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The modern concept of Small Office and Home Office or SoHo , or Small or Home Office deals with the category of business which can be from 1 to 10 workers. Larger business enterprises, one notch up the size scale, are often called Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.
Before the 19th century, and the spread of the industrial revolution around the globe, nearly all offices were small offices and/or home offices, with only a few exceptions. Most businesses were small, and so was the paperwork that went with them.
At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st the term "Small or Home Office" and its variants, and the acronym "SOHO" have been used to a great extent by companies who market products targeting the great numbers of small businesses which have a tiny or medium sized office.
Several ranges of products, such as the Armoire desk and a few other desk forms are often designed specifically for the "SOHO" market. Several kinds of books are written and marketed specifically for this type of office, ranging from general advice texts to specific guidebooks on setting up such things as a small PBX for the office telephones.
Many consultants and the member of several professions such as lawyers, real estate agents or surveyors in small and medium sized towns operate from such home offices.
The 36 hour or 48 hour cycles of much of software development has led many practitioners in this domain to do their work in home offices given the difficulty of the traditional business world to adapt its "normal" hours to some of the more extreme needs of software engineering.
In popular literature the home office has not been the topic of as many works as the "normal" modern office. Brian Basset, the author of the newspaper comic strip Adam has sometimes described its more humorous aspects.
References
- Basset, Brian. Bless This Home Office ...With tax credits: An Adam Compilation. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1997.
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