
Marissa Mayer had nursery built near office before work-from-home ban - protomyth
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/02/27/yahoo-marissa-mayer/
======
qeorge
Is it a foregone conclusion that others can't bring a baby to work?

My biz partner brought his newborn in for about 10 months - it was awesome.
Given, we are a tiny company and they are Yahoo, but its not obvious to me
that its impossible to work it out.

So I'm glad M. Meyer is doing so, I think that's kind of awesome. The kid will
probably have a great time. Maybe there's a way to let others do it too.

~~~
leothekim
Where I work, it's perfectly acceptable for people to bring their children in.
But it would be impossible for me to get anything done if I brought my two
kids in, other than taking care of my kids while they're here. It's also
disruptive to the other people here, so out of deference and sheer common
sense I don't bring them in.

Other companies provide a day care service, which I hope becomes a bigger
trend. Goldman Sachs has one that employees have a certain number of days that
they're entitled to.

I too am glad that Marissa is doing this. She, like every parent I know, is
trying to find a work-life balance, and she is in the privileged position of
being able to do it her own way.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
> ... But it would be impossible for me to get anything done if I brought my
> two kids in

The University of Houston has a day care that is operated by the Psychology
Dept. It is very well regarded, and quite a nice perk for employees (except
for its limited capacity). The center is housed in a separate building, so
there are no uninvited disruptions, except the ones that are universal to
every day care (injury / accident, etc.). It wouldn't be the sort of thing
that a small shop could do, but a company the size of Yahoo! could put such a
day care in (maybe they already have?), and potentially save the company and
employees considerable time and money.

------
cpeterso
Is this article trying to make Mayer look like a hypocrite? She had a nursery
built near her office because she planned to work _at_ the office, not from
home.

~~~
smacktoward
Unlike Ms. Mayer, the average Yahoo! line employee cannot afford to have a
nursery built near the office so they can come into the office while still
having their baby right at hand. So the "everyone comes into the office" edict
falls on them a little harder than it does on her.

It doesn't make her look like a hypocrite, in other words, as much as it makes
her look like an out-of-touch, clueless plutocrat.

~~~
leothekim
The "everyone comes into the office" edict probably doesn't affect child care.
If you have kids, you probably have already arranged for other types of care
for them.

If you choose to work from home and think you can take care of your kids at
the same time, then bully for you.

But if you think that changing diapers, changing clothes, breast feeding, and
cleaning up vomit for your kid and giving them activities to keep them from
climbing the walls is easy, then I've got a bridge to sell you.

Ms. Mayer is at least trying to do this and run a company. She may be out of
touch, but she's trying.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>But if you think that changing diapers, changing clothes, breast feeding, and
cleaning up vomit for your kid and giving them activities to keep them from
climbing the walls is easy, then I've got a bridge to sell you.

Maybe nurse-maids are about to make a comeback.

You can hire someone to do all of those other things, except breast-feeding;
where your options are to feed or to pump. Employees who choose to breastfeed
still receive the periodic disruptions in absence of the baby's immediate
proximity.

~~~
leothekim
> Maybe nurse-maids are about to make a comeback.

#shithnsays

Sure you can hire someone to delegate parenthood to. But that just underscores
my point that working at home is nearly impossible if you need to care for
your children by yourself.

------
huhtenberg
Why do these angered employees think it's reasonable to compare themselves to
the CEO of the company, who is trying to pull said company from a deep shit
that it is in.

~~~
corresation
You make that sound remarkably selfless of her, as she heroically arrives and
tries to save the day, the ungrateful slobs unwilling to see what is good for
them.

~~~
chollida1
I looked at his comment multiple times and it looks like you're trying your
very hardest to put words in his mouth.

All he said was that it's odd that rank and file employees expect the same
perks as the CEO. I think that's a very reasonable statement.

if the CEO get's a personal assistant would every other employee expect one?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Considering that she just took away a big perk from everyone (and one that is
very common in the industry), it's not crazy to wonder whether she'll try to
make it up in some other way.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Especially given the difficulty of arranging good quality child care on short
notice.

------
merinid
Maternity leave is not remote working. Women should have the right to take
lengthy maternity leaves without the fear of corporate ostracizing.

~~~
Muzza
> Women should have the right to take lengthy maternity leaves

And the cost should be borne by single men.

~~~
zorpner
Screw you, seriously. You want to remove childbearers from the workforce? You
want to reduce everyone's employment experiences by diminishing the market of
employees and ideas? You want your ten bucks a year so that you can say you
don't support single mothers (note -- extensive public health research
demonstrates that productivity and well-being of women of child-bearing age is
the best indicator of the overall health of a society)?

Why should society give you anything at all? Why should my tax dollars go
towards protecting you from crime, or paying your emergency room bills? And I
mean you, specifically, not people in general -- if you don't want to
contibute to make everyone's lot better, why should anyone give a crap about
you, or for that matter your opinions?

~~~
Muzza
I see I hit a sore spot. I don't really want to remove childbearers from the
workforce, but I do want a frank discussion about who bears the costs.
Actually, just an admission of the inherent injustice of the system would be
nice. Ten bucks a year? Screw _you_. I pay roughly 70% of my income in taxes
every year.

And holy thoughtcrime Batman! Despite paying tens of thousands of dollars
every year in taxes, all government services should be denied to me just
because of my opinions?

<http://mises.org/daily/2485>

------
geebee
I've read a lot of outrage about this, particularly around the hypocrisy of
having a nursery while forcing others to come into the office with no
comparable perk.

Problem for me is, I actually don't think there's any moral imperative for
Yahoo to make life easier for working parents or people who have some need to
telecommute. It may make good business sense - Richard Branson certainly seems
to think it does, but that's not a moral issue, it's a strategic one. If good
employees who have options no longer wish to work for yahoo, they will leave.

I do think Yahoo managed this poorly from a PR perspective. I think it would
have been wiser to announce Yahoo's plans to make the campus a perfect place
to be, with everything a working parent could want. Play up the daycare, gym,
dry cleaning. If they're not doing this, start a plan or two and make a big
deal about it. I'm speaking cynically here, this is about managing the press.
I'd rather it were sincere, of course, but this is PR we're talking about.

~~~
rayiner
> Problem for me is, I actually don't think there's any moral imperative for
> Yahoo to make life easier for working parents or people who have some need
> to telecommute.

It's not any more or less of a moral imperative than having bathrooms. It's a
concession to the structure of human society, and is arguably moral in that
sense.

~~~
geebee
I'd like to start by saying that I do agree with you that some basic rules
about the relationship between employer and employee reach the level of "moral
imperative" and should be codified in law. "At will" employment is a big part
of this (if you don't like it, you leave), but I certainly do agree that there
should be some legally enforced rules around this.

So the only real disagreement we have is where to draw the line. Do you really
put the right to telecommute on the same moral level as having a place to pee
or time off to go to the bathroom?

~~~
rayiner
I don't disagree with anything you've said, just pointing out that it's an
arguable point.

I think child care is more important than corporate America perceives it to
be. It is _the_ thing perpetuating the pay disparity between men and women in
white collar jobs.

------
donohoe
I wish people would give this a rest already. This is getting old fast.

------
aviswanathan
To her credit, she probably has the toughest and most scrutinized job in the
technology industry right now. Every action she takes will have hoards of
supporters and nay-sayers. Kudos to her for actually being bold and ignoring
the noise.

~~~
jff
The big stacks of money she's being paid, and the enormous golden handshake
she'll receive even if she runs Yahoo! into the ground, probably help with
that.

------
gte910h
I am not unconvinced the turning off the WFH was not a stealth layoff.

~~~
46Bit
Nice triple negative. I think there's an element of layoff about it, but
comments from ex-Yahoos about lax work culture in remote employees might well
mean it's the best thing to do. Especially when your management clearly can't
work well with remoters and no longer has a clear direction.

Remote work is _great_ if there's good communication both ways. If not, it's
throwing money into a bottomless pit.

~~~
emperorcezar
Sounds like they should have laid off management then. :)

~~~
gte910h
If they just need to decrease headcount, they can completely move the
conversation to WFH vs NOWFH instead of "why are they laying off people" by
canceling it.

I'm going to bet MM doesn't necessarily think WFH is bad at all, it was just
an easy layoff.

------
nthnb
Why is the disgusting media leaking into HackerNews?

~~~
tutuca
The same reason we have comments like this :
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5299756>

------
enraged_camel
On the one hand, what Mayer does with her money is her business. It is
actually kind of nice that she built a nursery for her kid - it shows that she
is taking her parental duties seriously (unlike most CEOs who get tunnel-
visioned into their work and ignore their families).

On the other hand, it would have been nice if she petitioned the Yahoo! board
to spend company resources to build a larger nursery, one that can be used by
regular employees. That way, it would have come across as, "we are eliminating
the work-from-home perk for everyone, but we understand that this is tough for
employees with young children, so we built this nursery they can use free of
charge." That would paint her as a no-bullshit CEO who is also attuned to the
family-related needs of her employees.

------
Jabbles
Well where are the details about the nursery? Is it just for her? If it's
available for all employees you could rewrite the headline:

 _Mayer builds Nursery for employees' children to compensate (in advance!) for
loss of remote working._

~~~
smacktoward
Since the nursery is literally "next to her office" (see
[http://allthingsd.com/20130225/survey-says-despite-yahoo-
ban...](http://allthingsd.com/20130225/survey-says-despite-yahoo-ban-most-
tech-companies-support-work-from-home-for-employees/)), and she paid for it
out of her own pocket, it seems highly unlikely that it's intended for
community use.

~~~
Jabbles
Oh. That does seem likely to cause resentment.

------
shin_lao
It might look like a stupid decision, but I think the true reason isn't as
obvious as "people working at home don't work".

------
codex_irl
fact is people have kids & that's just life. If M wants to make Yahoo a more
attractive place to work & get the most from her employees then build a dam
child-care facility on site / at the office so that every employee can use it
- take care of your employees common life requirements so that they are free
to focus on building the best products & not about what time they need to
leave to beat the traffic & pick up the kids.

------
rayiner
My wife's reaction: "it's great, but [she] should have built on-site daycare
for everyone to use." (Profanity edited).

------
calinet6
This is a horrible criticism: Marissa Mayer is the CEO of Yahoo. She can do
whatever the hell she wants.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
What is your argument? That those who are adversely affected should go and get
CEO jobs themselves? Yeah! Let's all be CEO. In this country we have a long
established right established in the principle that everyone can speak their
mind. If Marissa Mayer's feelings are hurt, she can wipe away her tears with
freshly printed one-hundred Dollar bills. But, one thing she absolutely does
not have is the right to live a life free of criticism.

------
jroseattle
I look at this latest story and think about it in context when Yahoo switched
their employees to iPhones and Androids, which was well received as I
understand it. Other perks put in place also helped boost the morale of the
rank-and-file a little bit. But it appears she thinks about morale and vibe as
quantifiable, something that can be managed relative to the available morale
quotient that she can tap.

If this is part of an overall strategy, Mayer looks like someone who only
knows how to manage things on paper using spreadsheets. I'm sure she's trying
to replicate many of the successful approaches she took at Google, but Google
and Yahoo are not the same.

This nursery story just adds to my impression of her that she's tone-deaf to
how her actions affect the organization.

------
fnordfnordfnord
That's excellent, so Yahoo! employees have access to a nursery at the work-
site? That sounds like a reasonable thing to do after revoking the work-from-
home policy on short notice.

------
schoper
Mayer is not there to clock hours or save Yahoo with her brilliant ideas. You
don't hire a pregnant CEO to get things done. Yahoo has to take a number of
unpopular actions in order to get back into the game. Remote workers tend to
be mediocre workers and they need to go. So do others.

Mayer is there to absorb and deflect criticism during Yahoo's readjustment
period. For various reasons, people don't like to criticize her, and when they
do, they aren't criticizing Yahoo. She'll continue to slash and burn for a
couple of years, and then she'll be gone, leaving Yahoo with a sort-of-clean
reputation.

~~~
xentronium
This is some extraordinary claim. Do you have any extraordinary evidence
besides her pregnancy?

~~~
schoper
She was sidelined at Google for years and basically forced out. Despite that,
and despite her pregnancy, Yahoo still hired her. Every indication is that she
is at Yahoo as an Image CEO.

Further, the only thing that makes my claim "extraordinary" is that Mayer is
someone who garnered elect status on HN shortly after her tenure at Yahoo
began. A similar (though opposite) phenomena was the story yesterday about
Mark Pincus, which generated a lot of heat for saying something positive about
one of HN's "damned" personalities.

------
dreamdu5t
Why do I feel like I've never read about Yahoo's CEO before it was Marissa
Mayer? Is it because she's a woman?

~~~
wutbrodo
Way to jump to conclusions of sexism against all evidence... Carol Bartz
(former CEO of Yahoo) was also a woman. The reason you hear about Marissa
Mayer a lot is because she had a sudden, high-profile transfer from Google to
Yahoo, and had high expectations by some of making big changes at Yahoo in an
attempt to turn them around (as well as expressing the intent to do so).

------
quux
I'm CEO bitch.

