
No more remote work at Yahoo - mh_
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3453-no-more-remote-work-at-yahoo
======
kjackson2012
I worked for Yahoo in the years surrounding the Microsoft debacle. Let me tell
you in no uncertain terms that Yahoo was the worst company I worked for.

I had very little work to do. Period. End of statement. I spent most of my
time doing practically nothing except playing ping pong and foosball and
getting paid for it. A lot of my coworkers and a lot of Yahoos were in the
same boat. Needless to say, that once the Microsoft acquisition failed and the
layoffs started happening, most of us were out of there.

On top of that, there was very much a prima donna attitude around Yahoo, with
a great deal of self-entitlement. I remember a couple of threads on devel-
random complaining about the lack of ping pong balls, and how that insulted us
as Yahoos since it meant that management didn't trust us. Oh the humanity of
not providing everyone with $2 worth of ping pong balls!

Yahoo was filled with lazy workers, and an extremely fat layer of lazy
management. I vaguely remember Rasmus running a script that calculated around
70 employees per VP. As well, the internal politics at Yahoo was astounding.
One of my friends worked on an iPhone app on his own free time, and when he
tried to get approval, it was held up for months because people were arguing
over things like color schemes, and which group should own the app. It was
pathetic.

I like what Marisa Mayer is doing. I think by getting rid of some privileges
like remote working, it is enforcing a discipline that hasn't been at Yahoo,
at least during the years that I was there. Showing up to work is a small
price to pay for being paid a great wage and having the opportunity to work
for what will hopefully become a first class company again. People need to
show up and work and interact with their peers, instead of hiding at home and
people not knowing wtf is going on with them. Sure, some people will quit, but
quite bluntly, anyone worth their salt would have already left Yahoo by now.
Anyone who is happy working in the environment that was Yahoo over the past 5
years is not an A player by any stretch, so it's safe to assume that you can
afford to lose them.

~~~
officemonkey
The way to "fix" entitled, lazy employees and management is to "light their
shit up," so to speak.

Give people work, set goals, and hold them accountable. You can't get a
completed app approved and on the street in months? Fire the managers
involved. Somebody complains that they don't have ping pong balls? Take away
the ping pong table.

Stopping remote work will not improve performance. Firing poor performers is
the solution, not chaining them to their desk.

~~~
enraged_camel
Firing people left and right and taking away perks is a fantastic way to run
morale that's probably already pretty low. I see what you are saying with
regards to the need to light fires under people, but there's other, more
positive and more productive ways to go about it.

~~~
officemonkey
If you fire the people who deserve to get fired you actually increase morale.

~~~
enraged_camel
That's not necessarily true. Office politics matter. If you fire popular
people - even if they are under-performers - then it will hurt morale.

Firing is always messy business. It's a good idea to avoid it unless it is
absolutely necessary.

~~~
officemonkey
Agreed. However, I'm running a business, not a social club.

If I have a few bad apples (the lazy, self-entitled employees of a previous
post) and they're not responding to being held accountable, the whole staff
needs to know I will use all tools available.

Frankly, if you manage properly, there's very little firing you have to do.
Most bad employees, when they see you hold people accountable, will find
another job. The only ones who stick around are the one's who are holding out
for unemployment.

------
mef
The author asserts that the new policy is based on "flimsy foundations". How
does he know if the foundations are flimsy or not? Does he have inside
knowledge of the productivity of remote vs. local employees at Yahoo? Is he
assuming it's the same as at 37signals? Might it not be?

He writes that Yahoo employees should be "angry" that the new policy was
declared "without your consultation". How does he know there was no
consultation? How does he know local employees didn't give feedback to
management that the extra communication overhead with remote workers didn't
create difficulties in collaboration?

He also writes that this policy change reveals that "Yahoo management doesn’t
have a clue as to who’s actually productive and who’s not.". Why is this
assumed? Why isn't it plausible that management studied the problem and found
that having collaborators in disparate locations hampered progress?

The entire article seems needlessly reactionary and assumes things about the
working culture at Yahoo that may not be true. Perhaps this vehement reaction
is due to the fact that the author has a new book coming out advocating remote
working?

~~~
raganwald
Without agreeing or disagreeing with your first three paragraphs, I want to
share with you that the very last sentence puts your arguments at risk of
being derailed by accusations of Ad Hominem Tu Quoque--that you are
speculating about the author's motivations with exactly the same lack of
insight that you decry. Worse, that line is also likely to distract people who
notice that it's an Ad Hominem Circumstantial.

I personally think your argument would be best served by saying something
along the following lines:

 _The author asserts that the new policy is based on "flimsy foundations". He
writes that Yahoo employees should be "angry" that the new policy was declared
"without your consultation". He also writes that this policy change reveals
that "Yahoo management doesn’t have a clue as to who’s actually productive and
who’s not."_

 _What evidence is there that any of these conjectures and speculations are
true?_

That would make the point about the lack of evidence in the post rather than
about the author.

~~~
mef
I appreciate the input, but on the contrary, I don't think an author's history
and interests should be ignored when evaluating their argument. The world is
full of people who excel at making compelling arguments for whichever side of
an issue suits their interests. Personally, knowing that an author has a
upcoming book whose thesis might be undercut by the decisions he's criticizing
makes any doubt cast upon this article much more compelling. Which is why I
mentioned it :)

~~~
raganwald
Well, then you end up with threads very much like the ones associated with
anything John Gruber posts. They end up being about John Gruber rather than
about his opinions. Which is great for people who find discussions about
people interesting. I do the first time all those points are raised, but I
can't help noticing that they become repetitive.

But to indulge you, consider whether you are confusing correlation with
causation. It could be that he writes this post to promote his book
(causation).

Nevertheless, it could also be that the post and the book are correlated, and
that the root cause is his own personal success with remote working
arrangements.

------
bpatrianakos
Any one of us could go off on a diatribe on why DHH is right or wrong (and
some of us have) but I think this issue is actually much simpler and we're
missing something crucial here.

Whether remote work is a good practice or not is besides the point. I'd say,
when done intelligently, it's a great thing. But don't you think Mayer knows
that already? The bottom line here is that Mayer has to take a floundering
company and turn it around. There must be something going within Yahoo! that
makes this decision the right one. Yeah, there's going to be some blowback
from employees and the media but at the end of the day it wouldn't be
surprising if Mayer is reading all these articles and saying "Oh if you only
knew what remote work is doing to this company...".

Remote work as far as I'm concerned is a great thing - but it's probably
hurting Yahoo! more than helping right now. I wouldn't be surprised to see
Mayer turn this thing around and reinstate the remote work policy when the
dust settles.

It's easy to play armchair CEO, especially if you're a CEO, but what DHH is
saying is basically "remote work is working for us therefore it should work
for others". Well, it's great that it works for 37Signals but Yahoo! is a
different beast and Mayer is not an idiot. It seems like she's willing to take
some damage now to avoid a catastrophe down the line.

~~~
gfodor
Great comment. In such a dysfunctional company such as Yahoo I would bet that
the majority of "remote workers" are just coasting and doing nothing. It's a
shame for those productive remote workers who will either leave or be forced
to start coming in, but if for every one of those people there are a hundred
pieces of dead weight then I think the cost benefit analysis is pretty clear
for a CEO to make.

~~~
bpatrianakos
Exactly. You said it better than I could in less words. The way I see it
there's definitely a lot to discuss when it comes to remote work but as it
applies to DHH's criticism I think what he says comes off as more of a way to
kind of say "hey we're awesome and we promote remote working" and completely
ignores what may be happening within Yahoo! to prompt this change. I wish DHH
had framed his post differently because it comes off as very know-it-all-ish
and doesn't seem to take into account that there might be anything else going
on at Yahoo! other than what he thinks.

------
willvarfar
I'm a remote worker. I've worked remotely for teams based in the US for one of
those big names you know and more recently for a London-based company with
offices just a couple of hours commute from my house deep in the Swedish
countryside. I've worked about 6 years full-time remote in the last 10.

Working for home is not for everyone but for some of us its speeds us up not
slows us down. The days I go into the office for meetings are the days I get
nothing real done.

Here and in all the remote-working threads people come along to say it doesn't
work and that you need to sit together to be a team. Well, I guess these are
inexperienced people who haven't worked out how to do it effectively is all.

I hope there is a new enlightenment in remote-working for us programmers.
There's so many diverse companies and meaningful organizations I'd be happy to
dedicate my thinking hours too if their management could just consider it
possible...

~~~
cbsmith
> Working for home is not for everyone but for some of us its speeds us up not
> slows us down. The days I go into the office for meetings are the days I get
> nothing real done.

It seems like you've drawn a particular conclusion from this, but I think you
are missing an entirely different one. If you "don't get anything done" every
time you come in to the office, that would suggest there is something more
important than your individual "getting things done" that doesn't get
addressed when you aren't in the office. When you are there, taking advantage
of the opportunity to address this exceeds the value of what I'm sure most
people would describe as your primary job function.

> Here and in all the remote-working threads people come along to say it
> doesn't work and that you need to sit together to be a team. Well, I guess
> these are inexperienced people who haven't worked out how to do it
> effectively is all.

I would agree with this. Obviously remote working can work. That isn't to say
that there aren't trade offs. There absolutely are. Like all trade offs, the
exchange is a bargain for some contexts and an unacceptable price for others.

~~~
gcp
_When you are there, taking advantage of the opportunity to address this
exceeds the value of what I'm sure most people would describe as your primary
job function._

I think it's more a side-effect of the typical meeting. They tend to be so low
bandwidth, that most people view any way out of them as increasing their
productivity.

I've not found remote meetings much better in this regard.

~~~
cbsmith
But given that one can have remote meetings, the fact that one is deluged with
meetings when coming in to the office kind of suggests something, no?

~~~
gcp
Yes, it says the the OP's company doesn't have a good teleconferencing setup.

~~~
cbsmith
Well, more generally it says that there is value in having on site meetings.

I think it is fair to say that the OP's measure of his net productivity
doesn't match that of his coworkers/employer... else they'd leave him alone
when he came in to the office. Now, you can argue whose perceptions are
accurate, but in the end the employer's perceptions are kind of all that
matters.

------
willholloway
I don't understand how serious software engineering is done in a lot of the
start up offices I see in photos.

These offices look like an Apple store. They are open floor plan. Instead of
desks they have tables where devs sit across from each other working on 13" to
15" laptop screens.

The ergonomics of these set ups are awful, and so are the economics.

Real estate is expensive in this economy. Why double pay for space? Why have
9-5 work space and 6-8 home space?

I know there is a separation of concerns argument, but in a competitive global
economy I find that takes a back seat.

I look at not double paying for space as one of the business advantages my
consultancy has.

A nice home/office with floor to ceiling windows slightly tinted to reduce
glare and UV in a high rise building with panoramic view, a proper standing
desk, a Kinesis Advantage contoured keyboard, Evoluent vertical mouse and dual
27" monitors is an incredible mood and productivity booster.

The ratio of window area to wall area in non-luxury buildings in NYC is an
abomination. In my far off utopian vision a glorious and massive urban renewal
project demolishes all soul crushingly dark tiny windowed apartments and in
their place stand gleaming solar powered monuments to the human race where our
creative class toils happily producing works of the head and the heart for
global consumption and a breath taking view is never more than a side-long
glance away.

~~~
jes5199
Well, the short answer is: they mostly don't do "serious software engineering"
- they do a lot of design (UX, mostly, but to some degree product design and
graphic design) - and shuffle the UI around. The software engineering happens
in short spurts, tucked away in conference rooms with the door closed, or
after hours when the managers have gone home (...assuming the managers go
home. I worked in an office where those people tended to still be there at
8pm)

~~~
speakingcode
I don't see what this scrutinization of stereotypical trendy startup
environments has to do with remote working. If a company has budget for it and
wants to make its employees comfortable with open space, and the employees
like it, it's their business. To suggest that "serious software engineering"
isn't occurring because of how you suppose their workspace is setup is,
frankly, offensive. In software engineering, most of the work goes on inside
the minds of the developers. Most of the remainder goes on in a keyboard and a
screen. If you wanna get down to it, having more whiteboards and less fancy
computer equipment is an indicator of better problem solving, not less. I sit
with three 19 inch monitors on my desk at work. At home, I use a 10 inch
netbook most of the time. I have not seen a difference in productivity because
when I am focused, I don't need screen real estate for more distractions.
Everything just tunes out. If you consider phd-level university computer
science research as "serious software engineering" then I'd note that most
research labs I came across in my days in academia were largely empty rooms
with some tables and some work desks. Most of the students (phd students, mind
you) worked on whiteboard and did coding and writing on whatever laptop they
had. The workhorse machines w. big monitors were usually time-shared and
dedicated to running heavy processing jobs.

As far as working from home goes, it seems you each agree that being
comfortable with ones workspace and environment impacts productivity. That
said, one is more likely to have a comfortable and productive work environment
when it is up to him/her to decide what equipment to use and where, which a
home office lends itself to more than an office, especially on a corporate
cube-farm level. Sure, some individuals may not be as productive at a
comfortable workspace in the home, but that is the individual. Working from
home is not for everyone, but those who find they are more focused and
productive in the home environment ought to have that choice.

~~~
jes5199
a classroom full of PhDs may be architecturally similar to an open-floor plan
startup office, but the quality of sitting in one and thinking is different -
mainly, it's quieter in a classroom. Quieter is good for thinking.

The startups I've seen don't particularly use whiteboards.

------
jobu
We've had business relationships with Yahoo in the past and everyone we dealt
with there had a complete lack of accountability. No one seemed to care when
we found problems, and it would take months for simple things to be fixed on
their side.

This change will no doubt cause some loss of talented people, but if they want
to drastically change the culture at Yahoo I don't see any other way. They
need to get everyone working together both physically and mentally.

Hopefully they'll move all development back home as well. Their dev teams in
India were dreadful with turnaround times and bugs.

~~~
willvarfar
> if they want to drastically change the culture at Yahoo I don't see any
> other way

Surely you can imagine other ways to make people accountable, dedicated,
empowered and effective than focusing on the place and hours they work?

~~~
PakG1
Can you? If the situation was truly bad at Yahoo, I can't. That if is an
important if, of course, but the question stands.

------
PakG1
All of the comments I keep reading that criticize this decision assume that
the A-players were working from home, and that the A-players will hate the
decision. Possibly true.

But a lot of the anonymous internal feedback was that over the years, previous
management had filled Yahoo up with B-players. If that's true, I can easily
imagine that there's quite a large overlap between those who work from home
and the B-players. It's such an easy way to slack off if you're not motivated
or capable. And nowhere do I read people saying, "Hey, maybe this was what the
situation was." I only read people saying, "Yahoo is boneheaded for not
respecting their people." Let's consider all the possibilities.

------
swombat
As I posted on the 37s blog:

Management paranoia is not the only reason why someone would want to decrease
the amount of remote work. There are team spirit benefits to bringing people
together physically, and depending on the type of work being undertaken,
remote work may have more downsides than upside.

I don’t see this as an aggression against remote workers, or an attempt at
controlling remote workers more closely based on some paranoid perception that
“they’re slacking” – it seems more like a change meant to help strengthen the
culture at Yahoo by making it easier for teams to bond.

~~~
ebbv
I'm sure that's how the executives in charge of this boneheaded decision
explain it to themselves, but try applying just a pinch of real world logic to
that thought and it shrivels like a slug under salt.

Do you _really_ think that people who have been forced to start working in the
office under threat of termination are going to form a positive, collegial
bond? If they form a bond at all, it will be one based on shared resentment of
the Dilbert-esque reality they now inhabit.

~~~
swombat
_> Do you really think that people who have been forced to start working in
the office under threat of termination are going to form a positive, collegial
bond? If they form a bond at all, it will be one based on shared resentment of
the Dilbert-esque reality they now inhabit._

I think that in hard times, you either do form a bond or you go form a bond
somewhere else. I think that's the decision that was just taken at Yahoo.

They could just have fired all the remote workers - but that would have been
truly stupid.

~~~
ebbv
Just firing the workers would have been _even more stupid_ but what they did
was already stupid.

------
britman
For me I think it's actually a clever marketing move by DHH and 37 Signals to
create a "stir" around the issue. My guess is they don't really care what
Yahoo's reasons are behind it but are very pleased with the timing...you can't
help but notice at the bottom of the post - Interested in learning more about
remote work? Checkout our upcoming book REMOTE: Office Not Required.

~~~
smw
I think it's likely that you're missing a layer. The book is really just
marketing for the DHH/37signals/RoR brand.

Developing that brand makes people more loyal to their products and ecosystem,
which probably makes them a lot more money over the long run than book sales.

------
127001brewer
The following (from the posting), " _When management has to lay it on so thick
that they don’t trust you with an afternoon at home waiting for the cable guy
without a stern “please think of the company”, you know something is horribly
broken._ ", reminds me of this quote...

 _How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm
clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair,
and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money
for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?_
[1]

[1] [http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/111168-how-in-the-hell-
could...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/111168-how-in-the-hell-could-a-man-
enjoy-being-awakened)

------
cletus
37signals comes down against a decree of no more remote working. I am shocked
(shocked that there is gambling going on in this establishment).

Much like hiring practices this is and will continue to be a divisive issue.
This one however seems to be largely driven by personal preference: if you
want to work from home, you can't understand why anyone is against it. If you
don't, then you do.

I fall in the camp of not necessarily being against remote working but it's
not something I want to do, I understand why companies don't want it and I
don't think working remotely scales.

The last is the most important point. Many take the view that they can be much
more productive with flexible work schedules and when people don't bother them
with trivial stuff and when they don't waste time on the commute.

Firstly, working from an office doesn't not exclude a flexible work schedule.
I've gone through phases where I don't get into work until 3pm. A guy I know
decided he would take Thursdays off and work on Saturday instead. My manager
forgot I was going on vacation for a few days and I didn't get a call or email
asking where I was until midday Tuesday (having not shown up on Monday).

As far as not being bothered, this can certainly be true. This is actually
part of the reason why I often wear headphones. Noise-cancelling headphones do
a pretty good job of filtering out a lot of noise but just the act of wearing
headphones I tend to find acts as a psychological barrier from others
bothering you.

As for commute, this much is true and is a particular problem in the Valley.
For me, my commute is a 7 minute walk to work (in NYC). YMMV. :)

But a lot of people make the same mistake with this issue that they make with
hiring practices: they tend to think that the individual case matters. It
really doesn't. If a hiring process weeds out some qualified candidates, it
doesn't mean it's broken. Whether or not it's broken is determined by whether
the company finds a suitable candidate, how long it takes and how expensive it
is. False negatives don't matter (to a company) as long as you get a positive
result.

The same goes here. The individual thinks they can work from home and they may
well be right but there are bigger issues. For teams--particularly large teams
--to work together requires a certain camaraderie that is orders of magnitude
easier to manage when physically colocated. This also applies to teams that
are geographically split. All other things being equal, a team in N sites will
perform better than a team in N+1 sites.

The other issue, and this particularly applies to large companies, is one of
culture. Culture like team cohesion is orders of magnitude easier to spread
when physically colocated. For a company the size of Google (my employer),
IMHO this is _far_ more important than any individual perceived benefits about
permanent remote work.

Google has (IMHO) done a remarkably good job of maintaining cultural
consistency such that transplanting an engineer from one team to another is
_relatively_ seamless. This isn't just about common tools either.

Chris Dizon wrote a great post called _Twelve months notice_ [1]. I like it
because it articulates the primary difference (in my experience) between those
who work remotely and those that don't. In my experience, those who work
remotely tend to be far more in the _transactional work_ category. While
there's nothing wrong with this and I think it's particularly suited to
freelance consulting, IMHO it is at odds with running and maintaining a large
engineering organization.

But I know I'm not going to convince anyone. This another polarizing issue.
Just be aware there are bigger issues than the individual not wanting to drive
to work.

EDIT: Also, I disagree with the position that this "punishes" good employees.
Yahoo wants to build (or rebuild) an engineering culture. They've decided this
is easier to do with engineers physically colocated. This doesn't preclude
workers from working from home on an occasional basis (eg waiting for the
cable guy). It simply means the default is you come into the office.

[1]: <http://cdixon.org/2009/10/23/twelve-months-notice/>

~~~
gcp
_I don't think working remotely scales._

Scales to what? I don't understand how this argument can be made when most
companies have multiple, globally distributed offices, which turns their
workforce effectively remote on the grand scale.

On all on-site jobs I've done so far, the remote offices were effectively
other companies as far as communicating is concerned. People who're used to
in-face communication have a huge barrier to overcome. This is a big
difference from working remote, where it doesn't matter, because the
communication channels are set up.

I simply don't see how this claim can stand even basic scrunty.

 _Firstly, working from an office doesn't not exclude a flexible work
schedule. I've gone through phases where I don't get into work until 3pm._

This works fine until something urgent comes up and a meeting is called at
11am, and management wonders why you are "late". Maybe Google is better at
avoiding this than your average company, but maybe at some point in your
career you'll find they're not :)

The rest of your argument is either very questionable (false negatives are OK
as long as the result is positive - a more positive result is better than a
barely positive one), or very squishy (camaraderie, team cohesion, culture)
with no hard data to back it up, so no point in arguing over it.

~~~
kayoone
having different offices usually doesnt split up teams between onsite and
remote, so its not really comparable. If a whole team is in another location,
they are effectivly on-site. Sure, communication with other teams is harder,
but that doesnt happen as often as internal team communication.

Trying to scale a company were everybody is remote and on their own, is a very
tough task.

So when working remote (as in from home) and your project manager calls you
for something urgent at 10am but you are still sleeping/doing stuff with the
kids etc. How would that be different to not being in the office ?
Meetings/communication dont go away just because you work remotely.

~~~
gcp
_Sure, communication with other teams is harder, but that doesnt happen as
often as internal team communication._

The question was about scaling up. It's obviously possible to manage entire
teams that are offsite, as many companies now do it. Is there some other way
to scale up than to have other teams? You aren't seriously suggesting to have
bigger teams, are you?

If you accept you need teams in multiple teams & locations (due to labor-
market limitations, physical limitations, cost of office space in some areas,
etc), then companies that are organized for remote work have a massive
advantage because they are much better at communicating between them.

 _Trying to scale a company were everybody is remote and on their own, is a
very tough task._

What arguments are supporting this statement? Is there any? What does "on
their own" even mean here?

 _So when working remote (as in from home) and your project manager calls you
for something urgent at 10am but you are still sleeping/doing stuff with the
kids etc_

I put down the phone, turn on the PC and am available 2 minutes later, instead
of 60 minutes later while I commute. Exactly the same thing as when an
emergency happens outside office hours in an on-site job, except that I'm
actually guaranteed to have all the stuff I need for work available at home.

Some of the arguments here make it sound as if these are fairytales, yet this
is exactly how work is and has been done for years, at least at some of the
more enlightened employers :)

~~~
kayoone
>> The question was about scaling up.

Having multiple offices in different location isnt working remotely. The teams
that work together still actually physically work together.

All i am saying is, having for example a team of 15 engineers, marketing guys,
sales guys who all work from home creates more communication overhead per
person. Add to that totally flexible schedules where the people i need to talk
to often arent available and vice versa, i dont think it scales well. Its a
total mess.

>> I put down the phone, turn on the PC and am available 2 minutes later

What if you have decided to go grocery shopping, take your kids to school,
your dog for a walk when something urgent happens ? It basically the same as
not being in the office at that point, you just are not available, no matter
if on-site or remote.

I have been working remotely for several years, but i enjoyed working in a
team with other engineers and the overlap of private and work life doesnt
really leave me feel relaxed at home. So its not for everyone and remote-work
certainly isnt the one-fits all future of work imo.

~~~
gcp
_All i am saying is, having for example a team of 15 engineers, marketing
guys, sales guys who all work from home creates more communication overhead
per person._

I'm not sure I agree with this. I was going to say that it could perhaps be
true for sales/marketing (not my area), but I just realized that at my last
on-site job the sales guys were actually the only ones remote. So my practical
experience seems to point the exact opposite as your claim.

 _Add to that totally flexible schedules where the people i need to talk to
often arent available_

Don't confuse flexible schedules with working remotely, they really are
entirely different things. I already pointed out how flexible schedules cause
problems for on-site work in the parent posts.

Different time zones are even more of a pain for both local and remote, but
I'd rather stay awake late at night for a meeting _if I can do so at home_.

------
shanelja
I think that this is all being blown far out of proportion, when people are in
the office, there is a lot more intent, you are there to work, sure you could
spend it surfing HN, or whatever, but you are under more pressure to produce
results.

In my experience, having someone there in person is a lot more productive, I
get immediate responses to my queries and they get immediate responses to
their work, no waiting around for emails to be responded to.

We are seeing a company taking away something we - as employees - like, in
addition to our $120,000 per year wages, our paid healthcare, our free office
snacks and clothes washing and our free donated dairy cow.

I wonder if, in a few years if the bubble pops, we will look back fondly on
the days of decadence and wish things where still the same?

\-------------

Also, totally unrelated, just realized I've been a member of HN for 6 months,
cool landmark :)

~~~
gcp
_...but you are under more pressure to produce results._

No, really, it is the opposite. You're fine as long you as you sit on your
computer from 9 to 5. Working from home, there's a constant pressure to
produce actual results, because that's what you are judged by. I find it more
stressful and there's more tendency to do overtime (you're already home
anyway, right?).

 _I get immediate responses to my queries and they get immediate responses to
their work, no waiting around for emails to be responded to._

There are many ways around this, chat clients being the most obvious. Also,
continuously interrupting people can be very counterproductive, specifically
if you do intellectual work.

 _We are seeing a company taking away something we - as employees - like_

There's many people for which working remotely isn't actually a choice,
barring a change of employer.

 _I wonder if, in a few years if the bubble pops, we will look back fondly on
the days of decadence and wish things where still the same?_

I've done consulting jobs both locally and remotely, and if you ask me, in a
few years time we'll consider non-remote working (when it isn't necessary for
the job) a thing of foolishness.

~~~
talentless
I think this is exactly right. It is easy to measure 'time in chair', but that
isn't a metric of productivity. Productivity is harder to measure so 'time in
chair' is often the substitute.

When you work remotely you don't have 'time in chair' as a proxy for
productivity so you have no choice but to prove yourself through your output.

When in an office you can stare at the wall all day and have it considered
"work".

Working remotely isn't for everyone. Some people do not have the self-
discipline. Don't allow those people to work remotely or don't hire them at
all.

There are other benefits to working in the same meat-space: culture, easy
collaboration, etc. I don't believe pressure to produce results is one of
them. I also think that most of those advantages are disappearing or gone with
chat, email, skype, google hangouts, and other collaboration solutions.

------
redm
It's worth noting that the author doesn't really know how Yahoo arrived at
that decision. Yahoo very well may have evaluated remote work productivity or
be aware of other situations or metrics that make it clear, they needed to
terminate remote work programs. I feel pretty confident that Marisa Mayer
didn't just wake up and make a rash decision to terminate remote work without
fully evaluating and understanding the situation, the impact and the benefits.

------
nikon
Working from home is boring. I spent 1 1/2 years working from home but now
much prefer working in my client's office with the team. It seems no one else
is either willing to admit this, or I am the only one who prefers the social
interactions and the ability to resolve and issue face-to-face in 2 minutes
rather than struggling on Skype, or waiting for emails.

~~~
gcp
_the ability to resolve and issue face-to-face in 2 minutes rather than
struggling on Skype, or waiting for emails._

If you're not coordinating your remote workers on an IRC-like system, you're
likely doing it wrong. (That's my experience, if someone else has successfully
used other systems I'd like to hear about it)

Also, if most of the team is on site and the remote people are a small
minority, things are going to suck, unless management is also off-site.

~~~
codeordie
I think you are spot on - I've done a lot of working from home, but it's by
far the most satisfying when there's a chat room (or IRC) system setup. It
makes it fun, I feel more connected, and I think we are more productive that
way.

------
outside1234
i'm not sure i would describe myself as a remote worker but instead, a worker
that comes in when there are advantages to coming in: a set of meetings, a day
where I need tons of facetime to nail things down, things that that are worth
the commute.

This is about 2x a week. I consciously batch these days up with as much of
this as possible. I work at home the other 3 days (on average again, some
weeks I'm in the whole week, some week I am at home the whole week).

I find this incredibly productive. I crush the people that work in the office
full time. I have time to be healthy with the regained hours from commuting
(40min in my case). I can afford a house.

Sorry, but the butts in seats mentality is crazy and I'm not going back. Even
for Google (where I've worked), which was nice, but failed on this score.

------
jijji
I'm Sorry, but I would prefer to live in a place where on the hottest day in
summer, the ocean water is not freezing cold. Or a place where my kids can
grow up and not have to worry about drinking polluted groundwater. Or a place
where even though I live 5 miles from work, it still takes me an hour each way
to get there. Or a place where the housing is not so out of touch with reality
that a 2 bedroom shack costs $600K, when in any other part of the country that
same house would be less than $60K.

~~~
throwaway1979
What better place do you have in mind? I don't live in the bay area anymore
because of some of these very problems. I moved to the New York area instead
and am somewhat regretting it. The bay area has problems but it is a pretty
decent place for tech folks. I'm genuinely interested if you have done your
home work and know of better options. The other place we are considering is
Austin. Chicago would be there too but we have had it with cold weather.

~~~
jijji
Well, my take on this is unique only because I did work for Yahoo for years,
and in the beginning I worked on-site, but then for years after that I worked
100% remotely from my house in Spring Hill, Florida. The way I work is
remotely, and I will work on-site for a small time, and after trust is built
up, the work is largely done remotely from then on.

------
infoseckid
People at Yahoo need to "work" first to qualify for "remote work". I think
this is the right direction. Get the team together, develop team spirit and
then transform the company.

------
alan_cx
Firstly, I'm a huge fan of proper home working. Simply, it works for me.

The general "vibe" I get from this is that that new management has arrived and
is concerned about productivity. I assume that if new management has arrived,
they would or should know what productivity levels should be and that yahoo
remote staff are lacking. If so, then from a management POV, it does seem
quickest and simplest to notionally get everyone back to base and kind of hit
a reset switch.

If yahoo is now a low ranked place to work, then I can well imagine that in
general its employees are a bit low ranked too, and perhaps some of the more
lazy ones looking for a lax easy life. Presumably the quality people will have
left. In which case, remote working cant work well at all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming the employees, this can only happen or go
wrong if management lets it. But, I think one should support a new regime that
is presumably trying to sort it out. Presumably, and if it were me, they will
assess the situation and bit by bit allow people out of the office again, but
with new procedures, guidelines or what ever.

So, to be honest, I think I can see what yahoo is doing. Yes it is painful for
the good remote employees that are left there, but if thing are going wrong,
they need to support the attempts to fix it.

Or...... I've missed the point somewhere.

~~~
smackfu
> I assume that if new management has arrived, they would or should know what
> productivity levels should be and that yahoo remote staff are lacking.

That certainly sounds like what most new management thinks they know.

------
mephi5t0
I SSH to REMOTE servers form home OR from office. So what difference does it
make? Well, yes, it may change some interaction because you could grab a
coffee with people. And I kinda like to work in office but I DO work from home
a lot. And even if I am in the office I still talk to most people on IM.
Yahoo's new policy is garbage. Or explanation why they do it is garbage.

------
xyahoo
Sigh, not this sh*t again.

Yahoo's problem is (and always has been for quite a while) bad middle-
management. (See my earlier posts; like Punxsatawney Phil, I come out only on
occasion). These middle MF'ers have been running the company into the ground
with their lack of vision, petty infighting and sheer idiocy. This has led to
MM and her cohorts to basically not trust the lower half of the company.

So the rank-and-file are paying the price for MM's inability to weed out the
rotten layer of middle managers.

Instead of cracking down on the WFH crowd, she should crack down on middle
managers.

1\. Get rid of any manager who has less than 8 direct reports

2\. Anyone of the level 'director' or above must justify their positions
(there has been severe rank inflation in Yahoo in the past)

3\. Anyone who has been at Yahoo for more than 2 years and in a position of
authority must be forced to analyze why their property declined over that
period, and what they could have done to avoid it. There is too much of 'shoot
and scoot' at Yahoo: managers jump on any hot item, botch it up and then move
on

------
lowglow
I would guess they're changing culture, then firing those that don't fit (or
have lost all intrinsic motivation) through performance reviews, then making
the rest sing and dance until they get burned out, finally replacing those
that left or were fired with new blood baptized by the new regime.

------
pshin45
New article from Business Insider with "inside information" for what that's
worth:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/ex-yahoos-confess-marissa-
may...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ex-yahoos-confess-marissa-mayer-is-
right-to-ban-working-from-home-2013-2)

"'For what it's worth, I support the no working form home rule. There's a ton
of abuse of that at Yahoo. Something specific to the company.' This source
said Yahoo's large remote workforce led to 'people slacking off like crazy,
not being available, spending a lot of time on non-Yahoo! projects.'"

"Mayer saw another side-benefit to making this move. She knows that some
remote workers won't want to start coming into the office and so they will
quit. That helps Yahoo, which needs to cut costs. It's a layoff that's not a
layoff."

------
jimwalsh
Are none of their teams distributed? I'd imagine if you have a distributed
team, what's the difference if an employee works from home occasionally. The
theory being that their boss or most of their team isn't in their location
already.

I can understand if Yahoo is making a shift to shore up some things in house.
Hopefully if that is the case, they return to a policy that allows more work
from home.

This is a battle that Gen Y'ers are going to have with aging management who
can only manage people they can see/touch/watch. I thought we as an IT culture
were doing better moving away from those old tenants but news like this
doesn't make it look good.

------
bcks
I have absolutely no data on this, but it struck me as a lazy and sneaky way
of making layoffs. It looks tough and decisive "She has a vision!" without
spooking Wall Street with the "Yahoo starts the layoffs!" headlines.

~~~
pyre
Sometimes Wall Street responds favourably to shedding employees. I guess it
just depends on the general outlook of the company. If the outlook is good,
then they are just 'cutting costs' and 'shedding cruft.' If the outlook on a
company is shaky or bad, then it's just seen as a desperate move to keep the
company afloat.

------
ap22213
Not allowing remote work seems as out-of-touch and inflexible as the types of
companies that impose 3-year minimum laptop leases. It smells of an
organization that is run by manufacturing MBAs and not creatives.

These are the companies that straddle the past - vision-less, fearful, and
clinging to hierarchy and control instead of embracing risk and riding and
harnessing waves of change. These are the types of companies that see their
employees as cost lines in a P&L spreadsheet, instead of as untapped resources
with limitless potential for creation.

------
brandonbica
I'm generally a fan of 37 Signals and the way they treat their people. I also
don't have any knowledge about any of this other than what I come across on
the internet. My current company doesn't have a set WFH policy, it varies by
department and sometimes seems hypocritical when you realize that there are
overseas contractors. This is my disclaimer.

I disagree with this post. From everything that I understand from what I've
read it seems like one of the major issues at Yahoo is a culture thing. This
doesn't seem so much like a trust thing to me. It comes across to me as a way
to rebuild an identity by changing the environment and you can't control the
environment when people don't come in to the office.

It does seem to me like there is potential to lose some good employees up
front, for sure. I don't assume this decision is a short term move. Whenever
management makes a decision that is more restrictive, or against popular
opinion, there is always out lash. Then it dies down. New people start and
it's the only thing they know so it's not a big deal.

The people are going to be the ones who change the company, and to change
their mindsets, and reinvigorate them it seems like a culture change would be
a good thing in the long run. The current policy clearly isn't working, how
bad could this really be?

I love the idea of working from home, being independent and working
autonomously, but it has its place. It's situational at best and this might be
the perfect example of a place where it's not currently working. This by no
means is saying that it doesn't work for 37 Signals. It seems to work
fantastically for them and for many of the customers who use their software. I
loved Rework, and I'm definitely looking forward to Remote.

Not everything is black and white.

------
vvortex3
I am a full time telecommute developer. I am slowly travelling around the
world while telecommuting. The job is awesome and all that anyone has to do to
achieve this is just to demand that any job they take be 100% telecommute.

There are, however, a couple things that one should keep in mind.

1) Your competition is global and intense. (How many of you have worked with
some of the better Russian or German developers? How do they get so good?)

2) Your pay must be set and comparable to a global standard so forget about
silicon valley pay.

3) You are usually a contractor and have no safety nets. So save large chunks
of your pay.

Ok, that said, maybe I can relate this to the original article by saying that
I've literally seen projects completed about 3x faster and at least 3x cheaper
than any other corporation I've worked for that required the workforce to be
in-office.

Why? Well, I don't really have the answer. I can speak to my own experience in
that I'm judged solely on deliverables. I don't really have a face and as far
as the company is concerned I exist as my deliverables... so they better be up
to par. The other reason is that working this way requires projects to be
organized ON PAPER. Those who have worked at any corporation will understand
why that is important. So many managers bullshit their way around doing things
like clearly documenting requirements or tracking deliverables. This simply
won't work in a telecommute environment.

I really do believe that if I were to hire a team to complete a project I'd do
so on a telecommute basis. It's simply cheaper and faster if done correctly
and thus gives any company that does so an advantage.

One last point: I don't believe any manager who is not him/herself an engineer
is suited to manage such a team.

------
laureny
I think we need to give Marissa a little more credit here, surely she's aware
of the adverse immediate effect of such an announcement.

Here is my interpretation: this is a way to flush people who are not
productive enough. Yahoo expects them to have left the company by June.

Once this is done, Yahoo will announce that it is restoring work-from-home
policy and will offer some very attractive packages to attract talent.

------
SethMurphy
I think a mandate having everyone work from home for a month would be more
telling at who the real producers are. This would force succinct communication
and everything is on the record. Working remotely forced you to communicate in
a more transparent way and actually gives a good manager more evidence to
judge an employee by. Of course counting hours is easier for a manager to do.

------
kayoone
I do not understand the general uproar against this. I have been working
remote alot in my life and i find its not the ideal way to work productive for
me and it certainly isnt the ideal way to build a great working culture.

Its more like everyone cooking their own meal, communication is hardly ever as
good as it should be in remote teams and you are just more disconnected from
the core.

Personally i like my time alone and i get alot of stuff done in less time, but
i enjoyed sitting in an office with 4 other engineers alot more. It was alot
more fun and not alot less productive, if at all... Working remotely from home
makes me feel alone after a few weeks now, i might even call it depressed.

While i think working remotely for some time (1-2 days a week) is awesome, i
dont see the future of work as being remote only... I dont want to mix private
with work life too much, which happens alot when working from home and i want
to feel relaxed at home and not always think about getting back to my desk to
get some more work done. And i know alot of people that think the same.

~~~
tribaal
I'm currently working from "home" 100% (since about a year), and to remedy or
alleviate this problem I rent a space in a coworking office full of other
(mostly non-IT) entrepreneurs/remote workers. It's been working pretty well!

~~~
kayoone
exactly what i will be doing from March onwards, just got the keys :)

------
lanna
Not surprising comming from a workaholic who sleeps 4 hours a night and thinks
a woman should have a baby and get back to work the same week.

------
brown9-2
I didn't bother to read the original announcement but this line stands out for
me:

 _it is about the interactions and experiences that are only possible in our
offices_

Seems to be a statement that good collaboration is only possible when
employees occupy the same physical space.

Yahoo has offices across the glove, don't they? Are they going to also ban
teams/employees in different offices from working together?

~~~
walshemj
Presumably the idea is that teams are collocated which is where most of the
value of team bonding comes from.

------
jasonjei
Here's a thought, why doesn't Linus Torvalds tell all the Linux core
committers that if they want to continue to have commit access, they must show
up at the office?

When I was a kid, I learned most of my programming through IRC channels. I
worked on projects on Campfire, Skype, Hangout. It's not only possible, but
provides a written log and account of decisions made. As well as giving people
time to reflect.

The bottom line is that if you don't trust the people you hire, you've already
hired wrong. Remote works if you trust your team. I had people working in
person playing video games in the office. You can't coerce someone to work;
you can only control this at hire time, not runtime.

Yes, it's impossible to tell who will work well remotely. But it's usually
pretty obvious. People who will look for new things to do will do so, and
people that will steal time can probably only keep up the con for only so
long.

Hire right, and remote working works. That also includes in-person hires; they
might be sitting there in seat...

------
fotoblur
Not surprised by 37 Signal's opinion as they've gotten remote to work because
of their passion for creating tools that foster communication.

For me, there are 2 ways to look at Yahoo's decision.

One is they are flat out wrong, but thats OK, because they are making
decisions (Steve Jobs spoke of this)! Decisions are what moves companies in
directions, good or bad, its better than being frozen and stagnant.

Two, I can attest to the cross pollination of ideas when you're together as a
team, sharing lunch, sharing experiences, seeing each other in person, reading
each other's body language, etc that just doesn't seem to happen at the same
level when you're remote. If I were building a team from the ground up I'd
want my team to be hanging out everyday ...the other meta of working together
doesn't happen over Skype :). I can't tell you how many solutions were dreamed
up on the walk to Starbucks. There is just something there that is hard to
replicate with software.

------
mschaef
A couple observations about this situation:

Yahoo will likely be better off with a an all local workforce. Having spent
time working both locally and remotely myself, being local and present with
the rest of the team has significant benefits.

That said, the personal costs for the employees in question are likely to be
very high, particularly for those that telecommute from places that aren't in
driving range of the Yahoo office. My hope is that Yahoo is treating these
people as gently as they can.

> Companies like Google and Apple can get away with more restrictive
> employment policies because they’re at the top of their game and highly
> desirable places to work. -DHH

The causality my be wrong here... it may not be the goodness of the employer
that enables the restrictive employment policy, it may be the restrictive
employment policy that enables the goodness of the employer.

------
pshin45
One crucial piece of info missing from this article is how long this "no more
remote work" policy will be in effect.

Yahoo's cut a lot of staff and (acqui-)hired a lot of new people over the past
few months, and so for the sake of team re-building, I can see why they might
want to have all staff in one place for a while.

Even if staff are working remotely, it's always better for them to have met
and bonded in person at some point - more trust, camaraderie, and goodwill.
Maybe this is Marissa Mayer's way of getting everyone on the same page for a
few months, and then afterwards people will be able to work remotely again as
usual.

If this is a temporary measure to team-build more effectively, then it makes
sense. If it's permanent, then I agree with the author DHH that it's a foolish
and shortsighted move.

~~~
netrus
If I now move my family close to an Yahoo office, only to learn that the
measure was just temporary, I would be quite angry.

Sure, invite all teams to meet at an office for 2-3 weeks of networking, team-
building etc. That's a great idea, but not what is happening here.

------
djt
What works for a company the size of 37 signals may not work for a company
with thousands of workers.

~~~
netrus
It works quite well at IBM, head-count around 400k.

------
at-fates-hands
While I agree with many points in the post, there are some things the author
is missing.

I have several friends who have worked at large floundering companies _cough_
Best Buy _cough_. As soon as a new CEO comes in, this is usually the first
thing to go in terms of perks to the worker bees. They try and frame it up in
many ways, but overall, it's an attempt to try and focus your work, and rally
the troops in order to help stagnate morale.

The ironic part was the lower managers immediately convened a meeting of
developers after the CEO's announcement, and told everybody, "Yeah, this isn't
going to affect our group - carry on and continue to do what you need to do.
Even if it means working remotely a good part of the time."

------
Mankhool
At my corp of 40,000 souls we are, year by year, diminishing the number of
full time resident workers in favour of mobile workers and home based workers,
all as a way to cut costs, save office space and increase the bottom line.

------
louischatriot
DHH points are valid, and I agree with him that this move shows how much Yahoo
trusts its employees. That basically means they have no clue why they're
falling appart and think the answer is "people need to work more".

But we have to keep in mind that 37signals is a very differend kind of
company. I'm not sure remote work is that suited to big companies. So they may
be right in principle but they're handling it poorly.

tldr of the article: [http://tldr.io/tldrs/512b80b57ad42f2e2500000a/no-more-
remote...](http://tldr.io/tldrs/512b80b57ad42f2e2500000a/no-more-remote-work-
at-yahoo-by-david-of-37signals)

~~~
aoprisan
works fine for IBM

------
tristan_juricek
My sense is that Yahoo is about to start doing some reorganization.

\- There might be some trial and error runs of different managers (ergo, a
period of quick reorganization) \- Leadership might want to simply make their
mark on the organization \- It might be about establishing a culture of
secrecy a la Apple (this is a stretch)

I do sense it's a symptom of a serious cultural problem. Layoffs might be
coming. However, I'd expect more people to just to be straight up fired,
without the big "we're reducing headcount" sort of announcement.

------
mikec3k
I worked for a company that's 100% remote workers. It didn't work for me,
because I had too many distractions at home & my friends thought I wasn't
working and always asked me to do errands during the day. On the other hand,
it obviously worked for a lot of people, since they've been in business for 20
years doing custom programming.

That taught me that I actually prefer working in an office, as long as I don't
have to drive to work.

------
olefoo
I think Ms. Mayer is doing the _right thing for Yahoo!_ at _this_ time.

Yahoo! needs to be in high-contact mode for a time while it gets its company
culture sorted out. There is no room for people who aren't willing to commit
to full participation in the company and its day-to-day functioning in the
highest bandwidth form there is; being present.

This is not a strike at working remotely in general, its Yahoo! dealing with
Yahoo!'s issues.

------
speakingcode
in this day and age the notion that remote work hinders communication or
scalability is absolutely absurd. Sure, it may hinder certain types of social
interaction and communication, but in terms of collaborative engineering, it
does not. Open source projects have managed tens, hundreds and even thousands
of developers on single projects using rather primitive mailing lists, irc
channels and source control. These days we have hangout and facetime, skype,
hipchat... endless lists of intuitive textual, audible, and visual
communication tools, project management tools, team management tools, code
management tools... Using the right tools and practices, remote working is FAR
MORE scalable than in-office working, because you can leverage a mass of
employees from all over the world without the need to build out office space,
infrastructure and other overhead to facilitate physical colocation.

[http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/02/why-we-still-
believe-i...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/02/why-we-still-believe-in-
working-remotely/)

~~~
millstone
Open source projects tend to be almost entirely remote. That’s qualitatively
different from a company like Yahoo!, which I imagine to be majority in-
office, with some remotes.

From the link you shared (which I strongly agree with):

 _There’s no halfsies in a distributed team. If even one person on the team is
remote, every single person has to start communicating online... no more
dropping in to someone’s office to chat, no more rounding people up to make a
decision_

So the in-office members are forced into contortions to accommodate the
remotes. That may be OK if the team is committed to the practice, like stack
exchange is. But if Yahoo! is run like a traditional company, designed around
in-office work with occasional exceptions made for remotes, then those remotes
burden the in-office team members, and absolutely hinder communication.

------
jblock
I get the stigma of "cool companies" that have chefs that serve organic meals
4 times a day, but are those benefits really all that superficial? As a new
graduate who has to move to likely a very expensive part of the US to work for
them, making the transition easier by eliminating some worries from my life
(like doing lots and lots of grocery shopping) is a pretty nice benefit.

~~~
ikailan
No, not at all. Serving meals makes it much easier to convince your team to go
to lunch together (though many folks will eat at their desks, PLEASE
DISCOURAGE THIS). Lunching together with your team frequently is the single
best benefit of a company that offers cafes for employees. It's one of the
ways non-urgent but important information propagates around an organization.

------
gojomo
It is possible to believe both of the following:

(A) Remote working is a good thing, and the best companies will embrace it,
now and increasingly in the future.

(B) Ending remote working arrangements is the right thing for Yahoo right now.

There is a path-dependence in corporate structures and cultures. Yahoo needs
big changes. Even somewhat arbitrary changes with collateral damage could help
re-form habits of interaction.

------
ChuckMcM
I some times wonder if this is a test. We've all been looking at it from the
engineering perspective, but I sometimes wonder if its a test of management.
Is somebody trying to see if there is any manager inside of Yahoo that can
justify remote team members? It is those managers who are going to lose people
when those remote people quit or have to be laid off.

------
cujo
Wow. Why are we all of a sudden so interested in what Yahoo is doing these
days? They aren't a leader in, well, anything, but now the internet is in a
frenzy about this work-from-home recall.

How's this for an idea? Let's see if Yahoo is a company worth looking at for
leadership. They aren't? Oh. Then let their policies die with them.

~~~
eloisant
Well, people who like the idea of working from home don't like the bad
publicity remote working is getting from the ban at Yahoo.

~~~
MitziMoto
Exactly this. As a full time remote worker, I fear the "monkey-see-monkey-do"
fallout that could come of it. Yahoo may not be a "leader" in anything, but
their CEO is one of the most respected people in Silicon Valley. When she
makes a move such as this one, people notice.

------
ishansharma
This reminds me of of my college. There are so many times when I want to study
myself but they have a strict attendance criterion which I have to fulfil.

I do not like this new decision. Yahoo looked on a nice path after Merrisa
coming back but this is a bad decision for workers. No matter they will leave
soon!

------
guiomie
I see a lot of people whining about trust and dictatorship ... but perhaps the
situation is worst then it seems from the outside, and that Yahoo is actually
full of complacency and laziness, and getting them all under the same roof is
the only way to clean the place correctly.

------
drgath
> Yahoo already isn’t at the top of any “most desirable places to work” list.

Yahoo ranked #8 on this list. [http://www.businessinsider.com/best-employers-
in-america-201...](http://www.businessinsider.com/best-employers-in-
america-2013-2?op=1)

------
PakG1
This article seems like an excellent response to OP. It was posted 496 days
ago.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3123135>

------
donohoe
Basically, remote working works and is good.

At Yahoo it was nor working - being abused, bad habits and policy engrained
over years.

Doesn't mean it won't be back down the road. I think they're just cleaning
house.

~~~
just2n
That doesn't make any sense. If a person is unproductive or abusing a policy,
you fire them, publicly. You don't ban the policy.

Now everyone who wasn't abusing the policy but was only still working at Yahoo
because of it will leave. This is called throwing the baby out with the
bathwater.

------
airnomad
I'd like to see ratio between remote and office employees for 37signals. My
bet is they're not, contrary to the popular belief, mostly remote-work
company.

------
koenigdavidmj
I wonder if someone's going to try to call this constructive dismissal.
Probably somebody in a different state with a spouse who can't just up-and-
leave.

------
voltagex_
I'm in a wheelchair. Transport and accommodation is tricky. These policies
really, really suck.

------
webmonkeyuk
We all love a sensational post!

"Of course not, you’re going to be angry at such a callous edict, declared
without your consultation" seems a bit out of place when the pull quote from
Yahoo! reads: "If this impacts you, your management has already been in touch
with next steps"

~~~
aoprisan
it's really not, just less bs

------
senthilnayagam
on twitter my interaction with dhh me: @dhh been to yahoo office and things
are recovering, just reserve your judgement till 3rd quarter results are out ,
hoping for a miracle

dhh: @senthilnayagam No miracle forthcoming will be due to killing remote
working programs.

me: this one is a boomerang, it is targeted at yahoo management team and
managers who are comfortable in their old ways me: those who wanted to abandon
the yahoo ship have already done it, yahoo has to float first before it can
sail again

------
tribeofone
Get'em Dave

~~~
benatkin
I don't think he goes by Dave, any more than he drinks beer. :p

------
michaelochurch
This is an excellent analysis of the situation. I generally prefer to work in
the office over remote work, because it's preferable from a networking
perspective, but a zero-tolerance approach to it is ridiculous.

My personal hunch is that this is a move to reduce headcount. Yahoo's top
management doesn't want to put the company through a layoff, and they're not
organized enough to know which projects to cut, so this is their hail-mary
complexity reduction step. It's a way to shave off a few percent without
having to terminate people. Unfortunately, the cultural side effects are going
to be massive. It's bad for the executive image as well. "We're out of ideas."

WFH exists for sociological reasons in addition to the obvious benefits
(geographic reach, lower stress levels). Engineers are smart. They know
they're not all going to climb the ladder and become top dogs. Not everyone
wants that, either. The right to WFH gives people the tacit ability to "grow
away" to a 10-hour work week, taking pressure off the competition for
visibility and rank and allowing the organization to actually function. It
gives people a path whereby, instead of climbing the organizational ladder,
their efficiency gains are paid back to them in the ability to retain
employment with a reduced work footprint. If you're twice as efficient as a
typical office drone (which is not hard) then you can work a 20-hour week.

When you go back to the ass-in-chair regime, management has more control and
the social stakes are higher. People aren't going to be happy putting in 40-50
dedicated hours _and_ not having control. To a myopic executive who thinks
everyone should be like him or her, that seems like a good thing because it
makes people "hungry", but it's actually dysfunctional because the competition
for rank is extremely counterproductive.

Next up is the Micromanagement Death Spiral. Macroscopic underperformance
leads to individual overperformance by managers, the problem being that
managerial overperformance (heightened control, micromanagement) is toxicity.
That will exacerbate the company's macroscopic issues and lead to more
micromanagement... the vicious cycle.

~~~
jorde
No doubt will this reduce head count but on what expense? My guess is that it
pushes more talented people out which can start the downward spiral. This is
something we have seen in Finland with Nokia: when the company decided to give
people the choice to leave and get a severance package, it meant that the best
people left to join startups and to do something else. After you start to
bleed talent like this it's hard to go back.

------
nirvana
TL;DR: Here's the thing: All engineering is "working remotely" because being
"remote" is simply a matter of isolation. This is why even people in the same
room use headphones, IM, etc. Everything that's not working remotely (eg:
isolation) is "meetings" and the overhead of distractions. The only advantage
of having engineers in the same office is a lower cost of meetings. The
disadvantage is it makes engineering harder.

\--

This decision shows me that Meyer doesn't respect or understand engineering
culture. She's bought into the management BS "accidental collaboration"
rationalization for industrial age butts-in-seats ideology.

Engineering culture comes, to a great degree, from the way you treat engineers
and the process of engineering.

Treating engineers like cubicle bunnies who just can't wait to get interrupted
by their Pointy Haired Boss is not conducive to building a good engineering
culture.

In fact, requiring people to be in the office shows an anti-engineering
mentality, because engineering, an effort of the mind, requires situations
that are best for the mind.

Two key things enable good engineering: Collaboration (which requires
communication) and coherent thought (which requires silence or peace or the
isolation from interruption necessary to do it.)

This means that even if every engineer is in the same room, they're going to
start "working remotely" by isolating each other via the use of headphones,
and a preference for non-interruptive working (Eg: send email, or an IM rather
than walk over and tap the engineer on the shoulder.)

It's true that in an office getting together in a conference room to has
something out is easier and more convenient, but the tradeoff is that even
with all the isolation people try to put into effect interruption creep is a
real thing- eg: meetings, etc.

Working remotely prevents these interruptions at the slight cost of a higher
level of effort needed to have a "meeting" (using a virtual whiteboard or just
a phone call or whatever.)

So, if you spend most of your time in meetings, then you need everyone
together.

If you value engineering and spend most of your time engineering, then whether
people are together or apart physically, they are all isolating each other and
effectively "Working remotely".

IM, Email and other collaboration tools that allow engineer isolation work as
well whether the engineer is in the office or across the country.

Plus, lets not forget the minimum 2 hours of lost productivity that comes form
requiring people to go to an office- either the commute (and the resulting
need to get into work)-or the long lunches at those free cafeterias, and the
endless cycle of distractions that are accepted non-work in offices. A "15
minute coffee break" at the office really has a 20-40 minute work
interruption, because it often involves other people, while that same break
working remotely can easily be exactly 15 minutes, and likely will be shorter
because 10 minutes is enough to get the same level of relaxation from the day.

Almost everything in an office is designed to distract you from engineering,
and the cost of this overhead is significant.

~~~
drharris
> Meyer doesn't respect or understand engineering culture

I think somebody doesn't understand where Mayer came from.

~~~
nirvana
I know exactly where Meyer came from, and a fair bit of inside baseball about
her time there.

If you disagree with my argument, please make a counter argument. Snide
comments are useless.

~~~
drharris
She IS an engineer. What else do you need to understand engineering culture,
other than to have been one for years?

~~~
trhtrsh
She was an engineer, very briefly.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer>

