

Marissa Mayer is killing telecommuting, and that’s a good thing - shin_lao
http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/28/marissa-mayer-is-killing-telecommuting-and-thats-a-good-thing/

======
potatolicious
This post makes no sense.

Author mentions Facebook's "lockdowns" as evidence that other people are
killing remote work. Except lockdowns are highly exceptional events - is
asking your employees to stay late in a disaster situation _at all_ like
asking them not to telecommute?

> _"It’s okay to say that. Sandberg and Mayer are giving up everything, so why
> can’t they ask that of everyone else?"_

I'm going to be frank: because I have several dozen recruiter emails piling up
in my inbox, and that's just from the last week. I have people swinging large
six-figure paychecks in front of my nose day in, day out, all of whom are
doing interesting things. I'd take them all if I could clone myself 100 times
over.

That's why you can't ask me to give up everything. Free market, people, it
cuts both ways.

You can ask your employees to come to work every day in lederhosen, too. We'll
see how far you get with that.

As someone who dislikes remote work, but has no problem with other people
doing it, the irksome thing about this topic is that is resembles the
vegetarian/omnivore "debate". You can't seem to champion for one side without
slamming the other.

Proponents of remote work constantly portray brick-and-mortar offices as
stodgy, inflexible, archaic, etc.

Proponents of on-site work constantly portray remote work as lazy,
inefficient, and for many reasons inferior.

Can we just accept that people work differently? And that people who subscribe
to one way of working aren't out to destroy your way of life?

~~~
mgkimsal
> "It’s okay to say that. Sandberg and Mayer are giving up everything, so why
> can’t they ask that of everyone else?"

They're not giving up everything. In an immediate short term sense, they're
giving up some things, but they also have a far more secured financial footing
to deal with the next 50 years of their life. They can, tomorrow, stop
everything, and do whatever they want to. Most of the rest of the company
can't, and need to balance their current obligations with their
wants/desires/dreams and family life today. And if they don't, they don't have
the 8 figure bank balances to fall back on.

~~~
sologoub
Mayer is surely not giving up everything. She's using her wealth to balance
things out in ways her employees cannot:

"Alas, with her blink-and-you’ll-miss-it maternity leave and her new policy
banning working from home, it feels like Mayer is throwing darts at working
parents everywhere. Her stand is even more egregious considering she’s
apparently built herself a set-up most moms can only dream of: a nursery —
paid for out of her own pocket — adjacent to her company office. “I wonder
what would happen if my wife brought our kids and nanny to work and set ‘em up
in the cube next door?” wondered a husband on AllThingsD. His wife, a Yahoo
employee, will soon have to stop working from home."

Source: [http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/28/how-yahoo-ceo-
marissa-...](http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/28/how-yahoo-ceo-marissa-
mayer-is-building-a-nursery-by-her-office-and-dissing-working-moms/)

~~~
lambersley
If all parents could afford daycares and nannies to pick our children up when
school calls and says, "little Johnny is sick ," I could agree with the
decision to remove workplace flexibility. However, we aren't all as wealthy as
Mayer. This is bound to have an adverse effect on Yahoos.

~~~
snowwrestler
Right, because only remote workers can take care of their kids when they are
sick.

Yahoo has not removed workplace flexibility, PTO, or sick time. They
restricted remote working, which has little to do parenting.

------
silverbax88
"The message here is that if you want to work at a company where people are
doing big and important things, you have to give up everything. It’s okay to
say that."

No, it isn't.

Yahoo! is certainly not doing 'big and important' things. They are a search
engine that can't figure out how to get it's rapidly decreasing market share
from rapidly decreasing. And the CEO wants everyone in the company to give up
everything - happiness, work life balance, a life outside of search engine
work -for that cause.

Unless Yahoo! decides they don't need you all of sudden - you know, if
headcount is too high or they decide your department isn't part of the 'goal'.
Then they can cut you loose, despite the fact that you gave up everything for
them.

So, translation: Yahoo! and other companies want you to give up everything for
them, but they will give up nothing.

Deeper translation: Yahoo! is doomed.

~~~
Roritharr
Especially if the CEO creates services at her workplace to mitigate her own
need to give up her own family life [1].

[1] [http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-
blogs/weird-...](http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-
wide-web/marissa-mayer-yahoo-ceo-telecommuting-nursery)

~~~
snowwrestler
I'm so, so, sick of this line of argument. Remote work has nothing to do with
raising kids or family life.

------
kyllo
>Family historian Stephanie Coontz writes that today’s workforce is so
demanding that families can only handle having one person in the workforce.
She shows how the average work week does not allow for people to take care of
children, which means that one partner needs to drop out of the workforce and
take care of kids.

No, no, no, no, no. This is not the way of the future, or even the way of
today. This is a throwback to the past. Yahoo has a productivity problem
because of incompetent management that cannot measure productivity, and sees
butts-in-seats as the only way to start. They are regressing. Because of their
dysfunction, they are trying to solve a problem that better companies already
solved years ago.

A person simply cannot work productively for 12-16 hours a day over a career.
You start to see diminishing returns at about six hours, and after nine or
ten, the only reason you're still there is social climbing. And because you
know you're not going home early no matter what, because you basically live at
the office, you will naturally take breaks, screw off, and procrastinate.
Working 8 to 8 for an Asian megacorp, I have seen it so many times. On the
other hand, bankers, management consultants, lawyers, and startup founders who
actually work hard 12-16 hours a day do not and cannot do it for a long
career, they are running a sprint not a marathon to maximize short-term
earnings in the hopes that they will reach their finish line, achieve "f---
you money" and be able to retire before they burn out.

------
jwwest
The author of the piece, Penelope Trunk, has a well-established pattern: write
a highly flammable headline followed by a long, off-the-cuff piece intended to
grab attention and generate page views via controversy de jour.

The article does not even broach any of the important issues being discussed
around telecommuting: trust, productivity, team gelling, etc. But instead
takes advantage of a recent controversy and adds a little spin from Trunk's
tired routine in order to generate page views and comments.

She once wrote that travelling is a waste of time (for her, but she projects
it to everyone). After reading this a few years ago, I actively started to
dislike this person immediately.

[http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/08/17/4-reasons-travel-
fo...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/08/17/4-reasons-travel-for-fun-is-a-
waste-of-time/)

Let's discuss the actual message of the post. Two paragraphs in I'm already in
full rage mode. Giving up your life for a company is ok? I understand
dedication, even the occasional extra few hours, but what Mrs. Trunk is
proposing is literally living at work, which we all know is unmaintainable and
unhealthy for most of us. Research has shown that there is a tiny portion of
the population that can get 4 hours a sleep and maintain 16 hour days, but
that's only about 1% of us. The rest of us have bodies and lives to maintain.

------
TallGuyShort
At the end of the post is this biographical gem: "She lives on a farm in
Wisconsin and homeschools her sons."

~~~
Mark_B
Actually, that sounds pretty awesome.

------
baggachipz
The author is just as out of touch as Mayer is in her morale-killing decision.
The author seems to have a bone to pick with those of us who would _dare_ to
have a life outside of work. If I earn a seven-figure salary and bonuses out
the ass, then I'll happily put in more hours. Especially if the livelihood of
others depends on my performance. However, in a wage-slave position, expecting
double (or triple) output from employees is idiotic and borderline evil.

------
vellum
At this point, I think the author is just trolling.

> _Mayer doesn’t want to work with anyone who is working 60 hours a week. She
> is in Silicon Valley where an 80-hour week is full-time and 50-hours is
> part-time._

> _I have written before that the reason women are not startup founders is
> that startups require 120-hour workweeks._

Really? People at _Yahoo_ are working 80 hours a week?

According to this 2009 HN poll, 5% of respondents work 80+ hrs. 16% worked
60+.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2843979>

------
gesman
Marissa's gesture applies to Yahoos who been doing lots of personal and "side
projects" away from premises at Yahoo's expense and not necessarily for
Yahoo's benefits. As a matter of cleaning the house - she's is 100% right.
Everyone should get a sense of discipline at least for the time being.

Sincerely - I been working from home for full-time clients for a long time and
having two dogs and two kids and kitchen smells around the house does not help
to focus and be productive.

I actually like being [in the nice] office and communicate with [nice] people.

Marissa is cleaning the house and everyone is invited! :)

~~~
kolektiv
> Marissa's gesture applies to Yahoos who been doing lots of personal and
> "side projects" away from premises at Yahoo's expense and not necessarily
> for Yahoo's benefits

Does it? Because from all the information provided publicly it seems to apply
to all remote workers - are you sure they're all lazy moonlighters? Doesn't
seem probable.

And don't apply your own experience to everyone else where it doesn't apply -
I work from home a lot too - I have no dogs, no kids, no smells - in fact I
have a very nice office, with better equipment and environment than any client
I've ever worked with. But that's just me, of course.

~~~
gesman
Well she cannot babysit every employee, and I understand her and understand
your point too. All are valid.

She needs to save the company and that's her choice.

If you work for Yahoo you choice is either [optional: bitch and] comply or
find a better place to work :)

~~~
corresation
_Well she cannot babysit every employee, and I understand her and understand
your point too._

Hacker News, Reddit, Slashdot, 9gag, and countless other sites exist upon the
9-5 of office workers who aren't actually working. The notion that office
workers are more likely to actually be doing something of value is utter
nonsense.

Any manager who doesn't know what their employees are contributing to the
company is completely incompetent and incapable of doing their job. The
physical location of the staff is irrelevant.

 _If you work for Yahoo you choice is either [optional: bitch and] comply or
find a better place to work_

No one is arguing with that. They _are_ saying, however, that the end result
for Yahoo will probably be much worse.

------
gregd
One question that I can't seem to find the answer to is, is Yahoo! willing to
pay relocation expenses to those telecommuters that have been asked to come
into an office? Or is it basically, "we don't care if you live in Des Moines.
We want you to move your family to San Jose and come into the office"?

~~~
mgkimsal
idle speculation ahead:

I suspect they'll make token offers of, say, $5k towards relo expenses, and
you'll be on the hook to pay those back if you stay less than a year.

~~~
gregd
Well nobody seems to be asking _that_ question and in my mind, it changes the
equation significantly.

------
mgkimsal
Some thoughts:

"Companies move more efficiently if everyone is at the office"

Some companies do - companies that are geared towards physical face time. Many
people work best like that - some don't. I'd say, more importantly, there are
periods of time when I work better face to face with people - often a few week
portion of a project, then there are other times when I'm _far_ more
productive getting stuff done working from home.

"that innovation happens faster if people work at the same office"

Yahoo's problem has not usually been innovation specifically, but following
through on that innovation (how many things have come from yahoo's labs - yui,
etc - that get half-hearted support, or then get killed?)

You can't tell me past leadership at Yahoo were all telecommuting. All those
top-brass managers had plenty of in-office shared space facetime, and it
didn't do a lick of good for them.

I understand Mayer is coming in and trying to change all of that, but I
suggest changing people vs changing policies will get better results in the
long run. I realize it's more problematic to define 'better' people, and
policies are much easier to define, but they must realize they're also going
to be excluding some otherwise great contributors because of the policy. Might
these losses be offset by gains in productivity and innovation? Who knows?

~~~
mgkimsal
Another thought here - if they kept telecommuting staff, it would actually be
a bit easier to keep some of these people 'in line' or 'on message', because
the threat of losing a nice 'work from home' position is greater than forcing
people to be in a tech-rich metropolitan area, often just blocks from
lucrative offers, and trying to mandate stricter working conditions.

------
rollo_tommasi
This is what you should always ask yourself before you start making sacrifices
for your company:

"If the CEO had to choose between firing me or taking a pay-cut equal to my
salary, what would he choose?"

The answer is almost always immediately obvious.

------
jusben1369
The strange irony whereby the place that has benefited more than anywhere on
the globe by the reduction of friction in communication can't find a way to
harness that same technology to improve productivity.

------
antoinevg
What a strange article.

I kept looking for the <sarcasm/> tag.

~~~
EwanToo
I think it was hidden behind the very last line:

"Penelope Trunk founded Brazen Careerist and two other startups. Her career
advice runs in 200 newspapers. She lives on a farm in Wisconsin and
homeschools her sons."

------
nsxwolf
Oh hey, we have this technology that lets large groups of people collaborate
on almost any kind of work, from anywhere in the world! It saves money on gas,
office space, and is good for the environment to boot!

Let's not use it though. It comes with a few problems that can't possibly ever
be solved. It's just a fad. It will never catch on.

------
twistedanimator
So do they have a policy of no instant messages or emails? I'd be pretty upset
if I was forced to come into work only to continue to communicate with my
coworkers through IM and email.

------
tuke
The article's summary of Stephanie Coontz is distorted. The author claims:

Family historian Stephanie Coontz writes that today’s workforce is so
demanding that families can only handle having one person in the workforce.
She shows how the average work week does not allow for people to take care of
children, which means that one partner needs to drop out of the workforce and
take care of kids.

This is not Coontz's point at all. Coontz considers the status quo to be about
"bad working conditions," and concludes
([http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/why-
gender-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/why-gender-
equality-stalled.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&)):

Our goal should be to develop work-life policies that enable people to put
their gender values into practice. So let’s stop arguing about the hard
choices women make and help more women and men avoid such hard choices. To do
that, we must stop seeing work-family policy as a women’s issue and start
seeing it as a human rights issue that affects parents, children, partners,
singles and elders.

In other words, the the status quo is hard on people; the problem is in the
nature of work. My bet is that Coontz would have a lot of issues with Mayer's
order.

------
ksec
I continue to ask what the big deal? Remote work doesn't work for everyone and
every company. That is a hard fact.

And Yahoo decided not to do it. ( For a lot of reasons only they would know )

And yet the internet is making a big fuss about it.

~~~
corresation
_And Yahoo decided not to do it. ( For a lot of reasons only they would know
)_

We all know why: It is a stealth layoff. It's an easy way to cut some staff
(many of whom will leave for greener pastures) without the negative market
news of cutting staff.

It is important to the rest of us, however, as it's held as some sort of
qualitative change for excellence. That it is proof that remote work doesn't
work/office work is better, etc. We've seen dozens of articles using this as
proof of...something.

When it's really just a way to save some costs -- even if longer term it hurts
the company.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"We all know why: It is a stealth layoff. It's an easy way to cut some staff
(many of whom will leave for greener pastures) without the negative market
news of cutting staff."

Of course, the first to leave will be the better employees who have other
options.

That's some awesome managin' there, to be sure.

------
NateDad
She's giving up everything? Bullshit. She built a nursery next to her office.
Screw her.

People say Yahoo did it because people were abusing work from home. What makes
them think the people who didn't get any work done at home aren't just going
to not do any work done at work? The problem is that people aren't productive,
not that they're at home. So you fire the unproductive people. Except
evidently yahoo can't tell who isn't productive or they would have already
done that. So how is being in the office going to change anything?

------
fnordfnordfnord
When I was working in engineering R&D for a manufacturing company, one of the
most productivity-killing things was to be in the office during normal
business hours.

------
btrautsc
this is so ridiculous it is sad that it will receive a huge amount of comments
and drive traffic to this utterly ridiculous post.

First of all, I don't believe Mayer or Sandberg are asking/ demanding/ or
hinting that employees need to give up everything. The economics of the job
market and organization health don't really back that up (whether you're
'changing the world or not'). Second - as many people are mentioning here -
the demand and economic returns to different employee levels completely skew
the "Mayer gives up everything" - she (and Sandberg) also receive completely
different benefits and calculate their commitment/ lifestyle tradeoffs with a
totally different set of inputs & outputs from the hypothetical Yahoo! front-
end guy who has been off-siting for 18 months... the whole thesis is beyond
comprehension. The author of this post who "lives on a farm homeschooling her
2 children" has lost touch with reality/ is actually quite smart at driving
page views, but is nonetheless wrong.

------
rockyj
Ummm ... I am gonna call this one - bullshit. What's even more painful is that
this is on HN front page.

------
marcosploither
What a piece of shit. This article is a heteronormative sexist big piece of
shit. But besides that, if i leave the office early, i have finished
everything i had to do, I don't fucking care if someone stays 5 hours longer
because he don't know how to manage time, for god sake.

~~~
addamh
seriously. +1

------
snedzad
People who aren't doing great work at home, are less likely to do so at the
office. Plus, there is overhead because you'll need to have someone to take of
those people (lack of self reliance, proactivity, dedication).

------
Jabbles
_at Google, where hundred-hour weeks are de rigueur_

Really? Maybe for execs, but that's not the impression I have from people I
know there. Anyone care to comment on Google's work/life balance?

------
lgleason
Penelope Trunk is entertaining, but sometimes you need to take what she says
with a grain of salt because she is trying to stir the pot to get
eyeballs/$....this is one of those times.

------
bhangi
Am I the only one who thought that this article was tongue-in-cheek? I mean,
who seriously advocates for such a dystopian world? It has to be ironic!

------
lotsofcows
"they are giving up their time with their kids so that they can run companies"

I cry for America.

------
manicdee
Obvious troll is obvious.

------
nirvana
Everyone not in the Yahoo bay area offices is "remote" to them. Talking to
engineers in New York is talking to "remote" engineers from the perspective of
someone in the bay area. Does it matter that much if they're in an office in
new york vs a home in nebraska? Maybe sometimes in some situations, but should
companies all locate into one single building?

If you take this to its logical conclusion, every company should build a
massive campus and locate everyone there, in the same time zone, even the same
building.

I don't buy that Meyer is "giving up everything". She just had a nursery built
next to her office (at her expense) so her infant can come to work with her.
Is Yahoo going to give space for all the previously telecommuting young moms
with infants to have a little nursery too?

Some companies _may_ "move more effectively" if everyone is at the office, but
I'm aware of several that have fully distributed teams, or significant numbers
of employees who don't come into the office who are moving pretty fast- Basho
and Automattic are two. (I think Couchbase does this too.)

I'd rather have someone living in one of the "flyover states" working for me
from their home than the overhead of an office... offices are a cost and the
assumed benefit may not exceed the increased cost. Certainly it can't be said
that it always does.

The assumption that telecommuters are "less dedicated" is a prejudice. I've
seen some evidence that they are more dedicated and put in more time. But
further, it's assuming that you don't want to hire people who put in less time
(for less pay, say a part time telecommuter.) Which seems silly. There are
some people who you'd like to hire, but which you're going to be forced to
pass on if you've got this "butts in the seats" policy, some of whome are
quite good but due to family situations or simply optimizing their own lives,
aren't interested in relocating to whatever big city you located your offices
in.

Imagine DHH decided to go freelance. As the creator of rails it's safe to say
he's the foremost expert, but this example works for anyone with significant
expertise that would be valuable to lots of companies. Would DHH's value be
maximized by working for one company 40 hours a week, and having all the work
that doesn't require his particular expertise along with the really key
stuff...or would it be better for him to work 10 hours a week for four
different companies, maximizing his efforts on the areas where his expertise
is completely unique? I know this is an even more radical idea, but I think
it's the future of work.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Thank you - totally agree.

I envisage it something like decomposing systems into micro-services, where
the service is a independant, deployable _thing_ (probably HTTP / Rest but who
cares).

Then its a lot easier to outsource specific parts and bring in specific
expertise - and also a lot easier to bid for those parts.

I like your DHH idea - and I suspect he or people like him do best at short
bursts in many companies.

We destroy a lot of inprocess speed, but I suspect we shall rely on Moores law
to help.

