
Marissa Mayer breaks her silence on Yahoo's telecommuting policy - kjhughes
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/19/marissa-mayer-telecommuting/
======
parfe
> _The shift in policy affects roughly 200 of Yahoo's 12,000 employees._

I see this statistic and I'm reminded at how much of a disingenuous uproar the
policy change caused. Every time I read comments regarding this issue I'm more
convinced the real issue is who issued the policy, and not the change itself.

A new mother canceling work at home while simultaneously raising her own child
in the office is not hypocritical. It supports her position. And yes, a
private nursery is a perk she receives as CEO.

A CEO gets a nursery: Outrage! CEO gets a private bathroom, private airplane,
private car, meetings on the golf course, etc: normal operating procedure. I
wonder why the nursery gets singled out for ridicule?

~~~
vor_
It seems a bad thing to me to expect that employees give up telecommunication
even for family reasons when the CEO doesn't have to endure such a tough
choice because they get a special CEO nursery.

~~~
bradshaw1965
Male CEO's can act like alpha animals, take what they want and flaunt blingy
perks, but let a woman build a nursery... Employees _never_ get the same perks
as CEO's.

~~~
nightski
Right because male CEO's have never been ridiculed.

~~~
bradshaw1965
When they are they laugh in the face of the peon daring to question his
greatness.

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potatolicious
There's a second elephant in the room, though a slightly more subtle one:

Was the elimination of WFH at Yahoo housecleaning? There have been _many_
reports from former Yahoo insiders that the WFH policy was abused to no end by
a small number of people.

I remember there was a large Microsoft layoff a while back during the fallout
from the '08 crisis, which insiders also reported to be housecleaning. After
all, what better opportunity to cut loose a lot of dead weight the company has
accumulated, without incurring the requisite "is the sky falling at
Microsoft?" reporting?

Personally I'd rather have people able to work remotely, but flexibility in
staid, slow, crufty large corporations is more often a source of abuse rather
than actual flexibility. I'm willing to believe that Yahoo's move was
justified.

~~~
velodrome
They lost a lot of good people during that period. They may have rid
themselves of "dead weight" but scared the best employees off in the process
(by severely hurting employee morale).

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EliAndrewC
Perhaps the most common and controversial aspect of Mayer's decision was the
claim of hypocrisy regarding child care. Staying home with children to avoid
the cost of a full-time nanny is a common reason for telecommuting. Some
claimed hypocrisy for her installing a persona nursery next to her office for
her own newborn while making Yahoo significantly less family friendly for its
employees.

Although I never agreed with these criticisms, I'm annoyed that she apparently
said, "I need to talk about the elephant in the room" and then avoided
addressing this complaint at all. Unless she did and this was simply bad
reporting which omitted any reference to it - I'd appreciate a link to the
fill keynote transcript if one exists; I can't seem to find it.

~~~
chollida1
> Staying home with children to avoid the cost of a full-time nanny is a
> common reason for telecommuting.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Could you please elaborate?

How does working from home avoid the cost of a full-time nanny? If I work when
I'm at home then I can't, by definition, take care of my children at the same
time.

Assuming a minimal commute, working from home doesn't save hardly any time at
all.

~~~
drcube
We're not talking about babies here. My six year old can take care of himself
just fine if he's fed and has an adult around in case of emergencies. I have
worked in my home office for hours while he played in the rest of the house,
watched videos, etc.

Daycare can be $500/week, for the privilege of simply having an adult be near
my kid. If telecommuting helps me avoid that cost, it's a significant
incentive.

~~~
chollida1
Hmm, then I guess your kids are better behaved than mine:) I've tried this and
it was so disastrous that I'd never let an employee do this.

There is just no way you can get proper work done if you are responsible for
looking after any kid under the age of 12:)

I agree it may save money and time but I've never seen anyone not have it
affect their work. You must be a rare individual:)

~~~
rayiner
> I've tried this and it was so disastrous that I'd never let an employee do
> this.

It's not your employees' fault you didn't raise your children properly. Kids
in Asia are doing hard manual labor on a farm at 7 or 8. They can definitely
keep quiet and entertain themselves at that age.

~~~
homosaur
Fairly certain having 7 or 8 year old kids doing hard farm labor is "raising
them properly." More like "desperate poverty."

~~~
rayiner
My point is that for the majority of human history, 7 and 8 year olds were
expected to do things that were a lot more intense than simply not bugging
their parents for a few hours at a time while they did office work. They
aren't constitutionally incapable of it, and OP shouldn't make assumptions
about the upbringing of his employee's kids.

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aviswanathan
I think turnaround CEOs have the some of the toughest and most public jobs in
the industry. The particularly difficult roles are for those individuals that
already have a successful past (Mayer with Google) that are then implicitly
'expected' to bring new energy and vitality to companies simply because of
those past successes.

Look at Ron Johnson, for example. His genius did wonders for Apple but the
same concepts failed with a different industry in his tenure with JCPenney.
There's no silver bullet, and what Mayer's doing with Yahoo may have some
similarities with what was done early on with Google, but in order to cement
Yahoo's independent identity, she's going to have to pursue some goals that
aren't identical to things she's done before.

Ending WFH is perhaps a start. The externalities (noisy lashback from media,
etc.) don't help, but she's going to have to face a lot more of that in order
to institute long-lasting change.

~~~
general_failure
You know how this works right? Everyone will call crap until the CEO is not
doing well. Once the company shows signs of improving, they will immediately
talk about the radical things they did and how they told you so.

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just2n
> The shift in policy affects roughly 200 of Yahoo's 12,000 employees.

So what you're telling me is that only 1.6% of the company's employees WFH at
all? Or is this 1.6% who work remotely in the usual case? I highly doubt only
200 employees take regular WFH days. I'd expect to get one or two if needed a
week, so I'd suspect this impacts a LOT more people than she admits.

> ..but they're more collaborative and innovative when they're together.

So e-mail, chat, hangouts/skype, voip, etc. don't exist, as far as Yahoo is
concerned? Collaboration does not require physical proximity. And if it's only
200 people who are working remotely, why is a mere 1.6% of the company making
a DRAMATIC difference to collaboration and innovation within the company? I'm
seeing a contradiction here.

I still maintain my stance on this move: it's a horribly shortsighted and
poorly/hastily made decision which will negatively impact Yahoo significantly
more than anyone expects. If someone is abusing a lenient policy, you ban that
individual from working remotely, not the entirety of your company. What a
massive overreaction.

~~~
dragonwriter
> So e-mail, chat, hangouts/skype, voip, etc. don't exist, as far as Yahoo is
> concerned?

"Do not exist" isn't required for the claim to be valid; "are not as effective
as face-to-face, in the room communication at facilitating collaboration" is
sufficient. And, a fairly widely recognized fact.

~~~
just2n
You need to quantify "are not as effective." Is it 1000000000000x as
effective? 5% more effective? If it's not boolean (such that "do not exist" is
the effect), then the problem is probably significantly less severe than it
would appear.

For the record, I completely disagree. For instance, personality would likely
dictate what the most effective method would be on an individual basis, so
that no general claim can be accurate.

I've personally been involved in collaboration over e-mail that was more
productive than most meetings I've ever taken part in. I've never thought
"this sucks, we should be doing this meeting in person," but I have thought
the opposite many times.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You need to quantify "are not as effective."

No, actually, you don't. Even they are even, in aggregate, even marginally
less effective than face-to-face, they are a net loss to collaboration.

> I've personally been involved in collaboration over e-mail that was more
> productive than most meetings I've ever taken part in.

Sure, for lots of things, email is a better choice than a meeting. You can
easily do email with people being in the same office building. OTOH, there are
things where a quick face-to-face is more effective, and you can't do that
when people are telecommuting.

~~~
Domenic_S
> _they are a net loss to collaboration._

Implicit is the assumption that high-bandwidth collaboration is necessary and
useful to all people in all functions at all times.

It's not.

A designer might just need to crank out a PSD without 30 people dropping by
their cube. A programmer might want to work on their tickets (which were
created with collaboration) without talking to anyone.

Or, like you said, there may be some meetings where being f2f is better. It
happens a lot. I schedule my wfh around my meeting days, usually.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Implicit is the assumption that high-bandwidth collaboration is necessary
> and useful to all people in all functions at all times.

No, implicit is the assumption that high-bandwidth collaboration may become
important to the roles of the people affected by the policy on short notice,
not that it is necessary to all people in all functions at all times.

~~~
Domenic_S
So the message is, be physically in the office because you (or I) _may_ need
high-bandwidth collaboration today? Sounds inefficient.

I'm willing to entertain the idea, but I'm not even sure your "it might be
needed" explanation is true for BigCo's... look at the proliferation of open
office plans, for example. COLLABORATION 24/7, YAY!

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wubbfindel
It's nice to see she does actually still have her head screwed on correctly. I
think she could have avoided a lot of criticism if she had only spoken on the
subject earlier.

It is fair to say that what works for one company will not work for another.
Therefore it cannot represent an opinion on the industry as a whole.

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drorweiss
Yahoo needs to reinvent itself. Working from home is so unimportant in the big
scheme.

~~~
drawkbox
I think WFH is key to making good products, for focus and an external view. If
Yahoo is still making peanut butter, getting internalized viewpoints isn't
going to help improve external product development and perception. Groupthink
is heavy in the office which is bad for external views of product. Also this
concentrates employees to one locale, again lending to internalized viewpoints
of how things are.

~~~
homosaur
You're right that entropy moves that way, but you can solve this culture
problem in the office with the right maintenance. Implementing a strategy that
lets people feel comfortable throwing disruptive ideas up the ladder helps a
lot. I tend to find the groupthink comes from certain personalities imposing
their will on offices. At times its necessary but you also risk putting your
staff in lockstep.

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marknutter
It's interesting that both Yahoo and Best Buy both cancelled their work from
home programs during a time when they are struggling to save their businesses.
It would be far more relevant to me if a company that was posting record
profits decided to kill its work from home program. Sounds like they were
looking for a scapegoat.

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mabhatter
It's not terrible to cancel that program for a while. Her previous
counterparts spent too much time on politics and people at home weren't
WORKING on what the company needed. When the company is out of control,
somebody has to take reigns..and it usually sucks for everybody.

Just remember, MOST employers in the country DON'T OFFER work from home at
all. Or of the do offer it, it is primarily for sales people.. That are never
actually "at home". This whole thing is a top 10% problem.. Only the top
richest companies offer top employees these type of options.

Now child care and commuting is a DIFFERENT problem. Perhaps Yahoo doesn't
need all its staff in crazy expensive trendy cities. They could relocate some
offices out to other places property values and commute times are more
reasonable... But that is for another time.

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aswanson
Why not just fire people who don't produce? If they are on the clock
bullshitting, remote or at the office, ax em and leave perks in place for good
employees. If you have logs of them charging the company and not doing
anything, fire them.

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kisielk
The new Yahoo Weather app mentioned in the article is really nice. However,
one thing I'm surprised it doesn't let you do is take a photo.

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thrush
"My goal is not to change the culture, but to amplify its greatness"

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michaelochurch
I'm glad she did that. One of the things that was a mess at Google was an
intensional/extensional conflict. Throughout the 2000s, Google was viewed as
"the cultural leader" and that exposed it to a lot of executive bikeshedding.
Not everyone feels entitled to an opinion about how _Google_ should run, but
everyone has an opinion about how _the cultural leader_ should be run. If I
ever build a company that's a cultural leader, I'm going to try to have the
reputation of a #4 player for that reason.

I admire Mayer a lot for having the _cojones_ to say, "This isn't necessarily
right for everyone, but it was right for us."

