
Yahoo CEO Mayer Now Requiring Employees to Not Be Remote - protomyth
http://allthingsd.com/20130222/yahoo-ceo-mayer-now-requiring-all-remote-employees-to-not-be-remote/
======
autarch
I think remote works best when everyone on a team is remote. At my current
employer, we have 6 people on our tech team. All except 2 of us are in
different places. This _forces_ us to figure out how to work effectively using
chat, wiki, project management tools, etc.

When only a few people on a team are remote I've found that it just doesn't
work as well. I imagine it _could_ work but it would take very strong
discipline from the people in the office.

~~~
dlowe
I've been telecommuting for 10 years. When I'm the only remote employee, and
there isn't a culture of remoteness, I believe it's _my job_ to have the
discipline and do the extra work to stay connected, not the rest of the
team's. It's a challenging dynamic, but it's not impossible, and I just don't
think it's reasonable to expect the entire team to adapt to the exceptional
case, instead of the other way around.

~~~
codex_irl
+1 to that. I have been working 100% remotely, full time for a client based in
Europe for 4 years now - I've never met the people on my team in person & we
only have a 3 hour overlap in terms of working hours. I expect myself to be at
least as productive as when I was in the office and then some - to eliminate
any doubts people might have. Its very easy for my boss to tell how I'm
doing....just take a look at my git log.

Not sure I could ever commute 5 days to work & sit in a cubicle or open plan
office (those places remind me of a Chinese factory floor)....they would have
to pay me a LOT of money to endure that again.

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ChuckMcM
This isn't particularly surprising, the policy at Google was (possibly still
is) much the same. The theory is that you don't interact enough with your
peers if you're not face to face.

I wonder if secret calibration scores are next.

~~~
mtrimpe
What are those secret calibration scores? It sounds very Orwellian...

~~~
asveikau
Sounds like something that turns companies into Microsoft.

~~~
jodrellblank
Shipping mountains of high quality popular software at regular intervals?
Sounds just what Yahoo! needs.

~~~
cgh
Have you ever worked at or with MS? If so, you'd know that stack ranking is
the reason MS has flopped in just about every field it's entered for the last
decade.

~~~
gradys
Would you mind expanding on this a bit? How exactly does it contribute to
Microsoft's performance in new fields? This is a completely genuine question.
I'm not an apologist just trying to defend MS in a roundabout way.

~~~
asveikau
People become obsessed with their scores and their peers' scores. They're
wrapped up in internal competition and compete poorly with external players or
when assessed honestly with most reality-based metrics.

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rm999
I certainly understand not hiring remote workers, but the transition will
probably destroy value, especially if exceptions aren't allowed. A previous
company of mine instituted a similar policy, and it was somewhat painful for
my small team because we lost an experienced member who by all measures was
amazing at her job. Fully replacing her probably cost a man year in value
between the extra work for the rest of us and training someone new. And of
course it was painful for her, as she had to find a new job after being
promised her position was secure.

------
OldSchool
It didn't seem possible but I now like Yahoo even less.

A 38 y/o CEO of a company that sells the "connected" world won't use the same
connectedness within the business?

This is why you don't leverage yourself to the hilt and live paycheck to
paycheck - so you can quit a job if it sucks.

~~~
cgh
As someone who has worked full-time remote since 2006, I agree completely.
There are plenty of ways to be a part of the team and be remote - in fact, I
doubt 30 minutes goes by in my day when I'm not either on the phone or IM'ing
with someone about some issue. It's the equivalent of stopping by my desk to
talk about something.

~~~
alexanderh
As someone who lives in a small remote city, and is broke and really cant
consider moving right now, the thought of less job opportunities out there in
other states at good companies that would allow me to work remotely really
discourages me. This was one of the biggest promises of the internet. The only
way I would be able to climb out of this place is if I could start by working
remotely somewhere. There are no tech jobs where I am.

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mathrawka
And turning down that job offer to work remote was a great idea. I was worried
that they would suddenly require me to work from their HQ all of a sudden, and
that was my only reason for turning down the job.

I feel sorry for the current employees that got sucker punched... but
honestly, a majority of the good ones are long gone.

~~~
talklittle
> I was worried that they would suddenly require me to work from their HQ

Out of curiosity, were you given any indication this would happen? Or were you
drawing from Google's similar policy?

~~~
mathrawka
It was just the feel of the conversation. This was 2 years in the past though.

Me: "I'd like to work remotely from Japan" Them: "We can't allow remote
positions now" Me: "I can't move to the US for family reasons" Them: "Let me
check with HR"

 _One week later_

Them: "We will let you work remotely, when can you start?"

Just something was off it felt like. There was more talk than that of course,
and a meeting when I was actually at HQ in CA for other reasons.

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javajosh
In the midst of cultural upheaval in a large company, this doesn't seem like
an unreasonable move, at least in the short term. I can see how the inherent
disconnectedness of remote employees might make a general sense of
disconnectedness worse for the onsite employees. If Yahoo! can redefine itself
clearly, this "disconnectedness infection" would find a far less vulnerable
host. (People that were hired under the assumption that they'd be allowed to
WFH indefinitely have my profound sympathies!)

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christopheraden
I work at a Fortune50, and I have to admit that if Mayer manages to turn Yahoo
around that this will set a dangerous precedent for other large companies.

The ability to work remotely is a huge perk to having a tech job, and if other
corporations see Yahoo killing WFH and then managing to save such a large
sinking ship, they might infer causality.

Until Yahoo actually becomes successful as a whole again, this is just them
thrashing about desperately. I'll be worried if we start to see success in
Mayer's methods.

~~~
ericflo
What if there is actually causality there?

~~~
fzzzy
How would it be possible to determine that it wasn't just correlation? It's
not like we have 5 yahoos we can run a controlled study on.

------
mikec3k
Best comment:

"Yahoo continues its impressive drive down the fast lane of the information
superhighway.

In your father's Oldsmobile. With the left blinker on. At 45kph."

------
eurodance
As an engineer, this makes me have less desire to be with Yahoo. This move is
like something a parent would do to a group of kids they couldn't trust to do
their job without supervision. How about they just bring in, or fire the bad
remote employees? Why risk punishing quiet, smart guys (who might be slightly
introverted) who serve important purposes? Our company has remote employees,
and most of them are brilliant.

------
edderly
Maybe this tells you more about Mayer's lack of trust of Yahoo's (maybe
former) managers that she wouldn't trust their recruiting decisions.

Personally, I do believe that remote employees can work well but it is a very
selective decision.

------
lifeisstillgood
Remote is how the future of work looks.

Pulling remote workers in is a sign you cannot measure the value of the output
of remote workers - and it is not going to get any easier when they are
filling up your corridors

~~~
wladimir
That was, at least for me, the promise of all this communication technology,
and one of the reasons for me to go into software: to work from home or any
other place, spend more time with people I care about, no more commuting, no
need to sit in a boring fluorescent lighted room for 8+ hours a day.

It really feels like business is taking a wrong turn lately. Back to reduced
independence of workers and patriarchal policies. They decide what's good for
you, and the office is a nice cosy place to be with your fellow workers, sit
in this chair and you'll be sooo productive! Instead of deciding someones
merit on the quality and timeliness of their work.

I suppose it's a sign of the times, to not take even small risks anymore, even
if people end up better for it. Not to look at individual merit but take rash
decisions. It's all about squishing the last bits of productivity using
"proven" methods (dating from the industrial revolution?), which may just as
well be self-defeating in the end. After all, remote working does allow
picking the person with exactly the right experience to do a certain job from
all over the world.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Same here - I now actually spend time with my children (which has its own set
of challenges but ...)

I want my company to succeed - and I want to to succeed as a distributed
remote company - mainly because I think that giving people back the time spent
on commuting will benefit the communities they live in disproportionately

It's also why I resent subsidising railways :-)

------
mrbird
Remote work can work well, but it unfortunately puts more pressure on
management. Basically, it requires a disciplined, thorough, and consistent
style of management. (Notice that these are all good things, no matter where
your team is.) Many organizations, unwilling or unable to achieve this, resort
to a more informal style that includes dropping by, looking over shoulders,
and generally using visual confirmation that employees are doing what you
think they should be.

It's a shame, because there's an increasing amount of research that shows that
people are happier, more productive, and even healthier when they can work
from home.

Successful incorporation of remote work boils down to a few things that sound
simple but are difficult in practice: 1\. Evaluate performance and progress as
much as possible by results that are objective and measurable in some way
(this goes for company goals as well, not just personal). 2\. Communicate the
same way with everyone, whether they are remote or local. If people in the
office chat in person, but only email with their remote colleagues, they will
definitely end up being marginalized. 3\. Avoid any discussion that could,
indirectly or directly, stigmatize people for being remote.

If you have full organizational support for the above, remote work can be very
productive.

~~~
aurelianito
> It's a shame, because there's an increasing amount of research that shows
> that people are happier, more productive, and even healthier when they can
> work from home.

Can you please link this research from here? All the research I read said that
collocated teams kick remote teams asses.

~~~
dripton
The Ctirp study last year showed that remote CSRs at a Chinese travel agency
were more productive than the ones in the office. Of course that might not be
applicable to other jobs.

------
bsg75
Yahoo! proving it still does not get it?

Or perhaps finding ways of shedding employees without actual layoffs?

~~~
citricsquid
Does not get _what_? Remote employees are a commitment, a company cannot just
have remote employees without making compromises and committing to doing it
right. Mayer is trying to rescue Yahoo, if the remote employees are not
providing enough value to justify that investment in remote workers then it
makes no sense for Yahoo to retain remote workers.

~~~
sabat
_Remote employees are a commitment_

So are on-site employees, who can screw off just as much as an off-site one.

 _if the remote employees are not providing enough value to justify that
investment in remote workers_

Then fire them. This kind of draconian move won't get Yahoo anything but an
even bigger talent hemorrhage than it already has.

~~~
cglee
> Then fire them.

That's exactly what will probably happen if they don't comply. I think giving
people an opportunity to comply before firing is a good move.

~~~
jaggederest
No, it's a terrible idea.

The ones that don't have any other options will stay ( you retain a higher
percentage of people who are _not_ top performers ), the rest that you _would_
want to keep leave ( the best employees can just get another remote job right
away )

This is the classic problem with voluntary buyouts and other discretionary
layoffs - you only keep the people without other options.

~~~
btilly
It happens on its own over time as well.

See [http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-
the-d...](http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-
effect/) for a fuller description.

------
MartinCron
I have mixed feelings on the subject of remote teams, but I have very very
strong feelings about this sort of bait and switch.

Having a "no _new_ remote workers" policy would feel a lot better to me than
this.

~~~
unreal37
The article doesn't say that people were hired and promised 100% remote work.
More likely, they have an office with their name on it already and they just
have the ability to work from home whenever they want and so they never come
in.

I don't see this as a bait-and-switch unless there's something to back that
up.

~~~
damncabbage
When I worked there, I took the job because of the flexible work-from-home-
when-you want policy, which I hadn't encountered for.

I'd certainly be feeling baited-and-switched right now if I hadn't already
left.

------
eplanit
This article is as much a statement about Yahoo as much as it is about remote
vs. on-site work. Personally, I question Yahoo's long-term relevance anyway.
As each year goes by, it seems they lag further and further behind, and are
not part of the real momentum anymore. I'm curious if others agree. The most
news I have heard about Yahoo in the last year or so was really all about the
celebrity status of Mayer, being pregnant on the job, etc. Does anyone here
foresee something relevant coming from that shop?

(edited to fix typo)

~~~
alaskamiller
I remember working at Yahoo in the late 90's as a barista and watching all the
people walking around with HTML for Dummies books under their arms while
enjoying their free espresso and chai thinking nah, these guys won't make it.

I remember my friends working at Yahoo in the 2000's being all excited about
the cult worship, good perks, then getting cynical about being stifled because
they copied everything AOL was doing with project matrix management thinking
nah, these guys won't make it.

I remember being at Google watching Marissa Mayer's user profile being delete
right after the announcement got out that morning thinking nah, these guys
won't make it.

But then I keep remembering, my mom still reads Yahoo Taiwan, uses Yahoo Mail,
and sends me Yahoo News links. Then I keep remembering about the hundreds of
products with plenty of inertia keeping the overall organization going.

Yahoo's in a great position. They still have good talent, have good traffic,
and most importantly they can position themselves to be Apple's best friend by
simply being Google's enemy.

Flickr, IntoNow, legacy stuff like Mail, Sports, Trave are still pretty
diamonds that needs polish and TLC. They just gotta shore up profit to stay
alive while out Google Google.

~~~
sabat
Yeah, and someone else's mom uses AOL for email. Yahoo: the new AOL.

~~~
alaskamiller
Now that the internet is mainstreamed why is this a bad thing? No, really,
think it through. Why would having a good hold on the demographics that would
actually pay attention to ads be a bad thing?

Yahoo's corporate DNA being a media company should make help, not detract,
when new media is just media.

~~~
sabat
It isn't necessarily bad. But being about as good as AOL is not why Ms.
Marissa was hired.

~~~
alaskamiller
Both media companies, not tech companies.

------
001sky
Kara Swisher has "issues" with M. Mayer. The typical ~snarky undertone oozes
from this article (and everything else she writes for All Things D on the
subject). She was a great reporter for the WSJ 10 years ago, though.

~~~
textminer
I've noticed people taking note of and commenting on Kara Swisher's take-
charge, arrogant, brusque nature far more often than with many male tech
journalists. Unexamined bias, or an expectation that female correspondents be
softer and nicer?

~~~
TallGuyShort
In this case I don't believe it's sexism for one minute. Allthingsd (and
specifically this author, I believe) are very well-known for aggressively
publishing and criticizing leaks from Yahoo. Any motivations behind such a
tactic would certainly bleed through into the aforementioned writing style.

------
TallGuyShort
There's a shortage of people who still want to work at Yahoo. I used to be one
of them but they pulled a similar stunt with me and decided to change the
terms of my hiring long after I had accepted an offer. Obviously we don't have
all the details, but I don't think this was a smart move to attract new
talent.

------
smackfu
Yahoo has 11,500 employees. This affects "several hundred".

So... Yahoo was not big on remote employees.

~~~
sliverstorm
Being a news article, I am assuming they did their best to make it sound
dramatic. In other words, "several hundred" probably translates to 307 remote
workers. Still technically accurate, but a much less impressive headline.

------
rburhum
That company is dying and it needs drastic changes to get it back to what it
once was. Those changes are bound to piss off a lot of people, but the
alternative is to continue on the same downhill route. Mayer is trying to
change the cultural problems she perceives. I have a different opinion about
that particular change she is making, but that doesn't matter... Good for her.
I hope it works.

------
geebee
Ok. I actually do understand why a company might feel that having lots of
talented people concentrated in the same area is better than having them all
scattered in different work places. I'm not saying that I necessarily share
this point of view, just that I wouldn't reject it as an idea.

Here's the thing - Google and the various other top high tech companies that
are known for this go out of their way to make the workplace a mini paradise.
Shuttles with wifi from noe valley, free and great food, extensive gyms and
sports facilities, haircuts, dry cleaning, sabbaticals, tuition reimbursement,
"take all you like" vacation policies... yeah, it's all designed to get you to
stay at work 24/7, but at least they're trying to make it so nice that you'll
want to.

I worked for a small company that eliminated telecommuting and pulled out the
"google doesn't do this" line, but with none of the perks. Uh...

If yahoo wants to become a developer paradise, maybe they'll pull this off. If
they want everyone to show up and work in a depressing cubicle all day,
they'll be losing a lot of talent very soon.

~~~
codeonfire
I worked at a 'this is not Google!' company for while. I kept hearing that the
place wasn't Google over and over. It got to be where you couldn't say the G
word. They had a messed up telecommute policy where the privileged group could
telecommute while the serfs had to work the cubes.

------
squid_ca
Thank God companies never hire consultants, use suppliers, open branch offices
or collaborate with other people that aren't located IN THIS VERY BUILDING or
they would never be able to get anything done.

------
vidoc
I'm not too surprised by the move, I worked 6 years at yahoo and have always
been amazed at how naive the company was with WFH. It may seem hilarious, but
I strongly believe the company actually thought those employees would a) work
and b) be at home! It was not uncommon to see people getting 2 or 3 days per
week at home. I personally rolled with 2 per week for several years and it was
great. I'd do a few emails in the morning, and that was about it for the day.
I'd generally go play a full round of golf or spend the day biking.

~~~
lttlrck
And look where Yahoo is now...

------
jchrisa
My startup sells database software to other coders. I think for this kind of
startup, remote people are essential. They can get a perspective on your
product and the perception of it in the marketplace, that you just can't get
when you set in a room with the makers all day. That is, they see the world
more like our users do, so it's often the remote folks who come up with big
innovations.

------
lifeisstillgood
Remote work often means out of the daily bustle work - thats one of the
reasons folk say "let me work from home for two days, I have to get this
_done_ "

If you can translate that into a continuous cycle of working on the most
valuable not the most urgent problem, and a cycle of picking the valuable
problem that turns you on, productivity should go through the roof

All the crap that _must_ get done - I am much more willing to do crap when I
have hit a home run the day before

Edit: this sounds like one expects to do productive work day in day out - I
don't think that's true - one should aim for a home run every two-four weeks
and be prepared to learn and measure during that period.

~~~
rocky1138
This is exactly how I work. You've hit the nail on the head.

------
jerhewet
So how many work-days per year is Mayer in her office at Yahoo?

Oh. I see. That's different.

~~~
chollida1
I probably shouldn't feed a troll, but I'll try to reason.

A CEO's job is just flat out different from an engineers job. The CEO's job is
often to be the public face of the company, to go out and make deals, to talk
to key investors, to raise money in some cases.

Or put another way, a CEO of a publicly traded company wouldn't be doing their
job properly if they were in the office every day.

------
sybhn
As much as i hate to say it, probably the right thing to do to get a fresh
grip on allocation & performance. I work at a place that frowns upon WFH and
really wish it wasn't the case, my team would be 50% more productive if WFH
few days a week. From my experience, lazy/bad managers find it much harder
manage remote team, and often advocate no WFH policies.

------
signed0
I wonder how many of them would have moved voluntarily if Yahoo offered to
give them a bonus + pay for relocation expenses.

------
tantalor
> employees... must either comply without exception or presumably quit

Why quit? More likely they would be terminated with benefits.

~~~
unreal37
More likely they will have to quit if they don't want to drive into the office
every day... They all have an office they belong to presumably. It's not a big
stretch to ask them to go there Monday to Friday.

~~~
tantalor
Let's suppose they decide to continue working from home despite the policy
change, so the company fires them. Is it for cause?

~~~
jpdoctor
Almost certainly. It is a rare employee employment letter that will have such
a thing immutably set in stone.

The most likely scenario though is a layoff package. Even at a few weeks pay,
it's still less than the legal costs.

------
adrianhoward
It's not been a month since the last time I posted my list of research
articles on the productivity drop you get from not having teams co-located so
I won't post it again in full... but for those who are interested you may find
these old discussions of interest:

* <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145358>

* <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5071701>

* <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4800412>

I'm always on the look out for new non-anecdotal research on the topic if
anybody finds any!

------
6a68
Uh, Mozilla is happy to hire remote folks worldwide :-)

Just sayin'

------
bborud
Am I the only one who thinks we should know more before we get our panties in
a bunch?

------
azov
Let's assume for the sake of argument that it is proven that onsite employees
_are_ more productive then remotes.

So what?

Some employers will do what Yahoo just did. Others may say: look, I want you
to be productive, but more than that I want you to be happy. I prefer having
great developers working at 90% of their capacity to squeezing every last bit
of productivity from the mediocre ones I'm still able to retain.

I hope the second group wins over time.

------
akulbe
I suspect this will do a great deal to give ammunition to 37 Signals for
writing their book about remote work.

I'm a huge fan of remote working, and I think that the current corporate
mindset against it... and company arguments against it... are mostly just
complete bullshit.

Of course, working remotely doesn't work in every case, but I'm certain that
it would work very well in far more situations than people are willing to
admit, or try.

------
flipstewart
This is a very sneaky way of performing mass layoffs.

------
aharner
Is it just me or do people seem to take a special pleasure in criticizing
Marissa Mayer above and beyond what most CEOs receive?

------
mkarazin
I've seen this happening with other companies recently. There may be a small
trend away from remote working. I agree its unfair to the employee who was
hired on flexibility, but I don't think it is a bad move for Yahoo. It takes a
very specific type of individual to work at home with the same efficiency as
in an office.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
> It takes a very specific type of individual to work at home with the same
> efficiency as in an office.

Does it? If I want to slack off I find it just as easy in the office as I do
at home. Heck I can even have music on at work or stream a video.

Frankly for me I find home working far less distracting than work. Work is
noisy, people are coming and going, there are calls all around me, at home it
is just me in a dark office only interrupted by things aimed specifically at
me (Skype, e-mail, etc).

But this all boils down to the same old 1900s time mythos. You take
intellectual workers and hold them to standards created for factory workers.

The theory goes that if I work longer I am more efficient. If they restrict
access to distractions then I am more efficient. If they can look over my
shoulder I am more efficient.

Personally I think this is all nonsense. The only way to track my efficiency
is with milestones. The nice thing about milestones is that they are metrics
which are flexible. If you fail to meet them you have a two way discussion
about /why/.

~~~
elmuchoprez
There's a lot of research suggesting that people overestimate their
productivity in remote working environments and that in general, max
productivity comes from small, in-person working environments.

~~~
jaggederest
Which one makes people happier with their lives?

~~~
blindhippo
Happiness is not a concern in this.

In America, the pursuit is for money and profits for your employer - an
employee's emotional wellbeing is irrelevant.

Now be a good serf and pop your head back down into your cubicle.

------
stanleydrew
I can certainly understand why current employees hired under the assumption
that they could work from home are upset. But the fact of the matter is that
if working from home isn't in your employment contract, then you shouldn't
really count on it being acceptable forever. A company has a right to change
its mind, in the same way that an employee might.

If an employee of Company X demanded to work from home two days a week for
some reason otherwise he'd quit, Company X managers would weigh the cost of
losing the employee against the cost of having him absent two days a week. And
then they would make a decision.

I don't see how this is any different. Yahoo! has decided that being on site
is a priority. Current employees may feel differently. These employees should
weigh the cost of moving or commuting against the cost of finding new
employment and make a decision.

~~~
ryguytilidie
All of that makes sense, but imagine you were hired away from a job at a great
company within the last year. You probably can't go back, you haven't vested
and you're essentially being pushed out after you were lured there with the
promise of being able to work remotely. I understand that these people are
free to quit, but that doesn't mean Yahoo! hasn't put them in a bad situation.

~~~
stanleydrew
I agree it's worse when a company does it to an employee. Being forced into
changing a job can have major negative effects on an individual's life,
whereas Yahoo! will probably be just fine if any single person decides to
quit.

It doesn't change the fact that it can happen, and this is a good reminder to
the rest of us who have things promised verbally in an employment offer to
have that stuff in writing. I am writing this as a warning to others and my
future self.

------
nonamegiven
The article specifically mentions customer service reps. Don't know what
percentage is csr, and what are stereotypical "I can work anywhere I want"
devs.

But for those remote csrs, besides the upheaval, it's going to be tough
working in SV on csr pay.

And how much team building do you need to read troubleshooting prompts out of
a binder anyway?

------
negamax
Yahoo has given ~50% returns since August last year.

~~~
dillonforrest
Let's not assume that public equities indicate good decision-making! :)

~~~
sceadu
"In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a
weighing machine."

~~~
jpdoctor
Combined with "In the long run, we are all dead", the implications are stark.

------
agent86
The one part I do not understand about all of this comes when you have a
company with multiple locations and work that crosses locations.

Say you have east coast and west coast facilities. If people only worked
within their local facility, I can see the reasoning and advantages. What I
don't understand is where the value is when the work crosses facilities.

What you would need to do to bridge the gap between the workers in the
different facilities is the same thing you should do to bridge the gap between
remote workers.

How is having people that need to work together in separate facilities any
better than the people working remotely?

~~~
edderly
Funny thing is, the different facilities are probably more problematic than
remote workers. It can be more prone to politics and the organisation as a
whole pulling in different directions.

The exception is where the remote does have some well defined autonomous
reason for existing, for example a sales office.

In comparison remote workers obviously are usually tied to a particular
office.

------
javascripter9
Can people please chime in with the names of any companies they know to be
actively looking to hire remotely so we job seekers that don't want this yahoo
move to become a trend know where to apply?

------
amorphid
Making the assumption that Mayer slash Yahoo wouldn't implement a policy like
this on a whim, I bet this comes out of a bigger plan. If one had a mandate to
do X, studied how to do that, and found X would be more likely to succeed with
a team working purely onsite, then you just do a cost benefit analysis and
make a decision. You'll find out later if you're decision was a good one, so
hopefully on the front end you've got good data, judgement, and moxie to
effectively make bold decisions!

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kwalsh07
I completely agree with Mayer. As a student that took the Babson MBA program,
it was a about building the team foundation, understanding that collaboration
was key. My whole team was made up of mom, dads, parents of all sorts. The key
goal was to assign a task and get it done in a timely manner while achieving
our best result. It taught me to push myself, push global collaboration...
beginning the foundation, allows for future growth.

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nhangen
Any chance this is a way to trim fat without actually laying people off?
Easier to get rid of the slackers if they quit.

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shawnc
Sounds like you hit the nail on the head.

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mansigandhi
If that's true, it's just plain stupid.

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thrush
You'd think they're doing this for security. I'm taking a security class right
now and pretty much I've realized that remote computer systems are super
insecure relative to anything on site. With the recent events of security
fails like what happened at the nytimes it seems that the risk is becoming
extremely high. I think it's a smart move by Mayer.

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donnfelker
Lame ...a great way to cut off your talent pool. Yah-who???

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vivekv
People change, policies change. What is the big deal?

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sultezdukes
I had a talk with my supervisor a few days ago about working from home vs
being in the office. We're "open office", which sucks in its current form, but
I've come to realize has some definite advantages.

The problem is when you have these black-n-white policies. When we're in bug-
fixing, hardening iteration I estimate that I'm almost 2x productive working
at home, than I am commuting in and dealing with the chit-chat and
distractions of being in open office.

The bottom line is that it's completely retarded for a CEO to make that kind
of decision on a company-wide basis. Middle managers should be making that
kind of decision.

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waltz
can someone explain to me why yahoo is still relevant?

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stevewilhelm
Here are about a billion reasons:
[http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=YHOO+Income+Statement&an...](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=YHOO+Income+Statement&annual)

