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No more remote work at Yahoo

37signals.com

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Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#61

Post by smackfu »

shanelja wrote: post #2

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 aro…

>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.

Corporate IM is one solution to this.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#62

Post by mef »

raganwald wrote: post #45
mef wrote: post #23

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 n…

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 p…

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 :)

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#63

Post by 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!

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#64

Post by 127001brewer »

cletus wrote: post #53

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 n…

... 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 ...

With that statement, you're really highlighting the trust your company has with you. Unfortunately, it seems Yahoo is communicating that it no longer trusts any of its employees working from home. And there may be valid reasons, such as significant lost of productivity, but punishing the "good" employees with the "bad" sends a negative signal.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#65

Post by Simucal »

cletus wrote: post #53

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 n…

How do you feel about working from home just part of the week? At my current company most of my team works from home two days a week. While we aren't required to do so, most of us sync our days so we all work from home Tuesday and Thursday. That way we are in the office at the same time for the most part.

I've found that I really enjoy this arrangement. I still feel like we have team cohesion while at the same time I can get done my transactional work two days out of the week without being disturbed. We schedule meetings where we need to collaborate for M-W-F. If we do need to get together on T-Th then we fire up a Google Hangout.

For me it seems like the best of both worlds. I reduce my commute and transportation costs 40% without really losing a lot in return.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#66

Post by 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.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#67

Post by talentless »

gcp wrote: post #14
shanelja wrote: post #2

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 aro…

...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 ge…

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.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#68

Post by cbsmith »

willvarfar wrote: post #41

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…

> 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.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#69

Post by 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.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#70

Post by 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.

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