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No more remote work at Yahoo

37signals.com

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Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#91

Post by willvarfar »

cbsmith wrote: post #68
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…

I distress that a flippant bit of colour can derail my point.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#92

Post by wyqueshocec »

Simucal wrote: post #65
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…

I worked on a team last year that did this. Wednesdays and Fridays.

It worked so well that I am trying to get it implemented at my current place. If I ever become a manager, I will probably implement this among my team, too.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#93

Post by lttlrck »

kjackson2012 wrote: post #73

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 Mic…

"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."

Great comment.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#94

Post by chaostheory »

cbsmith wrote: post #68
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…

It's not just the meetings, some of it is also useless distractions like non-pc gossip about how exactly someone got promoted even though they lack both skill and experience. It's distracting and it takes time for people to repeatedly tell their coworkers that they're busy and they need to work without offending anyone.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#95

Post by johnward »

tjdetwiler wrote: post #81
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…

"The days I go into the office for meetings are the days I get nothing real done." I think that has more to do with the meetings than the office.

When your in the office is much easier for you to be pulled into impromptu meetings.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#96

Post by johnward »

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…

It sounds like you don't have very much experience working as a remote employee or with remote employees. I feel like I'm under more pressure when I'm remote. I'm constantly trying to stay focused because I'm paranoid that the company will say "you aren't doing anything" and remove my WFH privileges. In the office I spend more time on HN and other time wasting because it's much harder to make the argument that you aren't getting your job done when you are physically in the office for 9-10 hours.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#97

Post by kayoone »

gcp wrote: post #90
kayoone wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

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 & locat…

>> 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.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#98

Post by gcp »

kayoone wrote: post #71

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 alo…

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.

This can be true, but for those whom it is ideal, why shouldn't there be uproar about it? Can we move your office to the basement, next to the drilling machine, while we take your stapler and forbid anyone to talk to you? This works for me so why are you upset about it?

Working remotely from home makes me feel alone after a few weeks now, i might even call it depressed....I dont want to mix private with work life too much...not always think about getting back to my desk to get some more work done.

These are valid points, and something important to take care of if you're working remote. I'd go batshit insane without friends on IRC, and it takes discipline to maintain a regular working schedule that doesn't venture into the night (too often). Nobody said working remotely is great for everyone. As long as you accept that on-site working is very suboptimal for others too.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#99

Post by 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.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#100

Post by 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.
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