No more remote work at Yahoo • Hacker News Board

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#121

Post by vvortex3 » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 4:18 PM UTC

I am a full time telecommute developer. I am slowly travelling around the world while telecommuting. The job is awesome and all that anyone has to do to achieve this is just to demand that any job they take be 100% telecommute.

There are, however, a couple things that one should keep in mind.

1) Your competition is global and intense. (How many of you have worked with some of the better Russian or German developers? How do they get so good?)

2) Your pay must be set and comparable to a global standard so forget about silicon valley pay.

3) You are usually a contractor and have no safety nets. So save large chunks of your pay.

Ok, that said, maybe I can relate this to the original article by saying that I've literally seen projects completed about 3x faster and at least 3x cheaper than any other corporation I've worked for that required the workforce to be in-office.

Why? Well, I don't really have the answer. I can speak to my own experience in that I'm judged solely on deliverables. I don't really have a face and as far as the company is concerned I exist as my deliverables... so they better be up to par. The other reason is that working this way requires projects to be organized ON PAPER. Those who have worked at any corporation will understand why that is important. So many managers bullshit their way around doing things like clearly documenting requirements or tracking deliverables. This simply won't work in a telecommute environment.

I really do believe that if I were to hire a team to complete a project I'd do so on a telecommute basis. It's simply cheaper and faster if done correctly and thus gives any company that does so an advantage.

One last point: I don't believe any manager who is not him/herself an engineer is suited to manage such a team.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#122

Post by codeordie » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 4:20 PM UTC

gcp wrote: post #55

nikon wrote: post #27

Working from home is boring. I spent 1 1/2 years working from home but now much prefer working in my client's office with the team. It seems no one else is either willing to admit this, or I am the only one who prefers the social interactions and the ability to resolve and issue face-to-face in 2 minutes rather than struggling on Skype, or waiting for emails.

the ability to resolve and issue face-to-face in 2 minutes rather than struggling on Skype, or waiting for emails. If you're not coordinating your remote workers on an IRC-like system, you're likely doing it wrong. (That's my experience, if someone else has successfully used other systems I'd like to hear about it) Also, if most of the team is on site and the remote people are a small minority, things are going to su…

I think you are spot on - I've done a lot of working from home, but it's by far the most satisfying when there's a chat room (or IRC) system setup. It makes it fun, I feel more connected, and I think we are more productive that way.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#123

Post by zheng » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 4:20 PM UTC

tompko wrote: post #31

shanelja wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No train of thought takes half an hour to recover, that is massively scaled up to make my point sound ridiculous. That aside, if I feel it is important enough that it required an immediate response prompting me to go all the way to their desk, then it's most likely more productive for the entire company. I should probably post-face this with the fact that I am one of only 2 devs at my company, the rest are content pr…

Actually studies suggest that for "knowledge workers" like programmers 25 minutes is the average amount of time it takes to recover from an interruption to a task. So half an hour lost to an interruption isn't that bad an estimate. Anecdotally I've certainly had times deep into debugging complex problems where an interruption has needed a lot longer than 30 minutes to recover from.

This. I find I can generally get back into feature writing within 5-10 minutes. Debugging can take much longer. This is the number one reason for staying late, because I know that if I leave this issue now, it will take me half of tomorrow just to get back to this particular spot.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#124

Post by ikailan » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 4:24 PM UTC

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 that has worked in the Valley that knows ex-Yahoos have heard crazy, crazy stories of what it was like. I remember hearing a story about an employee who worked there who wanted to quit to do a startup. Her manager panicked, saying, "you can't leave. If you leave, we will lose the headcount because we won't be able to backfill it fast enough." So what happened? The manager made an off-the-books agreement with the person for her to "work from home" for a few more months while the manager scrambled to backfill, still collecting a salary, while doing absolutely nothing at all. I never followed up to see what came out of this. I probably should.

Contrary to the flame-baiting you might see, Marissa is making some progress in turning Yahoo back into a desirable place to work again. I'm hearing from good engineers I know at respectable companies that have either considered it after talking to recruiters or have actually accepted offers. I suspect there is some method to the madness around the remote working policy - we'll just have to see over the long run what shakes out of it.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#125

Post by numbchuckskills » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 4:26 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #112

gcp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think working remotely scales. Scales to what? I don't understand how this argument can be made when most companies have multiple, globally distributed offices, which turns their workforce effectively remote on the grand scale. On all on-site jobs I've done so far, the remote offices were effectively other companies as far as communicating is concerned. People who're used to in-face communication have a huge…

scales to FTSE 100, DOW 30 or Global 500 size one place (British telecom) I worked at had a division had more developers/engineers than google has employees.

Not necessarily... I've worked in telecom as well and remote work policies were certainly a driver of head-count bloat.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#126

Post by donohoe » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 4:28 PM UTC

Basically, remote working works and is good.

At Yahoo it was nor working - being abused, bad habits and policy engrained over years.

Doesn't mean it won't be back down the road. I think they're just cleaning house.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#127

Post by xyahoo » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 4:31 PM UTC

Sigh, not this sh*t again.

Yahoo's problem is (and always has been for quite a while) bad middle-management. (See my earlier posts; like Punxsatawney Phil, I come out only on occasion). These middle MF'ers have been running the company into the ground with their lack of vision, petty infighting and sheer idiocy. This has led to MM and her cohorts to basically not trust the lower half of the company.

So the rank-and-file are paying the price for MM's inability to weed out the rotten layer of middle managers.

Instead of cracking down on the WFH crowd, she should crack down on middle managers.

1. Get rid of any manager who has less than 8 direct reports

2. Anyone of the level 'director' or above must justify their positions (there has been severe rank inflation in Yahoo in the past)

3. Anyone who has been at Yahoo for more than 2 years and in a position of authority must be forced to analyze why their property declined over that period, and what they could have done to avoid it. There is too much of 'shoot and scoot' at Yahoo: managers jump on any hot item, botch it up and then move on

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#128

Post by intended » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 4:33 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #117

nemothekid wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This, this is just "I'm in charge, everyone in because I say so" I doubt it's like this. From all the articles I have read, everyone seems to just be vilifying Mayer in standard linkbait form. Mayer could have said that ("In my opinion as the CEO we can only do this by being in the office at the same time, no flexi-hours, no mucking about, everyone in.") but it wouldn't matter because everyone would twist her words.…

OK, finding the original is hard work - in fact not possible YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION — DO NOT FORWARD ... To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeti…

Here's the deal which I see - this isn't what anyone here is making it out to be.

It's a wide strategy with its real target a set of managers. I'll bet money on it.

The secondary benefits and even the primary touted reason are great things to have, but they aren't the main goal.

This is based on what I'm seeing from looking at CEO in a non tech firm doing.

The aim of a new report or designation being created so far has is always aimed at getting and succeeding to get, multiple targets achieved, with the real target being buried somewhere inside and discrete.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#129

Post by ido » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 4:35 PM UTC

wyqueshocec wrote: post #92

Simucal wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same here (Mondays and Wednesdays), much better than coming to the office everyday IMO.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#130

Post by ikailan » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 4:35 PM UTC

jblock wrote: post #43

I get the stigma of "cool companies" that have chefs that serve organic meals 4 times a day, but are those benefits really all that superficial? As a new graduate who has to move to likely a very expensive part of the US to work for them, making the transition easier by eliminating some worries from my life (like doing lots and lots of grocery shopping) is a pretty nice benefit.

No, not at all. Serving meals makes it much easier to convince your team to go to lunch together (though many folks will eat at their desks, PLEASE DISCOURAGE THIS). Lunching together with your team frequently is the single best benefit of a company that offers cafes for employees. It's one of the ways non-urgent but important information propagates around an organization.