Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No more remote work at Yahoo

37signals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 217 posts

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#131

Post by bpatrianakos »

Any one of us could go off on a diatribe on why DHH is right or wrong (and some of us have) but I think this issue is actually much simpler and we're missing something crucial here.

Whether remote work is a good practice or not is besides the point. I'd say, when done intelligently, it's a great thing. But don't you think Mayer knows that already? The bottom line here is that Mayer has to take a floundering company and turn it around. There must be something going within Yahoo! that makes this decision the right one. Yeah, there's going to be some blowback from employees and the media but at the end of the day it wouldn't be surprising if Mayer is reading all these articles and saying "Oh if you only knew what remote work is doing to this company...".

Remote work as far as I'm concerned is a great thing - but it's probably hurting Yahoo! more than helping right now. I wouldn't be surprised to see Mayer turn this thing around and reinstate the remote work policy when the dust settles.

It's easy to play armchair CEO, especially if you're a CEO, but what DHH is saying is basically "remote work is working for us therefore it should work for others". Well, it's great that it works for 37Signals but Yahoo! is a different beast and Mayer is not an idiot. It seems like she's willing to take some damage now to avoid a catastrophe down the line.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#132

Post by kayoone »

tribaal wrote: post #89
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'm currently working from "home" 100% (since about a year), and to remedy or alleviate this problem I rent a space in a coworking office full of other (mostly non-IT) entrepreneurs/remote workers. It's been working pretty well!

exactly what i will be doing from March onwards, just got the keys :)

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#133

Post by smackfu »

alan_cx wrote: post #120

Firstly, I'm a huge fan of proper home working. Simply, it works for me. The general "vibe" I get from this is that that new management has arrived and is concerned about productivity. I assume that if new management has arrived, they would or should know what productivity levels should be and that yahoo remote staff are lacking. If so, then from a management POV, it does seem quickest and simplest to notionally get…

> I assume that if new management has arrived, they would or should know what productivity levels should be and that yahoo remote staff are lacking.

That certainly sounds like what most new management thinks they know.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#134

Post by senthilnayagam »

on twitter my interaction with dhh me: @dhh been to yahoo office and things are recovering, just reserve your judgement till 3rd quarter results are out , hoping for a miracle

dhh: @senthilnayagam No miracle forthcoming will be due to killing remote working programs.

me: this one is a boomerang, it is targeted at yahoo management team and managers who are comfortable in their old ways me: those who wanted to abandon the yahoo ship have already done it, yahoo has to float first before it can sail again

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#135

Post by kayoone »

gcp wrote: post #98
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 for…

Sure, no problem if it works for you. When i was younger it certainly worked for me too, but i now see alot more value in being able to talk to other like minded people during the day, where talk doesnt mean sending messages to an irc channel. That said, i am by no means extroverted and like being alone but i believe that things like working culture, team spirit and motivation are alot easier with people in the same room. Also depends alot on the company, for startups i think its essential that the core team shares the same space, while a corporate programming job an easily be done remotely.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#136

Post by willholloway »

I don't understand how serious software engineering is done in a lot of the start up offices I see in photos.

These offices look like an Apple store. They are open floor plan. Instead of desks they have tables where devs sit across from each other working on 13" to 15" laptop screens.

The ergonomics of these set ups are awful, and so are the economics.

Real estate is expensive in this economy. Why double pay for space? Why have 9-5 work space and 6-8 home space?

I know there is a separation of concerns argument, but in a competitive global economy I find that takes a back seat.

I look at not double paying for space as one of the business advantages my consultancy has.

A nice home/office with floor to ceiling windows slightly tinted to reduce glare and UV in a high rise building with panoramic view, a proper standing desk, a Kinesis Advantage contoured keyboard, Evoluent vertical mouse and dual 27" monitors is an incredible mood and productivity booster.

The ratio of window area to wall area in non-luxury buildings in NYC is an abomination. In my far off utopian vision a glorious and massive urban renewal project demolishes all soul crushingly dark tiny windowed apartments and in their place stand gleaming solar powered monuments to the human race where our creative class toils happily producing works of the head and the heart for global consumption and a breath taking view is never more than a side-long glance away.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#137

Post by h2s »

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…

You make a really good case against remote work. The only thing I can say about it is that you make a case from the point of view of an employer, or maybe an extremely loyal employee.

It may well be true that it's easier to enforce cultural homogeneity on colocated teams, which makes it easier to treat individuals as interchangeable cogs that can be transplanted between different parts of the wider machine.

Whose interest that's in is an interesting question. It's a obvious win for the employer. And employees who want to work for an "apex predator" employer are better off because in their case, utility for the employer is utility for the employee.

The point of the 37signals post is that only "apex predator" companies like Google can legitimately demand this sort of dedication. Given your statement that you actually work at Google, I think perhaps it makes sense that your opinion is what it is.

My point - to sum it up - is that productivity and cultural homogeneity aren't the only important metrics to optimise for.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#138

Post by gfodor »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #131

Any one of us could go off on a diatribe on why DHH is right or wrong (and some of us have) but I think this issue is actually much simpler and we're missing something crucial here. Whether remote work is a good practice or not is besides the point. I'd say, when done intelligently, it's a great thing. But don't you think Mayer knows that already? The bottom line here is that Mayer has to take a floundering company a…

Great comment. In such a dysfunctional company such as Yahoo I would bet that the majority of "remote workers" are just coasting and doing nothing. It's a shame for those productive remote workers who will either leave or be forced to start coming in, but if for every one of those people there are a hundred pieces of dead weight then I think the cost benefit analysis is pretty clear for a CEO to make.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#139

Post by officemonkey »

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…

The way to "fix" entitled, lazy employees and management is to "light their shit up," so to speak.

Give people work, set goals, and hold them accountable. You can't get a completed app approved and on the street in months? Fire the managers involved. Somebody complains that they don't have ping pong balls? Take away the ping pong table.

Stopping remote work will not improve performance. Firing poor performers is the solution, not chaining them to their desk.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#140

Post by cbsmith »

chaostheory wrote: post #94
cbsmith wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Those "useless distractions" tend to be more important than one realizes. Random conversations on random subjects actually can serve a purpose.
Post reply on HN