Get'em Dave
I don't think he goes by Dave, any more than he drinks beer. :p
No more remote work at Yahoo
161–170 of 217 posts
Re: No more remote work at Yahoo
#16237signals 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…
" If a hiring process weeds out some qualified candidates, it doesn't mean it's broken. Whether or not it's broken is determined by whether the company finds a suitable candidate, how long it takes and how expensive it is. " Absolutely. But changing terms and conditions after a person has been employed is different, and, in the UK at least, may be illegal. I suspect it is the change for existing employees that surpri…
One thing may be possible - that they actually took a look at who worked remotely and who worked on site. From that they decided that the 100% remote workers were not producing as well, or were acceptable to lose.
It could be that Yahoo didn't set up their remote work procedures very well and so it lead to poor productivity from remote workers.
Obviously they're willing to risk losing employees so I would guess they put some thought into it.
Re: No more remote work at Yahoo
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
I'm sorry but I don't get it - who are you saying Meyer is "really" targeting and why?
Re: No more remote work at Yahoo
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
I'm sorry but I don't get it - who are you saying Meyer is "really" targeting and why?
Re: No more remote work at Yahoo
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. I think it's more a side-effect of the typical meeting. They tend to be so low bandwidth, that most people view any way out of them as increasing their productivity. I've not found remote meetings much better in this regard.
But given that one can have remote meetings, the fact that one is deluged with meetings when coming in to the office kind of suggests something, no?
Yes, it says the the OP's company doesn't have a good teleconferencing setup.
Re: No more remote work at Yahoo
#166I see a lot of people whining about trust and dictatorship ... but perhaps the situation is worst then it seems from the outside, and that Yahoo is actually full of complacency and laziness, and getting them all under the same roof is the only way to clean the place correctly.
Re: No more remote work at Yahoo
#167This is an excellent analysis of the situation. I generally prefer to work in the office over remote work, because it's preferable from a networking perspective, but a zero-tolerance approach to it is ridiculous. My personal hunch is that this is a move to reduce headcount. Yahoo's top management doesn't want to put the company through a layoff, and they're not organized enough to know which projects to cut, so this…
I know that is typical, but in this case Google didn't approve of it either and Marissa came from Google.
Re: No more remote work at Yahoo
#168As I posted on the 37s blog: Management paranoia is not the only reason why someone would want to decrease the amount of remote work. There are team spirit benefits to bringing people together physically, and depending on the type of work being undertaken, remote work may have more downsides than upside. I don’t see this as an aggression against remote workers, or an attempt at controlling remote workers more closely…
I'm sure that's how the executives in charge of this boneheaded decision explain it to themselves, but try applying just a pinch of real world logic to that thought and it shrivels like a slug under salt. Do you really think that people who have been forced to start working in the office under threat of termination are going to form a positive, collegial bond? If they form a bond at all, it will be one based on share…
> Do you really think that people who have been forced to start working in the office under threat of termination are going to form a positive, collegial bond? If they form a bond at all, it will be one based on shared resentment of the Dilbert-esque reality they now inhabit.
I think that in hard times, you either do form a bond or you go form a bond somewhere else. I think that's the decision that was just taken at Yahoo.
They could just have fired all the remote workers - but that would have been truly stupid.
Re: No more remote work at Yahoo
#16937signals 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…
> 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. That's pretty condescending. If I don't share your view then I don't understand the situation? I do prefer working from home but I perfectly understand the disadvantages, and I understand the advantages of working in an office. That doesn't mean…
I agree with most of your points.
But this:
"Again, if you're going to make yourself more isolated and inaccessible, why work in an office to begin with?"
Working with headphones signals "don't bother me unless important" and does provides protection against a degree of interruptions and noise but still provides accessibility and potential closeness that you can't get when working remotely.
Re: No more remote work at Yahoo
#170The 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…
"He writes that Yahoo employees should be "angry" that the new policy was declared "without your consultation". How does he know there was no consultation? How does he know local employees didn't give feedback to management that the extra communication overhead with remote workers didn't create difficulties in collaboration?"
I'm sure they consulted every remote worker before they effectively shitcanned most of them.