No more remote work at Yahoo • Hacker News Board

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#181

Post by speakingcode » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 9:30 PM UTC

in this day and age the notion that remote work hinders communication or scalability is absolutely absurd. Sure, it may hinder certain types of social interaction and communication, but in terms of collaborative engineering, it does not. Open source projects have managed tens, hundreds and even thousands of developers on single projects using rather primitive mailing lists, irc channels and source control. These days we have hangout and facetime, skype, hipchat... endless lists of intuitive textual, audible, and visual communication tools, project management tools, team management tools, code management tools... Using the right tools and practices, remote working is FAR MORE scalable than in-office working, because you can leverage a mass of employees from all over the world without the need to build out office space, infrastructure and other overhead to facilitate physical colocation.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/02/why-we-still-believe-i...

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#182

Post by keithpeter » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 9:37 PM UTC

jakejake wrote: post #162

keithpeter wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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…

"From that they decided that the 100% remote workers were not producing as well, or were acceptable to lose."

I'm getting the picture that US has few employment rights! It will be interesting to see if any of those directly affected by this break cover and discuss it in public.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#183

Post by jakejake » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 9:38 PM UTC

pyoung wrote: post #180

jakejake wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This was speculated in the following article. Compared to announcing a round of layoffs, reigning in remote workers is probably much less damaging to morale, and they can always ease the restriction or set up a more rationale policy down the road. http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Why...

The article actually makes a lot of sense. In the case of an organization that wasn't set up properly for remote working and then grew out of control for many years - there's probably a lot of people who simply aren't contributing. It saves Yahoo the negative attention that a round of layoffs would bring.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#184

Post by speakingcode » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 9:44 PM UTC

jes5199 wrote: post #156

willholloway wrote: post #136

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 spac…

Well, the short answer is: they mostly don't do "serious software engineering" - they do a lot of design (UX, mostly, but to some degree product design and graphic design) - and shuffle the UI around. The software engineering happens in short spurts, tucked away in conference rooms with the door closed, or after hours when the managers have gone home (...assuming the managers go home. I worked in an office where thos…

I don't see what this scrutinization of stereotypical trendy startup environments has to do with remote working. If a company has budget for it and wants to make its employees comfortable with open space, and the employees like it, it's their business. To suggest that "serious software engineering" isn't occurring because of how you suppose their workspace is setup is, frankly, offensive. In software engineering, most of the work goes on inside the minds of the developers. Most of the remainder goes on in a keyboard and a screen. If you wanna get down to it, having more whiteboards and less fancy computer equipment is an indicator of better problem solving, not less. I sit with three 19 inch monitors on my desk at work. At home, I use a 10 inch netbook most of the time. I have not seen a difference in productivity because when I am focused, I don't need screen real estate for more distractions. Everything just tunes out. If you consider phd-level university computer science research as "serious software engineering" then I'd note that most research labs I came across in my days in academia were largely empty rooms with some tables and some work desks. Most of the students (phd students, mind you) worked on whiteboard and did coding and writing on whatever laptop they had. The workhorse machines w. big monitors were usually time-shared and dedicated to running heavy processing jobs.

As far as working from home goes, it seems you each agree that being comfortable with ones workspace and environment impacts productivity. That said, one is more likely to have a comfortable and productive work environment when it is up to him/her to decide what equipment to use and where, which a home office lends itself to more than an office, especially on a corporate cube-farm level. Sure, some individuals may not be as productive at a comfortable workspace in the home, but that is the individual. Working from home is not for everyone, but those who find they are more focused and productive in the home environment ought to have that choice.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#185

Post by jasonjei » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 9:48 PM UTC

Here's a thought, why doesn't Linus Torvalds tell all the Linux core committers that if they want to continue to have commit access, they must show up at the office?

When I was a kid, I learned most of my programming through IRC channels. I worked on projects on Campfire, Skype, Hangout. It's not only possible, but provides a written log and account of decisions made. As well as giving people time to reflect.

The bottom line is that if you don't trust the people you hire, you've already hired wrong. Remote works if you trust your team. I had people working in person playing video games in the office. You can't coerce someone to work; you can only control this at hire time, not runtime.

Yes, it's impossible to tell who will work well remotely. But it's usually pretty obvious. People who will look for new things to do will do so, and people that will steal time can probably only keep up the con for only so long.

Hire right, and remote working works. That also includes in-person hires; they might be sitting there in seat...

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#186

Post by jasonjei » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 9:54 PM UTC

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…

Tell that to Linus Torvalds. Rails core. Ruby core. Give them an ultimatum: move to where HQ is, or lose commit access. See how quickly those projects die.

Microsoft has an in-person team whose Win32 user land APIs are confusing, some of which came from Win16 bolted to the side of Win32. Which is made bigger with the WinRT APIs, which also keep all the Win32 APIs thereby making Surface unwieldy. And I imagine Ballmer likes to keep his team on site for chair throwing...

And yet Linux is eclipsing many kernel projects not just in share but performance. Hell, Torvalds is fully capable of flaming people to tears via email! They're half a world apart and he can still rip a new one :)

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#187

Post by cbsmith » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 10:09 PM UTC

gcp wrote: post #165

cbsmith wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, more generally it says that there is value in having on site meetings.

I think it is fair to say that the OP's measure of his net productivity doesn't match that of his coworkers/employer... else they'd leave him alone when he came in to the office. Now, you can argue whose perceptions are accurate, but in the end the employer's perceptions are kind of all that matters.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#188

Post by pyre » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 10:23 PM UTC

lostnet wrote: post #102

127001brewer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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…

Having worked mostly remotely for a company that was going slowly down the drain, I can say that I was more productive.. But I was the first to jump ship when their buyout looked unfavorable to engineering. Companies in yahoo's state don't necessarily care about current output (what good is more of what isn't working?) A report I reviewed in the past indicated remote workers are more likely to walk away when a bad ch…

So the aim of this was to shake loose the less loyal employees and/or to encourage 'fence-sitters' to be in an environment where they would be less likely to leave as the company circles the drain?

I don't now that doesn't seem like the purpose behind this.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#189

Post by pyre » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 10:26 PM UTC

bcks wrote: post #39

I have absolutely no data on this, but it struck me as a lazy and sneaky way of making layoffs. It looks tough and decisive "She has a vision!" without spooking Wall Street with the "Yahoo starts the layoffs!" headlines.

Sometimes Wall Street responds favourably to shedding employees. I guess it just depends on the general outlook of the company. If the outlook is good, then they are just 'cutting costs' and 'shedding cruft.' If the outlook on a company is shaky or bad, then it's just seen as a desperate move to keep the company afloat.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#190

Post by agilord » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 10:48 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #101

TL;DR: Here's the thing: All engineering is "working remotely" because being "remote" is simply a matter of isolation. This is why even people in the same room use headphones, IM, etc. Everything that's not working remotely (eg: isolation) is "meetings" and the overhead of distractions. The only advantage of having engineers in the same office is a lower cost of meetings. The disadvantage is it makes engineering hard…

Great reasoning, it certainly resonates with my experiences.

Two additional notes:

1. Working remotely demands the ability that you can assess each-other's work. Most managers are not capable to measure how SW developers work, so they fall back to measure the hours you spend in the office.

2. Moving information is much cheaper today than it was even 5 years ago. It is certainly cheaper to have a regular daily videoconf / whiteboard meeting, than move everyone in the same location. And we haven't even mentioned that moving families across the country or across countries is not cheap either. I'd really love a honest analysis on how these aspects compare to the perceived loss in office communication. My guess is that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.