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No more remote work at Yahoo

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Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#211

Post by marcosploither »

h2s wrote: post #137
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 int…

cultural homogeneity, actually, can be extremely dangerous.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#212

Post by lelele »

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…

The truth is that only smart people can make remote working work. What medium to big companies can afford to hire only - or even mostly - smart people? Not to mention that smart people who really want to dance at their own beat start their own businesses. Hence, for medium to bigger companies, the cost of catering to smart people surpasses the advantages.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#213

Post by just2n »

donohoe wrote: post #126

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.

That doesn't make any sense. If a person is unproductive or abusing a policy, you fire them, publicly. You don't ban the policy.

Now everyone who wasn't abusing the policy but was only still working at Yahoo because of it will leave. This is called throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#214

Post by jes5199 »

speakingcode wrote: post #184
jes5199 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, mos…

a classroom full of PhDs may be architecturally similar to an open-floor plan startup office, but the quality of sitting in one and thinking is different - mainly, it's quieter in a classroom. Quieter is good for thinking.

The startups I've seen don't particularly use whiteboards.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#215

Post by cacois »

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…

> 3. Scaling remote working. No organisation seems to effectgively scale past the dunbar number - communication and collaboration drops alarmingly. (Its not intra-group comms that drops, its the inter-group comms.)

Do you have any data on this? What about organizations like Canonical who are almost all full remote workers? Surely Canonical cannot have less than 150 workers.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#216

Post by edictive »

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…

Marissa Mayer Is No Fool, take it from the actual business point of view: http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/2013/02/marissa-mayer-is-no-foo...

Sure we all what to work from home, we sympathise and this is human nature, but its not good for Yahoo.

Re: No more remote work at Yahoo

#217

Post by edictive »

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…

Well put!
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