It's easy to blame minorities

While I agree with your criticism that he's attacking a strawman, I don't think there is any conflict of interest if he poses an opinion that he is using as a basis for a book. Many people write blog entries in support of a thesis they are evolving into a book.

1. A subtle discussion of "work-life balance", i.e. how women aren't suited to have time-consuming careers.

2. It's an opportunity for linkbaiters to occupy contrarian or coarse viewpoints (Forbes, Slate, etc.)

3. It's a way for people to pretend like they know anything about managing Silicon Valley tech companies by chiming in on this.

Why are people still posting and upvoting these articles? DHH has made it clear that he doesn't want his articles on Hackernews, which he described as a "cesspool".

This is not a case of blaming the "minority". To understand, let me digress a little – the case where we can easily get away by blaming a minority is when a school blames a small subset of students for spoiling a school's average test scores. That is called blaming a "minority" and it works.

However, what has been done here is purely for work optimisation. Mayer is clearly trying to change the culture of Yahoo, and in the attempts of doing so she has found that remote workers don't fit in the type of culture of strong collaboration and unity she wants Yahoo to become. And therefore, she has decided to change that. Simply stated.

There can't be any way for us to understand whether these remote workers under performed at Yahoo or not! However, when you try to make a defining culture, even the smallest of things matter. And perhaps, remote workers are not in line with the culture Yahoo is building. Regardless of how small the workforce is.

What will be interesting to me is how many of these remote workers are truly remote? As in, how many of them work in a completely different location than Yahoo HQ? To be honest, going down to work when you're living 5 blocks away from the office isn't particularly characterised as remote, knowing that the boss can call you in any second.

"But that’s exactly why it’s been so easy to place the blame on them for Yahoo’s ails. "

One thing is shutting down telecommuting because it is believed it's not working, another is "blaming" it for Yahoo ails, a statement that I haven't seen anywhere else apart from this article.

It's probably part of a larger set of measure that the new CEO has been undertaking to revive a stagnating company, talking about "blaming minorities" is plain exaggerating.