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It's easy to blame minorities

37signals.com

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Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#31

Post by jholloway7 »

dominic_cocch wrote: post #24

This post wasn't very well thought-out. "Gruber summed up this sentiment as “Yahoo employees have been allowed to work remotely, and they have not excelled”. In other words, Yahoo is a rudderless basket case, so it must be because of those 2-4% of the work force who are “goofing off”. Heh." That was a leap of logic, for sure. What this really says is: if 2-4% of your workforce isn't working out because they're remote…

It's clear to me that he didn't parse that Gruber sentence correctly and his misinterpretation invalidates the entire post.

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#33

Post by gte910h »

jmduke wrote: post #2

> Most estimates put the number of remote workers between 300 and 500. Which estimates are those? Overall, this post reeks of victimizing. > So yes, remote workers are keeping Yahoo from being the “absolute best place to work”. Stop attacking a strawman! Nobody's arguing that remote workers are the one stumbling block between Yahoo and mountains of glory. But there's clearly a culture that needs to be attacked, and i…

>ARENT LOGGING INTO THE VPN

Honestly, I have worked remotely at places where very few services required the VPN to function

But if the VPN is actually necessary for work, then that makes sense.

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#34

Post by rushabh »

I think the most important aspect in remote working is not only whether the company believes in a result oriented culture or not. What gets ignored, is that a lot of knowledge is embedded in the culture. Like a random conversation in the hallway or how someone reacts to a crisis. What remote workers also miss is the level of energy and the optimism/pessimism that is going around.

Without high fidelity feedback, a remote worker may be totally mislead about certain issues, including his or her own performance. Hence the onus is always on the remote worker to stay in deep contact with her or his peers. And companies that allow remote working should also make this explicit.

Will be interesting to read how 37signals works around these issues.

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#35

Post by papsosouid »

_pius wrote: post #29
papsosouid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How the hell did he contort himself into inferring that from what Gruber wrote?! It is called dishonesty. It is the entire reason anyone knows who DHH is.

It is called dishonesty. It is the entire reason anyone knows who DHH is. I understand you may not like the guy, but I'm pretty sure DHH's fame came mostly from creating Ruby on Rails.

I don't think it did. What's the name of the guy who created django? I know the only reason I know of DHH and not django-guy is that DHH spent years dishonestly promoting rails/trashing java.

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#36

Post by xfour »

DHH is leaning toward looking obsessed with this, at this point. But, I think Yahoo, no matter the reason for original attempt has received so much negative press that this will in the long run end up costing them.

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#37

Post by dfxm12 »

jmduke wrote: post #2

> Most estimates put the number of remote workers between 300 and 500. Which estimates are those? Overall, this post reeks of victimizing. > So yes, remote workers are keeping Yahoo from being the “absolute best place to work”. Stop attacking a strawman! Nobody's arguing that remote workers are the one stumbling block between Yahoo and mountains of glory. But there's clearly a culture that needs to be attacked, and i…

Stop attacking a strawman! Nobody's arguing that remote workers are the one stumbling block between Yahoo and mountains of glory.

There's a bigger issue here than just the ability to work from home. It's about freedom, not taking any steps backwards and globalization.

An employer should empower its employees to do the best work they can. Taking away certain freedoms will hinder this.

Remote working is a pretty solvable problem. What's it say that a technology company refuses to take this on? That they've given up and retreated from it? Does this have bigger implications on the industry at large? What about other industries?

Yahoo! has several offices. If you are working with someone in a different office, what does it matter to you if they are in their office or a coffee shop or their bedroom? What if they are in a different timezone? Is Yahoo going to increase their travel budget to get the benefits of collocating? Would stockholders like this?

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#38

Post by omonra »

bhauer wrote: post #12
jmduke wrote: post #2

> Most estimates put the number of remote workers between 300 and 500. Which estimates are those? Overall, this post reeks of victimizing. > So yes, remote workers are keeping Yahoo from being the “absolute best place to work”. Stop attacking a strawman! Nobody's arguing that remote workers are the one stumbling block between Yahoo and mountains of glory. But there's clearly a culture that needs to be attacked, and i…

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.

I guess it's just somewhat poor wording to call it 'conflict of interest'.

Maybe the post would benefit from a disclaimer - "I happen to be a big proponent of remote work and even wrote a book about how great it is. So I bring a set of pre-existing views to this issue"

Point being is that when someone is a proponent of something (to the tune of publishing a book extolling it), you hardly expect them to offer an unbiased analysis. Omitting that fact is kinda wrong.

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#39

Post by pwthornton »

Evbn wrote: post #19
zem wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a common problem in the tech press. back in the day, everyone knew how to solve sun's problems too.

Did Sun's CEO know better?

The idea that CEOs always know how to run their company better than outsiders is suspect argument. If this were the case, CEOs would never get fired and replaced by outsiders. And if this were the case, CEOs wouldn't drive companies into the ground.

But this isn't the case. CEOs are just like everyone else. Some of them have bad ideas. Some of them make gambles that don't pay off. Some of them don't really understand their competitors that well.

I'm not making a judgement as to Mayer's ability to run Yahoo, but the idea that an outsider can't have good suggestions for a company and CEO is crazy. Yes, a lot of people in the tech press like to make recommendations to companies that aren't well thought out and are perhaps done for linkbait reasons, but there is a lot of data on the merits of remote work, especially when done part time. I don't see any harm in pointing that out, and a debate about working environments and work-life balance is important.

Mayer is not like most employees. Most people can't afford to hire help and to have a nursery built next to their office at work. She can, and she doesn't have to deal with the same issues that most of her employees do.

Saying that we can't have a debate about this because we're not the CEO of Yahoo is crazy.

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#40

Post by _pius »

papsosouid wrote: post #35
_pius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is called dishonesty. It is the entire reason anyone knows who DHH is. I understand you may not like the guy, but I'm pretty sure DHH's fame came mostly from creating Ruby on Rails.

I don't think it did. What's the name of the guy who created django? I know the only reason I know of DHH and not django-guy is that DHH spent years dishonestly promoting rails/trashing java.

I don't think it did. What's the name of the guy who created django?

Adrian Holovaty et al.

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