No more remote work at Yahoo

But we have to keep in mind that 37signals is a very differend kind of company. I'm not sure remote work is that suited to big companies. So they may be right in principle but they're handling it poorly.

tldr of the article: http://tldr.io/tldrs/512b80b57ad42f2e2500000a/no-more-remote...

But to indulge you, consider whether you are confusing correlation with causation. It could be that he writes this post to promote his book (causation).

Nevertheless, it could also be that the post and the book are correlated, and that the root cause is his own personal success with remote working arrangements.

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 that they weigh out to the same preference for me as they do for you.

> Firstly, working from an office doesn't not exclude a flexible work schedule.

You can have a flexible work schedule while working in an office, but that does undermine the major reason companies usually want people to work in an office; being accessible. If you're not there while other people are there you might as well not be there at all. In fact, if you are remote but working the same hours as your coworkers, you are more accessible than someone who is working in the same building but at different times.

> As far as not being bothered, this can certainly be true. This is actually part of the reason why I often wear headphones. Noise-cancelling headphones do a pretty good job of filtering out a lot of noise but just the act of wearing headphones I tend to find acts as a psychological barrier from others bothering you.

Again, if you're going to make yourself more isolated and inaccessible, why work in an office to begin with? You're citing reasons you should be working from home rather than reasons why working at an office is advantageous.

> The other issue, and this particularly applies to large companies, is one of culture. Culture like team cohesion is orders of magnitude easier to spread when physically colocated. For a company the size of Google (my employer), IMHO this is far more important than any individual perceived benefits about permanent remote work.

There are plenty of companies who work in person that either have toxic or no real culture. OTOH, there are plenty of companies that work remotely that have a great culture. You can do plenty while working remotely to spread culture; it's either there in everything the company does or it's missing.

There's nothing special about working from an office w/regards to culture, especially when personnel are working random hours and wearing headphones to isolate themselves.

> Also, I disagree with the position that this "punishes" good employees.

Well, you're wrong, and this goes far beyond working remotely or not. If you hire somebody with a given benefit -- whether that's the opportunity to work remotely, free cafeteria, health care, paid overtime, etc. -- and then you take that benefit away, that's punishing your employees. There's no two bits about it. Whether you personally would take advantage of that benefit or not does not matter. It is punishing the people who did take advantage of it, and that's simple fact.

The question was about scaling up. It's obviously possible to manage entire teams that are offsite, as many companies now do it. Is there some other way to scale up than to have other teams? You aren't seriously suggesting to have bigger teams, are you?

If you accept you need teams in multiple teams & locations (due to labor-market limitations, physical limitations, cost of office space in some areas, etc), then companies that are organized for remote work have a massive advantage because they are much better at communicating between them.

Trying to scale a company were everybody is remote and on their own, is a very tough task.

What arguments are supporting this statement? Is there any? What does "on their own" even mean here?

So when working remote (as in from home) and your project manager calls you for something urgent at 10am but you are still sleeping/doing stuff with the kids etc

I put down the phone, turn on the PC and am available 2 minutes later, instead of 60 minutes later while I commute. Exactly the same thing as when an emergency happens outside office hours in an on-site job, except that I'm actually guaranteed to have all the stuff I need for work available at home.

Some of the arguments here make it sound as if these are fairytales, yet this is exactly how work is and has been done for years, at least at some of the more enlightened employers :)