Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It's easy to blame minorities

37signals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 48 posts

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#2

Post by jmduke »

> 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 if one of the elements of that culture is that remote workers ARENT LOGGING INTO THE VPN then maybe Yahoo shouldn't have remote workers for the time being.

It's also cute that DHH chose not to disclose that he's releasing a book about remote work (which, you know, might be a slight conflict of interest.)

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#3

Post by kmfrk » 

    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.
How the hell did he contort himself into inferring that from what Gruber wrote?!

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#4

Post by peterevans »

I think this is probably the best point to be made over Yahoo's change in policy -- there just aren't that many remote workers at Yahoo. With the emphasis they'd put on this particular change in policy, it's natural for people to conclude that Yahoo thinks that having everyone come into the office to work is a significant change necessary to right the ship. When so few workers are remote, can that really be the case? Does Yahoo know what they're doing?

I don't know the answers, but those are the questions running through my mind right now.

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#5

Post by atonse »

I don't see anywhere that people are blaming remote workers for all of Yahoo's troubles.

People are starting to care about Yahoo now and not just look at them with pity. Mayer is trying to clean up that company. When you are turning around a large institution like Yahoo, you're going to piss off a lot of people. These are all signs that someone is actually trying to turn things around there, instead of continuing the status quo like the previous CEOs did. This is just one of many moves.

I think remote work is great, but reading elsewhere shows that there was a lot of abuse of the policy _at Yahoo_. When a policy is rampantly being abused, you can revoke it until you can figure out how to better measure its effects. I'm sure they will re-institute this policy once they have better control over it, but that probably won't get any press.

I still have a generally favorable opinion of what Mayer's doing so far, and will try to hold my personal judgement to see how Mayer's moves affect Yahoo in the long term.

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#6

Post by pablasso »

To be fair to Yahoo, nowhere do they mention that the remote workers are at fault for the company or the workforce struggles. They only want them performing better.

I'm pro remote working, but I can't see the fault in that.

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#8

Post by tokenadult »

One large company with an uncertain future shutting down opportunities to work from home is an opening in the market for several smaller companies with more upside to their futures to offer such opportunities to new hires. In a diverse business ecosystem with free enterprise, customers like you and me decide which companies' products and services will be monetizable, and the companies decide which personnel practices help them meet market challenges. I know of a SaaS company, much smaller than Yahoo but apparently growing and profitable, that has an explicit "results-based management" policy. That means the managers don't care how often their developers come into the office, and as long as developers finish their projects with reasonable quality and speed, and keep up with their support tasks (ALL the developers do rotating shifts on support, to stay near customer concerns), then the managers are happy. Not all companies can organize that way, but then again not all companies have to organize just like Yahoo either. Yahoo is one model of running a company. The 37 Signals model appears to work for 37 Signals, but not everyone wants to follow their model. Each company gets to try something out, and we consumers get to pick the winners.

Re: It's easy to blame minorities

#9

Post by ssharp »

I can't believe how much coverage this story has gotten, particularly in popular media. I expected lots of dust in the tech community, but CNN has been publishing op-ed's everyday since the announcement.

I just don't get the idea that the remote workers are slacking off so much that they need to make a sweeping policy change. If the remote workers are performing properly, then it's a 100% obvious management issue. Managers aren't properly managing remote workers and the hiring process is unable to properly weed out slackers and lazy people.

Post reply on HN