• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

News: Yahoo work-from-home policy riles workers everywhere

zsdersw

zsdersw

Lifer
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/26/tech/yahoo-reaction/index.html?hpt=hp_bn5

(CNN) -- When Stephanie Van Pelt needed to care for her son after surgery, her company gave her the option to work from home.

"They didn't lose my productivity," Van Pelt posted on Google+. "They gained an intensely loyal, hard-working employee that was so pleased with not having to take (time) off."

Van Pelt was weighing in on the recent news that Yahoo is ending its work-from-home policy. The change, announced Monday by Yahoo human resources chief Jackie Reses, is expected to affect hundreds of employees. It is one of many changes CEO Marissa Mayer has made since being hired last July.

But Van Pelt doesn't work for Yahoo.

She doesn't work for Google, Twitter, or any high-profile tech company. Instead, Van Pelt represents how the changes at Yahoo have gotten the attention of workers everywhere, regardless of industry.

"This is just ridiculous," she continued. "Glad I have no desire to work for Yahoo!"
A 2011 study by Telework Research Network found that working remotely increased 73% from 2005 to 2011 in the United States.

Parenting is not at the heart of the issue, despite expectations Mayer would be more flexible after the recent birth of her first child. In the thousands of social media posts made about Mayer's decision since Monday, people have attempted to classify the policy as a statement about everything from feminism to incompetent management.

On Tuesday Yahoo issued a short statement, saying "This isn't a broad industry view on working from home -- this is about what is right for Yahoo right now."

But two themes seem to anchor the discussion, and they center on debate about what it takes to create a truly innovate workplace -- something Yahoo needs -- and the role morale plays in productivity.

On innovation

Psychologist Eve Ash wrote for SmartCompany.com that, "The combined efforts of a group can provide quantum leaps in innovations."

Hired to essentially reinvent Yahoo, Mayer is clearly attempting to reignite the "spirit of collaboration." In an opinion piece for CNN, Raymond Fisman said Mayer has it exactly right: Personal interaction is still the most effective way of conveying a company's direction. The assertion that new ideas spring up through "chance encounters" is backed by academic research, he says.

David Hirsch, who uses @startupman on Twitter, agrees. As a managing partner of Metamorphic.vc and a father of two, he says for every restart or start-up, real-time collaboration and strategy needs to happen "every 5 minutes."

"As a parent who occasionally works from home -- I feel bad for all those impacted," posted JD Fairweather. "As a consultant who has seen the challenges of managing remote workers and the complications of rebuilding a company -- it's the right move."

"Yahoo needs employees who want to live breathe and evangelize Yahoo," wrote tech blogger Shawn Farner. "The company needs employees in Sunnyvale, walking the halls, eating lunch with colleagues, brainstorming on whiteboards, gathering around monitors -- basically, doing the things you'd see a small start-up doing in companies that emphasize collaboration and comradery."

On productivity

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, quickly posted his opposition to Mayer's policy, saying a big part of successfully working with other people depends on, "trusting people to get their work done wherever they are, without supervision."

Donald Trump tweeted that Mayer is right to expect Yahoo employees to come to the workplace. "She is doing a great job!"

Lynn Dang, a former IBM employee posted to Facebook that the policy is silly and short-sighted for three reasons. First, unproductive staff will be unproductive anywhere. Second, Yahoo now risks losing top performers, and third the policy speaks of control and distrust unlikely to boost morale and engagement.

"I do think team building and interaction are useful but it doesn't have to be an all or nothing approach like this," Dang posted. "Especially in 2013. Especially for a tech company."

In an article on HLNTV.com, Sarah Evans, owner of Sevans Strategy, a public relations consultancy, wrote that each year, $1.4 trillion is lost in productivity regardless of where a worker's desk is physically located.

"Finding a better way to work should be a company's priority -- not telling people where they can do said work," Evans said.

For Scott Jordan, the policy signaled a much greater issue, which is that Mayer and her team have not planned and deployed technology properly. "There should be no time when an employee is more than a couple of taps away," he posted to Google+.
Click to expand...

Bolded parts are what I particularly agree with.
 
Yahoo is basically going down in flames and all the employees can do is complain about not being able to work from home. They'll be spending alot of time at home soon when yahoo doesnt exist anymore.
 
I think the reason the changes were made is because they are trying to salvage Yahoo, maybe get people physically together and do brainstorming together in an office like setting. I don't know, I can see why those who were hired initially under the agreement to work from home would be upset. Most people who are under those arrangements are usually caring for sick loved ones, or stay at home moms, or stay at home dads.

The Yahoo execs shouldn't be surprised if they lose a lot of talent because of this however.
 
crunkzilla said:
Yahoo is basically going down in flames and all the employees can do is complain about not being able to work from home. They'll be spending alot of time at home soon when yahoo doesnt exist anymore.
Click to expand...

Well, making a superficial (in terms of improving the company) change in policy like this one isn't helping the company.
 
Development jobs that require group collaboration will definitely benefit from face to face interaction in the office...

Support roles where individuals handle and trouble shoot issues on their own wont matter if they are on site or working remote.

Trying to apply a blanket policy to a company that has both of these types of roles is ridiculous.
 
Personally I find Mayer's actions to be extremely hypocritical and indicative of management that doesn't trust their staff to perform when not supervised. Very short-sighted IMO.

She's also said before that her family is priority and all that jazz. She had a nanny room built next to her office so she could have her baby there with her, but then turns around and takes away flexible work hours for employees and yanks their ability to work from home. I'm very happy I don't work for her, she seems like hypocritical scum.
 
Company is bloated - they need to let people go so this is a start by getting people to voluntary resign.

From what I understand, the working from home 1-day a week or taking 3-days off to work from home to take care of a medical emergency or sickness of a child is fine.

Its those people, especially managers that are working remotely, whose teams have not seen them in ages that are being told to show up or depart.
 
Fmr12B said:
Company is bloated - they need to let people go so this is a start by getting people to voluntary resign.
Click to expand...

If that's their goal, this is a really really dumb way to go about it. You're going to end up losing your better performers (who generally have more options available to them), and end up keeping the ones who don't have as many options. Double bad.
 
Fmr12B said:
Company is bloated - they need to let people go so this is a start by getting people to voluntary resign.

From what I understand, the working from home 1-day a week or taking 3-days off to work from home to take care of a medical emergency or sickness of a child is fine.

Its those people, especially managers that are working remotely, whose teams have not seen them in ages that are being told to show up or depart.
Click to expand...

If this is the truth. I find the mechanism they are using to be the dumbest way to go about it. What would be so hard about trimming the unproductive workers from the organization instead of hoping people leave on their own by imposing a blanket no work from home rule?

Chances are high the people who leave are highly productive workers. They know their worth and have enough ambition to move on. Yahoo will be left with the leftovers of people who cant move on to other ventures.
 
I agree with Mayer.

We had an employee who was able to work from home (the only one who was given that permission) because apparently his gf or wife or something was on bed rest for some problem. He sold his place near work and moved in with her 2 hours away. He was leaving and the company wanted him to stay. So they agreed to let him work remotely for him to remain on the staff.

Anyways. A few years later. There was this critical project that needed to be done for a client. He kept dragging his feet and was 6 months overdue. Kept talking about how complicated it was, and it was really engaging and just struggling. He finally put in his 2 weeks and quit after being 6 months overdue. I inherited the project to pick up the pieces. I had it working in a day. The entire thing.

All he did was create a database table with 5 or so columns (takes about 5 minutes of work.) That's all he did in 6+ months. I wrote the code to use that table where the bulk of the work was and I finished in a day. I told my boss he should be taken to court to pay back the wages, but they didn't.
 
Oldgamer said:
I found this article, apparently the CEO was checking VPN logs http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/030413-yahoo-ceo-mayer-checked-vpn-267323.html
Click to expand...

If that article is correct, I'd have to reclassify my view of her from "smart but ruthless and hypocritical" to "idiot". Looking at the VPN logs is a terrible way to measure productivity. People can be very active on the vpn, but not being very productive.... while someone else might not even be logged in, but yet come up with a great idea and be testing it.
 
brandonb said:
I agree with Mayer.

We had an employee who was able to work from home (the only one who was given that permission) because apparently his gf or wife or something was on bed rest for some problem. He sold his place near work and moved in with her 2 hours away. He was leaving and the company wanted him to stay. So they agreed to let him work remotely for him to remain on the staff.

Anyways. A few years later. There was this critical project that needed to be done for a client. He kept dragging his feet and was 6 months overdue. Kept talking about how complicated it was, and it was really engaging and just struggling. He finally put in his 2 weeks and quit after being 6 months overdue. I inherited the project to pick up the pieces. I had it working in a day. The entire thing.

All he did was create a database table with 5 or so columns (takes about 5 minutes of work.) That's all he did in 6+ months. I wrote the code to use that table where the bulk of the work was and I finished in a day. I told my boss he should be taken to court to pay back the wages, but they didn't.
Click to expand...

That's a perfect example of a lousy and unproductive employee, but as many other execs have pointed out, lousy and unproductive employees are going to be lousy and unproductive in the office as well. If you have people that need strict supervision to get something done, you've got the wrong set of people anyway and you should be looking to replace them with more independent workers.
 
brandonb said:
I agree with Mayer.

We had an employee who was able to work from home (the only one who was given that permission) because apparently his gf or wife or something was on bed rest for some problem. He sold his place near work and moved in with her 2 hours away. He was leaving and the company wanted him to stay. So they agreed to let him work remotely for him to remain on the staff.

Anyways. A few years later. There was this critical project that needed to be done for a client. He kept dragging his feet and was 6 months overdue. Kept talking about how complicated it was, and it was really engaging and just struggling. He finally put in his 2 weeks and quit after being 6 months overdue. I inherited the project to pick up the pieces. I had it working in a day. The entire thing.

All he did was create a database table with 5 or so columns (takes about 5 minutes of work.) That's all he did in 6+ months. I wrote the code to use that table where the bulk of the work was and I finished in a day. I told my boss he should be taken to court to pay back the wages, but they didn't.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a failure of management. If someone is months behind on a project maybe its a good idea to have them come into the office for a day to discuss the problems with the project.
 
I work from home a lot, and really appreciate my in office days as certain things are just easier to get through face to face on whiteboard.

In most cases when I have a slow week, I can get a ton of mind numbing paperwork etc done at home. When things gets busy I am way more productive in office and interfacing with my direct reports.

I actually think support related positions should never be work from home, you lose some collaborative benefit.
 
brandonb said:
I agree with Mayer.

We had an employee who was able to work from home (the only one who was given that permission) because apparently his gf or wife or something was on bed rest for some problem. He sold his place near work and moved in with her 2 hours away. He was leaving and the company wanted him to stay. So they agreed to let him work remotely for him to remain on the staff.

Anyways. A few years later. There was this critical project that needed to be done for a client. He kept dragging his feet and was 6 months overdue. Kept talking about how complicated it was, and it was really engaging and just struggling. He finally put in his 2 weeks and quit after being 6 months overdue. I inherited the project to pick up the pieces. I had it working in a day. The entire thing.

All he did was create a database table with 5 or so columns (takes about 5 minutes of work.) That's all he did in 6+ months. I wrote the code to use that table where the bulk of the work was and I finished in a day. I told my boss he should be taken to court to pay back the wages, but they didn't.
Click to expand...

Who was managing him? And why would it be any different if he were sitting in a cubicle doing nothing? To be that far behind and nobody managing him to get shit done. I doubt his location would had mattered in getting this project done.
 
But Trump thinks the new CEO is doing a great job and supports the policy! I think that says more about Trump than it does Yahoo's CEO.
 
zsdersw said:
But Trump thinks the new CEO is doing a great job and supports the policy! I think that says more about Trump than it does Yahoo's CEO.
Click to expand...

Trump is from a different generation and in his line of work being hands on is more appropriate than phoning it in. So he gets a pass from me. That generation cant fathom people working on their own without a manager on overwatch.

What worries me more are younger tech savy people who will mold this and next generations working habits. There seems to be enough that believe planting an ass in a cubicle equals getting shit done.
 
nehalem256 said:
Assuming that the VPN logs are "accurate" it would seem that:

(1) Yahoo has incompetent managers that do not make sure their employees are completing enough work

(2) Yahoo is filled with slackers.

Clearly these problems will be solved by having the slackers come into the office 🙄
Click to expand...

Exactly, seems like attacking the symptom rather than the problem. If these people are such slackers, then you don't have the right people and it's a management problem. If they're not slackers, then the "measure by vpn activity logs" method is stupid.
 
PokerGuy said:
Personally I find Mayer's actions to be extremely hypocritical and indicative of management that doesn't trust their staff to perform when not supervised. Very short-sighted IMO.

She's also said before that her family is priority and all that jazz. She had a nanny room built next to her office so she could have her baby there with her, but then turns around and takes away flexible work hours for employees and yanks their ability to work from home. I'm very happy I don't work for her, she seems like hypocritical scum.
Click to expand...

She's a typical power tripping CEO, what do you expect
 
Phokus said:
She's a typical power tripping CEO, what do you expect
Click to expand...

You mean like all the other "power tripping" ceo's that have allowed work from home use to rise at an enormous rate over the past decade?

Obviously not all of them share her views.
 
PokerGuy said:
Personally I find Mayer's actions to be extremely hypocritical and indicative of management that doesn't trust their staff to perform when not supervised. Very short-sighted IMO.

She's also said before that her family is priority and all that jazz. She had a nanny room built next to her office so she could have her baby there with her, but then turns around and takes away flexible work hours for employees and yanks their ability to work from home. I'm very happy I don't work for her, she seems like hypocritical scum.
Click to expand...

This. terrible leader.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top