Marissa Mayer says no telecommuting at Yahoo

[ejp626]

This is probably too inside baseball (and about a company that is hardly relevant anymore), but I find the larger issue quite interesting.

Marissa Mayer has decided to shake things up at Yahoo and says that because in-office collaboration is so critical to Yahoo's success that she is unilaterally cancelling previous arrangements that allowed a fairly high level of telecommuting.

It actually strikes home for me in a lot of ways, since my office is relocating to a really shitty location (adding 25 minutes of commute time each way) and the managers have been told to really crack down on telecommuting. As it happens, I very rarely telecommute, but I was considering doing it more to make the office move a bit more tolerable, and then this is thrown in our face. Consequently, I am now in the early stages of bailing, and, not to toot my own horn too much, I have more options than the typical employee because I have technical skills that are far more in demand than the majority of my officemates.

I would say there is a right way and a wrong way to go about this, and both Yahoo and my company seem determined to go down the wrong path.

There are already some threads devoted to this -- here and here.

The second link is Farhad Manjoo over at Slate. Personally, I find the actual column pretty reasonable. In short: not everyone does their best work in an office setting, and that, particularly for a tech company, some people really are vastly more productive working from home. A good manager should be able to tell who is delivering without requiring people to be chained to their desks. Oh and BTW, the best people are the ones who are probably going to be really insulted by this high-handed change and will probably walk out the door.

And he (and the more reasonable responders) is not even calling for 100% telecommuting and for an end to face-to-face meetings, but that professionals be able to use their own discretion and telecommute up to 1-3 days week.

But then you see the awesome nature of the internet (and I mean its awesome awfulness) and people are willfully misconstruing this or getting all offended and blowing things out of proportion. I was really surprised at the number of people who simply say: lump it or leave it, basically the enabling suck-ups that make it possible for CEOs to be so arrogant and out-of-touch. Then there are some that seem to be so offended that anyone can telecommute (because assembly plant workers can't work from home, you know) and that apparently no one should be able to. They are probably just trolling, but you never know. And just an overall inability to actually read what's in the post and then to consider a situation outside of one's own.* And an unwillingness to engage in any level with some of the research that Farhood does link to, showing the impact of telecommuting on productivity. Oh, and unbelievable pettiness/nit-picking and the ever-present typo crowd. (Honestly, give it a rest already. Maybe we can have Seth McFarlane sing a song like "You Spelled It Wrong" and finally drive this into the ground where it belongs.)

What can I say? Regardless of how representative internet chat rooms are or aren't, this is depressing. I can see why the politics/religion threads get so derailed all the time (definitely not worth reading at WashPost in particular), but a thread on telecommuting policy? So much heat, so little light.

* This really has to be the root of 80% of all flame wars. The unwillingness to consider other positions than one's own as valid at any level.

Edited February 27, 2013 by ejp626

[GregK]

i really dont see the problem. go to work, just like they do at Google, where she used to be (still can't believe she left Google for the Titanic that is Yahoo).

[ejp626]

You really don't see the problem in trying to force everyone to work to your notion of how office productivity should work? And that this is far more about upper management imposing their will because of their insecurity and inability to know who is productive and who isn't (and thus call for blanket policies with no exemptions). I am certainly opposed to rigidity and bad management practices, and this checks both boxes for me.

Maybe Google does enforce a no telecommuting policy, but many/most tech companies do not. And the best people will probably walk.

Anyway, I am not worried about myself, but it is quite obvious that in my company morale has suffered tremendously already and it will certainly negatively impact productivity. I feel badly for the coworkers that have fewer options that will be stuck in a bad situation.