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> I guess this proves that banning work-from-home didn't solve their problems. I don't know what's the big deal about that. It affected ~200 people max. Yahoo

> I guess this proves that banning work-from-home didn't solve their problems. I don't know what's the big deal about that. It affected ~200 people max. Yahoo was just tightening the restrictions, bringing them in line with the rest of the Valley companies. And yet people still think that it was a big deal; it wasn't. (Source: I was there.)

YZF 11y ago
Maybe it wasn't a big deal for you but it was perceived negatively overall and it hurt Yahoo's reputation (or whatever remnants of that remained at that point in time). If only 200 people were affected then it wasn't worth the backlash it created and wasn't a smart move. Anyone who was impacted by it, e.g. wasn't able to go pick up his kids or stay home for a plumber to come fix his sink, wouldn't be happy and his unhappiness would impact people working with him. These sort of moves can hurt the "spirit" of a company irrevocably.
- henrikschroder 11y ago
  The reason was to get rid of dead weight that was "working from home", but effectively just lifting a paycheck for doing nothing. It did in no way impact productive employees who needed an occasional flexible schedule. But that's not something you can tell the press, so it was spun as it was spun, and that's what people remember.
  - skuhn 11y ago
    In actuality it just tightened the existing restrictions on remote workers to the very upper echelon of ICs. It didn't really impact occasional work-from-home people much as long as they flew under the radar, but it did impact the sort of people who lived in the middle of Idaho. Everyone was required to relocate to within 100 miles of a Yahoo office and commute in most days, unless they were truly irreplaceable and their VP went to bat. Oh and imagine relocating to be near an office that was subsequently closed. It was a stupid policy decision, it damaged the Yahoo's public reputation due to their incompetent PR (nothing new there) and it has cost Yahoo a considerable number of excellent (but not truly irreplaceable) employees. In conjunction with the drive to re-centralize teams back in Sunnyvale (after other drives to de-centralize to less competitive markets to hire better people), this cost Yahoo a lot of their network engineering team, among other groups. LinkedIn, Apple, and other companies have reaped the benefits of Yahoo's short-sightedness. Whenever a company has to resort to cleaning house to rid itself of dead weight -- either by "banning" remote workers, mass layoffs, or whatever else -- the real story is that they simply don't know who is doing good work and who is not. If they knew, that, then the non-workers would already have been separated from the company. Either the managers are not suited for their roles or not empowered to perform the duties of their roles or terrified of political nonsense like losing headcount and reqs and being demoted. Yahoo has consistently failed to properly measure employee performance, either taking a lackadaisical approach to performance or using pseudo-scientific nonsense like bell curves. As a result, there has always been a lot of dead weight -- inside the offices is no exception. They're currently being sued for their firing practices, and the suit suggests that the performance measuring system is wielded punitively for political purposes. I don't find this at all hard to believe. There is no easy fix to a poor work culture, and I don't think Yahoo really has ever had the stomach for the hard fixes. The culture is too poisonous and it has persisted too long. It doesn't matter now though, Yahoo won't be around in its current form for too much longer.

YZF 11y ago

Maybe it wasn't a big deal for you but it was perceived negatively overall and it hurt Yahoo's reputation (or whatever remnants of that remained at that point in time). If only 200 people were affected then it wasn't worth the backlash it created and wasn't a smart move. Anyone who was impacted by it, e.g. wasn't able to go pick up his kids or stay home for a plumber to come fix his sink, wouldn't be happy and his unhappiness would impact people working with him. These sort of moves can hurt the "spirit" of a company irrevocably.

henrikschroder 11y ago
The reason was to get rid of dead weight that was "working from home", but effectively just lifting a paycheck for doing nothing. It did in no way impact productive employees who needed an occasional flexible schedule. But that's not something you can tell the press, so it was spun as it was spun, and that's what people remember.
- skuhn 11y ago
  In actuality it just tightened the existing restrictions on remote workers to the very upper echelon of ICs. It didn't really impact occasional work-from-home people much as long as they flew under the radar, but it did impact the sort of people who lived in the middle of Idaho. Everyone was required to relocate to within 100 miles of a Yahoo office and commute in most days, unless they were truly irreplaceable and their VP went to bat. Oh and imagine relocating to be near an office that was subsequently closed. It was a stupid policy decision, it damaged the Yahoo's public reputation due to their incompetent PR (nothing new there) and it has cost Yahoo a considerable number of excellent (but not truly irreplaceable) employees. In conjunction with the drive to re-centralize teams back in Sunnyvale (after other drives to de-centralize to less competitive markets to hire better people), this cost Yahoo a lot of their network engineering team, among other groups. LinkedIn, Apple, and other companies have reaped the benefits of Yahoo's short-sightedness. Whenever a company has to resort to cleaning house to rid itself of dead weight -- either by "banning" remote workers, mass layoffs, or whatever else -- the real story is that they simply don't know who is doing good work and who is not. If they knew, that, then the non-workers would already have been separated from the company. Either the managers are not suited for their roles or not empowered to perform the duties of their roles or terrified of political nonsense like losing headcount and reqs and being demoted. Yahoo has consistently failed to properly measure employee performance, either taking a lackadaisical approach to performance or using pseudo-scientific nonsense like bell curves. As a result, there has always been a lot of dead weight -- inside the offices is no exception. They're currently being sued for their firing practices, and the suit suggests that the performance measuring system is wielded punitively for political purposes. I don't find this at all hard to believe. There is no easy fix to a poor work culture, and I don't think Yahoo really has ever had the stomach for the hard fixes. The culture is too poisonous and it has persisted too long. It doesn't matter now though, Yahoo won't be around in its current form for too much longer.