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Most people just move to the big cities because there there are the jobs which pay better (and the chance to hop between them in case of being fired, without ha

by yulaow 9y ago

Most people just move to the big cities because there there are the jobs which pay better (and the chance to hop between them in case of being fired, without having to relocate) A good start could be just to make remote all the jobs that can be made remote, but of course this would not cover a big part of jobs which need a whole team in the same location and specialized machinery (Eg the whole manufacturing sector)

mcny 9y ago
> A good start could be just to make remote all the jobs that can be made remote, but of course this would not cover a big part of jobs which need a whole team in the same location and specialized machinery (Eg the whole manufacturing sector) Marissa Mayer raised the question of in-office vs remote at Yahoo! and I am still not convinced either way. If we had a robust basic income, we should just let go of people who we feel are dead-weight on our team? https://archive.fo/ThVv9 https://archive.fo/ThVv9 On the other side of the spectrum, the concept of a "manufacturing city" in China PR is troubling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91s87s2Ar20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91s87s2Ar20 What happens when someone is not capable of working anymore?
- yulaow 9y ago
  I think we all know that the Marissa Mayer "war" on remote jobs was just a PR move to facilitate a rapid mass layoff without negative moral repercussions on the rest of the Yahoo teams. We should not take her words as a serious reflection on the issue
  - IronKettle 9y ago
    I was at Yahoo from 2010-201X. It was really bad. Tons of remote employees you couldn't count on to give you the time of day, let alone do anything meaningful. Was the problem remote jobs? No, probably not. The problem was complacency: Complacent employees who didn't want to work and used remote jobs as an excuse not to do anything. Complacent managers who didn't know how to manage remote employees and didn't want to learn. Did we have remote employees who were amazing? Hell yeah. Did lazy employees overwhelmingly choose to become remote because it was the easiest way not to do any work? Hell yeah. There were more than a few stories (not from management, even) about employees who hadn't even logged in in a couple months. It was beyond the typical "bad employee gets no work done," it was just "bad employee doesn't work one iota." My takeaway was that managing remote employees is a skill that many managers don't possess, and bad employees knew that and capitalized on it very effectively. So you're correct that it was a move to facilitate a rapid mass layoff, but the part that's unsaid there is that the people being laid off were overwhelmingly the worst employees anyway. Their managers should've been given the boot as well.

by yulaow 9y ago

mcny 9y ago

> A good start could be just to make remote all the jobs that can be made remote, but of course this would not cover a big part of jobs which need a whole team in the same location and specialized machinery (Eg the whole manufacturing sector) Marissa Mayer raised the question of in-office vs remote at Yahoo! and I am still not convinced either way. If we had a robust basic income, we should just let go of people who we feel are dead-weight on our team? https://archive.fo/ThVv9 https://archive.fo/ThVv9 On the other side of the spectrum, the concept of a "manufacturing city" in China PR is troubling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91s87s2Ar20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91s87s2Ar20 What happens when someone is not capable of working anymore?

yulaow 9y ago
I think we all know that the Marissa Mayer "war" on remote jobs was just a PR move to facilitate a rapid mass layoff without negative moral repercussions on the rest of the Yahoo teams. We should not take her words as a serious reflection on the issue
- IronKettle 9y ago
  I was at Yahoo from 2010-201X. It was really bad. Tons of remote employees you couldn't count on to give you the time of day, let alone do anything meaningful. Was the problem remote jobs? No, probably not. The problem was complacency: Complacent employees who didn't want to work and used remote jobs as an excuse not to do anything. Complacent managers who didn't know how to manage remote employees and didn't want to learn. Did we have remote employees who were amazing? Hell yeah. Did lazy employees overwhelmingly choose to become remote because it was the easiest way not to do any work? Hell yeah. There were more than a few stories (not from management, even) about employees who hadn't even logged in in a couple months. It was beyond the typical "bad employee gets no work done," it was just "bad employee doesn't work one iota." My takeaway was that managing remote employees is a skill that many managers don't possess, and bad employees knew that and capitalized on it very effectively. So you're correct that it was a move to facilitate a rapid mass layoff, but the part that's unsaid there is that the people being laid off were overwhelmingly the worst employees anyway. Their managers should've been given the boot as well.