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Which companies with similar concerns have actually managed to increase productivity in a way that satisfies the C-suite? A much older anecdote: I had a friend

Which companies with similar concerns have actually managed to increase productivity in a way that satisfies the C-suite? A much older anecdote: I had a friend who worked at Yahoo around the time Marissa Mayer was coming on as CEO. At the time, they were allowing semi-WFH for certain positions. I literally never saw this guy go to work, or actually do any work. He was part of a stand-up comedy workshop and spent 100% of his time there. He'd figured out how to keep his manager happy enough, pass performance reviews, collect a huge paycheck, and do exactly squat. Somehow during all the "clean house" reviews, he passed. Everyone, including him, were shocked that somehow, nobody seemed to be able to figure out that he was essentially a ghost employee. What finally got him was a "return to office" directive -- no more WFH, which he couldn't comply with. This all took place a decade ago, and I've thought of it several times post-Covid as all these companies that "discovered" WFH suddenly decided that employees need to return. But none of the extensive attempts to fix Yahoo's culture, management etc came to anything, the company continued to backslide despite all efforts and now basically no longer exists. Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive "some people shouldn't be here" statements feel like a repeat of that whole Yahoo debacle (although I suppose Facebook probably isn't yet as dysfunctional as Yahoo was in 2012).

Scoundreller 4y ago
I think yahoo found something like 35% of its wfh staff hadn’t logged in for weeks or months. (I can’t find a source for the number, so maybe I’m off, but vpn logs were used to justify ending wfh, which is… an imperfect approach for many reasons). Overall, I don’t think the plan at yahoo was to fix anything, but just asset-strip it, which worked well for stockholders.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  It baffles me how that's possible - in 25+ years working for software companies all my co-workers have been people I interact with basically daily (certainly more than once a week) - so how could someone not log in for weeks and it not be an issue?
  - beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
    I've heard from some people in tech companies/remote first companies that once the company gets to a certain size (by employee #) it becomes extremely easy to float through. I know of people that have essentially outsourced their entire job by just hiring cheap freelancers to do their work for them. Those roles include designers, SWEs, marketers, etc... And throughout it all managers and finance and payroll and any sort of checks on employees all approved them all the way through and never. Find yourself with the right manager/employer and you can get away with a remarkable amount of coasting.
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      That very much to me sounds like the wrong manager/employer! I just can't imagine working in an environment coworkers aren't genuinely keen on actively contributing towards building/ maintaining products and features. It's surely the reason you get into software development in the first place.
    - sleepybrett 4y ago
      You reach a certain kafkaesque threshold where making any move at all requires coordination outside your team with at least four other teams, you end up in gridlock. That said when i've been in such a position I have sometimes just fallen into gold-plating the hell out of whatever I was working on. Far beyond what was useful, just too keep myself sane.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dyingkneepad 4y ago
    I work for a company where the VPN sucks so much that we find ways to work outside it. Shadow IT is a thing here. I'd say some of our most productive and value-creating employees may go months without logging in internal systems, because things that are inside the company are able to pull their work that they do outside, so they don't have to deal with the shitty Windows-centric IT.
underdeserver 4y ago
Given her attitude toward WFH, I'd say Marissa Mayer knew. Maybe not about this specific person, but then he was likely not a special case.
jedberg 4y ago
I think Yahoo was a special case though. At that point in the company's life, they attracted the kinds of people that wanted a job they could phone in. I knew a bunch of Ex-Yahoos, and they all cited this fact as one of the main reasons they left. I also knew some Yahoos at that time, who were not like that, but were frustrated so many of their coworkers were, especially since they had to carry the load. But they liked their job so they stayed anyway. Marissa came into a terrible situation, and tried to make some big changes to fix it. She wasn't successful, but she did try.
- paganel 4y ago
  > I knew a bunch of Ex-Yahoos, and they all cited this fact as one of the main reasons they left. Which was a shame, because they had built something really interesting and nice when it came to the web. Between 2006 and 2008 (give or take) I'd say Yahoo was neck and neck with Google when it came to bringing "cool stuff" to the web. Yahoo! Pipes is still something I think of from time to time after all these years.
  - jedberg 4y ago
    Indeed. The ex-Yahoos I worked with were some of the best most talented engineers I've worked with, and the managers were all fantastic too. In its prime Yahoo was a real powerhouse. I'm not exactly sure where it went wrong.
    - clarle 4y ago
      I was at Yahoo during the Marissa Mayer era. I think the thing with Yahoo was that it tried do too much, and it never really had any focus on any particular vertical. Its legacy has always been that it was the place you would go for anything, and I think that hurt it more later on because the company itself was unfocused, and it didn't have a money-printing machine like Google's ads to fund the experimental work. When Marissa Mayer was on board, the focus was "mobile and emerging products", which was absolutely the right call in 2012, but it was still too general to rally a company around. It had a lot of great small things, but none of them had enough investment to turn into a multi-billion dollar business on its own, as well as a lot of legacy things that still needed to be maintained.

Scoundreller 4y ago

I think yahoo found something like 35% of its wfh staff hadn’t logged in for weeks or months. (I can’t find a source for the number, so maybe I’m off, but vpn logs were used to justify ending wfh, which is… an imperfect approach for many reasons). Overall, I don’t think the plan at yahoo was to fix anything, but just asset-strip it, which worked well for stockholders.

wizofaus 4y ago
It baffles me how that's possible - in 25+ years working for software companies all my co-workers have been people I interact with basically daily (certainly more than once a week) - so how could someone not log in for weeks and it not be an issue?
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
  I've heard from some people in tech companies/remote first companies that once the company gets to a certain size (by employee #) it becomes extremely easy to float through. I know of people that have essentially outsourced their entire job by just hiring cheap freelancers to do their work for them. Those roles include designers, SWEs, marketers, etc... And throughout it all managers and finance and payroll and any sort of checks on employees all approved them all the way through and never. Find yourself with the right manager/employer and you can get away with a remarkable amount of coasting.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    That very much to me sounds like the wrong manager/employer! I just can't imagine working in an environment coworkers aren't genuinely keen on actively contributing towards building/ maintaining products and features. It's surely the reason you get into software development in the first place.
  - sleepybrett 4y ago
    You reach a certain kafkaesque threshold where making any move at all requires coordination outside your team with at least four other teams, you end up in gridlock. That said when i've been in such a position I have sometimes just fallen into gold-plating the hell out of whatever I was working on. Far beyond what was useful, just too keep myself sane.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dyingkneepad 4y ago
  I work for a company where the VPN sucks so much that we find ways to work outside it. Shadow IT is a thing here. I'd say some of our most productive and value-creating employees may go months without logging in internal systems, because things that are inside the company are able to pull their work that they do outside, so they don't have to deal with the shitty Windows-centric IT.

underdeserver 4y ago

Given her attitude toward WFH, I'd say Marissa Mayer knew. Maybe not about this specific person, but then he was likely not a special case.

jedberg 4y ago

I think Yahoo was a special case though. At that point in the company's life, they attracted the kinds of people that wanted a job they could phone in. I knew a bunch of Ex-Yahoos, and they all cited this fact as one of the main reasons they left. I also knew some Yahoos at that time, who were not like that, but were frustrated so many of their coworkers were, especially since they had to carry the load. But they liked their job so they stayed anyway. Marissa came into a terrible situation, and tried to make some big changes to fix it. She wasn't successful, but she did try.

paganel 4y ago
> I knew a bunch of Ex-Yahoos, and they all cited this fact as one of the main reasons they left. Which was a shame, because they had built something really interesting and nice when it came to the web. Between 2006 and 2008 (give or take) I'd say Yahoo was neck and neck with Google when it came to bringing "cool stuff" to the web. Yahoo! Pipes is still something I think of from time to time after all these years.
- jedberg 4y ago
  Indeed. The ex-Yahoos I worked with were some of the best most talented engineers I've worked with, and the managers were all fantastic too. In its prime Yahoo was a real powerhouse. I'm not exactly sure where it went wrong.
  - clarle 4y ago
    I was at Yahoo during the Marissa Mayer era. I think the thing with Yahoo was that it tried do too much, and it never really had any focus on any particular vertical. Its legacy has always been that it was the place you would go for anything, and I think that hurt it more later on because the company itself was unfocused, and it didn't have a money-printing machine like Google's ads to fund the experimental work. When Marissa Mayer was on board, the focus was "mobile and emerging products", which was absolutely the right call in 2012, but it was still too general to rally a company around. It had a lot of great small things, but none of them had enough investment to turn into a multi-billion dollar business on its own, as well as a lot of legacy things that still needed to be maintained.