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As I posted on the 37s blog: Management paranoia is not the only reason why someone would want to decrease the amount of remote work. There are team spirit ben

by swombat 14y ago

As I posted on the 37s blog: Management paranoia is not the only reason why someone would want to decrease the amount of remote work. There are team spirit benefits to bringing people together physically, and depending on the type of work being undertaken, remote work may have more downsides than upside. I don’t see this as an aggression against remote workers, or an attempt at controlling remote workers more closely based on some paranoid perception that “they’re slacking” – it seems more like a change meant to help strengthen the culture at Yahoo by making it easier for teams to bond.

ebbv 14y ago
I'm sure that's how the executives in charge of this boneheaded decision explain it to themselves, but try applying just a pinch of real world logic to that thought and it shrivels like a slug under salt. Do you really think that people who have been forced to start working in the office under threat of termination are going to form a positive, collegial bond? If they form a bond at all, it will be one based on shared resentment of the Dilbert-esque reality they now inhabit.
- swombat 14y ago
  > Do you really think that people who have been forced to start working in the office under threat of termination are going to form a positive, collegial bond? If they form a bond at all, it will be one based on shared resentment of the Dilbert-esque reality they now inhabit. I think that in hard times, you either do form a bond or you go form a bond somewhere else. I think that's the decision that was just taken at Yahoo. They could just have fired all the remote workers - but that would have been truly stupid.
  - ebbv 14y ago
    Just firing the workers would have been even more stupid but what they did was already stupid.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
smackfu 14y ago
From what I've seen, Yahoo doesn't seem like a "work from home if you want" kind of company. It seems like each person who is working remotely had an exception to a general policy, and now those exceptions are just blindly cancelled. In this case, "saying no work from home" just means many of those people are not going to work for Yahoo anymore. That's pretty terrible for team spirit.
- foobarian 14y ago
  I don't know, if it's true that their team is not very accountable and I was one of the top on-site folks I'd be relieved to see the dead weight go.
CamperBob2 14y ago
There are team spirit benefits to bringing people together physically, and depending on the type of work being undertaken, remote work may have more downsides than upside. This "team spirit" argument makes no sense to me at all. What group on Earth has more "team spirit" than the contributors and maintainers on major open source projects? For someone in Mayer's position, effective leadership means acting more like Linus Torvalds than Bill Lumbergh.

by swombat 14y ago

ebbv 14y ago

I'm sure that's how the executives in charge of this boneheaded decision explain it to themselves, but try applying just a pinch of real world logic to that thought and it shrivels like a slug under salt. Do you really think that people who have been forced to start working in the office under threat of termination are going to form a positive, collegial bond? If they form a bond at all, it will be one based on shared resentment of the Dilbert-esque reality they now inhabit.

swombat 14y ago
> Do you really think that people who have been forced to start working in the office under threat of termination are going to form a positive, collegial bond? If they form a bond at all, it will be one based on shared resentment of the Dilbert-esque reality they now inhabit. I think that in hard times, you either do form a bond or you go form a bond somewhere else. I think that's the decision that was just taken at Yahoo. They could just have fired all the remote workers - but that would have been truly stupid.
- ebbv 14y ago
  Just firing the workers would have been even more stupid but what they did was already stupid.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

smackfu 14y ago

From what I've seen, Yahoo doesn't seem like a "work from home if you want" kind of company. It seems like each person who is working remotely had an exception to a general policy, and now those exceptions are just blindly cancelled. In this case, "saying no work from home" just means many of those people are not going to work for Yahoo anymore. That's pretty terrible for team spirit.

foobarian 14y ago
I don't know, if it's true that their team is not very accountable and I was one of the top on-site folks I'd be relieved to see the dead weight go.

CamperBob2 14y ago

There are team spirit benefits to bringing people together physically, and depending on the type of work being undertaken, remote work may have more downsides than upside. This "team spirit" argument makes no sense to me at all. What group on Earth has more "team spirit" than the contributors and maintainers on major open source projects? For someone in Mayer's position, effective leadership means acting more like Linus Torvalds than Bill Lumbergh.