Best Buy Follows Yahoo in Banning Remote Work

bednarz writes "Is telecommuting the new scapegoat for poor performance? Best Buy, in the midst of a corporate restructuring, has canceled its flexible work program and expects corporate employees to put in traditional 40-hour work weeks at the retailer's headquarters (they used to be able to work whenever and wherever they wanted). The announcement comes on the heels of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's decision to end telecommuting, which ignited a firestorm of criticism. It also follows news of Best Buy's plans to lay off 400 corporate workers as part of a plan to cut $725 million in costs and restructure its business. This could signal the beginning of a trend, or be an indication that telecommuters need to actively justify their preference for working outside the office."

Comments

Terrible move by a dying entity

[ModernGeek]

This is a terrible move by a dying entity that is showing its irrelevance by going back further into the dark ages.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[MrEricSir]

Are you referring to Best Buy or Yahoo?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Radres]

It's just a way to lay people off without having to pay severance.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[timeOday]

I would like to see some evidence of that, rather than what I have seen in response to yahoo's decision - which is an outcry by people who telecommute and want to continue to telecommute, mainly for personal reasons.

I work with people who telecommute. It is a justifiable accommodation for an especially good performer who would otherwise have to leave. But from my perspective, it doesn't seem as good as having the same person nearby, when that is possible to do.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[afidel]

Yes

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Wookact]

It would be an apt description for both.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Radres]

There is no need for evidence, it's pretty obvious that if you tell your employees who live 1,000 miles away to either come into the office or quit, a good number of those will quit.

To the contrary, what is the evidence that remote employees perform worse than local? Why do we need more office space and people commuting generating pollution and congestion on our roads?

What industry do you work in and what occupation? I'm sure certain fields are more workable remote than others.

The problem with having it be a "justifiable accommodation for an especially good performer" is that everyone thinks that they are good performers and everyone will think they deserve it. It's either all or nothing.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much this.. more extreme form of "Casual dress code is being removed for more 'professionalism' " only to be returned to after layoffs are complete.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[beowolfschaefer]

I tend to agree. At my office a large number of employees live locally but work remotely often and it can be a big hassle when I need to get answers from them.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[the_B0fh]

You live in a black or white world? No shades?

There are people for whom telecommuting works. I have one great one, working thousands of miles away.
There are people for whom telecommuting does not work. I had one who was in another office, away from the rest of the team.

My team can work from home any time they want to. But the office is the primary work location.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[RabidReindeer]

Agreed. Best Buy is circling the drain. I imagine the reason they are asking folks to come in to the corporate headquarters is because they have to see them in person to lay them off.

I thought the "in" thing these days was to lay people off by email or SMS. Right before Christmas.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[ShanghaiBill]

Yes

Indeed. BestBuy has been closing stores and laying off. I have a Yahoo! account, and haven't noticed any improvement in years. I started using their email service in 1998. Three minutes later I realized that, although I could put mail in folders, there was no way to create sub-folders. So I could have a folder for "Friends", but I could not have a folder for "Friends/Joe" and "Friends/Betty". I didn't see how that could work for any serious email user, so I sent off an email, and received a response that said plenty of people had asked, and it was a "top priority". Today, fifteen years and fourteen thousand employees later, still no sub-folders. I am curious what any of these employees actually do.

 

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Dogtanian]

There is no need for evidence, it's pretty obvious that if you tell your employees who live 1,000 miles away to either come into the office or quit, a good number of those will quit.

If it was transparent that this was the intention, wouldn't that make it constructive dismissal? Or could they weasel out of that by pointing out that it wasn't aimed at any *specific* employee, or that it was in the contract, or whatever?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Synerg1y]

how about... "I am more productive from home" meaning...I don't really need 40 hours to do this 40 hour job you've proposed to me, but I'll do it better than the next schmuck you bring in, so hire me, your work will get done, I get paid, and business continues.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[LordLucless]

The only arguments I've seen along these lines have all been one flavor or another of 'I need to work at home. I have kids there, or a dying mother. I don't have any choice but to work at home. So if I can't I'll have to quit'.

How about "I was hired when this was allowable, live in another timezone, and don't want to uproot my family to get into the office"?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Above]

I got forced into telecommuting years ago, and have been doing it ever since. To answer your question, there are two factors that determine if remote work is productive:

* The job you're doing.
* The manager.

Some jobs demand being in an office. Some jobs are more productive at home. Most are a grey area, some aspects are better at home, some are better in the office. When it comes to the grey area, the manger is the single biggest influence; they need to understand remote working and make an effort to make it productive. The same sort of effort they make to make in-office work productive.

That said, since this is a blanket ban I'm sure the baby is being thrown out with the bath water. I've done jobs and known people doing jobs for companies like these that cannot be done in the office. They travel extensively, and work from home when not traveling. They are the glue that ties them to their vendors, the people who go on site and fix issues, the people who live in some far off time zone and provide "coverage" far cheaper than staffing two shifts in an office.

Of course, I'm sure there were some freeloaders too; people who started working from home and have done less and less over time. They should go.

I would argue though, doesn't that reflect more on management, that they are unable to tell who is productive? If management can't even tell who's doing their work productively there's no hope.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Jane Q. Public]

"I work with people who telecommute. It is a justifiable accommodation for an especially good performer who would otherwise have to leave. But from my perspective, it doesn't seem as good as having the same person nearby, when that is possible to do."

You are only looking at a very narrow segment of the job market. I am a freelance programmer and web developer. My job is 100% telecommute, all the time. (I have done lots of work for people in other states and outside the country, for example.)

In most cases there is no reason to hire someone full-time to do my job. So an on-site requirement would make no sense.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Jane Q. Public]

"I thought that the office was the place where the disgruntled ex-employee showed up and began firing at everyone in sight."

No, that's not the office. That's the Post Office.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Jane Q. Public]

"I tend to agree. At my office a large number of employees live locally but work remotely often and it can be a big hassle when I need to get answers from them."

Then it isn't being done right. If your office has a proper telecommute setup, the remote workers should never be more than an IM or Campfire message away, and respond as immediately as they would if they were in the office.

I worked in an office in which it was often easier and faster to get an answer from a worker in another state than from someone two desks over.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Anonymous Coward]

The tools are there to help you - email, instant messaging, and voice and video chat. When I worked in an office, i would say about 30% of my day was spent on actual work, the rest was constant interruptions. I need to be in my zone to function. Once I started working remotely, my productivity level skyrocketed. Since most medium to large companies have a global workforce, the vast majority of knowledge workers are remote anyways. I deal with folks in India, China, Germany, and three time zones in the United States and Canada.

Consider all the open source software that is developed by remote teams, people who have never met, and yet companies that rarely allow remote work use and depend on this same software.

Just imagine of all the office buildings that can be turned into housing in markets like the Silicon Valley. I fill up my car once every 2-3 weeks. My carbon footprint is far lower. Rather than using 2 hours of transit time going to a doctor's appointment, I am only on the road 30 minutes. It is a win-win for me and my employer.

If employees are slacking, put them on a performance plan. If they fail to improve, terminate them.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[LordLucless]

Nope - that's the point of the exercise. You're not fired - you're quitting.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[jrumney]

Any management that tries these techniques needs to be fired by the shareholders immediately. The people who leave voluntarily when pushed by these types of harassment are always the most valuable ones, who funnily enough find it easy to get a job elsewhere. The ones you're left with are the ones who are pulling you down in the first place (along with the management team, who are obviously deficient if they think reducing headcount is all that matters in saving their ass).

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[mcclungsr]

I was surprised to find out not long ago that you no longer have to pay. I don't pay them anything and I'm using IMAP with mutt to read yahoo mail.

Still not sure when this change was made but I suspect it was fairly recent (within the last couple of years, max).

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Exitar]

The didn't implement subfolders because they were slacking at home!
But now that they will be forced to work at their HQ, no user will ever complain anymore!

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Nope - that's the point of the exercise. You're not fired - you're quitting.

If this is truly what they're up to they'll be disappointed. A great many states unemployment laws explicitly take into account a fundamental change in the terms of a job as "involuntary termination." It is hard to imagine that a person being required to move thousands of miles as a condition of continued emplyment wouldn't be viewed as a "fundamental change of terms."

Since a lot of these people will likely be moms or people with family "situations" they're coping with lawsuits seem almost to be a given. They must really be short on cash if this is how they choose to conduct a layoff.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Agreed. Best Buy is circling the drain. I imagine the reason they are asking folks to come in to the corporate headquarters is because they have to see them in person to lay them off.

I thought the "in" thing these days was to lay people off by email or SMS. Right before Christmas.

I worked at a place where they laid off several dozen telecommuters in one day (but not every telecommuter) via conference call. The way it worked was this: The condemned got invited to a "mandatory team meeting" conference call at 9am the following day. All of the survivors got invited to another conference call to tell them who was getting fired to run concurrently with the termination call to the damned to prevent anybody from finding out via rumor or innuendo.

It mostly went okay (I mean, as well as firing somebody from their full-time-pay-a-mortgage quality job over a conference call can go) except a handful of "fired" people ended up getting sent the code for the "Survivors call" and got the false hope they'd survived because that call started with (I was on it) "Okay, we just want to let you know about some changes in our department, and specifically, some layoffs that happened earlier today. If you're on this call you have been retained by the company. We want to let you know who moved on..."

And then these temporary "Survivors" got to hear their own names on the list of the condemned. I mean, I don't know how it would have been any easier to be on the "correct" conference call and find out. But it sucks balls to hear "There's a layoff, and you've been spared!" and then it turns out no, actually, you're fired too.

Actually, somewhat dickish to fire a guy on the phone, too, I suppose.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[jrumney]

It used to work out well for me. My kids were in daycare, which ran from 8:30am (not a minute before), until 5pm (punctual pick up). So I delivered them in the morning, put in most of a day's work before picking them up in the afternoon, then put in some more time in the evening after they were in bed. Meanwhile my wife could work a regular office job where she was expected to be in the office 8:30pm - 5pm, with a 45 minute commute on top of that.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[jrumney]

I don't know what labor laws you have in California or Minneapolis, but changes in the terms of your employment that require you to relocate are usually legally treated as a layoff if you chose not to take up the relocation.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Karl Cocknozzle]

There is no need for evidence, it's pretty obvious that if you tell your employees who live 1,000 miles away to either come into the office or quit, a good number of those will quit.

If it was transparent that this was the intention, wouldn't that make it constructive dismissal? Or could they weasel out of that by pointing out that it wasn't aimed at any *specific* employee, or that it was in the contract, or whatever?

They are, however, potentially imposing these onerous terms on members of a protected class of employees. Think about the reasons somebody might choose to telecommute: Young children needing after school care, elderly parent living out of state... Single moms garner lots of sympathy in court and at the unemployment office. Ditto the angelic, devoted son or daughter working at home to be close to an ailing elderly parent.

If they're really doing this to avoid severance, unemployment, and wrongful termination lawsuits their interests would be better served by paying out some severance, because this stunt has the potential to get them sued nine ways from Sunday and be defending lawsuits in every jurisdiction from here to Timbuktu and back. A better use of their time, money and efforts would be paying some severance if they really need people in the office so they don't spend the next three years in court, and can instead focus on reviving one of the pioneers of search.

Or they can become "The Lawsuit Company!"

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tompaulco]

Our company has people who telecommute and they seem to work. Actually, they mostly just tell other people what to do, but that seems to be good enough for the company. They just fired another person who telecommuted and actually DID work. And then there are of course, the people who show up every day for work, but don't work. Like we have people who show up at 10, leave at 4 and go run errands 3 or 4 times a day. These sort of people earned us "the talk" last week, about how we have to be professional and be the example for the rest of the company. Rather than single out the two or three people for whom punctuality is a problem, they just pissed me off as well as the other people who show up shortly after 9 and then leave at 7 or 8 every night and go home and log back on and do more work.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tompaulco]

There was some mention they checked VPN logs...

I can think of two reasons why VPN logs are not a useful measurement. One is that anybody could just login to VPN and then go watch TV all day. The other is that a developer usually had most if not all of the tools that they need to development on their laptop and doesn't need to VPN in to get access to resources. E-mail is the obvious outlier, but they could be getting e-mail through webmail, which almost every company supports.
Most of our development staff (who all work in the office by the way) prefer not to connect to the domain even at work, and use alternative e-mail solutions such as Thunderbird.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tompaulco]

That said, since this is a blanket ban I'm sure the baby is being thrown out with the bath water.
In attrition layoffs, ONLY the baby is thrown out. The bathwater is kept.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This is a terrible move by a dying entity that is showing its irrelevance by going back further into the dark ages.

Worse than that... Shopping at Best Buy would be a lot more pleasant if they allowed more of their employees to work somewhere other than on site. No, I don't want the extended protection plan.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Austerity Empowers]

Hush now, you're implying that employees aren't fungible. If they had some unique value they'd be rich, and/or a CEO of something. If your job is "HW Engineer, Senior" you're just a lazy old guy who blackmailed the right middle managers into keeping his job.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Austerity Empowers]

But from my perspective, it doesn't seem as good as having the same person nearby, when that is possible to do.

Then I'd wonder if there is something wrong with HOW you work such that having the person nearby on demand is useful. Because, as a hardware guy, I HAVE to work from work most of hte time. And I get really annoyed and angry at people who interrupt me all the time to ask me inane questions. That's what email is for, I will respond when I reach a stopping point that is convenient for me.

There are jobs that require on site presence, I have one of them. But even my job has long periods where it's mostly email. spreadhseets and phone calls, and that can be done from anywhere. BETTER from anywhere but work, where people who are disorganized or just want to stretch can get up and be disruptive.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Austerity Empowers]

Sounds like employees in general. Some are great, some are poor. Get rid of the losers and bring in the performers. If bringing in is hard, then you have to use other means to get something out of the losers.

Where they are physically located is moot.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Austerity Empowers]

Or email. Email works. IM is just as obnoxious as showing up at my cube. If you find yourself annoyed that someone wasn't physically there, YOU are broken. Send email. If the person doesn't reply right away, assume that means he's in the middle of something and will get back to you shortly.

Email is a great tool, IM is never a replacement for email, IM is for conversation. E-mail is for questions.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[c0lo]

Any management that tries these techniques needs to be fired by the shareholders immediately. The people who leave voluntarily when pushed by these types of harassment are always the most valuable ones, who funnily enough find it easy to get a job elsewhere. The ones you're left with are the ones who are pulling you down in the first place (along with the management team, who are obviously deficient if they think reducing headcount is all that matters in saving their ass).

It bears a name: it's called Dead Sea effect.
After a while, you know for sure which employees you don't want to have: the ones that are still with you... So the best you can do: fire them and close the business.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Austerity Empowers]

That's a ridiculous statement. In attrition layoffs, bits of the baby and the bathwater are thrown out.

You do this because either a) you're a total moron, or b) you're so broke you can't afford performance based layoffs and will accept cost reduction regardless of price.

 

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Austerity Empowers]

Actually, somewhat dickish to fire a guy on the phone, too, I suppose.

I don't see why, especially if you telecommute. Feels like a holdover from a bygone age.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Jane Q. Public]

Yes, email works, too. Or should, anyway. I didn't mention email because people might get the wrong impression.

But there are occasions in which real-time collaboration is necessary, and at those times email can be awkward. IM is usually a bit more immediate.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[jvin248]

. The perceived problem is really a symptom of the greater issue within these organizations. Moving them back to the office to "keep an eye on them" will be counter productive. Of course any change will have an effect (but short lived) because someone will be "measuring" (Westinghouse Hawthorne effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect).
.
The strongest performers, if any remain in the organization, will bail and find flexible jobs at major competitors.
.
The real solution? Hire professionals and give them the ability to get things done - aka thin the middle management ranks and flatten the organization.
.
.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[GigaplexNZ]

How is showing up at a cube considered obnoxious? If you can't handle face time at work with your co-workers, YOU are broken.

IM is for conversation. E-mail is for questions.

What, so we're not allowed to ask questions in a conversation any more?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's to say they haven't already left - about 12 years ago?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[thoth_amon]

You, sir, have elucidated my thoughts eloquently.

A sane layoff program targets the X percent of employees who are actually worth the least. Trying to piss everyone off with a dumb policy and then watch them stream out the door indiscriminately is one of the worst strategies. You'd probably be better off randomly firing X percent of your company. You'd keep a lot of the good people and they wouldn't feel alienated.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Bert64]

Because by showing up at someone's desk, or calling them on the phone you are making the statement "stop whatever you are doing and devote your attention to me right now". Such actions should be reserved for situations which are urgent, for anything else you can email and someone will respond when its convenient to do so.

A distraction like this also breaks your concentration, so the loss of productivity extends beyond the distraction itself as it takes you time to recover what you were doing before...

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Bert64]

There tend to be more freeloaders who work in offices...
If you're at home then people want to see evidence that your work is getting done, whereas if your in the office turning up on time is often taken for such evidence. I've known a great many people who turn up to the office, only to browse the web, play games, chat or conduct their own business all day, all while sitting at their desk where management assumes they are working.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[datavirtue]

Exactly, take your pick. After her hiring at Yahoo this is the first story that surfaces, and now Best Buy. I don't know about all of you, but when I get home and pop open my Google drive and get back to coding I'm way more productive with two kids trying to kill each other at my feet than trying to work at "work" where my boss and others are randomly stopping by with conversations about zombies and other shit I have to act like I want to talk about. Meanwhile a cursor blinks in a code window while we talk about Obama, zombies, and various planetary bodies. Seriously, I just want to work. The only reason I want to telecommute is to get work done.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[the_B0fh]

Is it that difficult to understand that some people require structure and oversight?

And some are independent and capable of working alone?

And figuring out which is which is not as easy because you also want to be fair, etc etc?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[girlintraining]

But now that they will be forced to work at their HQ, no user will ever complain anymore!

Yeah, the shock change in the corporate culture as thousands of telecommuters either relocate, lose their job, or suddenly start seeing people in real life that they'd largely only interacted with online will surely not have any significant impact on business process.

Reminds me of another company I worked at where an executive declared that 2/3rds of all IT must be outsourced, and then fled for "unspecified personal reasons" from their position nine months later. Meanwhile, the IT infrastructure fell down around everyone's heads, and the replacement workers, having been suddenly thrust into positions without any knowledge transfer or documentation by the previous crew, struggled to reinvent the wheel to disasterous effect.

Whenever you see an executive make a bold and unseasonable move in the company that promises to have far-reaching implications, and there isn't a clear and unambiguous reason for it beyond "I read it in a trade mag!" or "everyone else is doing it!" I have one word for you: Run. Run fast. Run very fast. Run like you're in Pompeii on volcano day, because baby, shit's about to get hot and explosive in short order and you don't wanna be one of the screaming villagers on fire n shit when it happens.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[gomiam]

Some of us like being able to check our "old" mail even if there is no network connection available. YMMV though.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Seumas]

I like how "two dying companies that are on life-support are ending telecommuting -- is this the end of telecommuting?!". It's like concluding that if a company has to shed some office space because it is failing and can't afford the leasing costs, that it's an indicator of the end of leasing office space. No, it's just an action by a company trying desperately to stay afloat. *shrug*

There are a ton of massive companies out there that are very successful with a massive remote workforce and, often, it can be very difficult to get all the experts you want to hire to relocate to the same city (you know, where they can be watched over like children by their direct boss).

Also, if they're moving to do this because they "expect corporate employees to put in traditional 40-hour work weeks", than that is all they are going to get out of those employees. I have found that remote employees put in whatever amount of time it takes to do the job and then some. Covering for colleagues, throwing in massive extra work to make sure projects hit deadlines. They do far more than 40hrs and they do far more than just 9-5. In their minds, they're usually "always available, because my job is my job and not necessarily constrained by hours or time of day".

Treat them like a sprocket or a widget and that is exactly the work ethic you will get out of them and little or nothing more.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Seumas]

You are a shitty employee and you hired shitty employees. They were shitty working remotely and they're shitty working on-site.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[rtb61]

In the end it all boils down to what kind of company you are. If you are an internet company selling technological solutions and you public fail at telecommuting something you should be logically selling to others, well, then you are public incompetent and not to be relied upon for anything. M$ always talked about eating it's own dogfood for good reason, failure to do so cripples your marketing.

So the global message released by Yahoo, 'WE ARE INCOMPETENT AT TELECOMMUTING" screamed loud and clear to all their competitors and customers. Telecommuting was one of the basic productivity enhancements promised by the internet. There is no excuse for this decision or the way it was handled, Marissa Meyer is either an idiot or a Google poison pill.

Yahoo is meant to be selling telecommuting to other companies as well as the establishment and long term management of telecommuting solutions, seriously WTF?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Seumas]

How about "I'm not five years old and I don't need to be constantly supervised to be productive and perform the service for which I am well salaried"?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Seumas]

Who has the time or energy for that?

If I were in that situation, it would be a far better use of my time to make three or four phone calls and wind up employed again by the end of the week, in the position and circumstances I prefer than to drag out a bunch of bullshit in some legal action.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Seumas]

How much of a hassle can it be? We live in the god damned future. We have instant messaging, email, telephones, cell-phones, voice-mail, video chat, face-time, web-conferencing, telephone conferencing, shared desktop sessions, chat rooms. . . Hell, a lot of corporations even have their own internal social networking (tweeting, facebook style, etc) collaboration systems.

You only have one additional option, in person, and that's walking over to their desk -- assuming it is nearby and not on a different floor, in a different building, or in a company office on the other side of the country. You're just as likely to get up and walk over there and find them not at their desk as you are to email, IM, call, or otherwise attempt to contact them without immediate response.

I really don't understand this complaint from people in this day and age. We mostly solved all of these communication and collaboration issues fifteen years ago, in this industry.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Seumas]

I have to agree on the manager part. I've had some really good managers and some not so good. Well, mostly just one. I used to have a manager (will, an upper manager) who was a micro-managing fetishist. As a result, you spent more time explaining and justifying things than actually doing them. Usually, because he just simply didn't understand what was going on, in the first place. It stressed everyone out, slowed everything down, and made it a pretty hostile experience.

On the other hand, I've had managers who make themselves available to employees and trust them to do their job. Employees are paid to do their job and location is irrelevant. They either do their work or they don't and that's the factor that has mattered to these managers. They make themselves a utility for employees to use, as necessary, rather than an obstacle.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Neil Boekend]

Requesting someone to travel 1000 km just to fire him/her and leaving him/her in a difficult position without support 1000 km from home seems far more dickish than to fire him/her over the phone.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[daem0n1x]

I hope you're being ironic, because what you wrote is really stupid. Unfortunately, I know lots of people who have this mentality.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

I hope you're being ironic, because what you wrote is really stupid. Unfortunately, I know lots of people who have this mentality.

I think the batteries on your sarcasmometer need recharging.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

If the "Dead Sea Effect" were true, companies would simply ensure that they had a high staff turnover, rather than worry about keeping valued employees. Especially in places like the US, it is very easy to fire old staff and hire new ones. Companies don't accumulate old, useless employees for the sake of it.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

how about... "I am more productive from home" meaning...I don't really need 40 hours to do this 40 hour job you've proposed to me, but I'll do it better than the next schmuck you bring in, so hire me, your work will get done, I get paid, and business continues.

If a company has a 40 hour a week job that can in fact be done in 20 hours, they should be re-classifying it as a 20 hour a week job. Whether it's in an office or at home is irrelevant.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

Nope - that's the point of the exercise. You're not fired - you're quitting.

Surely companies can't just unilaterally and fundamentally change the terms of an employment contract?

I know you all love being able to fire at will in the US, but you must still stick to basic contract law?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

Who has the time or energy for that?

If I were in that situation, it would be a far better use of my time to make three or four phone calls and wind up employed again by the end of the week, in the position and circumstances I prefer than to drag out a bunch of bullshit in some legal action.

Well aren't you the lucky one?

I know it's hard for the geniuses on slashdot to understand, but a lot of people can't just waltz from one highly paid job to another. Amazingly, there is this thing called unemployment that affects normal people.

Your attitude reminds me of those CEOs who are happy to get fired from their current position with a few million in share options and bonuses, because they know they'll be walking into a similar job after a short holiday.

No one ever said that capitalism doesn't work really well for the lucky minority.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

No they're not your fucking "team". You are not the leader of a crack squad of special forces operatives. They're a bunch of people who have to work to pay their bills.

The more employers and managers who remembered this, the better life would be.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

I have not taken a day off for vacation in TEN years. I have not taken a six day in TEN years.

LOL you are a retard.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

I need to be in my zone to function.

No, you don't.

Even though I'm not generally a mad Colonel right wing bastard, this sort of comment really provokes me into thinking that some national service wouldn't be such a bad idea after all. You don't get to say "no" to a twenty mile route march with full equipment in the rain just because you're not "in the zone". You fucking get on with it.

And your little coding problems are not in the same league as being under enemy fire while you're lying in a ditch after three days with little or no sleep.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

I've known a great many people who turn up to the office, only to browse the web, play games, chat or conduct their own business all day, all while sitting at their desk where management assumes they are working.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

You are only looking at a very narrow segment of the job market. I am a freelance programmer and web developer.

No, you are only looking at a very narrow segment of the job market. Why do people on slashdot seem incapable of remembering that 99% of people (outside specific areas like Silicon Valley) are not software developers?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

I get really annoyed and angry at people who interrupt me all the time to ask me inane questions.

No, that depends entirely on what your job is. Unless you're the CEO/CTO or something, there will always be people senior to you who have a right to ask you questions.

If you want to do only what you feel like doing, work for yourself. In the meantime, work politics, procedures, rules and customs all apply to you.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

I thought the "in" thing these days was to lay people off by email or SMS. Right before Christmas.

I thought the real "in" thing was for the company to unfriend employees on the corporate facebook account.

Status: fired.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

Requesting someone to travel 1000 km just to fire him/her and leaving him/her in a difficult position without support 1000 km from home seems far more dickish than to fire him/her over the phone.

Yes, I don't exactly suppose you'd be paying his travel, hotel, coke and hookers bills for him, would you?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[tehcyder]

I have found that remote employees put in whatever amount of time it takes to do the job and then some. Covering for colleagues, throwing in massive extra work to make sure projects hit deadlines. They do far more than 40hrs and they do far more than just 9-5. In their minds, they're usually "always available, because my job is my job and not necessarily constrained by hours or time of day".

In other words, by giving them a little sugar in the form of being able to work in their underpants, you get twice as much work out of them and they think they're getting one over on the corporation. Genius.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Rogerborg]

Nonsense, Best Buy and Yahoo!s' only problems are that they can't raise morale by beating their staff unless they're in the office.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Requesting someone to travel 1000 km just to fire him/her and leaving him/her in a difficult position without support 1000 km from home seems far more dickish than to fire him/her over the phone.

Ahh--here's the disconnect. Only a handful of these people lived more than 20-30 minutes from the office. They "telecommuted" because our sattellite office was too small to hold all the people they tried to stuff inside.

But yeah, 1000 mile trip to get fired does suck--that's the only scenario where I can see "on the phone" terminations being okay. Most of the people in my example lived within driving distance, so I'd say it would have been appropriate to deal with those people individually, at the office.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[ixidor]

except this is simply not the case. the other 20 hours are "built-in" time for chi-chat and other office bs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[__aajwxe560]

Indeed, AT&T went through this I believe last year (or yr before). Over the past several years, they have allowed employees to telecommute and work from anywhere, to the point that employees were moving to their own more preferred locations in the country and taking advantage of the opportunity. AT&T about-faces and says employees are required to show up to office, with mandate of 30 days for the new "initiative." This had the by-product affect of folks who had moved away from offices (or were located in areas where offices had closed up) suddenly were non-compliant and would need to quit or face termination.

I don't necessarily see this as Yahoo's true intent (yet), but it is easier to see this mindset for the likes of Best Buy who is continuing to try and thin the ranks.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[jittles]

If the "Dead Sea Effect" were true, companies would simply ensure that they had a high staff turnover, rather than worry about keeping valued employees. Especially in places like the US, it is very easy to fire old staff and hire new ones. Companies don't accumulate old, useless employees for the sake of it.

Maybe. Or maybe such companies would build a reputation for mistreating their employees and the talented people will never apply there to begin with. I have personally seen this happen. I was living in an area that had a small tech community. Our company was bought out by another and most of the good people left not very long after. The only talented people that stuck around were the ones that did not want to relocate for one reason or another. I have some friends who fall into that category and I've gone back to visit them. The people leading teams there now are people that I avoided working with when I was there.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[daem0n1x]

It's not only mine. His comment is currently rated +4 Insightful, instead of Funny. As I've written above: "Unfortunately, I know lots of people who have this mentality"

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Bigby]

The 0.75 horu minute commute is nothing compared to the 20.5 hour work day

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[afidel]

IMAP works fine for that....

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[RabidReindeer]

"I thought that the office was the place where the disgruntled ex-employee showed up and began firing at everyone in sight."

No, that's not the office. That's the Post Office.

Or GMAC (Florida). Or Xerox (Hawaii). Etc.

Post Office is just the stereotype.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Austerity Empowers]

I know, when I'm sitting there having to manually solve maxwell's equations to validate the piece of a product that will singlehandedly make or break our 2013 revenue because the CEO won't cough up the $75K to purchase a field solver that will do it for me and there's no one else on staff who can, what I really should be ready for is to be interrupted by marketing to ask me what the difference between an RDIMM and a UDIMM is so she can plan for her $500K boondoggle in 2014 in Belgium (while I will most likely be sent to the ass end of China to teach kids from a degree factory how to string some wires together).

You know, because that's really urgent and email won't suffice (having given up on ever getting marketing to just google it). This is not made up, this happened just now, this is how it's been happening for years. While I cannot telecommute, anyone who can, should. At least if they work for a living.

Not everyone's job can be done by guessing or hiding behind bureacracy. The buck has to stop somewhere, and it usually has to stop with technical people. For that to work, they need to be able to do their fucking job without incessant interruptions by idiots.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Austerity Empowers]

It was written to be +3 Ironic or Mildly Funny. +4 Insightful is an accurate portrayal of how slashdot has fallen into disrepair.

 

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Applekid]

I know you all love being able to fire at will in the US, but you must still stick to basic contract law?

The standard for "unconscionable" terms in the US is much higher than elsewhere in the civilized world. Therefore, sections that say that terms may change unilaterally by the employer and terms that if any aspect later turns out to be unenforceable the rest of the contract is still valid are legal, celebrated by the power brokers, and boilerplate.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Austerity Empowers]

Figuring out which is which is easy. Being "fair" is hard, if you interpret "fair" as setting equal rules for everyone, rather than setting rules for the employees demonstrated capabilities.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[aix tom]

Well, it's almost there then, because Yahoo Mail *certainly* sucks. ;-)

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[poofmeisterp]

I have one word for you: Run. Run fast. Run very fast. Run like you're in Pompeii on volcano day, because baby, shit's about to get hot and explosive in short order and you don't wanna be one of the screaming villagers on fire n shit when it happens.

That would be so awesome if there were a bunch of jobs out there ripe for pickin'. We're just plain fucked. Fucked if you stay and fucked if you leave. I'm just glad I have a job and <gump>that's all I've got ta say about that.</gump>

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[xkpe]

Ironic is the default on slashdot. Insightful refers to idea conveyed the sarcastic comment.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[chargersfan420]

It's not the fact that this feature doesn't exist that he has a right to complain about. It is the fact that he complained about this missing feature and they responded to say that it was a popular feature request and they would implement it in the near future. More than a decade goes by, and still no feature. If what he said was true, that makes them liars.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[the_B0fh]

which do you think is easier to defend in courts? If more men work at home, the women could claim this is gender discrimination (or more women than men). Same for any other situation you can come up with

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[gomiam]

It seems it does. My excuses. Now I need to check whether my workplace's firewall allows me to connect to IMAP...

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Hognoxious]

I might be able to do it in 20 hours. Doesn't mean you can.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[jrumney]

A company like Yahoo (maybe even Best Buy) has a number of employees who have been there since the early days, feel a lot of loyalty to the company and believe in the it's ability to turn itself around. But there's a limit to how incompetent the board decisions can be before they give up all hope.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[mgvrolijk]

It doesn't take a lot of brains to be in the service.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Neil Boekend]

That's not the support I had in mind. Most people feel the need for some support from loved ones if they face a enormous negative change in their life, such as losing a job.

Re:Which is totally fine...

[karnal]

I don't think it's been a seller's market for some time now.

As a former Employee

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you Best Buy treats their employees like total crap. I did not work in a retail store, I worked in one of their service centers. Worst run company ever. They actually had a VP come down one week and tell us we needed to tape yellow lanes on the floor to tell people where to walk and then 3 weeks later another VP came down and made them change it to red tape, then 2 months later another VP came down and wanted all the lines moved because he didn't think it was clear which areas were for walking and which areas were work areas. Ridiculous.

Re:As a former Employee

[ebno-10db]

Choose color of tape. No wonder they make the big bucks.

Re:As a former Employee

[game kid]

Seems the tape was red long before they settled on the color.

Re:As a former Employee

[Mister Liberty]

I suppose the yellow tape was meant to divide the corridors into two lanes,
so the employees who leave a little early don't bump into the ones that
arrive a little late.

Re:As a former Employee

[Mashiki]

Sounds familiar. I know of several fortune 250 companies who have VP's and plant managers who go out making work for people. An example, they went out and made them put up signs for posts, walls, lanes, doors, and so on. So the workers did so. Then carried on, putting up signs for the roof, walls, bathrooms, and so on in order to mock the stupidity of these people.

One thing that never really gets old is management thinking that their workers are dumb. Especially management that's never actually worked a blue collar job their entire life.

Re:As a former Employee

[gmhowell]

Choose color of tape. No wonder they make the big bucks.

The irony is, both executives were color blind.

Re:As a former Employee

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If the peons are so smart, why didn't they have their parents pay them through business school, like I did?

It's laziness like that that keeps them from making something of themselves; but at least it justifies how much more money I make...

Re:As a former Employee

[Austerity Empowers]

hey actually had a VP come down one week and tell us we needed to tape yellow lanes on the floor to tell people where to walk and then 3 weeks later another VP came down and made them change it to red tape, then 2 months later another VP came down and wanted all the lines moved because he didn't think it was clear which areas were for walking and which areas were work areas. Ridiculous.

[VP 1]: The red zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the yellow zone.
[VP 2]: No, the yellow zone is for loading of passengers and there is no stopping in a RED zone.
[VP 1]: The red zone has always been for loading and unloading of passengers. There's never stopping in a yellow zone.
[VP 2]: Don't you tell me which zone is for loading, and which zone is for stopping!
[VP 1]: Listen Betty, don't start up with your yellow zone shit again.

[VP 1]: There's just no stopping in a yellow zone.
[VP 2]: Oh really, Vernon? Why pretend, we both know perfectly well what this is about. You want me to have an abortion.
[VP 1]: It's really the only sensible thing to do, if its done safely. Therapeutically there's no danger involved.

Re:As a former Employee

[Osgeld]

not everyone wants to be a souless suit

Re:As a former Employee

[GigaplexNZ]

If the peons are so smart, why didn't they have their parents pay them through business school, like I did?

Right, because it's literally impossible to be really smart and have broke and/or no parents.

Re:As a former Employee

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Words can't express the chilling nausea brought on by learning that my post above is no longer outrageous enough to be obvious sarcasm...

Re:As a former Employee

[Anonymous Coward]

Poe's law, man... Poe's law. I don't know how many MBA's lurk around here, but I was guessing the odds of this being played straight were somewhat unlikely. However, since I knew from your post history you are a liberal, that tipped the balance in my assessment that it was sarcasm.

I had to read the comment byline first, though.

Re:As a former Employee

[Seumas]

So these are executives who worked on-site instead of telecommuting? Clearly, this shows the remarkable benefit of the hardworking on-site employees that can never be matched by those lazy telecommuters who would never even think of laying down tape for the lemmings, much less picking the proper color!

Re:As a former Employee

[Seumas]

Wait, if some are leaving early and the others are arriving late, there wouldn't be any crossover. There'd be big empty gaps and they'd never run into each other on their way in/out.

Or . . . wait, was that the joke? :D

Re:As a former Employee

[tehcyder]

If the peons are so smart, why didn't they have their parents pay them through business school, like I did?

It's laziness like that that keeps them from making something of themselves; but at least it justifies how much more money I make...

Only on slashdot would this not be modded as a troll. And only on slashdot would nobody respond with criticism. Money rules, eh?

Re:As a former Employee

[poofmeisterp]

Choose color of tape. No wonder they make the big bucks.

The irony is, both executives were color blind.

...and forgot it was them who came up with the last tape idea. You know, golf really fucks up your short-long term memory conversion. ;)

Re:As a former Employee

[poofmeisterp]

Wait, if some are leaving early and the others are arriving late, there wouldn't be any crossover. There'd be big empty gaps and they'd never run into each other on their way in/out.

Or . . . wait, was that the joke? :D

Car joke; I get it now. Ha. :>

Real motive

[asmkm22]

has nothing to do with working from home. They need to get rid of a bunch of employees and this gives them a way of doing so without actually having a reason to fire them. They know a certain percentage won't be able to work locally, and will have to "voluntarily" quit.

Re:Real motive

[wangmaster]

Yup, this is it.
Whenever a company needs to cut jobs via layoffs, things like this allow them to take advantage of attrition without having to pay severance.

Re:Real motive

[Whatsisname]

Best Buy is headquartered in Minnesota, an at-will employment state. They can eliminate anyone at any time for any reason, and don't need a bogus excuse to do so.

Re:Real motive

[sjames]

It's similar to my rule of thumb when judging the health of a datacenter. When the sci-fi posters sudden''y come off of the walls in the office and tech areas, start planning your move, the ship is sinking and management is determined to take it out on everyone under them.

Re:Real motive

[wangmaster]

Being able to fire at any time doesn't mean that employees do it.
I live and work in Minnesota and companies here do RIFs (reduction in force) all the time with severance payouts. If they can get people to leave on their own, that's one less severance package to pay. There are plenty of good reasons why companies pay out severance even if they don't have to. But if they can get away with paying out less than they have to, great.

Re:Real motive

[beowolfschaefer]

They can still do it in the interest of PR even if they don't need to legally.

Re:Real motive

[Anonymous Coward]

However, all of their employees are not located in Minnesota. It's not where the company is headquartered, it's where the employees are, too. I've worked for California, Pennsylvania, Mass, and New York based companies while living in Illinois. Every time the do something against Illinois employment law that's legal elsewhere, a single email to HR fixes the problem.

Re:Real motive

[The Wild Norseman]

Best Buy is headquartered in Minnesota, an at-will employment state. They can eliminate anyone at any time for any reason, and don't need a bogus excuse to do so.

They do not need a bogus excuse to do so (as long as it's legal), but there's this little thing called "public relations". This thing is something they cannot afford to piss away and I guarantee you that BB was watching like a hawk what the potential fallout would be when Yahoo pulled this earlier.

It's one thing to tell the public "hey, we're firing all these people just because fuck you, that's why" and "we're sorry to all involved, but we need to cut back on our distance working infrastructure due to fiscal flow calculations."

Re:Real motive

[Belial6]

I don't know Minnesota's local laws, but if they are like California (also a at-will) state, the company has to pay extra unemployment taxes for every person that makes a unemployment claim. If the employee quits, the company doesn't have to pay those extra taxes. It is common here in California to "encourage empoloyees to quit" instead of firing them. I assume it is the same in Minnesota.

Not allowing remote workers is the new way for companies to signal that they going bankrupt and they no longer feel there is a solution to avoid it.

Re:Real motive

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I don't know Minnesota's local laws, but if they are like California (also a at-will) state, the company has to pay extra unemployment taxes for every person that makes a unemployment claim. If the employee quits, the company doesn't have to pay those extra taxes.

Correct, un-employment insurance has a federal component that is the same everywhere. There are state components but they tend to vary in the taxation percentage not the reasons for collecting it.

Also, every state in the union is "at-will" with only minor differences in the details. OP probably confused at-will with right-to-work which is the legal principle that an employer can not force an employee to join a union as a prerequisite for being hired. Right-to-work doesn't really apply here either, but it is really common for people to mix up at-will and right-to-work.

Re:Real motive

[tompaulco]

In at-will states you can eliminate anyONE at any time for NO reason. From a legal standpoint, a company should never have a reason to fire someone, because that reason may turn out to be invalid in a lawsuit. There are also labor laws about terminating a lot of people which require notice periods, and depending on the state and any union regulations, may also require severance packages, retraining or other benefits. Firing a lot of people also introduces lack of confidence in the company (although it usually initially causes the stock to go up, because people are idiots who can't think long term), and also may carry some hefty one time charges for severance packages.

Re:Real motive

[flimflammer]

It's a PR move, not a legal one.

Environmentalists?

[operagost]

Where are the environmentalists who should be protesting the increase in the use of resources, especially petroleum products, that will be required when all these employees return to an office? Especially when many of them took the job under the betrayed promise that they would not have to often commute to an office that was perhaps an hour or more away?

Re:Environmentalists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because not that many people telecommute. Go talk to someone who's down a tax bracket and you'll hear lots of single parents saying, "cry me a river." Did I say single parents? I mean, the rest of the non-tech workers.

News Flash. Tech workers don't make much money either

Re:Environmentalists?

[poofmeisterp]

Where are the environmentalists who should be protesting the increase in the use of resources, especially petroleum products, that will be required when all these employees return to an office? Especially when many of them took the job under the betrayed promise that they would not have to often commute to an office that was perhaps an hour or more away?

...and hey, in an at-will employment state, that's a perfectly "good'n'green" reason to let people go. Good way to get employees to walk away fucked without unemployment.

wondering aloud...

[MickyTheIdiot]

I just wonder if any agreements were made with employees at either Yahoo or BB that they would be allowed to do a certain amount of their work remotely.

Again.. it goes back to the current American belief that it's okay for a corporation to break their word or contract with an individual but absolutely wrong when it's vice versa...

Re:wondering aloud...

[runeghost]

I'm not sure this is so much an American belief as something American corporations would desperately like their customers to believe.

Re:wondering aloud...

[MickyTheIdiot]

There is virtually no public outcry when a corporation violates their contracts with their employees in the U.S. That's why I make the statement. I can't speak for other countries that I don't live in.

Re:wondering aloud...

[Belial6]

The traditional example of this would be that if you don't give notice, the company will try to blackball you from working by telling anyone calling for a reference that you did not give notice. On the other hand, they have no problems firing employees at 4:50 on Friday, telling them not to come in Monday. That, or when insisting that employees give notice, they respond to that courtesy by firing the employee at the end of that day if not escorting them out immediately.

Re:wondering aloud...

[tehcyder]

It is precisely because of the totally asymmetric power balance between employer and employee that Unions were invented. Most people on slashdot seem to think that they're elevated far above the common working man and can negotiate on an equal basis with big corporations and their lawyers. it just needs something like this to make them realise how deluded they are.

Re:Which is totally fine...

[DigiShaman]

"Will code for food" so says the sign the man on the corner street is holding. While a line of college students outside of Yahoo are saying "I will pay YOU just to work there for experience and references". Ok, not that bad -yet-. Getting there though.

MBAs and Investment Bankers ruin companies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the history of companies like DEC, Compaq, Dell, the list goes on an on.

They all did great until MBAs and Investment Bankers got control.

Then the value was squeezed out and the carcass disgarded.

Re:MBAs and Investment Bankers ruin companies.

[bobthesungeek76036]

To be fair, those companies were on their way out before said financial minds took over.

Re:MBAs and Investment Bankers ruin companies.

[T-Ranger]

DEC is a great counterexample to "business interests" destroying a technology company. In fact, it was a company with great technology products which the market just didn't care about. An MBA in charge would have said "Skip this VMS shit, boys"

Re:MBAs and Investment Bankers ruin companies.

[Green Salad]

Cost drives everything. I think DEC ruined DEC and that the MBAs didn't push change hard enough.

DEC was a market leader and VMS was a fantastic OS in standardization and features. That said, maintaining a VAX/VMS environment was much too costly in talent and space. DataGeneral was scrappy class-competition. The MBA's did what they could reasonably do for DEC which was once a great company but was culturally already well on its way to becoming a dinosaur, because the techs/managers/strategists at DEC were just too much in love with their own architecture to effectively compete for a new type of business customer coming on-line in major numbers.

A personal microcomputer, with a standardized S-100 bus, 3rd-party S-100 accessories and a couple of 8" single-sided floppy disks, running CP/M or MP/M and utilities like "ZCPR3" with a Japanese dot-matrix printer offered a whole lot more flexibility and "bang for the buck" to small and medium-sized businesses.

On top of that, microcomputers were "almost" a consumer hobbyist product and VAX/VMS wasn't. The microcomputer took almost no care and feeding by expensive computer programmers or operators.

Pre-compiled, ready-to-use CP/M software could be purchased, literally off-the-shelf, at prices that were "almost free" from an amazing variety of vendors. Long before "Apple stores" I remember walking into a Heath/Zenith retail store and paying around $100 for business software, including 8.5 x 11-inch, 3-ring bound user manuals. The manuals would easily lay flat, had numbered, step-by-step instructions and a nifty protected-pocket in a richly-textured and padded 3-ring binders that held the 8-inch single-sided floppy disk media, allowing you to keep everything in one place. It sounds funny today, but managers thought nothing of using the spare disk space on the software distribution media to conveniently store data files, all in one place, stored safely in the same 8.5" x 11" 3-ring binder on their bookshelf.

A business could afford to buy several microcomputers and distribute them throughout the enterprise to non-computer professionals, such as accountants, managers and engineers, with just a bit of training, personal curious interest and they'd do wonderfully productive things with their computers. (Wonderful...unless you were one of the paid file clerks or report-processing clerks they realized they no longer needed and never enjoyed managing.)

In my humble opinion, the low-cost, CP/M and MP/M floppy-based computers for business and quick-booting Atari/Apple/Commodores for homes, foreshadowed DEC's death in the mid-range sysems.

The move by businesses to CP/M personal computers for key administrative users and the the move to bigger, denser mainframes for serious I/O intensive SQL databases, large memory array processing and intensive calculation for things like modeling fluid-dynamics were a big deal in the tech-race of the late 70's through the late 80's. The market was clearly demanding extremes of big and small while beginning to get wise about the labor component of total cost of ownership. Amdahl made clones of IBM's big iron. Everyone made clones of IBM's desktop micro-computers. Cray became a house-hold name. DEC, Prime Computer, Data General, were stuck in the economically-awkward "middle" of proprietary multi-user mini-computers that required the IT talent of mainframes and manufacturer's annual service contracts to operate effectively and semi-reliably.

Capturing what remained of the mid-market with Unix/Xenix was natural and easy for IBM/Fujitsu/Amdahl who were familiar with the service and operating models and offered no-brainer expansion paths, including connecting PC's to big-iron with RS-232 serial ports, smart-terminal emulation software, Token-Ring Network Cards for standard-bus microcomputers set the stage for client/server computing. As client-server computing become important, IBM rushed to get Linux offered on their biggest iron. While companies like IBM changed and adapted, mid-market computer

Re:MBAs and Investment Bankers ruin companies.

[Rob_Bryerton]

For great justice. Mod parent up; excellent post full of great info.

Re:MBAs and Investment Bankers ruin companies.

[Zeromous]

VMS was a rock solid product, people used! Indeed, I have 35 year old vaxen that are still running strong on original parts. The last time down for maintenance? Never. At least not in the last 15 years.

Biggest mistake was getting out of the PC market in its relative infancy. Ripe for Compaq in short order.

Re:Which is totally fine...

[MickyTheIdiot]

I think that's exactly it. It's a "we've got the power so frag you" type of move.

What firestorm

[Spy Handler]

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's decision to end telecommuting, which ignited a firestorm of criticism.

There was no firestorm, just whining from unproductive Yahoo employees and media parasites.

Perhaps they didn't get the memo, but Google (which is what Yahoo wishes it was, and is where every Yahoo employee wishes he/she was working at) doesn't allow telecommuting either. Marissa was just putting in place policies that worked for Google.

Re:What firestorm

[MickyTheIdiot]

This while she was building a nursery in her office so she could spend time with her kid at work.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/28/how-yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-building-a-nursery-by-her-office-and-dissing-working-moms/

If that's not her giving her workforce the finger then I don't know what is.

Re:What firestorm

[mozkill]

It is probably that exact experience that gave Marissa Mayer the perspective she needed to make a call on this. She probably experienced first-hand that being at home was more unproductive (towards her job).

Re:What firestorm

[Lisias]

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's decision to end telecommuting, which ignited a firestorm of criticism.

There was no firestorm, just whining from unproductive Yahoo employees and media parasites.

Perhaps they didn't get the memo, but Google (which is what Yahoo wishes it was, and is where every Yahoo employee wishes he/she was working at) doesn't allow telecommuting either. Marissa was just putting in place policies that worked for Google.

Perhaps Yahoo should do as Google on this also: opening facilities on third world countries to avoid paying too much on salaries. What do you think?

(I think it would be great! I live on one of these third world countries!)

Re:What firestorm

[c]

If that's not her giving her workforce the finger then I don't know what is.

She was at Google for a long time. Probably has a heck of a lot of pent up Evil she needs to burn off...

Re:What firestorm

[Provocateur]

This whole thing could have been avoided if they had allowed us to work wearing our pajamas and bunny slippers

Re:What firestorm

[Anonymous Coward]

but Google doesn't allow telecommuting either.

This is flat out false.

Re:What firestorm

[Mashiki]

From what I heard of her by friends at Google, she ran against the grain of how things should flow often enough that I'm surprised they didn't fire her.

Re:What firestorm

[Seumas]

Again, it's an issue of circumstances.

Guess what? I'm not a mother. I don't have kids. My fiance, a chemist, works all day in a lab.

At work (after dealing with the time and bother of a long commute), I am surrounded by six thousand other employees and plenty of noise and ridiculous conversations while I try to get work done between the precisely designated business hours.

At home, I have the ideal working environment. Invested in a magnificent desk, great huge monitors (helps with my eyes, too), a comfortable chair to help with my wrestling injury from long ago, a much better internet connection, and zero people to interrupt or distract me. In my home office, it is me and my work. No pets, no children. Not even any other adults to get in my way.

From my memories as a child and observing other people, raising children doesn't require your non-stop attention after the first couple years, so that shouldn't be much of an impact. If your children can manage without you while you're at work all day, they can manage without you while you're in your home office all day and consider you "off limits and not actually at home".

I'm sure there are some people who abuse that circumstance and don't perform, but that's hardly a reason to drop all the people who do this successfully through their career. Quite simply, hire decent employees that have a solid work ethic.

Re:What firestorm

[Seumas]

On the face of it, her decision is fucking idiotic. With details specific to her company, it may be much more sensible. We're not privy to that. I don't think she's an idiot and, in fact, everything I've seen of her over the years is quite remarkable. There are a lot of shitty CEOs, but she has yet to demonstrate that she's one of those. This is her opportunity to turn a failing company around and these decisions will either prove to be fair in this specific context or ridiculous and fruitless.

In the meantime, I think the internet and business coverage is reading way too much into this. "Oh my god, two failing companies are stopping telecommuting while they claim to be restructuring to stop their sinking ships --- this must be the end of remote workers, after only a few hundred years of it! Oh noes!".

I've telecommuted nearly my entire career and I would require it as a benefit of almost any job offer I ever took seriously, but taking the actions of Best Buy and Yahoo! as some sort of threat to the way I am most productive is crazy and foundless.

Re:What firestorm

[Seumas]

Google allows telecommuting, but only in certain situations. It's not really part of their culture. However, enticing employees to want to be at work through extensive efforts of making the rest of their life easier is part of the google culture. Transportation, babysitting, food, relaxation, concierge services, and plenty of other initiatives are available. That is not something most other companies are doing. After the dot-bomb days, most of those things were axed and you might be fortunate if your company offers a free doughnut or bagel to the office one day a week.

Google's office environment is unique. You can't just say "well, google doesn't like telecommuting, so there you go!" is disingenuous. The important thing to take away from what google does is "Google places emphasis on making the office environment one that is desirable to employees and serves their interests to the fullest possible extent so that employees want to be in that office". In other words, your mileage may vary if you follow the "no telecommuting" principal, but don't change your shitty office environment that treats employees less as an asset and more as a liability.

Re:What firestorm

[tehcyder]

Quite simply, hire decent employees that have a solid work ethic.

Having a solid work ethic is like being a happy slave and volunteering to pick more cotton at noon when everyone else is having a lie down in the shade. Most normal people want to do as little as possible of something they don't enjoy.

It is the one psychological trait of Americans that I find hardest to understand. I do appreciate that on slashdot there are people doing jobs they actually enjoy, but you still need to remember who your work is benefitting.

Desperate for Productivity

[Lije Baley]

Did you miss the news a while back about productivity levels having peaked? So now the weaker Corporations, faced with losing their least politically-damaging method of squeezing up short-term profit, are trying anything they can to shore up productivity.

Great way to lay off people without saying its

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a great way to lay off people without saying its a layoff, or paying for unemployment since quitting would mean no way to collect it.

Re:Great way to lay off people without saying its

[flimflammer]

Ding ding ding!

Best salaried employee behavior

[bobstreo]

Work exactly 40 hours per week, and not at all from home.

Re:Best salaried employee behavior

[93 Escort Wagon]

If I had to do this, my employer would find they'd end up getting significantly less work out of me. I end up doing a fair bit on "my own time".

But fortunately my bosses seem to understand the value of letting me work from home occasionally.

Re:Best salaried employee behavior

[bobstreo]

Yeah the problem is that if they "expect you to work 50+ hours per week" with no formal documentation or overtime pay, then
for every 4 employees, there is one other person who isn't going to be hired.

Then when times get "tough" there will only be 3 of you working 66 hours a week, for the same pay.

Re:Best salaried employee behavior

[mjwx]

Work exactly 40 hours per week, and not at all from home.

Sitting on 37.5 per week ATM.

But I dont get a paid lunch break. Plus side is I can take 2 hours for lunch as long as I still do 7.5 hours a day.

Re:Best salaried employee behavior

[Seumas]

This is called being salaried. How much of your life it sucks up is irrelevant. :)

Re:Best salaried employee behavior

[Seumas]

I work an average of 60+ hours a week and I take zero lunch breaks. I basically have a quick breakfast before walking into my home office. I sit down. I don't get up again for 8-12 hours. By that time, I'm usually starving to the point that I almost feel sick. I find something quick to eat. Then I go do home stuff for awhile, with my day/shift over with.

Within a few hours, I usually find myself having somehow wandered back into my home office and doing work again, just because it's there and needs to be done by someone.

But, you know, I'm one of those "lazy work-from-home" people, and all, I guess.

Re:Best salaried employee behavior

[Neil Boekend]

Nope. The best behaviour includes flexibility. Shift some hours from after a deadline to before it. Working from home is just an easy way of having some extra time to work, if and when required to make a deadline. If I could work from home I would be able to ditch the 1,5 hour commute (one way) and thus have 1,5 hours more available when required (and possible due to energy flow). But the extra hours need to be returned, and quite soon. Many who don't take those hours back suffer from burn out in the end.

Re:Best salaried employee behavior

[tehcyder]

This is called being salaried. How much of your life it sucks up is irrelevant. :)

The word "salaried" does not mean "available to work 24/7".

Re:Best salaried employee behavior

[tehcyder]

I don't get up again for 8-12 hours. By that time, I'm usually starving to the point that I almost feel sick

You misread the memo. Presenteeism is only necessary when you're travelling to an office.

Re:Best salaried employee behavior

[Bigby]

No, it means "available to work 24/7/356". It also means you could work less than 40 hours.

I got a "promotion" to be salaried and turned it down. If I am going to work over 40 hours, then they are going to pay me for it. And for managers that want me to charge 40 hours, even if I did 41 or 42, I ignore them and charge the real time. When they reject it, I do it again. I am not going to lie. If they insist, I will tell someone who cares that my manager wants me to lie.

And I am not joking.

Just Do Something (even if it's dumb) Management

[ebno-10db]

Person sits at desk from 9-6. Person taps keys. Appears to be breathing. It tells you nothing about whether they're doing their work, so if you can't tell by other means, you're an incompetent employer. And if you can tell by other means, then there's no problem with telecommuting.

OT: /. drives traffic to corporate sister site

[guanxi]

Should Slashdot include a disclaimer when linking to a corporate sister?

In case you don't know, Slashdot is owned by Dice Holdings (see the bottom left of the page you are reading), which also owns this link from the front page story:
http://news.dice.com/2013/03/05/yahoos-telecommuting-policy-could-find-fanboy-ceos/

Re:OT: /. drives traffic to corporate sister site

[Jerslan]

If I could I would mod this up.... I think the Slashdot editors should be obligated to stick a disclaimer in the summary when a link goes to a sister site (even when it was a user submitted summary/link).

Best buy has had poor management for years

[Joe_Dragon]

Best buy has had poor management for years. Maybe makeing big changes will save them.

Now the stores need to move off of judging people on how much they can sell and let them help people not up sell them till they walk out.

Re:Best buy has had poor management for years

[BLToday]

Big changes? You mean like better customer service, good pricing, and management that doesn't have a burning hatred for customers? That's way too big of a change for Best Buy. I remember when they started to implement their "Angels and Demons" policy, that made me to never go Best Buy except when they have the absolute best price on something I want. I use to browse Best Buy all the time while waiting for my girlfriend to shop. I always ended up spending $10-$20 on random things I didn't need. Now, it's order online and in-store pick up. I don't want to browse because the staff have to hungry look. And I'm chubby.

No loss

[Skapare]

I was never gonna work at either place, anyway. But now I do have to worry more that someone will try to upsell me to a 3 year warranty plan in person.

Very misleading headlines

[Wister285]

Does anyone seem to realize that work from home is not being banned, but PERMANENTLY working from home? There is a huge difference. Casual work from home is much different than never seeing your coworkers. Is permanent working from home a scapegoat? Perhaps, but it's not unreasonable that troubled companies need all hands on deck while at their most vulnerable.

Re:Very misleading headlines

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

...it's not unreasonable that troubled companies need all hands on deck while at their most vulnerable.

It is if it results in a loss of productivity & hard workers.

I know more than a few people (in a variety of disciplines) that work far more effectively when they're at home away from the noise & distractions of a cubicle farm, plus they automatically put in far more unpaid hours because they don't have the physical work/home divide and aren't recovering from the stresses of the office.

Or, to refer to a stance favored by many Slashdotters: if students can get a high-quality university/grad education online at home, then it makes little sense to assume they can't succeed using exactly the same approach in a white-collar job, considering the vast majority of people take jobs that are no more (usually far less) intellectually demanding than a good education is.

Re:Very misleading headlines

[SeaFox]

Perhaps, but it's not unreasonable that troubled companies need all hands on deck while at their most vulnerable.

If the person's job can be accomplished from home to begin with, what are they gaining from having them suddenly come into the office? "All hands on deck" doesn't require a physical set of hands if they didn't need them before.

Lab book

[Murdoch5]

Keep a bullet proof lab book with verifiable work and you'll be fine. The issue is that no one tracks what work they do so months after you finish everything there is no trace. Hence telecommuting looks back because how do you know who does any work. On the other hand if you can hand over a well kept book that is documented about the work you've completed then you look fine.

Re:Lab book

[perlith]

Keep a bullet proof lab book with verifiable work and you'll be fine. The issue is that no one tracks what work they do so months after you finish everything there is no trace.

You should be doing this regardless of whether you telecommute or not. Other than CYA, I also find it makes end of year performance writeups incredibly easy to do.

Re:Lab book

[stoploss]

You know, my engineering and chemistry profs were always ranting how important lab books were. Naturally, they were very anal about everything having to be documented in there. Hours of my life were wasted copying things from neatly rendered diagrams and text in the lab handouts as crude, hand-drawn facsimiles and block print rendered in carbon copy for the lab submission.

"You will thank me someday; lab books are admissible in court! As a matter of fact, this one guy who actually works in industry told me that people who forget to sign a page in their lab notebook are summarily fired!"—literally every engineering and chem lab prof I ever had (I swear, it's like they all compared notes and decided to give the suggested speech written by a lab book sales rep)

You know what? In the decade since I graduated, I have heard about *one* of my former classmates seeing a lab book used by someone *once*. Call it "roughly as common as a Bigfoot sighting". So, chalk all that up under "Lies My Professors Told Me".

FWIW, it's not that hard to tell what someone was doing/whether they're working. Have them write decent log messages when they commit. Or check the ticketing system revision history, whatever. If someone isn't checking in work for a suspicious amount of time, then follow up. If you wonder whether someone is worth their salt, dump a log of their diffs/work product from a chosen time range.

I would take versioned work in a repo over a handwritten lab book any day. Also, I would wonder how much time my report spent handwriting a personal lab book. I would rather see that time spent submitting work-in-progress diffs with meaningful logs that are checked into a server repo that is backed up, accessible to everyone else on the team, and forms a coherent history of our project for future analysis.

I retract my statement if your industry relies on hand drawings on paper, with no electronic document interchange or electronic work product. In that case, I suggest saving the carbon copies of the memos you type with your Selectric to exchange via interdepartmental mail.

Re:Lab book

[Murdoch5]

If your spending hours writing a lab book I think your missing the point. A lab book is a quick scribble about what you did followed by a date and time. Filling an entire lab book might involve two hours of writing and last me months, it doesn't matter if it's perfectly written, if the pictures are clear and beautiful, it matters if you can read it and the information is accurate.

How ever for going the paper version of the log book you can easily use one of the good electronic versions as long as your data / information gets encrypted and backed up. I wrote an electronic lab book tool for school that was just a text input with an attachment box, it then took what you entered, ran it under high level encryption and using SSL sockets transported it to a Wiki style server which was backed up to a GIT server. The GUI popped up once a hour and you had to enter something, closing it with out making an entry would literally put "Nothing" : "time stamp" in the software. I'm still using it at work, it's a very small effort part of my day and usually a nice break from work even for a minute to fill in.

You can say what you want about logs, diff's and merge lists but in the end at least I find it easier to just have a written list of completed and on going work, that way when the director wants a status update he can get it himself, saves me time and saves him time.

do they have 40-hours of work each week??

[Joe_Dragon]

Where they pulling lots of overtime at home?

Had lot's of downtime?

This is worse than it sounds

[Saxophonist]

Best Buy headquarters is in one of the areas of the Twin Cities metro with the worst traffic congestion already, and it is not well-served by public transit. Public policy in Minnesota is starting to tend toward encouraging more remote work and/or flexibility because the cost of maintaining and upgrading roads and transit is becoming unaffordable. I don't know about other areas of employment, but competent programmers are not usually having trouble finding work in the Twin Cities metro. Granted, many of Best Buy's developers are contractors anyway.

This move is likely just to drive away people with other options, and with a company that's already a sinking ship, it's certainly going the wrong direction.

Re:This is worse than it sounds

[Osgeld]

there are more workers than programmers and developers, how much development and programming actually goes on at best buy? they are a retail store, they need to focus on sales and purchaces, not developing windows 9

Re:This is worse than it sounds

[Saxophonist]

I don't know for sure. They have positions (typically through contracting agencies) for developers constantly. I don't know what their projects actually are, though obviously they do have an online presence.

Further, this policy obviously affects workers outside IT. I don't know how many of those individuals were working remotely.

Re:This is worse than it sounds

[Saxophonist]

Perhaps not, in aggregate. Never having been to Toronto, I cannot speak to such a comparison.

However, Best Buy HQ is not in downtown Minneapolis. If it were, the transit situation would be markedly better. It is in a first-ring south suburb called Richfield, right off I-494 and I-35W. Some recent upgrades to I-35W have helped some, but 494 is regularly at a standstill.

I doubt this one action by one company will change too many transportation policies in the immediate area. Nevertheless, the dearth of effective public transit along the 494 corridor has been a longstanding problem.

Next moves by Yahoo and Best Buy . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. . . claim every Linux user owes them $699, and then sue IBM . . .

Sounds like a fine business plan.

Who Cares

[the eric conspiracy]

Does anyone really want to work for Best Buy? Or for matter Yahoo?

These are companies that are 20 years behind the leaders. Go to work for them and you will always be sitting around waiting for the defenestration.

These new polices are just a message to the wise - time to find a better employer.

Re:Who Cares

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

Does anyone really want to work for Best Buy? Or for matter Yahoo?

They do if there's high unemployment in their area and they can't afford to be out of work for weeks or months. Also, the ones that flock to jobs with flexible hours or where they can work at home often do so because something in their life conflicts with working 9-5 M-F, like watching their kids/parents during afternoons, accommodating a medical problem they have, being able to rush off to handle their disabled kid's medical emergencies, and so forth.

Missing the point

[robnator]

Mayers had a point, Yahoo needs the creativity inspired by water-cooler talks. Best Buy, well their point is hard to buy hats for...

Re:Missing the point

[labiator]

I agree completely, Of course, this does not bode well for Best Buy to say our products help you be productive from anywhere, except if you work for us.

Re:Missing the point

[tehcyder]

Mayers had a point, Yahoo needs the creativity inspired by water-cooler talks.

Worker A: Hi, did you see Jersey Shore last night?

Worker B: Hi, yeah, I love Jersey Shore.

Worker A: Me too.

Worker B: Bye then!

Worker A: Bye!

Re:Worthy of a Dilbert strip

[Wister285]

If you're going to make claims like that, you bear the burden of proof. It sounds like you're just throwing around opinions as facts because the Best Buy made a decision that you do not find convenient. I'd really like to see a study that working from home full-time is net beneficial to productivity.

Companies always do this sort

[geekoid]

of thing as cost saving when they are desperately looking for buyers.

Cool!

[kwiqsilver]

So does this mean I'll actually be able to find a sales guy, since they won't be working from home?
Just kidding...I would never shop at a best buy.

Standard Corporate behaviour, reminds me of

[citizenr]

reminds me of:

http://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=24m2s

Re:what's 40 hours?

[ebno-10db]

Oh come on, you've never heard of fairy tales?

Re:Just Do Something (even if it's dumb) Managemen

[mrprogrammerman]

You should measure performance by the amount and quality of the deliverables and not whether someone looks busy.

It's a Filter

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

They know they need to lay off people, so how do you select who to keep?

I suspect this move to eliminate remote work will cause some employees to quit (cheaper for the company than a layoff). The ones that come in, but bitch about it will be labeled non-team-players and eliminated next.

I've seen some places that simply made life unbearable to see who would put up with shit. Making people quit is cheaper than a layoff. BTW, that company failed badly. I was happy to hear the asshole boss lost everything when his secretary sued for sexual harassment.

Best Buy follows Yahoo in banning remote work

[sumergo]

Can't we keep "on-thread"? Forget "Best Buy", "The four Boxes of Liberty", "the traffic congestion in the Twin Cities". The issue is about "telecommuting". 1. Question: Does it work for everyone? Answer: No - lots of people need the "warmth of human contact" and feel isolated when they are not with with their corporate colleagues. 2. Question: Can it be productive? Answer: Yes - for those who are comfortable working without the immediate physical co-location of other humans, working from home can be much more productive than the corporate 9 - 5 (plus commute) work day. Truth is - you work much more at home than in the office. 3. Question: So what's the problem? Answer: Middle managers get paid to manage people. If "their" people aren't physically around, middle managers worry about their own reason for existence and if "their" staff are being as productive as they could be. The easy option is: "when in doubt, get the staff back in house so we can see what they are doing" ;-( Pardon me, but don't we live in a virtual world these days?

Re:Which is totally fine...

[tompaulco]

Any displaced Java developers wanting to work in the Oklahoma City area, contact me. We're hiring.

Re:Just Do Something (even if it's dumb) Managemen

[only_human]

It's ironic how we can hire people on the other side of the world and put up with their shoddy work, but in the USA we need to come to the office.

It's worse than ironic. It means that for telecommuting, they don't need/want Americans -- Bangalore or elsewhere will do.

Wrong trend

[viperidaenz]

"It also follows news of Best Buy's plans to lay off 400 corporate workers as part of a plan to cut $725 million in costs"

Isn't this signalling a trend to cut down unnecessary management roles that have nothing to do with what your business does?

Re:Just Do Something (even if it's dumb) Managemen

[Dr Fro]

That would imply management is capable of judging the quality of their deliverables ....

whatever they do...

[mschaffer]

Whatever they actually do, I guess the will actually be doing it in their office.

Or...

[mschaffer]

Or a way to show the Board and stockholders that they are making "significant changes".

Marissa is the Out-Of-Touch Romney of Motherhood

[Scot Seese]

These headlines are pushing the career trajectories of working mothers directly back to 1956. The message is clear - You can have children and be a stay-at-home mom, OR you can work full time and pay nearly $1,000 per infant per month for infant day care - erasing an enormous amount of your salary. You thought you could have both, but sorry, you're wrong, says Marissa Mayer - Who like all the Hollywood stars, pop stars and celebrities make parenthood look effortless while hiding behind a small army of Au Pairs, Nannies, drivers, cooks, security and personal assistants, tutors and private schools. Yes, parenting is wonderful when your sleep is NEVER disturbed because someone ELSE sits up all night for diaper changing and bottle feedings. Someone ELSE puts your kids on the bus at 7 AM.

Marissa Mayer is the wildly out-of-touch Mitt Romney of Motherhood - How can you expect someone building a nursery off her executive office, presumably staffed with a nanny - to understand or care about the work/family balance of her comparatively proletariat cubicle drones?

Soon, I imagine the Corporate Daycare (asses in cubes) culture will crush casual dress codes and Flex Time.

More Tim Ferriss damage

[ghjm]

A couple months ago, we had the (likely made-up) incident of the programmer outsourcing his job to China. That story was widely told in corporate boardrooms, along with mentioning Tim Ferriss. Now they have all just read The Four-Hour Work Week and have come to the conclusion that anyone who wants to telecommute is trying to rip them off (which is what they already secretly thought anyway).

How does one "remote work" for Best Buy?

[Smerta]

I didn't know you could peddle $80 HDMI cables from the comfort of your living room - how does that work?

Re:How does one "remote work" for Best Buy?

[tehcyder]

I didn't know you could peddle $80 HDMI cables from the comfort of your living room - how does that work?

Try spamming slashdot. Last week, I earned $3,682 for just a few hours work!

To be honest...

[yuhong]

Retail is basically sticking around to service customers, and they aren't killing it completely, they are just requiring manager approval.

they have a point

[aahpandasrun]

I hate to admit that they have a point. It's easy to slack when you're not in the office with your boss looking over your shoulder.

Re:they have a point

[Skapare]

Yeah, I slack. Yes, I do work from home. But slacking is how I get things done, right, and on time.

Re:Wall Street agrees that remote work is bad

[Skapare]

Just as have all the other stocks where people do work at home.

Re:Telecommuting rocks.

[Skapare]

You should change your nick from Anonymous Coward to Anonymous Telecommuter.

Re:Just Do Something (even if it's dumb) Managemen

[thegarbz]

Person sits at desk from 9-6. Person taps keys. Appears to be breathing. It tells you nothing about whether they're doing their work, so if you can't tell by other means, you're an incompetent employer. And if you can tell by other means, then there's no problem with telecommuting.

3rd theory. You can tell by other means and those other means show telecommuting employees have lower performance.

I'm all for telecommuting but I work in a job where it would be too hard to get stuff done. I would use the words collaborative environment but I'm afraid to get downmodded here by victims of bad management with mod points. Sure the word collaborative workplace gets thrown around a lot by the big wigs along with synergy and other such bullshit, but between all the bullshit is a small ounce of truth.

Re:Which is totally fine...

[tehcyder]

Any displaced Java developers wanting to work in the Oklahoma City area, contact me. We're hiring.

Why do you mention the physical area? I thought everyone here worked from home?

Re:Just Do Something (even if it's dumb) Managemen

[tehcyder]

Person sits at desk from 9-6. Person taps keys. Appears to be breathing. It tells you nothing about whether they're doing their work, so if you can't tell by other means, you're an incompetent employer. And if you can tell by other means, then there's no problem with telecommuting.

The problem with telecommuting is a simple psychological one: all the people who are forced to come into the office feel that the ones at home have it easy. That's human nature. Until everybody has the option, telecommuting is always going to seem like a perk to the mass of workers.

Re:Just Do Something (even if it's dumb) Managemen

[tehcyder]

That would imply management is capable of judging the quality of their deliverables ....

That is simply asinine. "Management" don't employ people for the sake of it, of course they know if they're not getting the delivery they need.

Re:what's 40 hours?

[tehcyder]

What the hell is a "traditional 40 hour work week"?

It's what you have when work is not the most important thing in your life.

Re:Purely, the effect is downsizing..

[tehcyder]

Look, I have no interest in the world of corporate strategy and high finance, but you make it sound as though companies downsize for the sake of it or for some obscure philosophical reason. In fact, they are just doing what you would expect, which is not incurring any more costs than they need to do do what they do.

If they're downsizing because their business is shrinking, fine, talk about why their business is shrinking.

Re:Which is totally fine...

[tompaulco]

We have a number of people in our company who telecommute, but the developers are not in the number. We do work from home from time to time, which on the whole is more productive, but we also have to support the product, which is an internal product, and the people we support are in the office. So, it is advantageous to be in the office.

Re:Just Do Something (even if it's dumb) Managemen

[Bigby]

Then you haven't worked for large companies or in the "right" area. There are lines of business that literally want a head count for the sake of employing people. Maybe they want unnecessary expenses to keep their profit margin at 10%...and when revenues go down, they know just who to get rid of to keep the profit at 10%. Kind of like SoftReference in Java.

It doesn't make any sense!

[SuntanSallaj]

What I don't understand is how Marissa Mayer says something in the lines of, "We want people to be in the actual building of Yahoo to improve on communication" when it means cutting off ties with current employees who live far away. Then going on to say something like, "By allowing people to be in the building, you'd generate more collective ideas." I had a yahoo account for 10 years and saw the huge decline. If I literally bought the services like mail forwarding, I would have left a long time ago and move all my accounts to google mail. I never once entered the Yahoo building or had any collaborations with them, but I have had way too many ideas about what they can do with their products; which leads me to the next point.

It's not the engineers and developers fault for their bad services and bad qualities. The real case points directly to management. I can bet that there are quite a few employees who don't care about passing ideas up the ladder, regardless of where they are; and the real reason is because in those companies, management is an unapproachable bully of an entity. I can't tell how many times my co-workers get together during lunch to ridicule what the managers are doing, only to be part of something that we know will fail, and trust me we tried all in vain for change. When you have employees opening up, and really show signs of contributing, and actually enjoy the process of providing those ideas without fear of backlash... THAT is the signs of good upper management... THAT is the sign of a good company. This move of trying to limit remote connection is telling me the real scape goats and the ones who aren't part of the building, shifting liability from their own failures to someone else's.

Now Best Buy is giving into all this.. it doesn't make any sense how they can just make a move like that without even THINKING of how much reward it would be in the long run. It's not like there aren't companies out there that aren't following this kind of rule already.. there have been companies for years that never had remote access.. and are they showing signs of success?

If anyone really wants to know a true CEO.. a master of his game.. check out Joel Spolsky from "Joel on Software". The guy has one of the best models for a business corporation I've seen, and I commend him for his catering to his employees.

Re:Which is totally fine...

[poofmeisterp]

If you don't mind losing 20% of your workforce in about a week. It's a buyers market for IT Professionals right now.

Attrition is cheaper than layoff. HINT. NUDGE.

Re:Which is totally fine...

[poofmeisterp]

"Will code for food" so says the sign the man on the corner street is holding. While a line of college students outside of Yahoo are saying "I will pay YOU just to work there for experience and references". Ok, not that bad -yet-. Getting there though.

Oh, I'm sure he'll get a job once new news covers the "mysterious jobless guy on the street with the best sign-making artistic skills ever seen". /sarcasm

Hypocrites as usual

[kenp2002]

"How dare you disagree with me and not like my way of life. YOU MUST BE SILENCED IN THE NAME OF TOLERANCE!!!!", typical.

These moves are one thing and one thing only

[Lord Bitman]

The *only* reason for these new policies is to fire people without needing to admit that these people are being fired.

Why lay off 800 people due to financial difficulties when you can lay off 400 and say that 400 chose to leave for unrelated reasons?