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The Data That Drove Yahoo's Telecommuting Ban
Stiletto writes "Business Insider and All Things D are reporting that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's decision to ban telecommuting was data-driven, as you'd expect out of the former Google exec. After spending months frustrated at how empty Yahoo parking lots were, Mayer consulted Yahoo's VPN logs to see if remote employees were checking in enough. Despite all the outrage and flak she's getting from those outside the company for the move, some ex-employees are praising the decision, citing abuse, slacking off, and general 'unavailability' of folks working from home."
I am glad that the background for the decision is coming to light after all the vitriol.
Having managed a (partially) telecommuting workforce before, nothing is more frustrating than not being able to reach people or get answers in a timely manner.
It really depends on the combination of management, tasks, and individuals to make telecommuting work.
In my personal case, admittedly, we had insufficient procedure for measuring progress to ensure equal productivity through telecommuting, and people were quick to take advantage of that (yes, I am admitting management failure here) This was not in an IT-related field but a more traditional business field.
"A lot of people hid. There were all these employees [working remotely] and nobody knew they were still at Yahoo."
It's amazing that a company can have people on the payroll, and the managers forget about them..
I agree that the root problem is management, but refuse to discount that remote work is also a problem at some companies. I work, and have worked at places where remote work usually meant slacking for the day. At other places, some people that work remote were useless and unproductive members of the team.
If everyone is at the office, peer pressure can help stir the shit off of the bottom. When people work where management is not good, the shit at the bottom does bring everyone else down, and even the best workers begin to smell bad and lose their motivation. When management fails to maintain motivation, peer pressure at least keeps the people with some motivation from giving up and becoming slackers. Remote access drastically reduces the impact of peer pressure on coworkers.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Unless the team was deeply dysfunctional to start with - I have yet to see an environment where getting people together in one room to interact wasn't vastly more productive than trying to do so virtually. Though the slashdot demographic is virulently misanthropic, they're off on the left hand tail of the bell curve in that respect.
I had a friend who successfully telecommuted for about five years... and then things started going to hell. The main cause was normal turnover at the office, slowly but surely he was no longer dealing with the people he'd dealt with before moving to another coast... but with complete strangers to who he was just a voice on the telephone. They didn't really think of him as fellow employee, just a cipher who coughed up blobs of code on demand. He's working in an office now, and actually much happier than he was telecommuting.