View Full Version : Yahoo workers must show up
CaseyMiller
2-26-13, 5:31pm
Yahoo workers must work in the office:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/26/opinion/fisman-yahoo/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
I would love to know the reasoning behind this decision but my guess would be a few ruined it for the many by being unreachable at a critical time.
I would love to know the reasoning behind this decision but my guess would be a few ruined it for the many by being unreachable at a critical time.
The story I read this morning claimed that the reason was that incidental collaboration is a key to a successful company. My experience is that it is true. I've telecommuted, sometimes for weeks at a time, and, for most jobs, it is difficult. Even with email and conference phones and Web conferences and instant messaging, there's still some -- what's the term? protocol? friction? -- a layer between the communicators. Nuances (the look that, despite the head nods and the mouth saying 'yes', indicates your colleague really doesn't get what you just said) are missed. Hallway encounters (where I worked, a tremendous way to cut through the clutter and get stuff done) are nonexistent. Even beyond work topics, the chance to get to know colleagues better (where one went on vacation; whose daughter also is in Girl Scouts, etc.) is part of the social lubricant that makes work easier -- and that's harder to do remotely.
Google, Apple, 3M, and several other companies known for innovation are trying hard to generate more collaboration across groups and even across business units. They sponsor events at which people can get to know each other. They create spaces for impromptu meetings, complete with smartboards and wi-fi connections. Remaining siloed forces you to improve almost solely through operational efficiency. The great ideas and the leaps forward in design and manufacture come from cross-pollination. Anything that can make that happen is a good thing.
Having switched back and forth from working from home to having to work in the office and back several times. I've been affected by a "top-down" decision like this before and it appeared to be "we do it this way just because that's what boss likes".
The few ruining it for the many usually happens lower in the chain and I've seen this, too. At my work someone was unavailable when they were supposedly working from home, and now their entire group has to work from the office. But that was a decision by their immediate manager.
It would really bite if I had to start showing up at the office - my job was relocated out of Boston. Given commuting times and all the other stuff that goes with working in the office, I'd lose about 30-35 hours of my own time every week.
My experience working overseas leads me to question the necessity of such actions. I collaborate just fine with colleagues 12-13 time zones and thousands of miles away. In some cases, my transpacific working relationships are actually better/smoother than the local ones! Most of our communication is done by email, with the occasional late night or early morning call when there is something urgent. In many cases we actually work MORE efficiently this way, because I can work on somethign all day on my end, hand it off to a colleague to work on the next day, and at 7am when I am back in the office the next day it is there waiting for me for the next step. We also can cover serious medical issues with grantees more or less 24/7 this way without the burden falling too much on one person.
There are probably a lot of people who slack while telecommuting, but for me I am more productive working remotely because there are fewer distractions.
One of the endless frustrations of my job is that I interact with a lot of people remotely just fine, and it is obvious from my work product and from the feedback on it, but my boss insists on us being in the office. I can sometimes work from home if there is an emergency, but it is rare and I am loathe to ask for permission because I know he doesn't like it. So I endure nearly 3 hours of commuting every day to go and sit at the desk and do pretty much exactly what I would do if I was working from home. Only somewhat less efficiently.
Sigh.
lhamo
My personal view is that little of note was ever accomplished by committee, that "face time" in the office is more like wasted time, and that Lhamo's absolutely right about being able to work just fine with people you never even see. In my all-too-brief editing career, I was practically love-bombed by my writers and we couldn't have worked better together. I met exactly one of them in person. So a big, wet electronic raspberry to Yahoo.
I'm someone who does both as well, and mostly those impromptu meetings in the office, while fun, are distracting to those not involved. And often deteriorate into unrelated conversations. And we try to not make too many decisions verbally. We like to have a paper trail (email trail) and random meetings result in half the department not knowing what is going on. Anything important has to be written up by somebody anyhow. Since we use email, software programs and the shared drive documents most of the time anyhow, there is minimal lost by telecommuting. I am also more productive at home, though don't know about my co-workers.
I can see it being a bit awkward if I worked at home all the time, but it depends on the job. I've been doing some collaborative writing/editing for a few months now and I've never met one of the people I'm working with. It works fine to do that type of work over email only, especially as we're many time zones away.
I'm going to agree with SteveinMN on this one, with a qualifier: it depends on your job function. As some here have said their work can easily and effectively be done at home.
However, the research supports the in-person cross-pollination effect, especially if your workplace layout is physically conducive to it. For example, public spaces as mundane as company cafeterias can allow for interaction that would otherwise not occur.
My own corporation goes to a lot of expense to bring their top tech people (engineers, scientists) across many disciplines to an annual high-level invitation only show and tell (best way I can describe it). The main reason is for the hoped-for cross-pollination to energize thinking and further innovation.
Ugg! I am "office based" because this reduces the intrusion of work into my home, and my commute is about 8 minutes in heavy traffic. And yet....I prefer to be in the office before 8am when the whining office nurse comes in and complains about everything from how often she has to answer her phone (it's her job) to how slow her computer is (probably about average) OR after about 4pm when everyone else heads for home. Weekends are best. It's just me and the occasional walk through security guy.
Collaboration? Cross-pollination? Sorry, hasn't happened at my place for decades.
I actually have had ideas, submitted to management.....they don't get it.
Don't get me wrong, I love patient care. I hate the system that pays for it.
gimmethesimplelife
2-27-13, 12:57am
My experience working overseas leads me to question the necessity of such actions. I collaborate just fine with colleagues 12-13 time zones and thousands of miles away. In some cases, my transpacific working relationships are actually better/smoother than the local ones! Most of our communication is done by email, with the occasional late night or early morning call when there is something urgent. In many cases we actually work MORE efficiently this way, because I can work on somethign all day on my end, hand it off to a colleague to work on the next day, and at 7am when I am back in the office the next day it is there waiting for me for the next step. We also can cover serious medical issues with grantees more or less 24/7 this way without the burden falling too much on one person.
There are probably a lot of people who slack while telecommuting, but for me I am more productive working remotely because there are fewer distractions.
One of the endless frustrations of my job is that I interact with a lot of people remotely just fine, and it is obvious from my work product and from the feedback on it, but my boss insists on us being in the office. I can sometimes work from home if there is an emergency, but it is rare and I am loathe to ask for permission because I know he doesn't like it. So I endure nearly 3 hours of commuting every day to go and sit at the desk and do pretty much exactly what I would do if I was working from home. Only somewhat less efficiently.
Sigh.
lhamoIn a world so obsessed with profits and efficiency, where's the efficiency in your wasting all that time commuting when you could be working at home more productively due to decreased stress? I often don't understand business decisions.....good thing it's been years since I have worked in a standard office environment. Rob
gimmethesimplelife
2-27-13, 1:01am
My personal view is that little of note was ever accomplished by committee, that "face time" in the office is more like wasted time, and that Lhamo's absolutely right about being able to work just fine with people you never even see. In my all-too-brief editing career, I was practically love-bombed by my writers and we couldn't have worked better together. I met exactly one of them in person. So a big, wet electronic raspberry to Yahoo.I have to say in my recent foray into doing more secret shops, I am perfectly content to do my shops, submit all forms electronically, and rely on email for any questions or necessary communication. I realize that there are more complex types of work being discussed here, but I have to wonder, if I am able to get my work done with no face time - thank goodness I'm immune to this as an IC - and with minimal if any actual conversation - why can't this sift upwards towards more complex work? At least for those who work best not dealing with face time and conversation such as myself - or at least dealing with a minimum of both. Rob
My last boss could have worked from home. She never came out of her office to talk to me or invited me in for a chat. She wanted everything electronic for documentation. Needless to say we had zero relationship and I was her personal management assistant.
SteveinMN
2-27-13, 10:50am
I have to wonder, if I am able to get my work done with no face time - thank goodness I'm immune to this as an IC - and with minimal if any actual conversation - why can't this sift upwards towards more complex work?
You kind of answered your own question. Telecommuting or working remotely can work fine for discrete jobs like secret shopping or medical transcription or dispatching people and goods or even sales (many sales reps "telecommute" as we're defining it here).
But more complex work typically requires at least brief periods of intensive interaction with others. It requires collaboration to bring forth ideas and concepts, shape them, and define the roles people have in executing them. lhamo and Kestra have had different experiences on the matter, but where I worked, when I was testing software from another country, working with the developers wherever to illustrate problems in their code or performance issues, the time zone difference meant one or more of us was working well off the clock. U.S.-night meetings with Chinese developers. U.S.-early-morning meetings to catch our British partners. Heaven help you if one project was from China or Vietnam and the other concurrent project was in Europe...
More immediately, testing windows often were narrow, so when something went wrong (the test system was misconfigured or it failed during testing), you needed to find someone/anyone in the appropriate area to fix it quickly or several hours would be wasted for everyone. It's helpful to be able to shout out to a coworker to see what you're seeing in an effort to troubleshoot or identify an issue -- much harder to do when not nearby. Similarly, not all training can be offered on-line. Brainstorming, IMHO, is harder to do over a telephone. And then there's the big one: the assumption by management that anyone not sitting in a cube is somehow goofing off. Changing that perception probably will require a generation or two of managers to retire.
American business in particular has gotten much more used to "virtual" workspace than ever before. Not using email or instant messaging or Web conferencing or file shares is no longer an option at most workplaces (in most respects, our workplace could be much more casual with paper trails than Kestra's). Maybe someday, 30-40 years from now, everyone will work at a place of their own choosing. Technology may allow it (really, what we have for teleconferencing today beats what was available a decade ago by several orders of magnitude). People may allow it, too.
ApatheticNoMore
2-27-13, 3:50pm
I really don't think there is much gained by coming in to work everyday at all. But I spend 2 hours in traffic every day to do it nontheless. If people were allowed to work at home even 1 or 2 days a week I can see the benefit and can't see it having any impact on productivity whatsoever (unless people used the time to goof off of course). The main thing that prevents it isn't even obstinate bosses though, it's not investing in decent VPN.
Some consultant made a mint by coming up with a report on working at home. They have no "skin in the game".
Much like the consultant at a huge pharma that said they would save $400,000 per year if they got rid of all (100%) individual garbage cans. Now all the extremely highly paid employees have to store used kleenex and all kinds of stuff in drawers as they are not allowed to bring in their own garbage cans. Employees are making charts of time and steps to find cans which are centrally located. One employee goes 66 steps to get to a can. They are not located in places like next to copy machines where ream covers are discarded and the holes next to coffee makers were not covered even though the underneath garbage cans were removed. This was one of the most stupid (and I truly mean stupid) decisions ever made.
I bet the consultant has a garbage can at his desk where ever it is located.
It's important to be able to have face-time, as they say, with your managers and colleagues, but ONLY if you have a collaborative workplace.
If your workplace is uptight, top-down, rigid and hierarchical, where managers make all the decisions and reject input from below, there's simply NO point in people's bodies being in the same building together. If your mind isn't needed, it doesn't matter where your body is.
This is my situation now. We're a talented team with incredible combined experience, but management utterly rejects collaboration with us. Knowledge is hoarded, decisions get made at the teeny tiny tip of the hierarchy, and secrets are cultivated as a form of power-wielding. (This can easily happen in a creative company where the managers, on the other hand, are linear bean-counters.)
I call it management by surprise. Stuff just gets dropped on us without warning. We're expected to implement ill-thought out, off-the cuff, and often just plain crazy crap, immediately, and without a peep - no input needed. It's demoralizing to be told to siddown and shaddup over and over again, especially when you're experienced in your field and have something to offer.
Everyone on my team could do exactly what they're doing in the office right now, from home, without any change in the product. It shouldn't be that way, and wouldn't be - if creative thinking and collaboration were encouraged.
OMG! This is something that would happen where I work.
Some consultant made a mint by coming up with a report on working at home. They have no "skin in the game".
Much like the consultant at a huge pharma that said they would save $400,000 per year if they got rid of all (100%) individual garbage cans. Now all the extremely highly paid employees have to store used kleenex and all kinds of stuff in drawers as they are not allowed to bring in their own garbage cans. Employees are making charts of time and steps to find cans which are centrally located. One employee goes 66 steps to get to a can. They are not located in places like next to copy machines where ream covers are discarded and the holes next to coffee makers were not covered even though the underneath garbage cans were removed. This was one of the most stupid (and I truly mean stupid) decisions ever made.
I bet the consultant has a garbage can at his desk where ever it is located.
It was done (garbage can thing) at the company that laid off hubby and where he qualified to retire. He has free meals but hates now to go into the cafeteria and listen to all the negative comments and issues. Not worth the meals. (We only live about 1.5 miles from corporate headquarters.) We are so thankful we dumped the stock when he turned 50.
His whole group was dealing with forward planning and consultation but management decided they did not need any planning help.
I think it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. I agree that a smart manager should consider letting a proven performer work from home one day a week, or be flexible about working from home in certain circumstances. And by circumstances I don't mean you want to stay home to watch your kids at the same time - that's not fair to the kids or the employer because it doesn't work.
But to me it's one of those "it's a privilege not a right" situations - if the company requires you to be present in-person, you have to do it.
I feel really blessed to have landed in a place where working at home several days a week is the norm. There are only a handful of us who show up every day, and I'm just there every day since I'm still new and getting to learn how the place operates. This is just not for the new moms- both men and women participate, many with older or grown kids. Most of the management are in the office even less than the engineers. We are a distributed company anyways- we have developers in Scotland, Atlanta and Providence. Often your boss isn't even in the same office as you. When I'm leading a conference call where half the people are geographically remote, what difference does it make where /I/ make the phone call from? Our company has really great collaboration tools, so its pretty seamless most of the time. For important or sensitive meetings, I'd still prefer face to face to be able to pick up on body language- but I'm in the minority opinion there.
This is the first place I've worked where this is so routine and the first place where the /managers/ also do this. I plan to ask to work at home on Fridays starting in April- what can my boss say as he is in only once a week or so.
I think it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. I agree that a smart manager should consider letting a proven performer work from home one day a week, or be flexible about working from home in certain circumstances. And by circumstances I don't mean you want to stay home to watch your kids at the same time - that's not fair to the kids or the employer because it doesn't work.
But to me it's one of those "it's a privilege not a right" situations - if the company requires you to be present in-person, you have to do it.
This makes sense and is exactly how my company does it. You have to have the type of role that makes working remotely feasible as well. Some jobs just aren't work from home jobs.
I go into the office whenever the company needs me to do so or I have particular work I'm doing that is easiest done in the office. So management and I are both flexible. But I'm incredibly lucky to have the job and supervisors/managers that I have. I know that most jobs are nowhere near that good.
AmeliaJane
2-28-13, 2:58pm
I think there can be advantages to having everyone in the same place at the same time, and that it does create a certain kind of workplace culture and staff which may be desirable depending on what you want to accomplish--and if Marissa Mayer wants that for Yahoo, it is her privilege to decide that as CEO. I don't agree with some of the rhetoric around the internet (not here :)) just now that borders on claiming that people's human rights are being violated by not providing workplace flexibility. Now obviously there are also costs, including loss of productivity among staff who work better with flexibility, and perhaps difficulty in hiring by not offering a benefit that other competing companies do. Perhaps she has considered those costs, and feels it is worth it to accomplish a major change in workplace culture, or maybe she is a poor manager who has not thought all of it through.
My kind of work is flexible in terms of schedule--we need people regularly on nights and weekends, which trades off to allowing flexibility during the workweek that can be valuable to some. We aren't flexible in terms of place--you really have to be here, both because of what we do, and the collaborative nature of our work. I would be extremely reluctant to approve regular work-at-home barring extraordinary circumstances, even if a staff member felt it would work better for their productivity.
ApatheticNoMore
2-28-13, 3:15pm
If not much of a drive, coming to an office has benefits, you get a little social contact (not much), they pay to heat and cool it (although often too cool) and have central air (whereas you have a window box A/C) and the ergonomics are often set up better than your goodwill table with a laptop on it or whatever :). On the other hand the lack of natural light in offices does tend to drive me toward depression.
The main problem happens if you have a serious commute with lots of traffic. That's painful. And the company has no incentive to accomodate you wanting to work at home if you do, because they don't pay your gas, you do, and they don't pay for congestion, cities do, and they don't pay for the carbon burned, the whole planet does. I doubt yahoo is competing for workers via benefits or anything, yahoo has long since ceased to be a place likely to attract people who specifically want to work for it (that's for the googles of the world), but it is still the type of place to attract people who need a job, any type of place is that type of place.
CaseyMiller
3-1-13, 3:05am
Yahoo has had a succession of leadership changes. Chances are much of their current management knows they're on their way out and is not motivated to get anything done. The remaining workforce may be burned out from changes in leadership and constantly changing objectives. Projects probably were not getting done so they pulled the plug on working from home.
Project teams that work remotely can fall into a rut of having the same meetings over and over without moving forward. Add in a regional difference and it can become very frustrating.
My bet is they will be required to come to the office but will also have to work from home to keep up with the workload.
Does anyone think as I do that this is a painless way to cull the staff? There may be other reasons for the decision, but could not this be one of them?
I know people who would retire rather than resume a lengthy commute, others who work hundreds of miles from their plants, one who works in the US for a company whose headquarters are in Europe. Think of the impact on stay-at-home parents who can put in their eight or more hours without the added commute time, and on a daily schedule that accommodates their job and home commitments.
If working at home was not a term of hire, an employee who refuses to relocate closer, who quits rather than resumes commuting, etc., has no basis for applying for unemployment insurance and/or may choose to leave before she/he is vested.
For me, this is another indication that the American worker is losing ground.
For me, this is another indication that the American worker is losing ground.
It wasn't that long ago -- maybe a generation -- that every worker showed up at work. There was no telecommuting.
I think the far greater loss to the American worker occurred years ago, when many jobs morphed to 7x24 occupations only sometimes performed in the office. The same technology that allows us to work at home to avoid commutes, care for the occasional sick child, await the plumber, whatever, is being used to tie workers to their jobs almost around the clock. And, bless their fearful little Protestant-work-ethic hearts, American workers have bought into the paradigm big-time.
Would that we all had the spine our European colleagues have to establish boundaries between work and the rest of life. At the company I worked at, as recently as three years ago, our European colleagues refused to carry pagers or be on call after work hours. And that's when they were not taking their 4-6 weeks of vacation. *sigh*
My office allows occasional emergency working from home - a kid is sick, or you have to wait for a repairman for something major. But those are exceptions. Working from home is less efficient than in the office. We've all got two monitors, which works wonderfully. We often have to scan documents to send them to other offices, Customs, etc. The high speed copier/scanner works much better than anything we might have at home. The office laser printers are much better than our inexpensive home inkjet printers. Better desks and chairs, too. I know of only two people in my department who actually have what would be considered a "home office." The rest of us just work at the kitchen table!
I will say, though, that having the ABILITY to work from home when needed, even if not used much, is pretty invaluable for me and my department. It's more than just email, it's having access to the VPN and our industry software. Sometimes you need to work on something in the evening, and don't want to stay in the office by yourself. Or maybe there is an emergency.
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