{"id":98,"date":"2013-03-01T16:48:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T16:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/2013\/03\/01\/no-more-remote-work-at-yahoo\/"},"modified":"2016-10-29T05:48:59","modified_gmt":"2016-10-29T05:48:59","slug":"no-more-remote-work-at-yahoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/2013\/03\/01\/no-more-remote-work-at-yahoo\/","title":{"rendered":"No more remote work at Yahoo"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a long-time advocate of remote work, both as a participant and as a manager, I was going to sit down and write a piece about what a misguided decision Yahoo has made to ban the practice. But then I saw this piece from Jason Fried the Signal vs Noise<\/a> blog. <\/p>\n

I think David nailed this one.<\/p>\n

No more remote work at Yahoo<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Employees at Yahoo have had a rough decade. The company has been drifting aimlessly with little vision, an endless parade of CEOs, and a flatlined stock price. That\u2019s not exactly a conducive environment to be inspired and motivated within, let alone do the stellar work that Yahoo needs to pull out of the rut.So it\u2019s no wonder that they\u2019ve been suffering from severe brain drain for a long time. But Yahoo is a big company, and there are surely still lots of talented people who don\u2019t want to leave (or can\u2019t)\u2014waiting for better times. Unfortunately, it appears they\u2019ll be kept waiting, if Yahoo\u2019s announcement<\/a> of \u201cno more remote work\u201d is anything to go by:<\/p>\n

Beginning in June, we\u2019re asking all employees with work-from-home arrangements to work in Yahoo! offices. If this impacts you, your management has already been in touch with next steps. And, for the rest of us who occasionally have to stay home for the cable guy, please use your best judgment in the spirit of collaboration. Being a Yahoo isn\u2019t just about your day-to-day job, it is about the interactions and experiences that are only possible in our offices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The leadership vacuum at Yahoo is not going to be filled by executive decrees issued on such flimsy foundations. Imagine you\u2019re a remote worker at Yahoo and you read that. Hell, imagine you\u2019re any kind of worker at Yahoo and you read that. Are you going to be filled with go-getter spirit and leap to the opportunity to make Yahoo more than just \u201cyour day-to-day job\u201d? Of course not, you\u2019re going to be angry at such a callous edict, declared without your consultation.What this reveals more than anything is that Yahoo management doesn\u2019t have a clue as to who\u2019s actually productive and who\u2019s not. In their blindness they\u2019re reaching for the lowest form of control a manager can assert: Ensuring butts in seats for eight hours between 9-5+. Though while they can make people come to the office under the threat of termination, they most certainly cannot make those same people motivated to do great work.Great work simply doesn\u2019t happen in environments with so little trust. Revoking the \u201cyard time privileges\u201d like this reeks of suspicions that go far beyond just people with remote work arrangements. Read this line one more time: \u201cplease use your best judgment in the spirit of collaboration\u201d. When management has to lay it on so thick that they don\u2019t trust you with an afternoon at home waiting for the cable guy without a stern \u201cplease think of the company\u201d, you know something is horribly broken.The real message is that teams and their managers can\u2019t be trusted to construct the most productive environments on their own. They are so mistrusted, in fact, that a \u201czero tolerance\u201d policy is needed to ensure their compliance. No exceptions!Who cares if Jack is the best member of the team but has to live in Iowa because his doctor wife got placement at a hospital there? Or if Jill simply can\u2019t deal with an hour-long commute anymore and wants to spend more time with the kids? With a zero tolerance policy, there\u2019s simply no flexibility to bend for the best of the team, and thus the company. The result is a net loss.Now imagine all the people who actually have a choice of where they want to work. Does management really think that the best Yahoo employees currently on remote work arrangements will simply buckle and cave? Why on earth would they do that given the wonderful alternatives available to remote workers today? No, they\u2019re simply going to leave, and only those without options will be left behind (and resentful).Yahoo already isn\u2019t at the top of any \u201cmost desirable places to work\u201d list. A decade of neglect and mounting bureaucracy has ensured that. Further limiting the talent pool Yahoo has to draw from to those willing to relocate to Sunnyvale, or another physical office, is the last thing the company needs.Companies like Google and Apple can get away with more restrictive employment policies because they\u2019re at the top of their game and highly desirable places to work. Many people are willing to give up the improvements that remote work can bring to their life to be part of that. Yahoo just isn\u2019t there. It\u2019s in no position of strength to be playing hardball with existing and future employees.The superficial trinkets, like a free phone<\/a> or free meals at the cubicle compound, are simply not going to serve as adequate passage for a zero tolerance work place that\u2019s still fumbling its way out of a haze of disillusion. In fact, it cheapens those initiatives when the things that really matter, like the power of teams to recruit and retain the best, are curbed.The timing of all this couldn\u2019t be worse either. Remote work is on a rapid ascent, and not just among hot tech companies like Github, Automattic, or thousands of others. It\u2019s been taking hold in supposedly stodgy big companies like Intel, IBM, Accenture, and many others. Worse than simply being late to that party is to try to turn back the clock and bait\u2019n\u2019switch your existing workforce.Yahoo deserves better than this. It\u2019s one of the classic brands of the internet and it\u2019s painful to see it continue its missteps, especially on something so fool-hearted as trusting its employees and attracting the best talent.But if recent history is any guide, I guess Yahoos without options to leave can console themselves with the fact that the average CEO term in the past six years has been a mere one year. So the odds are good that a new boss will be in place within long.
Interested in learning more about remote work? Checkout our upcoming book REMOTE: Office Not Required<\/a>. It details all our lessons from more than a decade working remotely along with those from the growing list of other companies reaping the same rewards.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Via Signal vs. Noise<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a long-time advocate of remote work, both as a participant and as a manager, I was going to sit down and write a piece about what a misguided decision Yahoo has made to ban the practice. But then I saw this piece from Jason Fried the Signal vs Noise blog. I think David nailed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p88Hib-1A","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":839,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}