Gotta disagree with you here. The OP’s very argument is that Mayer is a “bitch” because as a woman in power she’s not in touch with the needs of her female underlings.
The OP (and lots of the general buzz on the airwaves/internet) is all about the temerity of this woman to enact a policy that is ZOMG bad for MOMMIES!
Exactly. I don’t think I’ve used Yahoo in more years than I can count. Google works just fine so why bother changing?
I’d be interested to see if they actually save any money.
My company spends $20/mo for a phone, and for VPN software that they already provide everyone, so that I can work from home. They don’t spend for office space, office phone, office network, office furniture, parking, etc.
I also save time/money from not having to commute every day, which I would expect compensation for if I were to get a new job at a traditional office.
My company decided to go cheapazoid on us a couple of years ago, saying “We’ve decided that we’re only going to pay for your phone line and office consumables, no internet, no office furniture, you’re responsible for those. If you don’t want that deal, we’re happy to give you a desk at your local office location.” I didn’t like it, but never seriously considered actually going back to the office.
If Yahoo doesn’t provide on-site day care, then whacking tele-commuting while building a nursery next to her office is hypocritical bullshit.
Is it really about the policy itself or the change?
The policy of having employees show up at the office was something Steve Jobs insisted on. And he’s lionized. The vast majority Google employees (where Mayer came from) also show up at the office rather than work from home. Ditto Facebook.
Seems like she’s enacting a policy shared by the tech companies you’d want to emulate, but she’s somehow getting singled out for it. She also instituted other Google-like changes, like free meals and free phones and such (and you don’t hear about that much).
Seems like she’s trying to change the business culture at Yahoo to match other top companies that have outperformed Yahoo for years.
What gives?
HAHAHAHAHA! Oh man that was a good one. Fantasy worlds are fun aren’t they.
Seriously. “I work hard at my job. But now they actually expect me to SHOW UP!”
What I mean is… if I were to get a new job at a traditional office, I’d require a higher salary to compensate me for the cost of commuting. You know, if they expect me to leave my current job for theirs.
Put another way, I’m willing to suck on a lower salary here, because I don’t have to pay the cost of commuting every day. “Yes, I could make $X more at a different job, but then I have to pay $Y in commuting, and spend an hour and a half a day in a car, and pay for after-care for the kid, etc. Maybe I should just stay here.”
So is that he strategy? Just copy whatever Google does and then they’ll be just like Google?
I don’t really think it’s the worst offense in the world to require that employees actually go to an office, but it is pretty crummy to have a telecommute option, which no doubt was a major selling point for many who got on board, then to say “No more of that thing that drew you here in the first place.” As has been said, telecommuting is a great option for people who need to work and don’t wish to be away from their children and don’t have the option of building their own nursery for their children.
The good news is she’s apparently willing to reverse this if there turns out to be no measurable evidence that making people come in actually makes a difference. The bad news is this is probably bullshit.
You’d be amazed at what those well paid one percenters can do.
One of the things that Internet companies like Yahoo! are selling is the technology to allow people to telecommute in the first place. So things like Yahoo! Mail, Google Docs, Dropbox, etc. allow people to communicate and work together even though they may be in different locations. Does this mean that Yahoo! is admitting that concepts like cloud computing don’t work?
This is a silly way to frame the issue.
If a company wants to keep its best employees, they will need to offer competitive compensation. This might include competitive salary, benefits, or attractive working conditions (such as the option to telecommute).
If you take that away, then you are in effect reducing the compensation you offer. If you reduce it such that its no longer competitive compared to what other companies can offer, then your best employees will go to those places and your company will be left with the folks who are not quite as good and are willing to work for less total compensation.
It doesn’t make her a bad person, just a foolish and short-sighted one, since it will cost her top-flight employees and create no benefit.
Unless there actually are benefits. Whether or not they outweigh the negatives is the sort of analysis and decision-making that Mayer is being paid for, but certainly it’s not hard to imagine that they exist.
An employee (or potential employee) saying, “I would rather work from home, and I work just as well from home, and your business runs just as well as it would if I were in the office,” is not a compelling argument for telecommuting.
Nor is, “everyone will quit.”
Some will, I’m sure. Some will decide that their current level of compensation is adequate, even after having to give up telecommuting. And, Yahoo may make other changes to make having to be at the office more appealing (ie, make up for the reduction in compensation by increases elsewhere).
The image of hundreds or thousands of Yahoo employees quitting over this and just walking into other jobs at higher rates of compensation is comical.
Yes, especially since all the large “hot” companies, like Google, Facebook, Apple, and several others, also encourage working in the office.
I am arguing that the benefits do not exist, that Mayer is making a foolish (and outdated) analysis and a bad decision as a result.
Do you honestly think it’s difficult to find a job that allows telecommuting? In any industry? In a Web-based industry?
No, it’s not going to be a mass exodus, all at once, like a movie.
It’s going to be a quiet leakage of the top talent. The people who really can get a job somewhere else because they’re that good will leave; they will be replaced, but not by the best of the best - those people will join the departed top employees at places without silly policies like this.
The overwhelming majority of employees will stay - the bottom 85% - but the top 15% will fall away. And I argue that courting the bottom 85% of potential employees - the ones who will be eager to accept your job no matter what you do because they’re not that good - while a novel business strategy, is not one that has been historically successful.
There is a HUGE difference in kind between encouraging working in the office while informally allowing telecommuting on a limited basis where appropriate (which is what most of the world does), and banning it altogether as Yahoo proposes to do.
The one sounds like a reasoned business policy; the other sounds like an exercise of control for its own sake.
Not specifically to you, but the general idea. Telecommuting means working from home or remotely. It doesn’t mean you also watch your kids while you are working. Work time is work time. Even if you telecommute, you still need to find someone else to do childcare. Otherwise you’re not really working. Either you’re working, or watching your kids, not both.
As mentioned in several different places, it’s not banned altogether. There are allowances for family situations or health reasons.
They’re just falling in line with the same policies/practices exercised at the other large tech firms. But somehow, it’s resonating especially hard in this case.
Maybe this is a stupid question but never having telecommuted, IDK. I would guess it’s possible to work 2 full time jobs (or 1FT, 1PT) from home if you wanted/had to and if that’s something that enough people do, could that be a motivation?
So what? You keep bringing this up as if because some other successful company is doing it, it’s somehow integral to its success. “Hey, I hear Google has goats roaming the campus. Quick! Get us some goats!”