For the most part, if these Yahoo employees could have gotten jobs at Google, Facebook or Apple, they would have jumped ship already. Yahoo is a sinking ship and has been for years.
Both companies I have worked for:
If you have a regular telecommuting day (or permanently telecommute) you must have child care arrangements for any child under the age of eight.
If you are telecommuting to take care of a sick child, or for the day off school - on an occasional basis, you are fine with kids at home.
My wife’s agency allows non-managers to telecommute up to two days a week. As part of the deal, you are expressly required to have some sort of child care arrangement in place. This makes sense to me since I have tried to do work stuff from home when watching a sick child and I got very little done. A little kid is going to require a whole lot of attention that is going to eat away at your productivity.
My understanding of Yahoo!'s policy is that you can still work from home on days that you have a sick child or days that you have repair people coming.
I have a friend who is a manager at the company I work for. He told me that if I ever needed something, anything, from my manager, I should not talk about how it benefits me, only how it benefits the company.
What I want to tell the company is how it is going to save them money, free up parking lot and office space, cut down on absenteeism and keep output high.
There are drawbacks to telecommuting. One is there may be an initial outlay of money for equipment. Productivity can hampered by power and internet outages not related to the office. Another is that some people don’t work well without supervision.
The telecommuting option is at the discretion of the company. It should be given as perk for the best employees. I agree that cutting out entirely seems short-sighted. And the CEO seems like a prick. But they may aware of performance issues with telecommuting employees that they would rather not release and would rather scrap the whole thing.
I read somewhere that an employee claimed that Mayer made this decision at least partly off of the number of cars in the parking lot when she came in and at 5 pm.
What I’ve seen of the news - it’s NOT about cost but rather quality of innovation and work.
The contention is (not saying I do or don’t support it) that more interaction leads to more creativity.
Now I don’t know about you, but its pretty hard to argue that Yahoo doesn’t need more creativity.
I know you know this, but it’s worth mentioning to others that it’s the people with the kids in that 8-14 range than might be the most invested in telecommuting for the sake of their kids. Those middle school years can be a bitch: kids don’t need minute-by-minute supervision, but coming home to an empty house for 3 hours every day after school (and hanging out in an empty house all day during the summer) is suboptimal. There aren’t a lot of fantastic childcare options, especially from 10-14ish, when they are really too old even for after school care, but when they will really benefit from having an adult within shouting range.
If I had kids in that range, telecommuting would be something worth taking a significant pay cut–or even staying on a sinking ship–for.
Maybe Yahoo! could build child-care centers next to their offices, for kids under school-age. People show up for work, their kids are down the street and Yahoo! looks like they care about everyone’s kids.
Some companies already have day care centers in their corporate campuses. So parents can meet their kids for lunch, or use a webcam to check on them during the day. But remember that telecommuting appeals to non-parents also. We have people who telecommute from other states, ones without any offices of my employer. So if we instituted such a policy, some of our telecommuters would have to leave the company.
The announcement is a bullshit dramatic gesture aimed at wall street to make the CEO look like she is taking charge and getting the ship back on course. Real policies designed to increase productivity are implemented over time with test groups to work out the kinks.
This is a good point. Lundberg found lower stress in eworkers in 2002, but Lipnack and Stamps in 2001 found only a few workers were suited for it. There are personality tests which can predict which workers are likely to perform as eworkers.
It was a leaked memo, durpy.
A “leaked” memo. I doubt there was any question in anyone’s mind that it would get out somehow to someone.
I’d actually push that back - I remember hanging in a friend’s empty house. I was in college - but most of them were in high school - skipping class.
Eight however, is around the age where you can have a kid at home without “mommy…mommy…mommy” (or daddy…daddy…daddy)- they can get their own snacks, control their own remote, play outside without having to be watched - you can get work done.
If anyone can get much done work-wise with an active two year old, they are a better person than I ever was. Or their job takes significant less concentration.
When the company I worked for laid off 20% of its staff, almost every strict telecommuter was on the chopping block. They didn’t have the relationships and the feedback loop of having someone see them work.
I think that if you want to telecommute and your job lets you - that’s great. But it is a risky job than showing up in the office every day. Eventually, your bosses boss is going to have to let 10 people go. And he is going to say “that Dewey guy…who is he? What does he do? Are you SURE he is busy out there all the time?” And your boss might say “well, he produces great output” but if his boss says “I don’t know him, cut him” you are out.
They told us to show up for work, and we said nothing.
They told us to be there on time, and we said nothing.
They told us to stay focused and productive, and we said nothing.
Pretty soon they are going to tell us to get off our asses!!1!11! :eek:
Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Finance are actually pretty successful brands for Yahhoo! (they have the best Fantasy Football service, IMO).
And Melissa Mayer is a fox, so i am very shallow-ly saying that she is right to do whatever it is she is doing, based on nothing more than her looks.
I’m really curious about the idea of a gold-plated bitch. If she were a nickel-plated bitch would that be an increase or decrease in bitchiness?
I just can’t work up a great deal of outrage over a policy requiring employees to show up to work. Will we also be upset if she bans three hour lunches? She’s supposed to be running the company, and presumably thinks this is good for the company. If you don’t want to work in an office, go work someplace else.
ETA: Wow. She might be the best-looking CEO I’ve ever seen. Not that it affects my opinion of the policy.
With a $60 million compensation package, you’d think she could afford gold fill, if not solid.