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Comment by greyman | Hacker News Reader

But wasn't that move following her observation, that (some of those) work from home people just haven't work?

That might have been a machete approach to a problem more appropriate for a few dozen scalpels.

Maybe Yahoo didn't have time to sort through all those cases, but it shouldn't be surprised that:

1. Yahoo might have pushed out many people who didn't deserve it. Many of them are working parents and perhaps people with disabilities.

2. Yahoo might have pushed out "cheaters" without really telling them why, leaving them disgruntled about work-from-home policies instead of embarrassed that they were caught not doing their jobs.

3. Yahoo singled out a certain category of "cheaters" unfairly. I'll bet $5000 that there were at least twenty always-at-their-desks Yahoo employees who "wasted" a significant amount of time on HN, facebook, reddit, Yahoo video, or just talking about hobbies and sports with coworkers. Taking the ax to at-home slackers and ignoring the general slacker problem is slightly unfair. It doesn't project communication and transparency; it teaches employees to hide their routine from their bosses as much as possible.

My old boss had a very relevant point about why the company would fire folks as they did. If you have a guy on your team who usually doesn't work enough or comes late and leaves early you can fire him, or put up aa time clock, but the second you put up that time clock you've just alienated all the other good employees who didn't need babysitting. If people abuse the system, fire them and don't punish the loyal and hardworking. Mass punishment may work in the military, but this is the private sector and I have options.

Mass punishment is also pretty shitty in the military.

It's much different though in that the goal to get the group to a point where it is self-correcting (e.g. of new troops).

Yes and no. The stated objective was to improve collaboration in "hallway and cafeteria" discussions [1]. Privately, former Yahoo employees said that the policy led to "people slacking off like crazy, not being available, and spending a lot of time on non-Yahoo projects," which is a problem with the management of employees not the policy itself.

If someone is working from home and not meeting their duties they should be fired. Eliminating the policy was a band-aid, having hard conversations and getting rid of the slackers (and their managers) would have been the cure.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/26/us-workplace-flexi...

I bet if she scanned the work from office people she would also find people who just don't work.

At one horrible startup I worked for I would do 3 hours of work and then wait out another 6 hours because of the 9 hour face time expectation. I had high output because I'm good at what I do but they couldn't wrap their heads around not having me there constantly.

I ended up quitting because I was tired of watching my boss browse Facebook and sports blogs all day.

Guessing they didn't get a good exit?

Before I got there they rolled the dice and walked away from a $250MM acquisition offer and ousted their original CEO. They were somehow able to acquire additional funding before I left but, based on the numbers I saw, they were using questionable models to indicate that they were more profitable than they are.

They still exist and will probably take another 18 months to wither and die. The experience taught me to look hard for red flags and to hold my company as accountable as myself.

Absolutely, you are as much of a business as your employer.

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