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Comment by nemothekid | Hacker News Reader

>This, this is just "I'm in charge, everyone in because I say so"

I doubt it's like this. From all the articles I have read, everyone seems to just be vilifying Mayer in standard linkbait form. Mayer could have said that ("In my opinion as the CEO we can only do this by being in the office at the same time, no flexi-hours, no mucking about, everyone in.") but it wouldn't matter because everyone would twist her words.

Even the whole issue is sort of overblown. AFAIK, Mayer has only said you can't always work at home. There is nothing she said about cutting flexi-hours, or working from sometimes.

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OK, finding the original is hard work - in fact not possible

  YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION — DO NOT 
  FORWARD

...

  To become the absolute best place to work, communication 
  and collaboration will be important, so we need to be 
  working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we 
  are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions 
  and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, 
  meeting new people,

But ... it just does not make sense ...

1. If we take as read that working in physical proximity increases communication (often, not always certainly) then why have multiple offices? Who exactly is supposed to work together with whom? Why is the San Francisco office not the one and only office? Why have a Beijing office if people there cannot work with people in Bangalore

2. I hope I am not villifying Meyer - I think she has taken on a difficult high profile role. I have never run a 10,000's people company. Its probably quite difficult.

3. Scaling remote working. No organisation seems to effectgively scale past the dunbar number - communication and collaboration drops alarmingly. (Its not intra-group comms that drops, its the inter-group comms.)

Here's the deal which I see - this isn't what anyone here is making it out to be.

It's a wide strategy with its real target a set of managers. I'll bet money on it.

The secondary benefits and even the primary touted reason are great things to have, but they aren't the main goal.

This is based on what I'm seeing from looking at CEO in a non tech firm doing.

The aim of a new report or designation being created so far has is always aimed at getting and succeeding to get, multiple targets achieved, with the real target being buried somewhere inside and discrete.

I'm sorry but I don't get it - who are you saying Meyer is "really" targeting and why?

> 3. Scaling remote working. No organisation seems to effectgively scale past the dunbar number - communication and collaboration drops alarmingly. (Its not intra-group comms that drops, its the inter-group comms.)

Do you have any data on this? What about organizations like Canonical who are almost all full remote workers? Surely Canonical cannot have less than 150 workers.

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