Yahoo's Mayer: Bashed for her telecommuting policy
The CEO gave employees an ultimatum: Work in the office -- or quit. Now she's coming under fire for an 'awful' call.
When Yahoo (YHOO) last year tapped Marissa Mayer as its new chief executive, many thought the 37-year-old (who was a mom-to-be at the time) would prove a champion of working parents. But with Mayer's recent ultimatum that telecommuters need to either come into the office or quit, some of her one-time fans are turning on her.
Many comments on Twitter reflect disappointment with her stance: Her policy is "awful for ALL workers" and "[t]his woman is RIDICULOUS!" are among the tweets sent by irate consumers, some of whom had expressed previous support for her.
Mayer's new policy was leaked on Friday, when The Wall Street Journal published a memo that it said was disclosed by "a plethora of very irked Yahoo employees."
Sent by the company's human resources chief, the memo said, "We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together." It added, "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home."
The reason for the policy change was that Yahoo found many of its telecommuters weren't productive, according to Business Insider. Many of them were depicted as hiding out, with Yahoo apparently unaware that some still worked for the company, the story adds. These hidden telecommuters reportedly worked in divisions ranging from marketing to engineering.
Regardless of Yahoo's situation with its telecommuters, Mayer's new policy is striking many one-time fans as, well, backwards.
More Americans are working from home than ever before, with a Census Bureau report from last year finding that 13.4 million people work from home. That represents a jump of 41% in a decade.
Many technology companies are big supporters of telecommuting, according to Fortune. Among those are Cisco Systems (CSCO), with 90% of its workforce counted as "regular" telecommuters, and Intel (INTC), with 81% of its employees counted as often working from home.
It's no coincidence that many tech companies support telecommuting: San Francisco, home to the tech industry, is one of the worst U.S. cities for traffic.
At least one rival is taking advantage of Mayer's gaffe, reports the Journal.
WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg wrote a pitch for working at his telecommuting-friendly company in the comments section of the article. He wrote, "For anyone who enjoys working from wherever they like in the world, and is interested in WordPress, Automattic is 100% committed to being distributed. 130 of our 150 people are outside of San Francisco."
| Tags: | DramaTechnology |
Oh please - all you whining "we want to stay at home and pretend to work all day" losers need to either get off your duffs and get into work or get the hell out of the way and let the REAL workers have your overpaid jobs! All of you "I'm-so-productive-I-get-so-much-done" bullshi**ers are full of crap and we all see it. If working at home really "worked" then civilized societies would have been doing it for 5000 years! If you're so good, then you can be so good at work like everybody else. And if this means going "backwards" then let's move backwards! Moving "forward" is having a detrimental effect on the economy and apparently "backwards" was where all the success was.
Great for this CEO! Move 'em in the work place or move 'em in the unemployment line!
The problem is NOT telecommuting. The problem is poor management oversight from lazy managers. With Mayer's new No-telecummuting policy, she is acting like a disgruntled principle who would cancel the prom just because a few students where misbehaving.
Yahoo has been going downhill for a long time. I've been trying to wean myself of Yahoo for a few years now and the new crappy news format gave me the final incentive to close my Yahoo account entirely this morning.
As one who's main office is at Home, one tends to work more than if in a "Corporate Office" It is difficult to seperate home time from work time!
I am much more refreshed going for a walk before work or at lunch than commutting 3 plus hours aday! What a waste that was!
I have a programmer friend worked for another huge company: He would get a multi million dollar with a years time leeway. He did not know when to stop working at home and get a project done in 2 months time!
People who are against working at home probably would screw off!
It is a proven fact, people are more productive working at home!
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