A real Yahoo move
By Ruth Marcus, Wednesday, February 27, 9:53 AM - Washington Post
Marissa Mayer, bounding back to work after a two-week maternity leave, came
up with a nifty solution for juggling work and family: The Yahoo chief brought
her family to work.
Literally. The 37-year-old CEO, named to the job when she was six months
pregnant, used her own money to build a nursery next to her office. Good for
her. Baby-in-adjoining-cubicle is not a scalable solution, but Mayer is — for
the moment, anyway — unique: the first woman to give birth while heading a
Fortune 500 company.
But Mayerfs self-bestowed flexibility made the news that Yahoo is cracking down on work-from-home arrangements
especially disappointing. gTo become the absolute best place to work,
communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working
side-by-side,h Yahoo human resources chief Jackie Reses wrote in a memo obtained by Kara Swisher of the Web site allthingsd.com.
gSpeed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,h the memo
continued. gWe need to be one Yahoo, and that starts with physically being
together.h
Yahoo graciously granted dispensation, sort of, for wait-for-the-cable guy
emergencies — although, even then, employees were lectured to guse your best
judgment in the spirit of collaboration.h Like what — you wait Tuesday afternoon
and if he doesnft show, Ifll go to your house and wait for the guy Wednesday
morning?
How ironic that a technology company, dedicated to enabling connectivity,
would enforce such a retrograde, back-to-the-assembly-line edict. It reflect a
bricks-and-mortar mindset in an increasingly cyber world. How depressing that
this edict comes from a female CEO, albeit a seemingly bionic one. You have to
wonder whether this is Mayer demonstrating that she is as tough — or as
boneheaded — as any guy.
Working from home isnft just a girl thing: Nearly as many men as women work
from home, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Indeed, it isnft just a
parent thing. But it is an important tool in the arsenal of parental juggling
and parental sanity.
This is not to argue that every employee should be able to work at home,
every day. Of course not. Some jobs obviously lend themselves to telecommuting
better than others. Working from home does not mean doing without child care
when the kids are little and would be too distracting.
Nor is it a license for slacking off, as some commentary has suggested was
happening at Yahoo. But the solution is not a blanket ban — itfs better
management, and better metrics for judging productivity.
Likewise, Yahoo is certainly correct in its intuition that gsome of
the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions,
meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings.h
True. They also come in the shower, when youfre sleeping, while youfre
walking the dog. And they come from employees who arenft stressed about what
their teenagers are up to when they come home from school to an empty house, or
who are exhausted from battling lengthy Silicon Valley commutes. They come from
employees who feel grateful for being trusted with the responsibility of
self-direction.
I have a stake in this argument because I am lucky to have a job that lets me
work from home most of the time. As I write this column, my teenage daughter is
sleeping upstairs — strep, again! If I had to be at the office, I could leave
her, but how much better to be able to take her soup and tea.
Working from home, I have interviewed senators while making the bed, listened
to campaign conference calls while emptying the dishwasher (thank goodness for
the mute button), talked to White House officials while driving carpool (thank
goodness for Bluetooth).
Even when I had a position that required more face time in the office, the
technology-fueled ability to work at times from home made all the difference; I
was more productive than I would have been chained to my desk, not less. I am no
super mommy, but the flexibility of working at home has allowed me to cling,
however tenuously, to the level of adequate mommy.
Yahoos are safe until June, when the new policy is to take effect. My
prediction? It wonft, in its current, draconian form. Mayer is smart enough to
realize this was a real Yahoo move — and not the kind that comes with an
exclamation point at the end of the word.
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