Best Buy Copies Yahoo, Kills Work At Home Program

They should have the "Shrink Stomper" go around kicking employees in the face!

Do they still have that guy?
 
Management only knows a a few tricks. That's why they are managers and not individual contributors. This is one of the few ways they have to exert their will. SOSDD.
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I would think that working from home could hurt the teams productivity as it impacts interaction between colleagues and hurts collaboration/knowledge sharing.

Maybe BBs definition/measurement of productivity was wrong.
 
crowat said:
I would think that working from home could hurt the teams productivity as it impacts interaction between colleagues and hurts collaboration/knowledge sharing.

Maybe BBs definition/measurement of productivity was wrong.
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As other people have already stated, it depends upon the person, the job, etc. I find working at the office is one of the least productive possible places. No privacy, loud, etc. Heck, I've worked for a company with a no WFH policy and that collaboration that happens? Almost all of it's through email, even when the person is right next to you.
 
Aluisious said:
Let's flip this on its head: what's so great about working from home if you have to do all the same work you'd do at the office?

At least at the office I have an excuse to dress up, have coworkers to go to lunch with, and can drink all the free tea and coffee I can before I burst.

I already hang out at home enough anyway.
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As noted by others, depends on how introverted you are...

For me, here a few things that are great by getting to work from home 2 days a week (and hopefully soon 3)...

Commute - 46 miles from house to office, no mass transit, approximately 1.5 hour commute time each way. Working from home they get 2+ extra hours of work per day out of me. If I drive to the office, I get there between 9-9:30 and leave by 5. Working from home I'm online by 8:00 and don't worry about having to work until 6.. since it is still earlier than if I was driving home.

Food - no worries about having to pack lunch or how much I'm going to spend eating out that day. Just raid the fridge for leftovers, make a sandwich, etc. Same for drinks.

Family - sorry... I work to live, not live to work. There is a huge satisfaction in getting hugs from my kids when they get home from school. Or being able to give my wife a quick kiss/hug when I step out of the office for a drink, bathroom break, snack, etc. (she's a stay at home mom).

Relaxation - I can listen to any music I want without worrying about offending anyone in the office. I can spend the day working in a t-shirt and shorts instead of business casual. If I really don't feel like shaving that day... don't have to (though that rarely happens as it affects the family part above ;) ). Not to mention the reduced stress of daily traffic to and from work.

Money - back to the commuting.. that 92 miles (at 25 miles per gallon, 3.70/gallon = approximately $25 gas per week at 2 days) + $10/day for tolls comes out to about $150 per month in my pocket I save and view almost like a raise... without costing the company additional money.

Productivity - Honestly, my productivity is higher at home... even with an occasional interruption by my family or starting a load of clothes. I'm not interrupted by inner-office discussions, don't have to listen to lengthy sports conversations, don't have people walking in and bugging me for things I'm already working on... causing delays for the very things they want.

Now, with that said.. would I want to work from home 100% of the time... nope. There are some things that are just easier and/or quicker to do at the office. For meetings, I prefer face-to-face since I don't think people pay as much attention when they can't be seen. It's kind of hard to rack a server or replace memory from a remote location ;) If I know I'm going to be touching a lot of devices remotely via RDP/Dameware/etc., I can be a lot more productive on a LAN connection than over VPN (like when I'm building multiple servers without a template).

It all boils down to whether you are responsible enough to manage your time/work. I don't even blink when asked to come in on my WFH days, but on the other hand if something comes up and I've got a doc appointment or something on a day I don't usually work from home I expect them to be lenient and let me work from home that day instead of driving in just to show up after lunch and turn around and leave at 5... which they are ;) That rarely happens because it makes more sense to schedule those things on my WFH days anyways....
 
IMHO Home offices are the future.

We just can't continue to move a billion frickin' cars back and forth every day forever. First off, it's stupid. With the advent of the high speed internet and other infrastructure available today, why the hell should someone drive 15 miles or whatever to go sit at a desk at a different computer to do the same shit they could have started doing an hour ago in their home office.

I have worked from home since 2005, 100%, and I am FAR more efficient here than in a costly office somewhere.

And the dog seems to know exactly when I need my toes licked.
 
Wouldn't let me work from home so I said "F# you" and retired instead, (well almost, using up vacation and banked time right now).
 
You guys going to do anything about the encroaching american style of work ethic there?


Stimpy88 said:
I worked for a Danish company, with a large part of it located in the US. My manager was based in the US, and I in Denmark.

He was a young guy, younger than me, and had no prior managerial experience, in a fairly big company which was run by clowns and old fools.

After 6 months working under him, he fired me for working from home too much, and also his inability to relate to the fact that we were 8 hours apart, and my family did not like his constant phone calls at 11pm most nights, and he felt that was me not being committed enough.

I worked from home because it meant that I could work hours that actually overlapped his working hours more, so we could communicate, and work better. But he could just not deal with home working aspect at all. He was the atypical American office worker, telling me that if your in the office, you get to see other managers and get the chance to network with others. However I do not bullshit and brown-nose that way. I let my work speak for me, which is how it is here in Europe.

He used to come over a couple of times per year, and he just called all the Danes lazy, as they were "never here", and worked very short hours (because they were not present in the office). I tried to explain to him that's how it works in Europe, we work hard, but we work around our families, because most of us work to live, and not live to work like American managers seem to. Most Danes work 6 hours or so in the office, and work the rest from home until all sorts of hours, because you have to get the task done!

I actually worked it out that we worked more hours than all of our colleagues in the US, by at least 4 hours per week, but we were not in the office the whole time. Also it was fact that we got the work done, while they were "networking" round the coffee machine, and having bullshit meetings with vendors and managers that had nothing to do with the projects we were running, but they were using it as a way of impressing other managers, so they could be the "go to" guys if that manager had a problem.

Now this kind of work setup is becoming more the norm, and now if American companies start banning home-working, it's going to catch on in Europe too, as for some reason managers here just get misty eyed when they see an American manager.

This will be a real big loss for people with families, and commitments outside of work.
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The thing is this and the Yahoo case aren't about how well you work from home, and they're not taking a philosophical stand over whether it works or not. It's about how well their workers work from home and whether the cost of replacing, re-training and re-acclimating new workers (to replace the lazy ones who aren't working) costs more than just forcing everyone back into the office to run things the traditional way.

They've both got high levels of indifference, so they're trying a number of different things to try to make people care again. People see Yahoo and BB banning working from home and immediately think the message is "you can't work from home effectively" when the message is really "our current employees can't work from home effectively." I believe Yahoo saw huge numbers of people who weren't logging into their company network and weren't being very productive, so they pulled the rug out. Laying off those workers sends an even harsher and more dire message than simply forcing them to change their work habits.
 
Working from home should be standard. There is no doubt that the amount and quality of work I do in the office suffer because people in the area can't SHUT THE FUCK UP.
 
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-...-work-at-home-yahoos-were-slacking-off-2013-3

After spending months frustrated at how empty Yahoo parking lots were, Mayer consulted Yahoo's VPN logs to see if remote employees were checking in enough.
Mayer discovered they were not — and her decision was made.
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Poor management led to that point (since the previous management should've been checking that stuff) but that doesn't help you solve the situation at hand, since you can't reverse the culture without something more drastic.
 
Jaerb4 said:
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-...-work-at-home-yahoos-were-slacking-off-2013-3



Poor management led to that point (since the previous management should've been checking that stuff) but that doesn't help you solve the situation at hand, since you can't reverse the culture without something more drastic.
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What bothers me is that this sounds like management treating their employees as little children with the whole "must check-in X number of times". Even where I currently work, we have required training classes on things such as "how not to slip". I can understand people abusing work at home, but not being a manager, such stories rub off more about power-hungry-control-freaks than employees abusing work at home. The whole system of how we work is horribly outdated and inefficient.
 
True, it depends if middle management is catching hell too, because they should be. We only got a snippet from an HR email, so we barely know the actual story.
 
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