Submitted by Katie Hellmuth on | 1 Comments
This morning, my business partner emailed me the announcement that Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer terminated the work-at-home policy for Yahoo telecommuters (here's the full memo). It was an eyebrow raiser, being that we're both work-at-homers. I have actually worked from home for seven years and love it, but I know it's not for everyone, or every company. Sabina then emailed me a query that I could answer from a journalist writing a story about said Yahoo shift, and I pitched in my thoughts. Shortly thereafter, my workday ended so that I could pick up my kids from daycare and begin the bedtime routine...But my curiosity was piqued...
My curiousity was piqued so much that I broke my no-phone-zone rule during my kids bedtime routine to Google more about the telecommuting decision. Thanks to Google's auto-think, I ended up googling "marissa mayers baby", and was shocked to find the working mother community outraged over her statement that her "baby is easy" and "Yahoo is fun".
Those two things (easy babies, fun workplaces) are such hot-button issues, I'm not going to touch them. I do think and hope that work is fun for people, and that yeah, they might have an easy baby, especially one that sleeps all the time in pictures, so go with it while you can (and childcare and housekeeping makes babies even easier). But what I am suspecting is that the telecommuting decision is getting double backlash because of the baby statement that preceded it.
Reading more I found that working mom guru Lisa Belkin wrote a charged piece about the easy baby comment, and now is challenging the anti-work from home decision, declaring it not family-friendly. In my experience, working from home and raising a family is actually extremely difficult, and I've made the decision to not do both simultaneously during the day (work and kids), as this writer describes while his baby almost gets smashed by his toddler because he's working while tending the kids (yes, happens to me too). Instead, I have daycare, and I have working hours, in which I plant myself in one of my three work-spaces: hiding in the basement, hiding in my bedroom, or living large in my real office when the kids are out of the house and I'm totally off-duty.
In Yahoo's statement on the telecommuting decision, they state that the decision comes from a strong desire to strengthen collaboration. At Tin Shingle, we aspire to be family-friendly, and part of that is working near our homes. Our team is all virtual, so there are no real office meetings or gatherings around copy machines, or birthday cakes or any of these other things that companies with offices do.
Despite the convenience of no commute and being in our comfort zones, I agree that collaboration is better in person. Just yesterday, I bought Sabina (and my daughter when she's there) a chair for my office desk (pictured here), so that we could "Battle Ship it" and collaborate at a desk when she comes out to my home office, instead of at my dining room table (and note my baby's chair as well, so that he can join in from the floor if he's at home).
I have a friend who is the editor of a magazine, and she mentioned to me that the publisher was considering having everyone work from home to cut costs. I gasped, because a magazine needs creative "gelling" and in-person collaboration to get completed. I couldn't imagine how someone would coordinate everyone's energy via GoToMeeting windows. (Which, btw, physically cuts off that collaboration immediately when the meeting presenter ends the call: you're completely disconnected from that energy, and might as well make a sandwich, read some emails, get distracted, and maybe hit your deadline discussed on the meeting at some point.)
I don't know the details of how everyone at Yahoo virtually communicates, but even as a veteran work-from-home person, I would agree with the decision at Yahoo, to pull everyone together to make some serious change and waves. But man, that's a major uprooting, and the point of it is to help people gel, but you don't want those people angry and resentful after a 180 degree change mandate.
So there you have it, those are my honest opinions...
Now, back to work everyone! Let Marissa do her thing! Maybe she really is having an easy time with their new baby. Let her be a newbie parent who makes newbie parent grandiose statements that end up being insensitive. In terms of her business decisions, hopefully she won't be like the JC Penny guy by making decisions just because they worked somewhere else.
Update: I've sinced written about the treatment of Marissa by the working mom community here in our Diaries of Small Business Owners series, as it's edged its way into my head.
Comments
Melissa Wildstein replied on Permalink
We too are a completely
We too are a completely virtual office. As the head of a medical device marketing firm, I'm working with graphic designers, copywriters, animators, videographers and web design teams all over the world. Our 'virtualness' helps us keep costs down and my clients like not having to pay overhead for some fancy Madison Ave office that they won't ever use. Plus, I won't lie, as a working Mom, I don't miss spending three hours commuting into NYC every day!
That being said, I think that there is merit in having face-to-face contact. And to your point, we do need 'gelling' when brainstorming new creative concepts or tackling big strategic problems. So, we do as much as we can via Skype and GoToMeeting. It's scheduled brainstorming instead of impromptu, but we've gotten into a rhythm.
But, I think that the other thing is that people also appreciate knowing that there's someone on the other side of the phone, the computer, the email that actually cares about them as a person and it's not all just work product. That's a little harder to do in a virtual setting. It was so easy to stick your head into someone else's cube! When I send paychecks, I include a handwritten note (almost!) every time and I know that my team appreciates that. It's something little, but it keeps us all human.