The author asserts that the new policy is based on "flimsy foundations". How does he know if the foundations are flimsy or not? Does he have inside knowledge of the productivity of remote vs. local employees at Yahoo? Is he assuming it's the same as at 37signals? Might it not be?
He writes that Yahoo employees should be "angry" that the new policy was declared "without your consultation". How does he know there was no consultation? How does he know local employees didn't give feedback to management that the extra communication overhead with remote workers didn't create difficulties in collaboration?
He also writes that this policy change reveals that "Yahoo management doesn’t have a clue as to who’s actually productive and who’s not.". Why is this assumed? Why isn't it plausible that management studied the problem and found that having collaborators in disparate locations hampered progress?
The entire article seems needlessly reactionary and assumes things about the working culture at Yahoo that may not be true. Perhaps this vehement reaction is due to the fact that the author has a new book coming out advocating remote working?
Without agreeing or disagreeing with your first three paragraphs, I want to share with you that the very last sentence puts your arguments at risk of being derailed by accusations of Ad Hominem Tu Quoque--that you are speculating about the author's motivations with exactly the same lack of insight that you decry. Worse, that line is also likely to distract people who notice that it's an Ad Hominem Circumstantial.
I personally think your argument would be best served by saying something along the following lines:
The author asserts that the new policy is based on "flimsy foundations". He writes that Yahoo employees should be "angry" that the new policy was declared "without your consultation". He also writes that this policy change reveals that "Yahoo management doesn’t have a clue as to who’s actually productive and who’s not."
What evidence is there that any of these conjectures and speculations are true?
That would make the point about the lack of evidence in the post rather than about the author.
I appreciate the input, but on the contrary, I don't think an author's history and interests should be ignored when evaluating their argument. The world is full of people who excel at making compelling arguments for whichever side of an issue suits their interests. Personally, knowing that an author has a upcoming book whose thesis might be undercut by the decisions he's criticizing makes any doubt cast upon this article much more compelling. Which is why I mentioned it :)
Well, then you end up with threads very much like the ones associated with anything John Gruber posts. They end up being about John Gruber rather than about his opinions. Which is great for people who find discussions about people interesting. I do the first time all those points are raised, but I can't help noticing that they become repetitive.
But to indulge you, consider whether you are confusing correlation with causation. It could be that he writes this post to promote his book (causation).
Nevertheless, it could also be that the post and the book are correlated, and that the root cause is his own personal success with remote working arrangements.
That's not an ad hominem, it's pointing out a relevant conflict of interest. DHH is heavily invested in promoting remote work arrangements. It doesn't invalidate his arguments, it does help explain why he's flying off the handle over this.
Conflict of Interest: Where a source seeks to convince by a claim of authority or by personal observation, identification of conflicts of interest are not ad hominem – it is generally well accepted that an "authority" needs to be objective and impartial, and that an audience can only evaluate information from a source if they know about conflicts of interest that may affect the objectivity of the source. Identification of a conflict of interest is appropriate, and concealment of a conflict of interest is a problem.
If you can look past DHH being DHH, his points are valid. That said, I think he missed the main thrust of Yahoo's decision: they are looking to increase collaboration, and they believe face-to-face collaboration is more advantageous than remote or semi-remote collaboration. I would assume this is because they think collaboration is an important part of the overall productivity of their staff.
I've been a remote or semi-remote [1] for 8 years, mostly for smaller organizations under 50 people. As a developer, I LOVE working remotely, and it creates a huge increase in my personal productivity. It also enables a saner work/life balance.
That said, enabling productive _collaboration_ does take work. My guess is Yahoo is so far behind the eight ball, they want to take this out of the equation until they can right the ship.
Rather than "you're an idiot" sort of post, I'd like it see 37 signals write up how they enable remote collaboration. [2]
Trust is the foundation of great collaboration, but you need more than that to actually make it work. And, scaling that up to thousands of people would be even more difficult.
[1] Semi-remote being three days in the office, two days at home.
[2] My guess is they still use campefire, but it would still be an interesting write up in 2013.
Collaboration requires coordination and clear expectations. You can't expect blind face time to result in productivity gains. A company without remote collaboration probably wont have onsite collaboration either.
Like many people above noted, global companies do this all the time.
"He writes that Yahoo employees should be "angry" that the new policy was declared "without your consultation". How does he know there was no consultation? How does he know local employees didn't give feedback to management that the extra communication overhead with remote workers didn't create difficulties in collaboration?"
I'm sure they consulted every remote worker before they effectively shitcanned most of them.
He writes that Yahoo employees should be "angry" that the new policy was declared "without your consultation". How does he know there was no consultation? How does he know local employees didn't give feedback to management that the extra communication overhead with remote workers didn't create difficulties in collaboration?
He also writes that this policy change reveals that "Yahoo management doesn’t have a clue as to who’s actually productive and who’s not.". Why is this assumed? Why isn't it plausible that management studied the problem and found that having collaborators in disparate locations hampered progress?
The entire article seems needlessly reactionary and assumes things about the working culture at Yahoo that may not be true. Perhaps this vehement reaction is due to the fact that the author has a new book coming out advocating remote working?