A World of Yahoos

Big buzz this week regarding Yahoo's CEO announcing employees will no longer be allowed to work from home. This has touched off a fairly large debate about whether people are more productive at home or at the office. Some research out seems to suggest people are more productive at home than at the office. I certainly know I can be more productive at my dining room table than at my desk (at least when everyone else is also at the office).

But I think the more interesting aspect of the whole model is how employees are held accountable. To me, what Marissa Mayer is saying by telling Yahoo employees to come back in is "we don't have an effective system for determining whether you are doing a good job other than to see you here working." That is a pretty terrible message. Companies that have clear goals and performance expectations based on those goals should always be able to let anyone work from anywhere - for any number of hours - and determine whether  the employee is successful based on their performance against those expectations. I would guess there are less of those companies out there though than there are Yahoos.

Respect

I haven't been posting much, mostly due to a level of busyness I have not experienced previously. Still busy today, so I will  outsource this post to Thom Yorke. In an interview with Esquire, Thom explains proper behavior in political arguments:

Respect is if you're having a political argument with someone, just before you get to the point where you call them a fascist, you sort of step back and wonder how on earth they've ended up at this point of complete ignorance and stupidity.


That sounds about right to me.

Yet Another Thing That Blows My Mind - Foot Volleyball Edition

I took an inventory of all the people I know, and I am 99.9% certain I don't know anyone who wouldn't severely hurt themselves trying this: