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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Marissa Meyer found this out and she gave her remote workers an ultimatum because it was such a lost cause --when she had her people check access logs many had not logged in to the systems they worked on in some time.

It’ll be interesting to see what the productivity numbers reveal in the coming years.

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I'm reading "Deep Work" by Cal Newport at the moment. He calls out this event specifically in a very negative light. His stance is that it's enforcing a nefarious belief that appearing to be busy is more important than being productive by punishing those who were performing deep work and rewarding those who habitually check their email, etc.

I think I am in agreement with him? Results matter not appearances. EMs should be able to tell who is working productively and access logs are a poor proxy for that.

What do you think?

I agree that it's nuanced. There are people whose contributions cannot be measured in discrete units of output. But others are. Also some people who are naturally lazy can be made more productive by virtue of being next to others who depend on them in some way.

> appearing to be busy is more important than being productive

It's like a bad code review, or bike shedding. It's so easy to look at who's at their desk with their heads down. It's hard to look into what they're doing and how it fits into larger objectives.

I think write a script to satisfy the idiots and move on.

Great book! Imagine EMs reading it, and reflecting deeply about it and what role they have in an organisation. There is so much bike shedding, fake knowledge, and nonsense in management. At best someone read a book once. How great is the average EM at management compared to programming, for example. The sentiment on scrum here on HN is a good example of that evidence imo. Management is a very underdeveloped area both in many companies, and society as a whole.

Sounds like an excuse to me. Pretending to work in-office is only marginally more difficult than doing so remotely.

It's a lot more boring though. Which is probably why they don't want to go back.

Yahoo was a cesspool at that time, right?

But it still illustrates the pitfalls some employees fall into.

Before and After Mayer, yes.

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