Forcing workers to come into the office is a symptom of Yahoo’s problems

"A well-managed company’s workers want to be productive, and managers trust them to decide how and where they will perform best. If that’s not happening, the boss needs to find out why. You can shackle a Yahoo to his desk, but you can’t make him feel the buzz."

Amen.

As a former Yahoo who now leads a distributed team that works from home, I feel that this article is spot on. Telecommuting isn't the problem; the problem is poor management that has allowed many employees - both onsite and remote - to remain at the company despite consistently mediocre performance.

That said, fixing the management problem will take time; calling everyone into the office, and keeping them there, is a short term fix to at least make the unproductive employees more visible so that they can be dealt with quickly.