Best Buy ends work-from-home program | Hacker News Reader

Best Buy ends work-from-home program

money.cnn.com

27 pointsmortenjorck46 comments

  | "In the context of a business transformation, it
  | makes sense to consider not just what the results
  | are but how the work gets done," Furman said.
  | "It's 'all hands on deck' at Best Buy, and that
  | means having employees in the office as much as
  | possible to collaborate and connect on ways to
  | improve our business

1. The "all hands on deck" thing is a bit over the top. It makes it sound like he thinks that people working from home aren't 'at their posts' or something.

2. I'm unsure why "how the work gets done" is now more important than (or as important as) the results of said work. If the results of said work are not enough, then either the work wasn't done correctly, or the person/team was allocated to work toward the wrong goal.

3. What is with all of this emphasis on "people connecting" while in the office. I recall something similar from the Yahoo announcement. Are these companies doing so poorly that they feel that chance meetings in the hallways or at the water-cooler will be their salvation?

I believe the fundamental problem that these companies face is that they've grown so big and complex that many fiefdoms have developed. There are isolated teams within the larger organization.

Frankly, it doesn't matter if the teams are in the office or working from home. The Real Problem (TM) that they're facing is that they've forgotten how to innovate, communicate internally, and be agile at scale.

They want a quick fix for these problems, so it's an easy mental leap to "get everyone in the same building to start with."

The "no more telecommuting" is making headlines, but what isn't making headlines is whatever else they are doing AFTER the telecommuting is over to fix these problems. I certainly hope that if "all hands on deck" is Step A that there's also steps B-Z.

The real problem is if they think ending telecommuting will solve all of the real problems. (It won't.)

>>The Real Problem (TM)

It is really getting annoying to see the TM sign in every other phrase now. It doesn't make anybody look clever so please guys stop it.

Humor is In the Eye of the Beholder (TM)

>Are these companies doing so poorly that they feel that chance meetings in the hallways or at the water-cooler will be their salvation?

For what it's worth, that is exactly the logic Google is using for the design of their new building near SF.

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/02/26/google-reveals-plans-for-ba...

I would see them as similar if Google was creating this new building for the sole purpose of these chance meetings. These changes by Yahoo and Best Buy seem to put a lot of focus/emphasis on these spontaneous meetings/ideas/exchanges.

At the micro level, I have seen many teams pull everyone in to the same physical location when faced with a sprint or deadline. It doesn't strike me as inherently illogical, and is a strategy that IME has yielded results.

What yahoo and BB are doing is essentially this, but at scale. They are both companies under significant duress and pressure and are attempting to rally the troops. While it remains to be seen whether these drastic moves will help, they most likely will not hurt.

I have no opinion one way or another about either Yahoo or Best Buy, but in my experience (when I've seen these sorts of things go down in person at previous companies) once a company starts down the path of emergency policy changes to right the ship, the death spiral is more or less irreversible. The top employees are already either out the door or actively looking for their next gig, and in a couple of months the ranks will be down to primarily people who can't easily find more stable jobs elsewhere.

This is in large part the fault of the corporations themselves who over the past 20 odd years have mostly destroyed the idea of company<->employee long-term loyalty, particularly when it comes to companies larger than a couple of hundred people.

I find it particularly interesting that Mayer goes to Yahoo from Google and straight away implements things that would surely make Google look like the better place to work at. At least for me (and I guess the HN audience type of people in general, judging from the comments on this topic so far). It's like a Trojan Horse that you can sell with a straight face as being tough on failure and driven for success and all that. Probably good for marketing and the chairholders to feel smug, will probably boost stocks... company will likely still fail.

So the message is now clear- ending telecommuting is something failing companies do.

Yahoo stock is up from $15 under Scott Thompson to almost $23 with Mayer, so not sure what point you're trying to make.

Please, since you are so familiar with the ins and outs of Yahoo, what would you have done differently?

not that.

I'm sorry, but are you implying that stock price has anything to do with how well the company is doing? Because it doesn't.

One place I worked at had a stock price that fluctuated. Some times it was 8c, other times it was 16c - we could actually double our stock price and still have to lay people off...

I'd be surprised if it were otherwise. The company only makes its money from selling "new" stock. The 8 and 16 cent prices are what people are paying each other for "used" stock, and the company doesn't see a penny from those "used" stock trades.

Er, surely the stock price has something to do with how well the company are doing!

It's more a measure of the traders' perception of how the company is going to do in the (not so distant) future.

Sometimes perception becomes reality. Sometimes traders have no idea what they are doing.

To me its more clear that these companies have pretty clueless managers that have no idea if their people are working or not.

Failing companies usually have managers who can't tell if their workers are being productive or not?

They must not have shown up in Yahoo!'s VPN logs either. ;)

Is Yahoo still actively "failing," or is it starting from a point of failure? If a few years from now Yahoo is successful and the move paid off, we will just as easily be able to say: "The message is now clear - ending telecommuting is a great way to help turn around your company." Time will tell. If this is just meant as a knock against yahoo/best buy, if they turn around it could make you eat your words.

Marissa Mayer might be a trendsetter. Just one week after the Yahoo CEO banned telecommuting at her company, Best Buy is ending its own flexible work program.

Well, one insightful HN'er, christopheraden, sorta called this[1], back in one of the earlier threads[2] on the Yahoo decision. Unfortunately it looks like people might just be following Mayer's lead here (even though she hasn't exactly "turned Yahoo around" just yet). Let's hope this doesn't become a trend.

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5267682

[2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5267030

It's just for dying companies. Yahoo and Best Buy are facing life and death changes. It makes sense to go into full panic mode. Maybe they'll come back, if they get small enough, maybe they'll be nimble enough to make some cash. Finding the really loyal employees is probably a good move. Scaling back benefits is a good way to do that.

It's just for dying companies.

Let us hope so.

Finding the really loyal employees is probably a good move. Scaling back benefits is a good way to do that.

But is that really the way it works? Somebody on another thread pointed out that this sort of thing probably actually costs you your best people, since the ones who leave first are the ones with plenty of options. The ones who hang around as long as possible aren't necessarily loyal they may just not think they can find another job, or they're "retired on the job" and hoping to milk it as long as they can until they get canned.

>> Let us hope so.

I'm not sure that it's really a big deal. For every company that ends telecommuting, another one will come around offering telecommuting as a strategy to acquire talent.

The best part is how you keep seeing the "Marissa Mayer is a genius because the remote workers who aren't performing will quit". No, the best ones will quit. The ones who can't get jobs elsewhere immediately will be the ones most likely to stay.

Any painful, unpopular decision is mostly for dying companies. That doesn't necessarily mean its a bad one.

It does seem like a convenient (for $corp) policy change as a way to let people go without negative news about firings or downsizing, instead couching it as reduction in remote-workforce and austerity measures.

BestBuy, like Yahoo!, also seems to not be doing so hot right now.

I'd imagine it's a good way to convince people to quit rather than wait to be fired.

The downside to this approach is that your good ones leave first. At least you have some control over who gets fired.

Best Buy has been flagging for a while. I'm sure the good ones had left before this announcement arose.

I honestly think it's more of a statement on the mediocre management of tech workers than the productivity of those workers.

Is there any empirical evidence regarding the productivity of remote workers?

I have it, but it's kind of a limited data set (1).

The fun part about going back on the acronym is that you are basically saying 'we no longer care about your results.'

So now we need a new acronym. I propose RIPE - "Results Inconsequential, Presence Exalted".

To be honest, retail is basically sticking around to service customers, and they aren't killing it completely, they are just requiring manager approval.

Telecommuting is here to stay and it will only become more common as old-school managers who don't understand technology retire/die off are replaced by young workers who grew up with technology.

I really hope so because often times the new simply model themselves after the old - then nothing changes.

I think that while the concept of "working remotely" isn't necessarily ingrained, the concept of communicating efficiently with people via methods that aren't physically face-to-face is extremely embedded in pretty much everyone under the age of 30 at this point.

While it's not a 1:1 correlation, there are going to be a lot more people asking the question "Why am I spending an hour commuting if there's nothing I can do at the office that I can't do from home". Despite a couple companies trying to close the doors after the horses are gone, this particular paradigm isn't going anywhere any time soon.

I think its totally understandable for a struggling company to do this and dont get the conspirancies about how they want to cut down workforce on the cheap.

I work remotely myself but still, managing alot of remote emplyees creates overhead in different places and this is one simple measure to solve these issues. Sure there might be better solutions, but its certainly effective and fast.

i don't understand what type of work gets done at home when one works for a retail company like best buy.

when i think of best buy, i think of people in blue shirts trying to sell me the latest widget. if i think harder, i can imagine people who have to get stuff on the store shelves and maybe managers who have to create reports or something.

what type of jobs are actually "work from home" jobs at retail stores?

Are you really that retarded? Payroll, HR, finance, the website, tech support for in-store systems, planning for growth, product selection, manufacture liaison, operations planning for distribution, legal...

Or are you under the impression that Best Buy stores appear out of nowhere, with stock selected and shipped from nowhere with no planning, with staff recruited and paid by nobody, no legal support, no tech support, and with some random blue-shirts making the website on their lunch hour?

Payroll, HR, finance, the website, tech support for in-store systems, planning for growth, product selection, manufacture liaison, operations planning for distribution, legal are all jobs that could be done from home.

Fixed that comment for you.

Thanks for that, I don't normally have any problems with a certain amount of aggression in a comment, but that one came across pretty badly, however, I think it would have been an order of magnitude less offensive had it not been for the leading statement.