To ask all MNetters to boycott yahoo ...

[theweekendisnear]

... because newish mum and newish CEO, Marissa Meyer, has just told yahoo employees that they cannot work flexibly from home anymore?

I am going to move my more-or-less 20-year-old yahoo account to gmail because of this. I am furious with this woman.

Good luck - I can't imagine that's going to particularly ruin her day.

And... Loads of employers don't allow working from home even if it is perfectly possible. Prehaps some employees have taken the piss with working from home.

Employers don't actually to agree to allow employees to work from home. European flexible working directives are there to encourage employers and employees to reach an agreement that works for everyone. There is no divine right to dicate your working conditions just because you are a mother or having caring responsiblities.

I don't use Yahoo so your suggestion of boycott makes no difference to me.

BTW, it's Mayer, not Meyer

Current yahoo employees, that probably accepted the job because it had flexible working conditions, will have to go to the office to work or leave their job. Is this reasonable?

I've worked for plenty of companies who've done stuff to piss me off/inconvenience me. My current job inconveniences me since it doesn't allow for flexible working. I doubt any Yahoo employees would get excited about my situation and I can't get excited about theirs.

And? So what? Many many companies don't allow flexible working or working from home.

It's perfectly reasonable. Companies change policies all the time. You go into the office or you find another job. Not easy to do right now, but not impossible either.

You do realize it's not just email, right? They now own Flickr as well.

And if you have an iPhone? That's your weather forecast that's built in.

Shall I find out what else they own for you or do you want to just give up the internet altogether?

Yes, Tee2072, please do give me a list. If I do it, I want to do it properly.

But, please, don't tell me they own Mumsnet.

Start here. Most of it says Yahoo.

But I am sure they own a lot more if you dig. You can do that part yourself if you care enough. They don't, yet, own Google.

Have fun with your boycott. They don't work, you know. If they did Nestle would have been out of business by the '80s.

Lack of flexible working would be low down my list of priorities if i was bothered about usa employment conditions

Yahoo email is so 90's..

So I should have abandoned yahoo mail many years ago anyway?

You haven't said why she's not going to allow it any more OP

There may well be a good reason.

WorraLiberty, here are a coulpe of articles:

www.businessinsider.com/why-marissa-mayer-told-remote-employees-to-work-in-an-office--or-quit-2013-2

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2283155/Marissa-Mayer-tells-Yahoo-employees-work-home-to-office---tech-companies-follow-suit.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

I work from home one or two days a month, mainly to write reports. It's so much easier to do it at home, with nobody that asks me how to change the format of a word in msword, or how to add a formula in an excel sheet, questions regularly asked in the office. I guess it's good for the other people in the office if I am there to answer their question, but not for the progress of my report.

No one days I'm going to yahoo it. They say I'm going to google it

Some projects just can't get done in the way they need to be done unless the team working on them are together and communicating in person.

I don't know if this is the case for yahoo (I know nothing about yahoo), and in general I am all for encouraging opportunities to work at home. But I do know that some kinds of collaborative work require actual physical and immediate presence of team members. And I can totally see how this would massively enhance communication and understanding - probably very important things when it comes to social media stuff.

As I said, I am all for working at home (I used to do it myself, and aim to do it again, when childcare is not so much my sole responsibility); but some things really do require people meeting face-to-face for the project to succeed.

Well having read your first link OP, I can understand her decision.

Clickable link

I didn't bother reading the Daily Mail one for obvious bullshit reasons.

It makes a lot of sense.

There will be people there not really doing much work, who never ever go into the office. Clearly this isn't aimed at people taking a day or two at home to write reports, but they have to have a catch all.

The people you should be angry with are the ones who are using the home working option to take the piss. Every flexible worker who abuses the system makes it harder for the next person.

My boss works from home on fridays, more often than not I bump into her shopping, I doubt she's doing much work while mooching round asda and bhs.

Has she actually said nobody can work from home or flexibly? I've also only read the Business Insider article which I took to mean those who work completely remotely will no longer be able to, so may have the option of dividing their week?

Flexible working is not just there to benefit employees, it must also make sense to the business.

I'm also not sure the fact that she is a new mum is relevant OP.

ps. thanks for the link Worra - much appreciated as on phone!

Sounds like the remote workers were taking the piss
IMO she is acting in the best interests of shareholders in trying to improve the bottom line, rather than allowing her "new mum" status cloud her judgement. Would you want to boycott yahoo if a man had made this decision?

No problem cocoa

The thing is here, Marissa Mayer has to do something to save the company money. If she doesn't, there'll be a hell of a lot of people out of work.

So it makes sense to insist people actually come to work than to have so many people working at home, that no-one knows what they actually do.

She hasn't "just told yahoo employees that they cannot work flexibly from home anymore". She's said that employees who currently work solely from home with no office time that this can't continue, and I can see why.

Sorry, your first link explains the reasons quite clearly. I also wouldn't be surprised if it's an issue they re-visit in the future, post shake-up and layoffs, but for the moment it makes sense.

It makes sense to me.

She's not there to do people a favour, she's there to run a company, and she would be wrong to make decisions that might work for individuals but at the expense of the company. People's jobs do change at times, it better that she's giving people the option to come into the office rather than just laying them all off without any compromise.