The polarization around remote work comes as no surprise
How you feel about remote work depends on who you are
The big story of the week was Marissa Mayer’s ‘no remote work’ dictate at Yahoo, hands down. That sparked a huge conversation in the tech world, ranging across Yahoo’s troubles, feminism, Silicon Valley, work culture, and the good, bad, and ugly of remote work. Or maybe it’s really about the polarization in thinking about work culture, and Mayer’s action just triggered a huge catharsis in the social discourse about that, and a number of posts here (see Yahoo’s Mayer thinks that remote workers are… too remote, What Marissa Mayer’s ‘no remote work’ dictate means, Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and Jennifer Magnolfi on Marrisa Mayer’s ‘no remote work’ edict). Let me see if I can can first recap what took place, and then try to characterize the polarization going on.
As I summarized on Monday last, Yahoo’s PR head, Jackie Reses, sent out a company-wide email announcing that, effective in June, there would be no more remote work at Yahoo. Employees will have to start working out of official Yahoo offices, and if necessary, relocate to do so. After this story broke, there was a huge outburst of commentary, to which Yahoo responded with one press release saying,
This isn’t a broad industry view on working from…
