Pros:
- Not done immediately. Must have been resulted from data-driven analysis.
- Cannot be applied case-by-case because it would hurt morale or be too difficult
- Must be for better innovation practices based on past experience
- Must be for better productivity practices based on past experience
- Company is in trouble so they must do big disruptive stuff
- She is CEO, that is a good enough reason
- Merely a ruse to get dead weight to quit then they will let best workers work remotely at some point in the future
- She is smart
Both:
- She is applying past business practices based on past experiences
- It is generating a lot of news articles about Yahoo
Cons:
- A blanket policy cannot represent smart policy
- Punishment over Incentive is demoralizing
- This shows lack of trust
- Remote employees are more effective (also stated with some or many)
- Office employees are less effective (also stated with some or many)
- She is encouraging people to quit to reduce/eliminate coming layoffs
- She is controlling
- She is stupid
From my view, I don't think any of us can really know why she implemented the policy. Publicly stated agendas might not be private agendas. As a CEO, she needs to walk a pretty tight line to make sure she does not dramatically negatively effect share price of Yahoo. Most of the above assertions imply a lot of inside knowledge and what the real motives are.
Although I am just giving another opinion I just thought I would throw in my 2c ant point out what I think are difficult to deny outcomes:
- Current remote workers will dislike/hate this policy
- A portion of remote workers will have to quit due to location and/or social situation
- Many in-demand remote workers who dislike this policy will change companies in the next four months.
- An unpopular decision by management has some demoralizing effects
- Yahoo is being talked about a lot right now
4 and possibly 5 of these are negative outcomes. The fifth might actually magnify the first four for employees. For this to be a good decision these all have to be outweighed by other positives. I tried to think of the immediate positive outcomes and I could not think of anything really obvious (yahoo is doing something to change course -- maybe?). That does not mean this won't work out as a policy (my personal feelings aside), but I think it does explain the dogpile of negative comments on the articles about Yahoo.