Penny Wiseacre

How Marissa Mayer could be like Dolly Parton

(Because once I get onto a topic, I break it down: We've already discussed why there's no reason to expect a female CEO to be nice to working parents and how telework is only a symptom, not the disease, in an ailing company. Now comes the third and, I hope, final post on the Yahoo thing.)

Like a lot of Generation X kids, the VCR hit my childhood right at the moment when my brain was soaking up pop ephemera and incorporating it into my moral development, which would explain why I could recite entire blocks of dialogue from 9 to 5 by the time I finished fifth grade.

Yahoo's problems won't end when teleworking does

(Or, the follow-up post to "Marissa Mayer does not have to be a role model," where I unabashedly "borrow" all the insights other people had.)

We can all agree that flexible working conditions are a good thing, and they're the kind of good thing that should not be restricted to college-educated white collar workers. Flexible working environments offer health benefits to whole families while also fattening a company's bottom line. The mere announcement of flexible workplaces and work-life benefits can boost a company's stock -- another way to bolster the bottom line and keep shareholders happy.

But you know what really keeps shareholders happy? When a company performs consistently well -- or take very public steps to indicate that they're likely to perform well.

Marissa Mayer does not have to be a role model

Last Friday, we learned that Yahoo! will no longer permit remote workers to work from home. More damningly, the decree also means that staffers who have built their childcare arrangements around a day or two of telework each week have to come in all five days per week. Per All Things D: "Employees who work from home must comply without exception or quit. One top manager was told that there would be little flexibility on the issue."

So let's set aside the ample documentation that supports the thesis that telework is good for a company. Let's forget that 79% of employees who telework say they want to stay in their current gigs, compared to 44% who can't (and let's forget that employee retention is always cheaper than employee turnover). Let's ignore the fourfold increase in productivity -- surely good for a company's bottom line, no? -- and let's ignore the $6500 annual savings each teleworking employee yields for their company. (Source for all of the above:  The Society for Human Resource Management) Let's also set aside the evidence that flexibility on the job provides a competitive hiring advantage for attracting top talent and it provides a handy way to squeeze more work out of your workforce.

Truth is, those savings pale in what a company can save if they lose an employee and simply don't hire a replacement. Especially if that employee is carrying a few kids on their health benefits. So you make the workplace a little less family friendly, and soon the workers who prize flexibility (spoiler alert: They're not all women!) will be trickling out the door. Making the workers' lives tougher is a great way to reduce the workforce without having to resort to layoffs, which can be costly on account of all those severance packages, and spook a stock's price.

(I'm not saying this is why that policy came down at Yahoo! But I am saying it would be worth keeping tabs on the place to see how the employees with families feel about the new "present equals productive" paradigm.)

There's a tenor to today's coverage that I strongly disagree with, and it seems to center around the expectation that as a woman and mother, Mayer ought to be more of an advocate for working families. One story includes someone sniffing, "When a working mother is standing behind this, you know we are a long way from a culture that will honor the thankless sacrifices that women too often make." Another site mourned, "I had high hopes that a young, female CEO — one who was openly pregnant when she signed on for the job — would bring a fresh perspective and some more, well, trailblazing."

Why, why, why is Mayer expected to balance her job -- turning around a company with a noisome internal culture and a failing brand -- with Advancing the Cause? If a male CEO laid down a family-unfriendly policy, people would be all, "Eh, the C-level execs are all Craftsman toolboxes. Time to update the CV." But somehow, Mayer's expected to turn around Yahoo! and be a role model for women and be an advocate for working parents. 

Look, we can't all be Sheryl Sandberg. And we shouldn't expect everyone to want to be Sheryl Sandberg -- Mayer's made it clear from day one that she rejects the notion that she's obligated to advocate for "women's" working conditions.

Would it be nice if more American workplaces offered more flexible hours to workers in all manner of jobs? Hells, yes. It makes for a healthier workforce and happier families. Is it solely the job of female executives to carry the banner for work-life balance? No. 

So step off Mayer and keep an eye on the Yahoo! employee count. Her grand experiment in changing a company culture and boosting the bottom line is the real story here.

San Francisco didn't change. I did.

In the winter of 1996-1997, I was at a party in San Francisco's Inner Richmond neighborhood, and I ended up talking to Paulina Borsook, a brilliant writer who was getting a lot of heat over the piece she published in Mother Jones, "Cyberselfish," which postulated that the dot-commies who had flooded the area were a bunch of libertarian jerks. This quote stuck with me at the time:

I routinely attend parties peopled by digerati in their 20s and early 30s who, in addition to their desirable arrogance of youth, have a frightening invulnerability (their skills in demand, the likelihood of cashing out high).

Mostly because at the time, I was attending the same parties with the same type of people.