Check this post from StackExchange [1]. One of the things I definitely took away from it is that while working remotely has benefits and affords flexibility to employees and employers, it incurs very real costs that have to be mitigated and accounted for. Making an explicit choice one way or the other can be better than muddling through halfway.
Does not get what? Remote employees are a commitment, a company cannot just have remote employees without making compromises and committing to doing it right. Mayer is trying to rescue Yahoo, if the remote employees are not providing enough value to justify that investment in remote workers then it makes no sense for Yahoo to retain remote workers.
Yahoo, which once was a place talented people wanted to work at (I have worked with some very bright ex-Yahoo-ers), is fighting for relevance which in part requires talented people.
Getting good folks to bet on a potentially sinking ship requires the appearance that it is not an unpleasant place to work. The commitment is on both sides, employer and employee. When many companies are shedding old traditions (like the one Mayer is instating) to attract talent, Yahoo seems to be doing the opposite in this move, less attractive to _current_ employees.
If you can't manage remote employees well enough to weed out those who do not produce, or you believe that dead weight will not still be dead weight when you move it in office, you just don't get it.
The ones that don't have any other options will stay ( you retain a higher percentage of people who are not top performers ), the rest that you would want to keep leave ( the best employees can just get another remote job right away )
This is the classic problem with voluntary buyouts and other discretionary layoffs - you only keep the people without other options.
They're wrong to equate being remote with not producing value. If people are not producing value for the company, sure, fire them. If they are doing well, then why force them to relocate? What's the business sense in that?
They have $X in their budget. If the remote employees are producing $Y value, where $Y>$X, then they are earning their keep. But suppose Yahoo believes they can yield 1.5Y for the same $X budget by having on-site workers?
It's not like companies are (or should be) altruistic democracies. I can see why a person affected by this would be sore, but they don't really have a valid gripe IMO. I'm personally a fan of at-will employment.
Or perhaps finding ways of shedding employees without actual layoffs?