The future of telecommuting
远程办公的未来
Corralling the Yahoos
雅虎“集结号”
Technology allows millions of people to work from home. A big tech firm is trying to stop them
由于科技的发展，数百万人可以在家办公。但某家大型科技公司却意欲阻挠。
“YOU can’t have everything you want, but you can have the things that really matter to you,” writes Marissa Mayer, the boss of Yahoo, in a blurb for a book called “Rebooting Work”. But not, it seems, if you are a Yahoo employee and working from home is really important to you. As part of her efforts to reboot the ailing internet firm, Ms Mayer has decreed that from June all the company’s staff will be expected to come into its offices to do their jobs.
“你不可能拥有想要的一切，但可以拥有对你真正重要的东西，”这是摘自雅虎总裁玛丽莎·梅耶尔（Marissa Mayer）为《重启工作（Rebooting Work）》一书所写的内容简介。但如果你是一名雅虎员工，而在家办公对你又很重要，那这句话似乎就不符合实际了。为一整公司颓势，梅耶尔作出了诸多努力，其中就包括从六月起，要求公司所有员工都必须到办公室办公。
The news of Ms Mayer’s ban on telecommuting surfaced in the form of a memo to employees sent by Yahoo’s head of human resources. It was promptly leaked to All Things D, a technology-industry blog, and unleashed a fevered debate in the blogosphere and on Twitter. Supporters saw it as the brave act of a boss determined to rid the company of slackers. Critics lambasted the firm for an antediluvian attitude towards the workplace.
雅虎的人力资源部主管以备忘录的形式向员工传达了梅耶尔的远程办公禁令。消息很快就泄漏给了科技博客All Things D，并在博客圈和推特上引发热议。支持者认为，这是梅耶尔扫清公司“懒虫”的果敢行为。批评者则猛烈抨击，认为雅虎公司对工作场所的认知过时了。
Among the latter was Sir Richard Branson, a British entrepreneur who wrote in a blog post that the decision was “a backwards step in an age when remote working is easier and more effective than ever”. “Yours truly has never worked out of an office,” added the bearded boss of the Virgin Group, “and never will.” On the other side, Donald Trump, an American television showman and property magnate, tweeted that Ms Mayer was “right to expect Yahoo employees to come to the workplace vs. working at home.”
英国企业家理查德·布兰森爵士（Sir Richard Branson）就是批评者之一，他在一篇博客中写道，该决定“对当今时代而言是一种倒退。现如今，远程工作更方便，工作效率也比以往要高”。“在下可从没在办公室工作过，”维珍集团（Virgin Group）的这位大胡子老总补充道，“而且永远不会。”而另一边，美国电视主持人兼房地产大亨——唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）在推特上表示，梅耶尔女士的做法“合情合理，应该让雅虎员工来工作场所工作，而不是在家”。
The decision touched a raw nerve in Silicon Valley because it is in the midst of a bout of soul-searching about the workplace. Why, many people are asking, have so few women risen to the top of the tech world? (Ms Mayer herself is a rare exception.) The news has also triggered a broader discussion about how much freedom workers should be given to decide where to spend their working hours.
该决定触到了硅谷的痛处，因为硅谷正对工作场所问题做深刻的反思。很多人在问，为什么到达科技世界顶端的女性这么少？（梅耶尔女士本人是个罕见的例外。）这则消息也激起了更深的讨论：员工在选择办公地点时应该拥有多大自由?
Fans of telecommuting point out that it is on the rise almost everywhere. A survey of over 11,000 workers in 24 countries published last year by Ipsos, a polling firm, found that almost a fifth of respondents who said they are connected online to their workplaces telecommute frequently; 7% of those polled said they worked from home every day.
远程办公粉指出，几乎所有地方都在推广这种工作方式。去年，民意调查机构益普索斯（Ipsos）对24个国家的1.1万多名员工做了调查，发现在那些自称与办公室联网的受访者中，经常远程办公的人几乎占到1/5；7%的人投票说他们每天都在家办公。
That fridge looks tempting
家里的冰箱看起来很诱人
Ipsos also discovered that telecommuting is more prevalent in emerging markets than in rich ones, but it is growing in the latter, too. According to figures published last October by the US Census Bureau, American workers who spend most of their time toiling from home rose from 3.6% of the workforce in 2005 to 4.3% in 2010. The bureau also noted that home-based work in computer, engineering and science is rising particularly fast, growing almost 70% between 2000 and 2010. Given that many technology firms produce the devices and software that make working from home a breeze, it seems sensible to let their employees use them.
益普索斯也发现，与发达国家相比，远程办公在新兴市场更普遍，不过它在发达国家也是处于日益增长的趋势。根据美国统计局（US Census Bureau）去年十月发布的数据显示，2005年时，在家辛苦工作的人占美国劳动力比重为3.6%，2010年则上升到4.3%。统计局也提到，电脑、机械和科技行业的居家办公率增长得尤其之快，在2000至2010年间几乎上升了70%。许多科技公司所生产的仪器和软件都是为居家办公服务的，考虑到这一点，让自己的员工“现创现用”似乎也是明智之举。
Why, then, has Ms Mayer put telecommuting on hold at Yahoo? The leaked memo said the habit has slowed the firm down and made it harder to have serendipitous meetings that can give birth to new ideas. Yet plenty of innovative technology firms such as Facebook move pretty fast while allowing some people to work from home. Banning telecommuting outright punishes good employees as well as bad, says Joan Williams, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.
那么，为什么梅耶尔女士不让雅虎员工采用远程办公的形式呢？那份泄漏的备忘录中提到，这种工作习惯已经拖延了公司发展的进程，而且如果想随时召开能够催生新点子的会议，难度会更大。然而不少像脸谱网（Facebook）这样的创新科技公司允许员工在家办公；尽管如此，他们的发展也相当快。加利福尼亚大学哈斯汀斯法学院的教授琼·威廉（Joan Williams）表示，将远程办公“一刀切”，惩“恶”的同时也罚了“善”。
A growing body of evidence suggests it harms productivity, too. A recent study by academics at Stanford University and the University of Beijing reports the results of an experiment at CTrip, an online travel company in China that is quoted on America’s NASDAQ stock market. The firm split some of its call-centre workers into two teams. One team worked at home for nine months; the other in the company’s offices. At the end of the period, the academics found the telecommuters had handled calls more efficiently, taken fewer breaks and had been 13% more productive than their peers. Job satisfaction was also much higher among the home workers.
越来越多的证据表明，坐班工作也会降低生产力。斯坦福大学和北京大学的学者最近做了一项研究，汇报了对携程旅行网（CTrip）的实验结果。携程旅行是一家在美国纳斯达克（NASDAQ）上市交易的中国在线旅游服务公司。公司把呼叫中心的一部分员工分成了两组，一组在家工作了九个月，另一组则是在办公室。实验期结束时，学者们发现远程工作者处理客户来电的效率更高，休息次数更少，比另一组的生产率高出了13%。在家办公的员工工作满意度也更高。
Admittedly, Ms Mayer’s staff are highly skilled people, such as programmers, who may need more face time with colleagues. They may also telecommute in exceptional circumstances. But insisting that everyone normally show up is risky at a time when tech firms are ruthlessly poaching talent from rivals. Since she took over at Yahoo last July, Ms Mayer has pushed her battered firm’s share price up 35%. Her latest decision could put those gains in peril.
无可否认的是，梅耶尔的员工都是像程序员这样的高技术人才，他们可能需要更多与同事会面的时间。在特殊情况下，可能也会远程交流。但现在很多科技公司都在拼命从对手那里挖人，如果这个时候执意让所有员工都正常出勤，是有风险的。自从去年七月梅耶尔接管雅虎以来，这家受到重创的公司的股价在她手上已上涨了35%。而她最近的这项决定可能会让这些收获付诸东流。