Yahoo's edict on working at home

Most of us have been following the brouhaha concerning the CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, and her edict that all the staff of Yahoo have to show up for work everyday. In the flesh. No more goofing off in your undies and logging unto the Internet in your kitchen. Being a woman and a mother, she is twice scolded for being against women working in a way amenable to  handling  family responsibilities. Now, even the Times has chimed in on the controversy.

In a previous job I worked from home, albeit without pay, just as a way to keep up with the things I couldn't fit in at work. To many of us, however, working at home perhaps seems more like the above picture. Here the babies are typing in the documents with Mom. Perhaps this picture is not as efficient as it could be in a time work continuum.

We are presented by Ms. Mayer an ideal of workers networking on tasks and coming up with creative ideas as they hang out in the coffee break room. My experience is that more bellyaching and gossiping takes place in such environments than light bulbs going off on top of people's heads, but perhaps that is just my own, largely civil service experience. If I was a betting man I would say more and more people are going to continue to work at home in the workplace.