I completely agree. Having had similar experience to what Dave62 describes with a global company, remote workers, whether at home or in a remote office, is a reality that has to be faced. IF Yahoo was doing this as a temporary stop gap while they got their house in order and established solid measures to ensure that all employees are being productive, both remote and in office, then that would be fine. If it is just a reaction to poor performing employees then the problem is much deeper than just having remote employees, and the situation won't get appreciably better.

Consider for a moment having performance measured by how much VPN traffic you used to determine if you are being an effective employee. Does that seem silly to anyone else? How do they measure the internal employees - how many times a manager sees them at their desk? Really? If so, that is sad.

Don't get me wrong, as a remote employee, I make it a point to ensure that I am online when I am supposed to be, responding to requests more quickly than in-office people, so that I avoid any negative focus, and probably work more hours than necessary. That is part of the pain point that I think goes along with being remote. I say all that to state that I don't take the measure of "VPN activity" lightly, rather stating that "VPN activity" alone is not a valid measure of an employees productivity. Again, this whole thing implies a much deeper problem than remote workers.