[cantbecool]

That's just poor management, not against working remote. If the employee isn't doing the required work or holding his own weight, by all means, he or she should be let go. It takes a manager with a backbone to do something about it before it starts to affect other employees morale.

[onemorepassword]

The point is, if good management comes in to take over, the first thing they'll do is bring everyone into the office to sort shit out. Especially since in a dysfunctional team, the most obviously dysfunctional members may not necessarily be the root cause of the dysfunction.

New management cannot simply take the incumbent on-site team members' word for it that it's all the fault of the remote guys. Which is probably part of what's happening at Yahoo.

Also, the words "the entire team knew" are a big red flag. Any team of responsible adults would have confronted the issue already. The fact that they haven't indicates that there is much more going on than just a two rogue remote workers.

[greyboy]

You are absolutely right. It's more work on management to have productive remote employees (and to do it right). But, there are reliable ways of understanding remote employee productivity - though, they aren't always obvious.