> That would be highly dependent on the quality of the company culture.
Bingo.
> You can argue that the former is useful to know, but I don't have ambitions of going the managerial route.
While there can be significant advantage in knowledge exchange, most of the big wins are from random moments of inspiration that come from interactions with people.
I think more importantly than that though, if you have a huge organization that has a dysfunctional culture you have a major problem of inertia that is only magnified if significant chunks of the organization disengaged from day-to-day interactions. Your odds of turning that ship around are tremendously improved if you have people interacting day to day.
By no means do I mean to let Yahoo's management off the hook: this decision is entirely the result of bad management, and I think upset employees would be perfectly justified in blaming poor management for the change. That doesn't make this decision a bad decision or one that reflects a lack of trust or respect for employees. If one has any respect or trust for employees, one ought to want to see them as part of the solution (something that I'd argue hasn't always been the case at Yahoo), and one ought to have the willingness to be take drastic measures to effect change, and be honest with them about what those measures are, in order to help the organization get out of its quagmire.
