Video chat: Is Yahoo being too severe with its ban on telecommuting?

Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer stirred up a hornet’s nest with her company’s announcement that it will soon ban telecommuting.

By Yahoo’s reckoning, you can’t operate at the top of your game if you’re working from home.

“To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side,� Jackie Reses, Yahoo’s human resources chief, wrote in a memo to staffers. “That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.

“Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,� she said. “We need to be one Yahoo, and that starts with physically being together.�

All well and good. But is this fair to working parents? Is it the best use of modern technology? If an Internet giant such as Yahoo can’t pull off telecommuting, who can?

These are some of the questions we’ll explore in a live video chat today at www.latimes.com. We invite people who already telecommute, or who want to telecommute, to chime in. We’d also like to hear from employers and company managers about the practice.

Join us at 2 p.m. PST for what’s sure to be a lively discussion.