Some suspect Dell's suddenly stringent office policy is an attempt to force people to quit so that the company can avoid layoffs. In 2023, Dell laid off 13,000 people, per regulatory filings [PDF].
this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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It's a layoff, but without having to call it a layoff.
Biggest difference in my eyes is that with a layoff you at least get to choose who leaves but in this case you only lose the best and most qualified.
Nice work Dell.
You're keeping the people willing to make sacrifices to keep their jobs. You're keeping the most desperate, most readily exploitable people, and getting rid of anyone who won't tolerate your abuse.
Touché
Shit company. I remember seeing the articles quoting Michael Dell saying WFH was the greatest thing and other companies were too scared to do it. All they do is put other people’s shit in a case.
Exactly how my office is doing things. All of us are tracked by our phones to ensure commutes and then by IP address pulled from Entra ID and company-wide VPN. They cross reference it with our seat booking system.
We were 100% remote for all employees since March 2019. Managers now encourage us to go out and buy food at the restaurants nearby (some even “jokingly” ask for receipts which some people keep).
It’s more important to hold up the economy than lower emissions and improve morale, employee happiness, and productivity.
Jesus, that sounds like hell.
I feel like helping local economy is the only valid reason against work from home.
But, you know. Not like better city planning wouldn't help this.
You should have a local economy where you live...
My city of 3000 people certainly appreciates us buying locally. Some other city that's 100x the size? They're gonna be fine. Is the real estate price really so important business would rather make us buy goods from nearby places?
Companies have heavy commercial real estate bags. They are justifying their investments by forcing RTO
I genuinely refuse to believe that it is more profitable for them to pay for AC, water and electricity that RTO would require. There has to be something else I am missing. Is it all just managers justifying their stupid decisions to other managers?
Part of it is management that can't handle their duties if they can't walk over and intimidate workers. The other bit is many companies have cash reserves invested in commercial real estate instruments, and can't handle the profoilo hit. And many of those company leaders are also personally invested in that same real estate.
It's like buying a very expensive pool, even though it costs money to run and service, you already bought it and will invite people to come and swim in it to justify the purchase, even though it's a giant money sink.
You can't just give it back that's also wasting money, so what are you going to do?
Imagine reading in a national newspaper that a government official wanted workers back downtown to fix the downtown economy and then learning 3 days later that you must start showing up to an office to sit on Teams calls with your nationally dispersed team.
Working from home does help the local economy, just not the right ones for the C-suite.
As much as I hate to admit it, the conversations that happen because I overheard another conversation a couple cubes over do have value.
If they have value to the company then how about sharing the costs of commuting? A 50-50 split seems reasonable to me. The company gets the value of those conversations, and the plebs get some help with all that fuel they now have to buy, at ridiculous prices due to high oil prices.
It's a way to filter out people, for good or ill.
Depending on the group/team/organization, physical presence makes a huge difference.
Even though I can work from home at will, I still go to the office a lot, about 60%-70% of my time is there. Physical presence just makes a lot of things easier, and it makes teams more cohesive. I can't imagine spending less time at the office - those random hallway conversations make a world of difference. If you're not there for the convo, they'll tap someone else, not by design or intention, just by that person being in front of them.
Now a call center? Maybe not so much, though I was once on a call center team and the ability to tap a teammate on the shoulder was a big help. Much better than using chat tools. So it really depends on the organization.
And then there's management that need you there to justify their role. That's just a poorly managed company, when senior management permits that (though some of them need their own staff count to justify their roles).
It totally is job dependent. I have had WFH since 2009. Mostly Engineering CAD work and design feasibilities. Some peoole needed the office interaction for learning, but I already had 20 years experience so I really didn't need input until design reviews. That role changed to more consulting in 2015 and I had to be onsite to learn the clients process and products, and get differing views from each "expert". Since COVID WFH i have been solo at home again. I get way more accomplished without random coworker hellos and idle chatter interrupting my flow.
company makes remote workers ineligible for promotion
hey guys yeah it really depends on the job, sometimes you just gotta be in the office heh
did a realtor write this?
Those quotes aren't in the parent comment?
The first quote block refers to what is mentioned in the OP article, and the 2nd is an exaggerated summary of the parent comment.
My issue is that the parent comment is taking imo a lenient stance towards something vile happening
60-70% seems nuts to me. 10%-20% feels about right to me. That's a day every week or two. Builds cohesion and lets you do some effective brainstorming sessions, and then the rest of the time you do actual work far more efficiently. I mean you do you, but I thought I was suffering from lack of office time, but that's way too far in the other direction for me.
It's been 5 years and 3 jobs since I've been to an office. My last job I honestly don't even know what state my job was based out of. That's a little too disconnected. But just a little.
At our small company many of us became more productive with working from home, to the point that they closed the office. A couple of people are finding it difficult because of their home situations, so it would be good still to have a space to work outside the home. But generally we're getting more done these days, and most who do work that needs prolonged concentration find this more conducive to that.
It varies between different companies, teams, roles and temperaments. What Dell is doing sounds like corporate heavy-handedness.
A couple of people are finding it difficult because of their home situations
This is why most of the nice cafes in my city are packed for most of the afternoon. A lot of people are WFH but don't want to stay home for whatever reason they have.
My uni forced us to resume in-person classes barely five months into the pandemic. No one is more productive. To this day, I’m only in the office when my contract says I have to be there. Even then, the door is closed and the lights are off. I can literally count on one hand the number of useful hallway conversations in the last four years. Generally, I’m far more productive without the interruptions and pointless random socializing.
It really depends on the company. You can make fully remote work, you can make 20-40% work or you can do 80-100% work. However the company needs to be run with that in mind to ensure good communication/team building etc.
You also can't just change the rules. If you change the split someone is going to be unhappy.
(And accept that your possible talent pool is reduced when you don't offer remote work)
What a bot response.
You have to wonder if these "leaders" of big companies have families or hobbies or like doing literally anything normal.
Being addicted to working and hoarding money beyond reason is an addiction at the end of the day and it has wide reaching impact. They need to get serious help.
They're not addicted to work. Just money. In exploiting regular people - both workers and customers - by robbing their wealth. Do you think their pay is proportional to their work? How do you think they get time to socialize and scheme against plebs if they are addicted to work?
In this particular context, they insist on return to office because WFH represents a loss of returns on the investments they made on corporate real estate.
While their addiction to money is a disorder, it's as bad to the general public as people with antisocial and criminal tendencies. The only difference is that these rich sociopaths have enough capital to buy their way out of being held responsible. They won't seek help because they enjoy the harm they inflict - just like how criminals don't consider their sadism as a mental disorder. They need to be treated the same way as any other criminal - as a threat to society. And measures should be taken to prevent them from inflicting harm on normal people. Something like locking them in a cell and throwing the key away.
High five. Completely agree lol. I can honestly think of thirty years or more of other activities, hobbies and opportunities that I would actively rather pursue over a paycheck.
I'm terrified that one day, I'll be forced back into the office. I think I've gotten extremely lucky so far. I know 100% I would not have made it through the past couple years if I was in the office. We have personal offices, which is a step up from cubicles, but it's 4 white walls and no natural sunlight. In the winter I saw sunlight for maybe 10 minutes total a day if I was lucky.
I just don't think people are meant to be working the way our current societies do. Conditions should be improved across the board for every industry regardless if you are doing white collar or blue collar work. Our lives are too short to be wasted making other people rich.
I think we just only recently have a privilege to be able to ponder on it. 100 years ago kids were working in some factory since 10 yo everyone was too busy with just surviving. Of course that only applies to the 10%? of the privileged part of the world too.
I think this era is brief and soon the climate change dark ages will come back again for us so that we revert to the more basic maslow pyramid fundaments. Which is pretty sad.
I hope for nuclear fusion infinite energy breakthroughs that will forever secure our individualistic low efficient lifestyles.
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Now The Register reports that Dell will track employees' badge swipes and VPN connections to confirm that workers are in the office for a significant amount of time.
An unnamed source told the publication: "This is likely in response to the official numbers about how many of our staff members chose to remain remote after the RTO mandate."
The Register reported that Dell "plans to make weekly site visit data from its badge tracking available to employees through the corporation's human capital management software and to give them color-coded ratings that summarize their status."
Here at Dell, we expect, on an ongoing basis, that 60 percent of our workforce will stay remote or have a hybrid schedule where they work from home mostly and come into the office one or two days a week."
In a statement to The Register, a representative said that Dell believes "in-person connections paired with a flexible approach are critical to drive innovation and value differentiation."
News of Dell's upcoming tracking methods comes amid growing concern about the potentially invasive and aggressive tactics companies have implemented as workers resist RTO policies.
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