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Meanwhile, my employer has said zero remote work once the state transitions into the next phase. They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who have po
by Loughla 6y ago
Meanwhile, my employer has said zero remote work once the state transitions into the next phase. They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who have positions that cannot be performed remotely.
So, you have a co-morbidity? Nope. You have no childcare suddenly? Nope.
It's startling how stuck in the 1980's some people are. Just absolutely astonishing.
- coliveira 6y agoThe reality of post-coved is that such employers will start losing people as never before. Most businesses are now transitioning to remote work as default.
- r00fus 6y agoDoes it make sense to name & shame these bad actors?
- Loughla 6y agoThe issue is, I know I would be fired, and cannot afford to lose this job. There is no one hiring in the area, and we're geographically locked due to factors around my child that I don't care to get into here. So, the answer is yes, but there is no way to do that without losing my health insurance, and probably home. So that's neat.
- zaphod12 6y agoNo idea what you do, but a lot of companies are newly open to full-time remote employees, fwiw. Sounds like you work for jerks.
- praiseDang 6y agoIf you don't mind, what is your comorbidity? Are you old or obese? Or some other health condition?
- amcoastal 6y agoYou're not geographically locked from working remotely. Lots of places are hiring remote workers. I'd start applying immediately.
- catacombs 6y ago> The issue is, I know I would be fired, and cannot afford to lose this job. There is no one hiring in the area, and we're geographically locked due to factors around my child that I don't care to get into here. Unionize.
- agensaequivocum 6y agoIn the current climate, we need less not more of this.
- scruple 6y agoThere's a world of difference between what some 13 year old said on Twitter in 2011 and how a business actively treats it's employees today.
- agensaequivocum 6y agoFair. But it should be a last resort not the go to response.
- celim307 6y agoEh any company who engages in marketing imo has entered the thunder dome of public opinion. They can’t have their brand be a one way communication channel
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago>But it should be a last resort not the go to response. Private companies have been slinging political / social issues messaging all over social media in the past few weeks. COVID and the decisions made around it are political / social issues, right? So in the name of not having things be one sided i.e. they get political when it suits their brand, I really feel like the right counterbalance is employee activism via organizing & leaking online. A company that is proclaiming about lives mattering one week and then pressuring their staff to return to close-quartered open-offices the next week deserves to have their dirty laundry hung high for all to see.
- catacombs 6y agoYes. It's all about PR, and if a company looks bad because it's forcing its employees to return to the office, amid a global pandemic and health concerns, that won't bode well, and they are likely to buckle under the pressure.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago> Wow, I guess I'll just tell my team you want them to die and they should find another job This is what I told my boss when these orders came down... they are still deciding what to do. Edit: Be aware, I have enough emergency savings for around 3 years worth of fuck it. I'm not you and you should not be me.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y agoEverybody should be you, if possible. Having enough savings to be able not to worry about the nearest future is not just a perfect option, it's a necessity.
- nicoburns 6y agoUnfortunately it's not a realistic option for most people. If we're talking about "shoulds", then we should have a welfare state that covers these scenarios rather than putting the burden on individuals, many of whom will not have the means to implement it even if they wanted to.
- throwaway894345 6y agoI'm inclined to agree, but I do wonder how we avoid people just adjusting their risk threshold to account for the welfare state. I know it seems to work in other places, but I'm not convinced that what works in Scandinavia (or wherever) will work in the US. It seems like the US has a lot of other problems that it needs to sort out in order to be in the same ballpark as these model countries with respect to successful government programs. Notably, our bureaucracy seems distinctly ineffective and incompetent, our body politic is highly divided, and our media apparatus optimizes for divisiveness and misinformation (maybe some or all of these are common problems among countries that have strong safety nets, I really don't know). This isn't to say we must sort out our government competence, etc before implementing a stronger social safety net, but I do wish we at least tried to solve for these problems in tandem with other policy issues.
- duxup 6y agoThe implication being going into the office sucks and everyone has to do it to be fair. I wonder if they're aware of that subtext....
- caymanjim 6y agoThat's not the subtext, that's exactly the point. I don't agree with it, but it's not a hidden message.
- duxup 6y agoPerhaps, but I suspect management might be more occupied with the positive of "being fair" and not aware how much negative it is.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoCommuting would be easier with less people doing it too, so whilst going to the office is sucks, for many, due to transportation issues it would stick a little less with fewer people doing it. Even a single company can make parking easier if only half the company car-commutes continue. Of course many businesses require employees to be present.
- Consultant32452 6y agoI wonder how long it will take for some fortune 500 company to get sued by their white collar office workers who catch COVID.
- duxup 6y agoI think it will take extra factors like some manager who orders someone he knows has COVID into the office before we see a lawsuit that makes it very far.
- Consultant32452 6y agoI think it could be as simple as interpretation of state guidelines. My state is recommending workers work remote if possible. If your company allowed you to work remotely before, your employer has demonstrated that it's possible. So if you are forced to endanger yourself against state health and safety guidance, that should be enough.
- jes5199 6y agocompanies who ask their employees to take risks with their health, without a compelling reason, are destroying any sense of goodwill or morale. In the short term, that change might be invisible, but over the long-term it destroys businesses
- yomly 6y agoIt sends the message "I don't care about you" very loud and clear. Don't be surprised when your employees suddenly stop caring about your company
- pbourke 6y agoYeah, a switch gets flipped that cannot be unflipped. It becomes a mercenary situation until you can exit.
- _jal 6y agoI know one startup learning this. They're ~80 people, and I thought they had a decent chance of making it until this. They lost their 'backbone' over the return-to-work plan. She was the one who kept everything nontechnical running. She felt the risk of bringing it home was too great, and $CEO pressured when he should have compromised. Now they're losing other key staff and it looks likely to become a stampede. I'm sure there are many possible takeaways from this, and one would be to beware of soft-power/moral-authority rivals. I think a far smarter one might be about empathy.
- asdfman123 6y agoI feel like American society is obsessed with safety and the value of individual lives, which has never made sense to me but I go along with it out of respect. However, when your actions have a x% chance of killing someone, and you can mitigate it with reasonable precautions... ad what value of X do you go along with? There's a disconnect there. Either people are really bad at math and science, or they do not care about other people's lives nearly as much as they think.
- Leherenn 6y ago
- coldpie 6y ago> They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who have positions that cannot be performed remotely. But, this only increases the risk for those who actually do have to go in. Everyone should be vocally opposed to this policy, including (especially?) those to whom this policy is supposed to be "fair."
- moksly 6y agoIt seems insane. I work in digitalisation in Denmark, as a developer, so I can do everything from home. We’re running at 50% as our country is slowly coming back from a lockdown, but those 50% go to the people who actually need to be at the office, so I’m in no way a priority. I wonder what management will do with the COVID data though. Our productivity is through the roof, but they’ve just spent several hundred millions building a new open office city hall because open offices were all the rage. Must be a tough pill to swallow that all those money were wasted because people work better from home where there are far less distractions.
- claudeganon 6y agoMy partner’s company just had their most profitable quarter in company history, when everyone but some bare bones staff was working at home, and they’re still debating whether or not to bring everyone back into the office. At a certain point you have to recognize that it’s not about being safe or rational. It’s about bosses making sure they can hold power over employees.
- meej 6y agoThe best way to protect the health of the employees who cannot work remotely is for those who can to stay home. It's appalling that your employer doesn't seem to understand this.
- jb775 6y agoIf that's their mindset with remote work, they probably have the "anti-adapt" mindset in other aspects of their business as well...which means they'll probably become dinosaurs and be out of business within the next 10 years.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoI wouldnt hold my breath, these types are widely distributed
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago> They want to be "fair" to everyone This is the explanation I hear most often, but when you examine it, it makes no sense. Otherwise you would need everyone to make the same money, which makes no sense either. People are different, their duties are different, some jobs are better suited for remote work than others - putting everyone in the same basket is plain stupid.
- walshemj 6y agoThe trouble is from an IR (industrial relations) perspective that actually can be problem if one group perceives that some other group has something they don't have. (Brigit's Jones Smaug Marrieds ) Also how would you audit this "oh her she's friends with manger x so she gets o work from home etc"
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y agoIt depends. For example I have my set of duties written in a table (a fairy long one). I added a column with the "Can be done remotely?" heading and marked the respective entries (most of them - the exceptions were things like meetings and business trips). The same can be done with all employees: the ones who have tasks that don't absolutely require their presence should be able to work remotely during a pandemic. Besides, by now it should be clear who is efficiently working remotely and who isn't. If there are problems, this should be a signal to reexamine the situation of a given employee. Everything should be based on clear metrics known to everybody. Riskng other people's (or, more likely, their relatives') lives for a wrong purpose is plain silly.
- notyourday 6y agoHere's what I do not understand -- if the company had an open office floor plan , which is probably the case a very large if not the majority number of offices, bringing the workforce back into the office would require a massive expense as the state governments are requiring the social distancing / partitions. How are the companies going to accommodate that set of regulations with the current layouts? From a simply logistical standpoint there's simply no way there enough time between now and say end of August to have offices redone to accommodate the new regulations.
- marcosdumay 6y ago> How are the companies going to accommodate that set of regulations with the current layouts? Most likely, they won't. If they gave shit about this, they wouldn't push people into the office at all.
- op03 6y agoSome folk make more money renting office space to their own companies than they do from the companies.
- cheez 6y agoGood observation.
- timewasted 6y agoI'm in a similar situation, except with a worse reason for requiring everyone to come back to the office. We were told that the optics of us not coming back to the office as the city is reopening could destroy the company. I can assure you that NO ONE is going to say "well I was going to spend money with these people but they're not in the office, so I'll go elsewhere". Further, we are being given less than 24 hours notice to come back into the office. It's just absurd, and it has eroded any trust that I once had in the company.
- corobo 6y agoName it, shame it. Not necessarily here but make sure places like Glassdoor know. Nothing like a good public shaming to change a company's direction
- Florin_Andrei 6y ago> We were told that the optics of us not coming back to the office as the city is reopening could destroy the company. Wherein "optics" means the millions that the top shareholders and decision makers may or may not make in the future. That's what's at stake, and that's why your families need to be put at risk.
- danbolt 6y agotheir profits oh no
- ci5er 6y agoIt's how the world works. Now, it probably isn't as correlated to butts-in-seats as mid-management would like to pretend it is, and maybe those people don't deserve bonuses for being bad mid-managers, but after the US just blew $2T+ on speculative bailouts, I do think that the goose is required to lay a few golden eggs.
- danbolt 6y agoMuch like 8-hour workdays, weekends, or parental leave, I'm excited for us to discuss reforming parts of how the world works to make things better for everyone.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoHere they are asking for volunteers first, but there is a clear push from management to get people back in the office ( and that is despite the fact that by all official metrics of our unit, we are basically killing it ). Doesn't matter. They want control. Current rumblings suggest we are going back in July.
- mattwad 6y agoThe thing is, having worked remotely for a year... the people working remote are the ones that become at a disadvantage. Because people in office may forget to include them in calls or conversations.
- TuringNYC 6y agoor...they may "forget" to include them in calls or conversations As much as I think WFH will be a huge win for workers, and the whole country (to some extent, ex SF/SV), I am skeptical it would work unless orgs are completely remote. In hybrid setups, I could see WFH workers end up getting edged out -- it has never worked any other way from what i've seen in the past.
- bluGill 6y agoSome problems happen when you have more than one office. It is almost always us VS them. Management needs to deal with this problem. Now I'll grant that it is a little better if it is a remote office as one person being remembered can remind you of the rest of the office. However it requires effort from management. Which is why I have approval to travel to other countries several times a year if I want to. If teleportation existed I'd probably work in a different office every day of the week, as a tech lead it would help the team.
- TuringNYC 6y agoI've seen, so many times in my career, a system being built with blood, sweat, and tears over the course of 6 to 12 painstaking months -- and then the system being "given away" to someone over the course of a couple of beers at a happy hour. (that is, management re-org / re-assignment) When I was co-founder/CTO I never acted this way, because frankly it didnt make sense. But it happens so often in real life, I wonder if this is more about human nature.
- bluGill 6y agoThat is a different problem that deserves its own thread of discussion, not buried under my reply.
- downerending 6y agoWhat they want is everyone's butts back in their chairs, in the office. The rest sounds like pretext. It remains to be seen how that will play out at my job, but I am very seriously considering a "100% remote" policy myself (as in, no office, no travel at all), even if I have to switch jobs.
- modzu 6y agowithout childcare cant work at home either..
- maurys 6y agoDepressingly, the easiest tactic is to keep piling on work, especially on remote workers. The manager won't be able to tell if you're genuinely stuck or slacking off, and the benefit of doubt is likely to go against you if offices have reopened. So unless you truly can't make it to work, you'll likely go back once the majority have, regardless of your apprehensions.
- g-garron 6y agoSome people just do not understand that employees are more productive if they are comfortable. They think employees need an eye behind its back in order to produce. And if it is that way, it is their fault, they have chosen bad when hiring.
- ThisIsTheWay 6y ago> Some people just do not understand that employees are more productive if they are comfortable. I'd wager most people understand it. Like you pointed out, it's an issue with the perception of lost control, and people are willing to trade productivity for power.
- asdfman123 6y agoThat's a really good point. People do do a lot of non-rational things when they feel like they've lost control.
- elliekelly 6y agoIf someone’s job can be performed from home and they’re at higher risk due to a co-morbidity it would very likely be a reasonable accommodation under the ADA to have them work from home.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoIt's amazing how so many people/entities want to pretend that somehow the pandemic is less dangerous now than it was in March when we started all of the isolating/WFH. When in fact we have a lot more cases now, high levels of new cases and more than half the states have R0 > 1.0. https://rt.live/ https://rt.live/
- chrisco255 6y agoYes, but if you actually look at the death count, it has dropped in the past month and a half, despite re-openings: https://ga-covid19.ondemand.sas.com/ https://ga-covid19.ondemand.sas.com/ Georgia being one of the earliest states to re-open, continue to see their deaths plummet even as their case count increases. What's the reason for this? I don't know. Better testing, maybe. Maybe a less deadly version of the virus is propagating now. Not sure.
- klenwell 6y agoI would posit a couple reasons: 1. Death is a lagging indicator. Based on new cases here, I'd predict an upswing shortly: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQSSp19amBFUtHvw_u1vZCjuz7-ezC3YZYr6qE72qHvbAi8cXoQE54oc1tbvHqWi-lMjH_m8lrbAAfM/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQSSp19amBFU... 2. Some reports indicate younger people are starting to get it more frequently. Data and common sense suggests they will have a higher survival rate. But this does not mean they will not suffer serious ongoing health and economic consequences as result. They also risk infecting others close to them.
- devalgo 6y agoAs klenwell said, deaths are very lagging. It could take weeks for a person admitted to a hospital to die so it shouldn't at all be reassuring that those numbers are going down. They are bound to rebound. How is this downvoted? If you have evidence showing all of the new cases are from younger people or totally asymptomatic carriers go ahead and show it otherwise its literally a tautology, more cases = more deaths.
- aedocw 6y agoIt takes a while for people to die after infection. Give states like Georgia time to catch up. Their hospitals will be overwhelmed and the numbers of deaths will get there. There is no "less deadly version of the virus". Treatment protocols have improved but that has not dramatically changed the odds of at-risk folks dying.
- edw519 6y agoThey want to be "fair" to everyone Where I work, discussing salaries is strictly forbidden and grounds for dismissal. I demanded an increase and was told, "No. It wouldn't be fair to the others." I asked, "How would they know?" (weWantToBeFair) = enterprise(iWontCumInYourMouth)
- spiznnx 6y ago>discussing salaries is strictly forbidden and grounds for dismissal. FYI, a strict ban on discussing salaries is illegal in the United States and in many parts of the world.
- xxpor 6y agoThat's an illegal policy (if you're in the US), FYI.
- kayodelycaon 6y agoIt's also illegal to fire someone for a disability or not hire someone because they are a minority but plenty of companies do it anyway.
- xxpor 6y agoThey're usually not dumb enough to say that directly though.
- neilparikh 6y agoCostco did a similar thing at the start of the pandemic, where they forbid people working in offices from working remotely, to be "fair" to those who work in their stores. An employee who worked in their offices actually died from COVID-19: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/costco-coronavirus-covid-death-office-open https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/costco-cor... Now, it's not a given they got it from the office, but they probably did spread it more, so it was a very irresponsible policy IMO.
- sergiotapia 6y agoShe was Joesie Krebs - Double-neumonia patient, 63 years old. https://www.kens5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/woman-battling-coronavirus-in-the-icu-dies/273-598f9b61-38bd-4ef0-9659-623d2aaf95f0 https://www.kens5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/woman-...
- scarface74 6y agoI quit my job and found a new one because my company was forcing us to come into the office to "collaborate" -- even though for the most part only the team leads are in the US and the rest of the dev team is India. My team was in another state. I was already halfway thinking about another job because of the open office that was a mix of developers, QA, customer service managers, and implementation folks that were always on the phone and it was loud. Now with Covid and me working from home for three months, I dreaded going back into the office.
- papito 6y agoCollaborate. All you would do is sit at your desk in a mask and freak out every time someone walks by you.
- scarface74 6y ago2nd part. My wife works for the school system as a bus driver. My new job was always designed to be remote and it pays enough more for me to "retire my wife". We decided that it wasn't worth the risk or the headache for her to go back to work. She's already started a new business/hobby as a virtual fitness instructor when school let out early and the gyms closed.
- noir_lord 6y agoMy employer is the same over here in the UK. So I’m voting with my feet and actively looking for a fully remote job, it’s fucking insane to pretend an extra 2ft and alcohol gel will work when no one is following the rules properly. I’d have been moving on at some point anyway since I don’t particularly like my job but it pays well so I have time to look for something that is a better fit. So they’ll drain the good staff, I’m not the only one planning to bugger off.
- waltherg 6y agoI've heard two C-level guys with two separate German SMEs say that the only part of their workforce that hadn't handled remote work well was middle management. The people doing the actual work were happy WFH and simply getting stuff done. Senior management / C-level types were content seeing sales figures and general output from afar. Middle management struggled because they had a hard time judging work estimates for tasks and whether people had their butts in seats etc. Just an anecdote but thought that was intriguing.
- delusional 6y agoOne of the execs of the bank I work at made a public statement that they actually saw the productive output of the IT organization shoot up during the WFH weeks here in Denmark. But of course middle management didn't agree so now we are back in the office.
- WalterBright 6y ago> the productive output of the IT organization shoot up during the WFH weeks Should be careful about projecting that to the long term. During WW2, to increase production, the workweek was increased to 50 hours. Production went up substantially. But after 2 or 3 months, productivity dropped back below the 40 hour week. With subsequent experimentation, they found they could get sustained production increases by alternating between 40 and 50 hour weeks. It's premature to declare victory for WFH. There can be long term deleterious effects: 1. the excitement and newness of WFH wears off, and the boredom and loneliness of it sets in 2. one loses connection with one's colleagues 3. one loses the serendipity of chance encounters and lunches with colleagues 4. you don't know your boss and he doesn't know you We'll see.
- Loughla 6y agoThe issue is, all of your 4 points can be overcome with just one intervention - communication. WFH relies on communication, in multiple modes, more times a day than working in an office. Failure to do that will lead to issues.
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoWhat a disturbing notion of “fairness” - apparently forcing people to be subjected to daily exposure to a deadly virus (via commute & office spaces) is “more fair”? Absolutely jawdropping stupidity that is.
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoBy this logic, civil servants in a police precinct should be exposed to violent criminals because it’s more fair. Apparently whatever is the maximum hazard experienced by an employee has to be shared by everyone to be fair?
- ponker 6y agoMore fair would be to allow people to choose to remain remote, but at a salary deduction, and give that salary to the people who are required to be on-site.
- aronpye 6y agoIf you can, get another job. Don’t work for that kind of company. If you can’t leave or demand better working conditions then you’re virtually a slave.
- camelCaseOfBeer 6y agoAnd you make more than $15 an hour, too? The audacity. Don't they know the plan? Poor people and minorities are supposed to take the risks we're not willing to face upon themselves! Best take to social media and start in with the self-congratulatory virus shaming and empty solidarity with the lower class. Remember - you are socially responsible and letting the peasants fight Covid-19 is all part of The Final Solution.
- killjoywashere 6y agoThe 1980s?! How progressive! I work for an institution that is culturally stuck in the 1950s.