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> “To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be

by rob74 4y ago

> “To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended,” the email reads. “If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.” Welcome to the dystopian future... I find it a bit galling how companies can force you into home office nowadays if it suits them (you want to avoid your underlings congregating in the office in such a situation), but also force you to come to the office when it suits them.

kortilla 4y ago
What are you talking about? The announcement says people should leave the offices. How is that dystopian?
- moron4hire 4y ago
  It's really to keep people from talking about details and exchanging contacts last-minute.
- lm28469 4y ago
  > How is that dystopian? You could generate all the electricity needed for the next 20 generations by harvesting the energy generated by the eyes rolling of people who live in countries with workers rights who just read that comment
  - fullmoon 4y ago
    I live in a modern central European nation. There is nothing dystopian about denying people that are no longer employed office access.
    - lm28469 4y ago
      > There is nothing dystopian about denying people that are no longer employed office access. That conveniently leaves out the dystopian parts. Being logged off remotely, no personal communication, no delay, &c.
      - oytis 4y ago
        That's just modern technology. I'm not aware of any country where labour laws would prevent logging employees out remotely. There are some where you can't be laid off immediately, but even there you could be denied access to the systems and just get paid for the rest of your tenure I believe?
        pjc50 4y ago
        Correct. Places with a statutory consulting period can lock you out, but they have to pay you for the consultation period.
    - Hamcha 4y ago
      I live in a modern central European nation. All our contracts are managed by unions and you can't just fire someone out of the blue, there's notice periods on both sides (unless there's just cause for termination)
      - tacker2000 4y ago
        I live in a modern central European nation. Yes, and most of the time the fired employee will be sent home during his notice period, so im not sure what you are talking about? The thing is, mass layoffs are often discussed widely in Europe since its mostly blue collar employees and the unions and politicians are often trying to prevent the layoffs.
        trashtester 4y ago
        Precisely. Most places in Europe, you're able to find ways to fire individual tech workers with whatever notice period dictated by the contract terms. Mass layoffs of tech workers is quite rare. Mass layoffs (or some kind of forced unpaid leave) is typically something that happens for blue collared jobs when there is a reduction of demand for their products. The twitter case is different, though. Twitter was a hostile takeover (even in the end, it was the company that forced the transaction). The takeover was not done for economic reason (or that was what was claimed), but because the new owner wanted to radically change the values of the company. For employees that base their personal identity on those old values, this makes them natural enemies of the new owner. When Musk carries the sink in, he is like an enemy warlord accepting the surrender of an enemy tribe. After a short tally, the enemy warlord lets half the prisoners go, after disarming them (takes away access to accounts and buildings), while the other half are allowed to join his forces, if they desire to. This is probably the way this had to go. Letting everyone keep their access to the infra would be crazy. Now the question that remains, is how much does he have to pay those that got fired.
      - tomp 4y ago
        Which is a large reason why people in Europe are so much poorer than US, and not getting any richer either over time (in contrast to the US). https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/xgoouz/americans_have_a_higher_disposable_income_across/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/xgoouz/americans_ha...
    - rob74 4y ago
      That email went out to all employees, not just the ones that were laid off.
      - throwaway4aday 4y ago
        So? If they need specific people to come in then they'll probably just call them, I'm guessing they're running with a skeleton crew while they do the lay offs. Most of the people in the office probably won't even be Twitter employees.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    Now you've got me wondering: is there any nation that guarantees any "workers right" that would forbid this?
    - xwolfi 4y ago
      No, and workers rights are usually about the amount of compensation for all this. In France, which we cant argue is laissez-faire capitalist, they can burn the company to the ground with all your work stuff for all we care so long as they compensate heavily, financially, for all the surprise unemployment. People think work is democratic but it s not: it's transactional and worker rights are just here to pay workers more, not give them any sort of novel ownership of the work tools. That can be done, but it s called communism and never works because workers want money not access to their work pc, and leaders want money not management oversight of every single work tool. So you end up with people pretending to work for people pretending to pay them in a lunatic worker paradise where there are no humans anymore, just workers and their work tool mindlessly fullfilling the glorious work tasks assigned to them by mindless work allocators.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    You are so confused I don’t know where to start. There is no country in the world where you have the right to go into a corporate office against the will of the owner. This has absolutely nothing to do with employment status. We’re talking about current employees being told to stay out of a physical office.
- rob74 4y ago
  In the past such a thing wouldn't have been possible because of the need to keep up day-to-day operations. Now companies can just decide if you should work from home or from the office as they please. And home office was initially promoted as giving more flexibility to the employees - looks like the companies are now exploiting this flexibility to their advantage while restricting the employee's flexibility (x mandatory office days etc.).
chrisseaton 4y ago
They're not 'forcing' you to do anything, they're offering to pay you to do it. Unless you think every time I buy some bread from my baker I'm stealing it from him?
- idop 4y ago
  What? If anything, this is more akin to the baker calling their employees to say "you'll be baking from home today, I'm firing a lot of people today and need to protect the bakery."
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > What? They aren't 'forcing' you to do something - they're offering you money in return for doing it. If you don't like the money they're offering you don't have to accept the deal. "Really dystopian that they're offering me $300k a year + benefits to be able to ask me to work in one of two locations" doesn't really work does it? "Really dystopian that I can walk up to a baker and force him to give me a loaf of bread by offering him the agreed price in money."
- alxlaz 4y ago
  Did you read the article, or at least the quote that the parent offered? This isn't about Twitter changing work site expectations/status. It's about blocking physical access for employees who were expected to show up at the office, without prior notice or any change in contract terms -- i.e. without their work site actually having formally changed. This isn't even dystopian, it's just a management clusterfuck. Whoever thought this is the right way to handle this kind of a situation should be the first to go in these layoffs. Wow.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > without prior notice or any change in contract terms Pretty sure it's within their contractual rights to deny people access to the office for any reason or no reason at all? Did you put a contractual clause in about the right to office access when you signed? > This isn't even dystopian Well yeah my comment agrees.
tremere 4y ago
koheripbal 4y ago
This comment seems very hyperbolic. Working from h for a day hardly seems dystopian.
- rob74 4y ago
  Maybe it wouldn't rub me the wrong way if it wouldn't come from the same guy who said that Tesla employees have to come in 40 h per week, the rest they can work from home (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/musk-to-tesla-and-spacex-workers-be-in-the-office-40-hours-a-week-or-quit/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/musk-to-tesla-an...). Well, he seems ready to embrace home office when it suits him...
xiphias2 4y ago
What about Foxconn China not allowing employees to go home because of ,,zero COVID policy''? For me that is dystopian.
- leereeves 4y ago
  Not allowing employees to leave the office is very different from not allowing them into the office.
  - culturestate 4y ago
    > Not allowing employees to leave the office is very different from not allowing them into the office. Yes. It's much worse.
    - leereeves 4y ago
      Agreed. That was dystopian.
- culturestate 4y ago
  > What about Foxconn China not allowing employees to go home because of ,,zero COVID policy''? It is a little dystopian, but (assuming you're talking about the Zhengzhou story from a couple of days ago) it's also not Foxconn's decision. The local government mandated that the industrial park be locked down. It's also worth noting that many workers at places like Foxconn live in on-site dorms anyway.
bitcharmer 4y ago
I don't think you understand how mass layoffs in big companies work. There's nothing new or dystopian about it. You probably haven't heard of garden leave as well?
pjc50 4y ago
The not showing up to the office is kind of irrelevant. Not having a consultation period, whether people are working or on "gardening leave", is illegal in CA, NY, the UK, and many other places for an employer of that size.
bfung 4y ago
Reading the article and not having a stake in twitter (no account, no stocks, don’t use it at all), seems reasonable. It’s basically, we’re closing office tomorrow, exit the premises please. Not dystopian at all and there was nothing in the article about go home and work, just go home and receive decision information.
infecto 4y ago
I am assuming this is a hint at how large the layoff will be. If are getting rid of 5-10% of your workforce, no issue with using the office but if you are axing some number greater...lets say 25%, it sounds like a security nightmare.
PuffinBlue 4y ago
This is quite a curiously Pavlovian response. It assumes so much from that "please return home". The whole comment stands as a window into a life lived under abusive working conditions where the Individual knows only the control of the Company. Nothing in that 'please return home' is anything to do with forcing anyone to have a home office, to go there and work, to do anything really. The company doesn't control you.
NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
Why would you want to drive into work just to get fired?

by rob74 4y ago

kortilla 4y ago

What are you talking about? The announcement says people should leave the offices. How is that dystopian?

moron4hire 4y ago
It's really to keep people from talking about details and exchanging contacts last-minute.
lm28469 4y ago
> How is that dystopian? You could generate all the electricity needed for the next 20 generations by harvesting the energy generated by the eyes rolling of people who live in countries with workers rights who just read that comment
- fullmoon 4y ago
  I live in a modern central European nation. There is nothing dystopian about denying people that are no longer employed office access.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    > There is nothing dystopian about denying people that are no longer employed office access. That conveniently leaves out the dystopian parts. Being logged off remotely, no personal communication, no delay, &c.
    - oytis 4y ago
      That's just modern technology. I'm not aware of any country where labour laws would prevent logging employees out remotely. There are some where you can't be laid off immediately, but even there you could be denied access to the systems and just get paid for the rest of your tenure I believe?
      - pjc50 4y ago
        Correct. Places with a statutory consulting period can lock you out, but they have to pay you for the consultation period.
  - Hamcha 4y ago
    I live in a modern central European nation. All our contracts are managed by unions and you can't just fire someone out of the blue, there's notice periods on both sides (unless there's just cause for termination)
    - tacker2000 4y ago
      I live in a modern central European nation. Yes, and most of the time the fired employee will be sent home during his notice period, so im not sure what you are talking about? The thing is, mass layoffs are often discussed widely in Europe since its mostly blue collar employees and the unions and politicians are often trying to prevent the layoffs.
      - trashtester 4y ago
        Precisely. Most places in Europe, you're able to find ways to fire individual tech workers with whatever notice period dictated by the contract terms. Mass layoffs of tech workers is quite rare. Mass layoffs (or some kind of forced unpaid leave) is typically something that happens for blue collared jobs when there is a reduction of demand for their products. The twitter case is different, though. Twitter was a hostile takeover (even in the end, it was the company that forced the transaction). The takeover was not done for economic reason (or that was what was claimed), but because the new owner wanted to radically change the values of the company. For employees that base their personal identity on those old values, this makes them natural enemies of the new owner. When Musk carries the sink in, he is like an enemy warlord accepting the surrender of an enemy tribe. After a short tally, the enemy warlord lets half the prisoners go, after disarming them (takes away access to accounts and buildings), while the other half are allowed to join his forces, if they desire to. This is probably the way this had to go. Letting everyone keep their access to the infra would be crazy. Now the question that remains, is how much does he have to pay those that got fired.
    - tomp 4y ago
      Which is a large reason why people in Europe are so much poorer than US, and not getting any richer either over time (in contrast to the US). https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/xgoouz/americans_have_a_higher_disposable_income_across/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/xgoouz/americans_ha...
  - rob74 4y ago
    That email went out to all employees, not just the ones that were laid off.
    - throwaway4aday 4y ago
      So? If they need specific people to come in then they'll probably just call them, I'm guessing they're running with a skeleton crew while they do the lay offs. Most of the people in the office probably won't even be Twitter employees.
- leereeves 4y ago
  Now you've got me wondering: is there any nation that guarantees any "workers right" that would forbid this?
  - xwolfi 4y ago
    No, and workers rights are usually about the amount of compensation for all this. In France, which we cant argue is laissez-faire capitalist, they can burn the company to the ground with all your work stuff for all we care so long as they compensate heavily, financially, for all the surprise unemployment. People think work is democratic but it s not: it's transactional and worker rights are just here to pay workers more, not give them any sort of novel ownership of the work tools. That can be done, but it s called communism and never works because workers want money not access to their work pc, and leaders want money not management oversight of every single work tool. So you end up with people pretending to work for people pretending to pay them in a lunatic worker paradise where there are no humans anymore, just workers and their work tool mindlessly fullfilling the glorious work tasks assigned to them by mindless work allocators.
- kortilla 4y ago
  You are so confused I don’t know where to start. There is no country in the world where you have the right to go into a corporate office against the will of the owner. This has absolutely nothing to do with employment status. We’re talking about current employees being told to stay out of a physical office.
rob74 4y ago
In the past such a thing wouldn't have been possible because of the need to keep up day-to-day operations. Now companies can just decide if you should work from home or from the office as they please. And home office was initially promoted as giving more flexibility to the employees - looks like the companies are now exploiting this flexibility to their advantage while restricting the employee's flexibility (x mandatory office days etc.).

chrisseaton 4y ago

They're not 'forcing' you to do anything, they're offering to pay you to do it. Unless you think every time I buy some bread from my baker I'm stealing it from him?

idop 4y ago
What? If anything, this is more akin to the baker calling their employees to say "you'll be baking from home today, I'm firing a lot of people today and need to protect the bakery."
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > What? They aren't 'forcing' you to do something - they're offering you money in return for doing it. If you don't like the money they're offering you don't have to accept the deal. "Really dystopian that they're offering me $300k a year + benefits to be able to ask me to work in one of two locations" doesn't really work does it? "Really dystopian that I can walk up to a baker and force him to give me a loaf of bread by offering him the agreed price in money."
alxlaz 4y ago
Did you read the article, or at least the quote that the parent offered? This isn't about Twitter changing work site expectations/status. It's about blocking physical access for employees who were expected to show up at the office, without prior notice or any change in contract terms -- i.e. without their work site actually having formally changed. This isn't even dystopian, it's just a management clusterfuck. Whoever thought this is the right way to handle this kind of a situation should be the first to go in these layoffs. Wow.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > without prior notice or any change in contract terms Pretty sure it's within their contractual rights to deny people access to the office for any reason or no reason at all? Did you put a contractual clause in about the right to office access when you signed? > This isn't even dystopian Well yeah my comment agrees.

tremere 4y ago

koheripbal 4y ago

This comment seems very hyperbolic. Working from h for a day hardly seems dystopian.

rob74 4y ago
Maybe it wouldn't rub me the wrong way if it wouldn't come from the same guy who said that Tesla employees have to come in 40 h per week, the rest they can work from home (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/musk-to-tesla-and-spacex-workers-be-in-the-office-40-hours-a-week-or-quit/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/musk-to-tesla-an...). Well, he seems ready to embrace home office when it suits him...

xiphias2 4y ago

What about Foxconn China not allowing employees to go home because of ,,zero COVID policy''? For me that is dystopian.

leereeves 4y ago
Not allowing employees to leave the office is very different from not allowing them into the office.
- culturestate 4y ago
  > Not allowing employees to leave the office is very different from not allowing them into the office. Yes. It's much worse.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    Agreed. That was dystopian.
culturestate 4y ago
> What about Foxconn China not allowing employees to go home because of ,,zero COVID policy''? It is a little dystopian, but (assuming you're talking about the Zhengzhou story from a couple of days ago) it's also not Foxconn's decision. The local government mandated that the industrial park be locked down. It's also worth noting that many workers at places like Foxconn live in on-site dorms anyway.

bitcharmer 4y ago

I don't think you understand how mass layoffs in big companies work. There's nothing new or dystopian about it. You probably haven't heard of garden leave as well?

pjc50 4y ago

The not showing up to the office is kind of irrelevant. Not having a consultation period, whether people are working or on "gardening leave", is illegal in CA, NY, the UK, and many other places for an employer of that size.

bfung 4y ago

Reading the article and not having a stake in twitter (no account, no stocks, don’t use it at all), seems reasonable. It’s basically, we’re closing office tomorrow, exit the premises please. Not dystopian at all and there was nothing in the article about go home and work, just go home and receive decision information.

infecto 4y ago

I am assuming this is a hint at how large the layoff will be. If are getting rid of 5-10% of your workforce, no issue with using the office but if you are axing some number greater...lets say 25%, it sounds like a security nightmare.

PuffinBlue 4y ago

This is quite a curiously Pavlovian response. It assumes so much from that "please return home". The whole comment stands as a window into a life lived under abusive working conditions where the Individual knows only the control of the Company. Nothing in that 'please return home' is anything to do with forcing anyone to have a home office, to go there and work, to do anything really. The company doesn't control you.

NaturalPhallacy 4y ago

Why would you want to drive into work just to get fired?