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Dell responds to return-to-office resistance with VPN, badge tracking
- paganel 2y agoWage slavery [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
- cosmic_quanta 2y agoI'm not so sure in this case. I think many companies' aggressive return-to-office policies are a method for attrition: layoffs in disguise. Case in point: the Federal Canadian government has recently increased the mandatory number of weekly in-office days from 2/week to 3/week, with no clear explanation. I suspect that it's a way to reduce the workforce with less pushback.
- andyjohnson0 2y ago"Dell has allowed people to work remotely for over 10 years. But in February, it issued an RTO mandate, and come May 13, most workers will be classified as either totally remote or hybrid. Starting this month, hybrid workers have to go into a Dell office at least 39 days per quarter. Fully remote workers, meanwhile, are ineligible for promotion, Business Insider reported in March."
- smith7018 2y agoIf we assume a quarter is 3 months, then there are 60 work days in a quarter. 39/60 is 65% in office. That basically means Dell employees have to be in office 4 out of 5 times a week with a little leeway here and there.
- postexitus 2y agoThere are 65 working days in a quarter (13 * 5), 39/65 = 60% in the office. How dare you question Dell's maths?
- smith7018 2y agoSee, that's why I shouldn't have assumed!
- indymike 2y ago> Fully remote workers, meanwhile, are ineligible for promotion, I'm not sure how this is even legal.
- sidewndr46 2y agoif you are fully remote due to an ADA protected disability, it likely is not
- robertlagrant 2y agoYeah this is unlikely to be included. It's probably more "if your contract is office based, we won't fire you for working remote but technically you're breaking your contract right now through inertia, so we can count that as a reason to not promote you."
- wang_li 2y agoThe ADA requires reasonable accommodation, not whatever the employee demands. If you’re blind they can get you a screen reader, they don’t have to hire Tim Curry to read all the text you encounter during the day. And if you lack mobility they have to have a wheelchair accessible workplace, they don’t have to let you work from from orbit via radio uplink.
- i_am_jl 2y agoGiven Dell's executives comments over the past decade on the effectiveness of remote workers, it seems like it would be difficult for them to make the case that remote work is not a reasonable accomodation for a disability affecting mobility.
- andy99 2y agoI don't think promotion is a right of any kind - there are many jobs where that's it and you're never promoted. It would actually be ridiculous (though not unexpected for some places) to have laws related to promotion. That said, it's really dumb corporate policy, it basically telling people to do the minimum or leave.
- belter 2y ago> Fully remote workers, meanwhile, are ineligible for promotion Is this out of a Dilbert cartoon?
- bluefirebrand 2y agoI suspect this is true at a lot of companies but they just wouldn't admit it out loud
- anticorporate 2y agoAt my company, the minimum is 3 days a week in the office, but the "expectation" is 4 days, and "leaders" are expected to be there 5 days a week. No idea what any of that means. I'm fully remote, so I guess I'm not the leader of the team I manage? Meanwhile, the only remote people I saw get a "promotion" in the last cycle either got a title bump without a level bump, or were the only person on the ground in the country where they work. The only level jumps I've seen in remote positions is when a remote person leaves and a new office-based person comes in to fill their place, the new person is hired at the level the remote person should have been promoted to. It's a shitty time to work in the corporate world.
- bluefirebrand 2y agoI'm in a particularly absurd situation at my job I'm fully remote, aside from about a week per quarter that I fly to the office for a bit My contract says I'm a hybrid employee and required to be in office at least part time But they don't have an office in my city so I fall into a loophole where I'm "outside commute distance" When I first signed this contract a couple of years ago I asked for it to be changed to say remote instead of hybrid but they wouldn't
- red-iron-pine 2y agomanagement, esp. on the mid to high level, is often about coordination, alignment, and communication. and often in ways that are not 100% provable, both in a CYA sense, but also in a "don't spook investors/the market" sense; until it's official, it's not anything. and in-person discussions lend themselves better to spitballing and brainstorming, IMO.
- davidgerard 2y agocheap reblog of https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/08/dell_return_office/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/08/dell_return_office/
- izzydata 2y agoIt sounds like they are trying to convince a decent number of people to quit on their own.
- mberning 2y agoI agree, but an actual RIF would probably be less devastating to morale.
- ClarityJones 2y agoTrue, but there's a major difference between who leaves. A well-implemented RIF would eliminate many of those who prefer a Return to Office. So - for them - this is a better alternative.
- SillyUsername 2y agoYep "quiet firing" I think is the new term for the old practice of forcing people out slowly by not giving them pay rises and making their existing position uncomfortable.
- RobotToaster 2y agoThe correct term is "constructive dismissal".
- red-iron-pine 2y agothe legal term is constructive dismissal, and that term has real weight in labor disputes
- TheRealDunkirk 2y agoI wouldn't worry about the people who quit and leave. I'd worry about the people who quit and stay.
- jmclnx 2y agoThe fortune 500 where I use to work, the only pay raises you got were like Cost of Living, based upon Ave Pay for your job, and those raises were always around 1%. People who I know who got promoted did not get any raises due to pay overlap in the bands. All you got was more stress on a promotion. So no promotions for working remote ? Sounds good to me.
- bezier-curve 2y agoWhy does that sound good to you? Do the executives at the Fortune 500 you worked at not make enough millions to comically eclipse the average wealth of the people that actually run the company?
- jmclnx 2y agoOf course they make more. But I will never be promoted and will avoid the stress. If promotions got real salary increases then maybe I would go in. But you know, it is almost impossible for regular people to get to the high exec level unless you were born into the 1%.
- joshspankit 2y agoAny “increase” that’s below inflation is actually a net decrease.
- bryancoxwell 2y agoI gotta say, given the choice between a potential promotion and continuing to live a significantly happier life as a remote worker, I’d easily choose the latter.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- artiscode 2y agoMy thoughts exactly. I'm done with the rat race. It's not a fair game where the rules change as you go along. I'm downsizing and getting rid of lifestyle inflation. I'd rather be free and remote with less pay.
- bravetraveler 2y agoGiven that the most meaningful jumps in my career have always been with the next company, agree. Can't believe I almost got suckered into making a 'promotion packet', while being the one person on everyone's speed dial. I already did the work, someone else just rewards it. Time and time again.
- drukenemo 2y agoWhat do you mean making a promotion packet? Story, English is not my first language.
- vundercind 2y agoEnglish is my first language and I don’t know what that means, either.
- foolswisdom 2y agoIt refers to a document (or documents?) making the case why someone (themselves) should be promoted.
- bravetraveler 2y ago
- asylteltine 2y ago[dead]
- whoknowsidont 2y agoExcept for the executives of course. Your guaranteed 30% raises are coming in like always, as well as the ability to disappear for months on end and then show up to 1 visible meeting and then disappear again with no accountability for output or overall success of the company.
- klysm 2y agoThey’re busy setting vision
- toomuchtodo 2y agoWorkers should get busy organizing and unionizing, anything that gets legal leverage against management.
- CWuestefeld 2y agoThe article doesn't mention anything about your claims. Do you have citations, or are you just making up things to snark about?
- weard_beard 2y agoIf we'd like to start scientifically collecting data I will gladly confirm I have observed this, "made up snark"
- illiac786 2y agoYou have execs disappearing for months at your employer? I work in an international 80k employee company, I can’t imagine an exec disappearing. These have no direct reports? In my company it’s a ticket for being let go, when you have no reports… Of course I don’t have super great visibility, but the 4 above me in my line of report, I don’t see how they could disappear.
- whoknowsidont 2y agoNot as made up as the value executives bring to their company. Feigning academic interest is nauseating by the way. You bring nothing to the conversation and demand other people do work until you reach some arbitrary level of satisfaction; even after doing the work you'd just disappear from the conversation and not have your opinion changed. Searching through your comment history you've only offered citations or references a handful of times, despite having over 11,000 comments. Practice what you preach.
- cebert 2y agoI’m excited when people in leadership positions who are in the boomer generation start to retire out. I think we’ll get a lot more sensible business leadership once they’re gone.
- geraldwhen 2y agoNope. They’re grooming the next generation of hand shaking hucksters who drink the kool aid.
- ClarityJones 2y agoYep. It's not particularly hard to determine which people will sell others out for a good paycheck.
- anticorporate 2y agoFor anyone in a middle management role, the struggle is real. I don't have a day go by without senior leadership treating me like I'm failing the company for putting my employees' needs over the "needs" of management.
- diego_moita 2y agoIf you think that being an intelligent boss has anything to do with age then you're being ageist, quite literally. Generations don't exist. They're an imaginary and abstract construct.
- whamlastxmas 2y agook boomer
- diego_moita 2y agoLOL Too bad I won't be around to hear your grandkids telling you something like that.
- hpestyghr 2y ago[dead]
- mellosouls 2y agoOriginal article, as linked in the OP here: https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/08/dell_return_office/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/08/dell_return_office/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fullshark 2y agoPro-Labor regulations are your only recourse against the inevitable surveillance wage-slavery.
- sebastianconcpt 2y agoFalse. You can go work in another place. Also creating that is the inception of politicized corruption. Argentina's last 60 years are a testimony to the world about that.
- shockedang 2y ago[dead]
- volkadav 2y agoAround a decade ago I was working at a developer tools company. An org within Dell was using our product. When we spoke with their management about how it was working, what their feature requests, etc. were, they'd frequently refer to the engineers as "the cattle" and were not speaking humorously. I am not surprised that behavior is present elsewhere in their employee relations. It does not seem like an environment that sparks joy.
- malfist 2y agoWhen I worked at Dell it was....not great. My org had a tendency to fire any manager who set realistic expectations and put in place anyone who would always say yes to the client. It got so bad that my direct manager had a literal mental breakdown one day over someone resigning that was key to the success of a project. Like sobbing, throwing furniture at walls out of control break down. I got out of their right after that, last I heard my direct manager quit tech entirely and went back to his home country. That org was not setup for anyone to win. But it was my first non-intern job out of college and it introduced me to the perk of WFH, we all had 2 WFH days a week and I loved it (especially since at home I could stream music, at the office 30+ people shared a T1 line). A couple years after I left, I got laid off, and desperate for a job, came back to Dell, but at that point almost nobody was coming into the office and I didn't have any teammates there so I just worked from home all the time. that was 9 years ago I think, and I've worked remotely since then.
- kkfx 2y agoWell... If you have to monitor the workers physical location, then you can't measure productivity, right? So, you want people in offices for side city-business (human animal intensive farming) but since you know they work equally from remote or in an office you have to check their compliance because your target are urban side business not work productivity, right? It's perfectly legit, only... You need to find people who agree being farmed like cattle, otherwise you'll get more and more desperate mediocre workers and well, some competitors will eat you a step at a time.
- tmaly 2y ago>However, the efficacy of RTO mandates is questionable. An examination of 457 companies on the S&P 500 list released in February concluded that RTO mandates don't drive company value but instead negatively affect worker morale. Analysis of survey data from more than 18,000 working Americans released in March found that flexible workplace policies, including the ability to work remotely completely or part-time and flexible schedules, can help employees' mental health. One possible translation: the company does not care about you.
- KLAUSGREY 2y ago[dead]