6 ms·

Dell's sudden 5-day RTO order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

stonethrowaway 2y ago
So funny thing about those unions… I am hoping that this will lead people to, prior to accepting a job (deal with the devil, more often than not), look into the pedigree of the company and evaluate based on how people within are treated if they want to work for such a place. In other words, I doubt that Dell was sunshine and roses until now. Or in other words: when someone you don’t like is screwed over, be prepared for that next someone to be you.
- giantg2 2y ago
  "Or in other words: when someone you don’t like is screwed over, be prepared for that next someone to be you." This is incredibly relevant to my own life. I wish people would contemplate this more - at work, with proposed laws, etc.
achristmascarl 2y ago
https://archive.is/0oTiy https://archive.is/0oTiy
milesskorpen 2y ago
It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to the office means you need to find child care it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time on those days.
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  I guess depends how far you are from the office, and how much time you'll end up burning on commutes. Childcare may be a 5 minute walk from home but a 1+hr unreliable commute from the office.
- giantg2 2y ago
  It depends on the level of needs for the child. There's a certain age range where a child can basically take care of themself for a few hours bur can't be trusted to be home alone (or haven't met the legal age).
  - milesskorpen 2y ago
    Yeah, I can understand that.
  - ckemere 2y ago
    This is probably between age 6 and 11, so with the average 1.94 children family with ~2 year spacing, there's a need for something like 7 years of after school monitoring...
- acheron 2y ago
  With a 2 year old, sure. But a lot of my PTO used to be "elementary aged child is sick and has to stay home from school, so I have to stay home too because he can't be home by himself for 9 hours". Now I don't have to take PTO for that. Kids are sick and just stay in bed or on the couch, I check on them every so often. Doesn't interfere with work any more than going to get a coffee.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  This is a good point. When I started working remotely, I was really clear with my spouse that this doesn't mean that I'm suddenly available to supervise the kid, do work around the house, go pick things up at the store, and so on, just because I was physically at home. I'm still working just as if I was in the office, just without having to drive to a separate building.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Strong boundaries. But the divorce is going to burn a bunch of your work time..
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      It seems like a healthy relationship to me… they communicated and understood each other’s needs.
- eesmith 2y ago
  I don't see mention of someone working full-time while also doing full-time child care. I see people who have part-time child care who now need full-time, like: > A sales-team member who's a parent said they started searching for additional childcare arrangements and > Under the hybrid model, one worker was able to leave the office at lunchtime to manage pickup times and shared childcare duties with their partner, who worked from home. The worker said managers were flexible about people signing on later from home to complete their hours. > Their productivity numbers had not fallen, they added.
- SvenL 2y ago
  Hanging all day in meetings also feels like not working full time…I have to admit, there are meetings where I sit with my child’s and build legos. Those are the most productive meetings I have…
- runako 2y ago
  Lots of legit reasons. Some I have seen: - kids do remote school for whatever reason. This works when parent is at home, but not if parent is at the office. - kids are < age when it's okay to leave them at home, but > age when it's okay for them to walk home from school. - Have to be at work at 9, school drop-off starts at 8:35. School is 45 minutes from the office. There are a lot of ways people organize their lives. The cool thing about sales teams is you don't have to micromanage them in the office as they are one of the few teams in the company where results are unambiguous.
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    These are all legitimate but I found my self a bit bewildered that the concept of a school bus is absent entirely from the apparent thought process, given I rode the bus for the vast majority of my primary and secondary schooling
    - ars 2y ago
      At least by me you have to be more than 1.5miles from the school to get a bus - that's a half hour walk! Doable certainly, but not fun, especially in the winter - or worse, when it's hot! And teens need to live even farther from their school to qualify for a bus, but teens don't walk any faster than non teens. Most kids don't really want to spend the better part of an hour each way going to/from school.
      - CalRobert 2y ago
        A bike can make 1.5 miles an easy ride (I rode 4 miles to school in HS) but it's really rare to have safe bike routes in most places, sadly.
        entropicdrifter 2y ago
        Sadly untrue where I grew up. The hills were brutal, walking and taking longer was preferable to not feeling your legs lol
      - 2y ago
- rkharsan64 2y ago
  There's nothing wrong with caring for your child. The cause of this situation is insufficient paternal leaves, not having and raising children. If you as an employer provide a leave of just 15 days for the father (I've seen really big companies do this), and just a few months for the mother, don't be surprised if people lose productivity or just straight up leave when they have children. Most EU countries have great paternal leave policies. Most other countries could learn something from them. Somehow, it has become acceptable to forget raising a family for the sake of working, and it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies. Edit with some more thoughts: 95% of all the time you will spend with your parents is gone. [1] If your child is raised by a caretaker, you're losing a huge chunk of all the time you'll get with them. On your deathbed, would you feel proud of having delivered another feature instead of spending a bit more time with your family and children? [1]: https://seeyourfolks.com/ https://seeyourfolks.com/
  - unsui 2y ago
    > it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies. HN is full of temporarily-embarrassed CEO-wannabes-in-waiting who tend to side with the disruptor, not so much with the disruptees.
  - davidashe 2y ago
    “There's nothing wrong with caring for your child. The cause of this situation is insufficient paternal leaves, not having and raising children.” Tell me you’ve never been a working parent, without telling me…
    - em-bee 2y ago
      i don't get what you are trying to say here.
- jimbob45 2y ago
  You're implying that none of them are on part-time daycare because they should easily be able to convert to full-time daycare now. That is false. You cannot simply convert up if the daycare does not have capacity, to say nothing of the associated costs.
- creativenolo 2y ago
  I couldn’t find any mention of employees doing full-time childcare in the article. But I suspect you don’t really understand the issues. If you need an extra hour childcare because of your commute you are unlikely to find childcare that covers that one hour only and works around you. You most likely need to find afternoon/early evening cover. Good luck. Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring the kids are not killing themselves. But you can’t just leave them at home incase they kill themselves. They call that neglect. Be glad you don’t have to sort out childcare or deal with people thinking you “weren’t really working”.
  - jhoechtl 2y ago
    > Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring the kids are not killing themselves. But you can’t just leave them at home incase they kill themselves. They call that neglect. Are you speculating or telling from personal experience? If the first the answer even common sense will give you is no. If the later you contribute to the problem that a vast majority of responsible workers pay the bills for a minority who overstretched the system.
    - creativenolo 2y ago
      Personal experience.
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    Something like that might include a casual arrangement like a neighbour watching them after school before you get home, a grandparent dropping by, etc.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      I’m don’t quite get what you mean. It wouldn’t be that unexpected in a nice friendly community for a neighbor to help out occasionally, but people don’t just work occasionally, right?
      - 2y ago
- unethical_ban 2y ago
  The job of a worker can often be realistically done in far less than 40 hours a week. If you're salaried, maybe working 9-12 and 2-4:30 is feasible and legal for performance, and 5x/week for 8 hours in the office takes you away from what you were doing in the padding. Secondly, RTO means a lack of flexibility in work hours even if you did 40/week. People who didn't have to commute, who had time to take their kids to school or pick them up, now don't have that pre- and post-work time to help kids.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- plantwallshoe 2y ago
  Elementary schools close at 3pm. No longer can you just take a break mid-day to pick them up because you’re stuck at the office until 5. Lots of daycares close by 6pm. Good luck leaving the office, commuting, picking up the kid on time.
- camgunz 2y ago
  When they're between 1.5-5 you don't really have to watch them all the time, but you can't leave them alone. Depending on your job (fine for my partner when she's being a PM, not fine for me when I'm being an SWE) that can be manageable. And daycare is booooooonkers expensive. I'm sure a lot of people were like "hmm, $3k/mo or constant low-key distraction... how bad can it be"
- 4star3star 2y ago
  Think elementary age children who go to school. Most parents would not want a first grader to have to be home alone for a couple hours. School age kids don't need 100% interaction while at home - they just need to be safe, and their parents need to be available occasionally. I would imagine returning to the office means finding after-school care in many cases.
- hexfish 2y ago
  Implying you're full time producing value - head in the game - when you're in the office?
- raydev 2y ago
  > it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time Only if you think it's impossible for people to work while their children are home.
Someone1234 2y ago
This is just downsizing while suppressing negative PR/investor fear. I'd caution anyone who invests or any of these companies that RTO, you should treat this like any other layoff from the perspective of company performance -- because it is.
- giantg2 2y ago
  Bonus points are that the ones affected most are families, so the companies save even more on the benefits they don't have to cover. Basically, this is roundabout maritial/family status employment discrimination.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Layoffs generally boost stock prices
ryandrake 2y ago
> "To harness this energy and grow skills, we believe our sales teams need to be together in the office," the memo added. "Additionally, our data shows that sales teams are more productive when onsite." I wonder if they shared the "data" in the memo. Otherwise, this should be considered a magical myth that the company's leadership simply believes.
- stonethrowaway 2y ago
  They’ll probably justify it using some outdated Gartner shit anyway.
- burnte 2y ago
  > I wonder if they shared the "data" in the memo. Otherwise, this should be considered a magical myth that the company's leadership simply believes. They never share the data. The data is "management wants it that way." I manage a completely remote team, I couldn't care less if they were in person, they work fantastically this way.
  - garciasn 2y ago
    Of course they don’t; because, none of this has anything to do with any measurable KPI(s) other than “we said so.” E: forgot a quotation mark. Please forgive my indiscretions.
    - burnte 2y ago
      Exactly. I get just as much from my people if not more when they're remote because I hire good people with good work ethics. They're responsible people who do the jobs I trust them to do. This is just control-fetish appeasement.
- burningChrome 2y ago
  Before I got into information systems, I spent about a decade in sales. As someone who's been on both sides of the ball, sales teams absolutely do not need to be in the office. Maybe for quarterly or managerial meetings, but the highest performing sales people and teams I knew where given free reign to do their thing as long as they were hitting their quotas. If you weren't hitting your numbers, then yeah, managers would lean on you to be in the office and on the phone building your pipeline and demonstrating you weren't out on the golf course doing nothing. Its a total myth that sales people need to be in the office.
linotype 2y ago
So are parents to blame for RTO then? I’m starting to wonder as the child-free folks I know are producing more WFH than they were pre pandemic.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  > So are parents to blame for RTO then? If you need a scapegoat. The correct place for the blame is management. Nearly everyone on our team does more work from home than they did sitting at the office. There are a couple notable slackers, but they're not parents. I suspect that's because parents have necessarily become adept at making a schedule and sticking to it.
  - linotype 2y ago
    I don’t need or want a scapegoat. I want data, frankly, that backs up RTO.
    - EasyMark 2y ago
      You won’t find it. All you’ll get are “trust me bro” from the management.
runako 2y ago
"RTO" honestly is better characterized as "RTO+H" because there is no expectation that people will _stop_ working at home after RTO, just that they will have the same amount of work to do and now fewer waking hours to do it.
laweijfmvo 2y ago
someone probably realized that people could work half as much as home and still get the same amount done as before. this pissed them off so much, they want everyone sitting in the office all day, doing the same amount
jhoechtl 2y ago
This one I do not understand. How could you do any meaningful work in Home Office without child care? I mean did they help their kids doing their home work while on job? That was ok during the covid craze but otherwise a no go.
- xutopia 2y ago
  It's not having full time kids at home it's having real world schedules that make it really hard to fit a commute on top of picking up kids.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  I think it is more that you can paper over any gaps with hybrid. Kids below a certain age need 100% available adults (not necessarily doing anything, but they need to be there). Leaving a kid alone for “just 15 minutes” is not going to fly. WFH gives you that availability to make a quick cutover to handle any disruption: kid is sick, full day care option does not start until 10a, sitter is late, etc.
- raydev 2y ago
  Do you think children of all ages need constant and undivided attention such that the parent is incapable of performing their paid job?
- EasyMark 2y ago
  Depends on the age of the kids.
amazinteresting 2y ago
[dead]
xinayder 2y ago
> Johnny C. Taylor Jr., the president of the Society for Human Resource Management, told BI that as more organizations have called workers back to the office, it's become clear that many employees didn't heed warnings that remote work was not here to stay. It's not the employees fault if they trusted the company wouldn't screw up home office, all these companies made employees believe they could have better working conditions, until they forced everyone to go back to the office. I don't blame the employees but the employer for making broken promises and manipulating their employees into thinking the company is better than the competitors.
- voytec 2y ago
  Johnny C. Taylor Jr., the president of the Society for Human Resource Management, a spokesman for corporations, is full of shit if you read his statements from the employee's perspective. This guy "is not your attorney" to put it politely. RTO is a tool used to cause no-severance departures of workers who are expensive to fire but can be replaced by cheaper workforce, in a way that will go unnoticed to investors during the next quarter. EDIT: this topic was just demoted from 1st to 5th page, with 45 points after 2 hours of being posted. No more fresh comments under such moderation.
  - Bluecobra 2y ago
    > RTO is a tool used to cause no-severance departures of workers who are expensive to fire but can be replaced by cheaper workforce, in a way that will go unnoticed to investors during the next quarter. Yep. I seem to recall this happening well before COVID, like at IBM (which was a pioneer for remote work) and Yahoo.
billy99k 2y ago
I know people that moved to other states during the pandemic that were told they could WFH forever. Unless remote work is in the contract, don't believe anything a company tells you.
whatever1 2y ago
Commuting sucks, remote has enormous benefits yada yada, however: The problems (childcare, commuting, etc) that the employees present as huge obstacles, were there before covid and people were managing. The c suites will not break a sweat over these. On the essence of the policy, this is a quiet layoff, same as Amazon's (which further threatens managers with layoffs if they do not enforce the 5day rto for their reports).
- em-bee 2y ago
  they also had plenty of time to make arrangements, consider the cost of childcare vs pay, and negotiate their salary accordingly. in some places childcare arrangements can only be made once a year, in others they have waiting lists going back years. i can't imagine most people be able to make long term arrangements over a weekend
hinkley 2y ago
I wonder how many new businesses will spring up in secondary markets because too many people took the pandemic as a chance to move somewhere with a better cost of living, and now they're being orphaned by RTO plans.
bee_rider 2y ago
This is really going to unsettle the living situations of a bunch of people, but of course they really important to get everybody in the office so Dell can harness that creative energy and make… more mediocre laptops.
throw3638 2y ago
Register your kid as a pet (emotional support animal), and you can bring it anywhere. Kids should be included in office life! If dog parents can bring their child to work, why not human parents?! Edit: Dell is a pet friendly company, bringing animals to office is employment perk, and should not be a problem! There are no limitations on species, and humans are technically animals!!! https://jobs.dell.com/en/dell-pets-scruffy https://jobs.dell.com/en/dell-pets-scruffy https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/flexible-work-solutions-can-make-every-day-pets-at-work-day/ https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/flexible-work-solutions-can-...
oliwarner 2y ago
If you need childcare to return to the office, we're you really, wholly working from home?
awiesenhofer 2y ago
See america? That's why you need unions!

So funny thing about those unions… I am hoping that this will lead people to, prior to accepting a job (deal with the devil, more often than not), look into the pedigree of the company and evaluate based on how people within are treated if they want to work for such a place. In other words, I doubt that Dell was sunshine and roses until now. Or in other words: when someone you don’t like is screwed over, be prepared for that next someone to be you.

giantg2 2y ago
"Or in other words: when someone you don’t like is screwed over, be prepared for that next someone to be you." This is incredibly relevant to my own life. I wish people would contemplate this more - at work, with proposed laws, etc.

achristmascarl 2y ago

https://archive.is/0oTiy https://archive.is/0oTiy

milesskorpen 2y ago

It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to the office means you need to find child care it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time on those days.

rich_sasha 2y ago
I guess depends how far you are from the office, and how much time you'll end up burning on commutes. Childcare may be a 5 minute walk from home but a 1+hr unreliable commute from the office.
giantg2 2y ago
It depends on the level of needs for the child. There's a certain age range where a child can basically take care of themself for a few hours bur can't be trusted to be home alone (or haven't met the legal age).
- milesskorpen 2y ago
  Yeah, I can understand that.
- ckemere 2y ago
  This is probably between age 6 and 11, so with the average 1.94 children family with ~2 year spacing, there's a need for something like 7 years of after school monitoring...
acheron 2y ago
With a 2 year old, sure. But a lot of my PTO used to be "elementary aged child is sick and has to stay home from school, so I have to stay home too because he can't be home by himself for 9 hours". Now I don't have to take PTO for that. Kids are sick and just stay in bed or on the couch, I check on them every so often. Doesn't interfere with work any more than going to get a coffee.
ryandrake 2y ago
This is a good point. When I started working remotely, I was really clear with my spouse that this doesn't mean that I'm suddenly available to supervise the kid, do work around the house, go pick things up at the store, and so on, just because I was physically at home. I'm still working just as if I was in the office, just without having to drive to a separate building.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Strong boundaries. But the divorce is going to burn a bunch of your work time..
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    It seems like a healthy relationship to me… they communicated and understood each other’s needs.
eesmith 2y ago
I don't see mention of someone working full-time while also doing full-time child care. I see people who have part-time child care who now need full-time, like: > A sales-team member who's a parent said they started searching for additional childcare arrangements and > Under the hybrid model, one worker was able to leave the office at lunchtime to manage pickup times and shared childcare duties with their partner, who worked from home. The worker said managers were flexible about people signing on later from home to complete their hours. > Their productivity numbers had not fallen, they added.
SvenL 2y ago
Hanging all day in meetings also feels like not working full time…I have to admit, there are meetings where I sit with my child’s and build legos. Those are the most productive meetings I have…
runako 2y ago
Lots of legit reasons. Some I have seen: - kids do remote school for whatever reason. This works when parent is at home, but not if parent is at the office. - kids are < age when it's okay to leave them at home, but > age when it's okay for them to walk home from school. - Have to be at work at 9, school drop-off starts at 8:35. School is 45 minutes from the office. There are a lot of ways people organize their lives. The cool thing about sales teams is you don't have to micromanage them in the office as they are one of the few teams in the company where results are unambiguous.
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  These are all legitimate but I found my self a bit bewildered that the concept of a school bus is absent entirely from the apparent thought process, given I rode the bus for the vast majority of my primary and secondary schooling
  - ars 2y ago
    At least by me you have to be more than 1.5miles from the school to get a bus - that's a half hour walk! Doable certainly, but not fun, especially in the winter - or worse, when it's hot! And teens need to live even farther from their school to qualify for a bus, but teens don't walk any faster than non teens. Most kids don't really want to spend the better part of an hour each way going to/from school.
    - CalRobert 2y ago
      A bike can make 1.5 miles an easy ride (I rode 4 miles to school in HS) but it's really rare to have safe bike routes in most places, sadly.
      - entropicdrifter 2y ago
        Sadly untrue where I grew up. The hills were brutal, walking and taking longer was preferable to not feeling your legs lol
    - 2y ago
rkharsan64 2y ago
There's nothing wrong with caring for your child. The cause of this situation is insufficient paternal leaves, not having and raising children. If you as an employer provide a leave of just 15 days for the father (I've seen really big companies do this), and just a few months for the mother, don't be surprised if people lose productivity or just straight up leave when they have children. Most EU countries have great paternal leave policies. Most other countries could learn something from them. Somehow, it has become acceptable to forget raising a family for the sake of working, and it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies. Edit with some more thoughts: 95% of all the time you will spend with your parents is gone. [1] If your child is raised by a caretaker, you're losing a huge chunk of all the time you'll get with them. On your deathbed, would you feel proud of having delivered another feature instead of spending a bit more time with your family and children? [1]: https://seeyourfolks.com/ https://seeyourfolks.com/
- unsui 2y ago
  > it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies. HN is full of temporarily-embarrassed CEO-wannabes-in-waiting who tend to side with the disruptor, not so much with the disruptees.
- davidashe 2y ago
  “There's nothing wrong with caring for your child. The cause of this situation is insufficient paternal leaves, not having and raising children.” Tell me you’ve never been a working parent, without telling me…
  - em-bee 2y ago
    i don't get what you are trying to say here.
jimbob45 2y ago
You're implying that none of them are on part-time daycare because they should easily be able to convert to full-time daycare now. That is false. You cannot simply convert up if the daycare does not have capacity, to say nothing of the associated costs.
creativenolo 2y ago
I couldn’t find any mention of employees doing full-time childcare in the article. But I suspect you don’t really understand the issues. If you need an extra hour childcare because of your commute you are unlikely to find childcare that covers that one hour only and works around you. You most likely need to find afternoon/early evening cover. Good luck. Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring the kids are not killing themselves. But you can’t just leave them at home incase they kill themselves. They call that neglect. Be glad you don’t have to sort out childcare or deal with people thinking you “weren’t really working”.
- jhoechtl 2y ago
  > Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring the kids are not killing themselves. But you can’t just leave them at home incase they kill themselves. They call that neglect. Are you speculating or telling from personal experience? If the first the answer even common sense will give you is no. If the later you contribute to the problem that a vast majority of responsible workers pay the bills for a minority who overstretched the system.
  - creativenolo 2y ago
    Personal experience.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  Something like that might include a casual arrangement like a neighbour watching them after school before you get home, a grandparent dropping by, etc.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    I’m don’t quite get what you mean. It wouldn’t be that unexpected in a nice friendly community for a neighbor to help out occasionally, but people don’t just work occasionally, right?
    - 2y ago
unethical_ban 2y ago
The job of a worker can often be realistically done in far less than 40 hours a week. If you're salaried, maybe working 9-12 and 2-4:30 is feasible and legal for performance, and 5x/week for 8 hours in the office takes you away from what you were doing in the padding. Secondly, RTO means a lack of flexibility in work hours even if you did 40/week. People who didn't have to commute, who had time to take their kids to school or pick them up, now don't have that pre- and post-work time to help kids.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
plantwallshoe 2y ago
Elementary schools close at 3pm. No longer can you just take a break mid-day to pick them up because you’re stuck at the office until 5. Lots of daycares close by 6pm. Good luck leaving the office, commuting, picking up the kid on time.
camgunz 2y ago
When they're between 1.5-5 you don't really have to watch them all the time, but you can't leave them alone. Depending on your job (fine for my partner when she's being a PM, not fine for me when I'm being an SWE) that can be manageable. And daycare is booooooonkers expensive. I'm sure a lot of people were like "hmm, $3k/mo or constant low-key distraction... how bad can it be"
4star3star 2y ago
Think elementary age children who go to school. Most parents would not want a first grader to have to be home alone for a couple hours. School age kids don't need 100% interaction while at home - they just need to be safe, and their parents need to be available occasionally. I would imagine returning to the office means finding after-school care in many cases.
hexfish 2y ago
Implying you're full time producing value - head in the game - when you're in the office?
raydev 2y ago
> it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time Only if you think it's impossible for people to work while their children are home.

Someone1234 2y ago

This is just downsizing while suppressing negative PR/investor fear. I'd caution anyone who invests or any of these companies that RTO, you should treat this like any other layoff from the perspective of company performance -- because it is.

giantg2 2y ago
Bonus points are that the ones affected most are families, so the companies save even more on the benefits they don't have to cover. Basically, this is roundabout maritial/family status employment discrimination.
jncfhnb 2y ago
Layoffs generally boost stock prices

ryandrake 2y ago

> "To harness this energy and grow skills, we believe our sales teams need to be together in the office," the memo added. "Additionally, our data shows that sales teams are more productive when onsite." I wonder if they shared the "data" in the memo. Otherwise, this should be considered a magical myth that the company's leadership simply believes.

stonethrowaway 2y ago
They’ll probably justify it using some outdated Gartner shit anyway.
burnte 2y ago
> I wonder if they shared the "data" in the memo. Otherwise, this should be considered a magical myth that the company's leadership simply believes. They never share the data. The data is "management wants it that way." I manage a completely remote team, I couldn't care less if they were in person, they work fantastically this way.
- garciasn 2y ago
  Of course they don’t; because, none of this has anything to do with any measurable KPI(s) other than “we said so.” E: forgot a quotation mark. Please forgive my indiscretions.
  - burnte 2y ago
    Exactly. I get just as much from my people if not more when they're remote because I hire good people with good work ethics. They're responsible people who do the jobs I trust them to do. This is just control-fetish appeasement.
burningChrome 2y ago
Before I got into information systems, I spent about a decade in sales. As someone who's been on both sides of the ball, sales teams absolutely do not need to be in the office. Maybe for quarterly or managerial meetings, but the highest performing sales people and teams I knew where given free reign to do their thing as long as they were hitting their quotas. If you weren't hitting your numbers, then yeah, managers would lean on you to be in the office and on the phone building your pipeline and demonstrating you weren't out on the golf course doing nothing. Its a total myth that sales people need to be in the office.

linotype 2y ago

So are parents to blame for RTO then? I’m starting to wonder as the child-free folks I know are producing more WFH than they were pre pandemic.

rootusrootus 2y ago
> So are parents to blame for RTO then? If you need a scapegoat. The correct place for the blame is management. Nearly everyone on our team does more work from home than they did sitting at the office. There are a couple notable slackers, but they're not parents. I suspect that's because parents have necessarily become adept at making a schedule and sticking to it.
- linotype 2y ago
  I don’t need or want a scapegoat. I want data, frankly, that backs up RTO.
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    You won’t find it. All you’ll get are “trust me bro” from the management.

runako 2y ago

"RTO" honestly is better characterized as "RTO+H" because there is no expectation that people will _stop_ working at home after RTO, just that they will have the same amount of work to do and now fewer waking hours to do it.

laweijfmvo 2y ago

someone probably realized that people could work half as much as home and still get the same amount done as before. this pissed them off so much, they want everyone sitting in the office all day, doing the same amount

jhoechtl 2y ago

This one I do not understand. How could you do any meaningful work in Home Office without child care? I mean did they help their kids doing their home work while on job? That was ok during the covid craze but otherwise a no go.

xutopia 2y ago
It's not having full time kids at home it's having real world schedules that make it really hard to fit a commute on top of picking up kids.
0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
I think it is more that you can paper over any gaps with hybrid. Kids below a certain age need 100% available adults (not necessarily doing anything, but they need to be there). Leaving a kid alone for “just 15 minutes” is not going to fly. WFH gives you that availability to make a quick cutover to handle any disruption: kid is sick, full day care option does not start until 10a, sitter is late, etc.
raydev 2y ago
Do you think children of all ages need constant and undivided attention such that the parent is incapable of performing their paid job?
EasyMark 2y ago
Depends on the age of the kids.

amazinteresting 2y ago

[dead]

xinayder 2y ago

> Johnny C. Taylor Jr., the president of the Society for Human Resource Management, told BI that as more organizations have called workers back to the office, it's become clear that many employees didn't heed warnings that remote work was not here to stay. It's not the employees fault if they trusted the company wouldn't screw up home office, all these companies made employees believe they could have better working conditions, until they forced everyone to go back to the office. I don't blame the employees but the employer for making broken promises and manipulating their employees into thinking the company is better than the competitors.

voytec 2y ago
Johnny C. Taylor Jr., the president of the Society for Human Resource Management, a spokesman for corporations, is full of shit if you read his statements from the employee's perspective. This guy "is not your attorney" to put it politely. RTO is a tool used to cause no-severance departures of workers who are expensive to fire but can be replaced by cheaper workforce, in a way that will go unnoticed to investors during the next quarter. EDIT: this topic was just demoted from 1st to 5th page, with 45 points after 2 hours of being posted. No more fresh comments under such moderation.
- Bluecobra 2y ago
  > RTO is a tool used to cause no-severance departures of workers who are expensive to fire but can be replaced by cheaper workforce, in a way that will go unnoticed to investors during the next quarter. Yep. I seem to recall this happening well before COVID, like at IBM (which was a pioneer for remote work) and Yahoo.

billy99k 2y ago

I know people that moved to other states during the pandemic that were told they could WFH forever. Unless remote work is in the contract, don't believe anything a company tells you.

whatever1 2y ago

Commuting sucks, remote has enormous benefits yada yada, however: The problems (childcare, commuting, etc) that the employees present as huge obstacles, were there before covid and people were managing. The c suites will not break a sweat over these. On the essence of the policy, this is a quiet layoff, same as Amazon's (which further threatens managers with layoffs if they do not enforce the 5day rto for their reports).

em-bee 2y ago
they also had plenty of time to make arrangements, consider the cost of childcare vs pay, and negotiate their salary accordingly. in some places childcare arrangements can only be made once a year, in others they have waiting lists going back years. i can't imagine most people be able to make long term arrangements over a weekend

hinkley 2y ago

I wonder how many new businesses will spring up in secondary markets because too many people took the pandemic as a chance to move somewhere with a better cost of living, and now they're being orphaned by RTO plans.

bee_rider 2y ago

This is really going to unsettle the living situations of a bunch of people, but of course they really important to get everybody in the office so Dell can harness that creative energy and make… more mediocre laptops.

throw3638 2y ago

Register your kid as a pet (emotional support animal), and you can bring it anywhere. Kids should be included in office life! If dog parents can bring their child to work, why not human parents?! Edit: Dell is a pet friendly company, bringing animals to office is employment perk, and should not be a problem! There are no limitations on species, and humans are technically animals!!! https://jobs.dell.com/en/dell-pets-scruffy https://jobs.dell.com/en/dell-pets-scruffy https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/flexible-work-solutions-can-make-every-day-pets-at-work-day/ https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/flexible-work-solutions-can-...

oliwarner 2y ago

If you need childcare to return to the office, we're you really, wholly working from home?

awiesenhofer 2y ago

See america? That's why you need unions!