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It's not about productivity at all. These same companies were commissioning studies during Covid that told their analysts "look how productive our employees are

by imcrs 10mo ago

It's not about productivity at all. These same companies were commissioning studies during Covid that told their analysts "look how productive our employees are now that they are working from home!" It's about crushing labor. WFH forces employers to compete. It gives a lot of power to employees, because they can apply for far more roles, work fewer hours, moonlight for multiple companies, etc, apply for other jobs during work hours, etc. These companies know that white collar workers are not fungible. Their intellectual workers are genuinely very difficult to replace and produce a lot of value. For talent that isn't fungible, it's RTO. For talent that is fungible, offshoring.

imcrs 10mo ago
For your comment about the turn towards authoritarianism, yeah, there's a reason every DEI program at every large corporation was pulled back within a few months, and it's not because the C suite all reads the same Musk tweets on X. Employees started making demands of management to actually look at some... structural issues. Those demands had teeth because employees acted and organized as a bloc. Only a matter of time before other lines of questioning besides race and sex were explored at work. Yeah.
- raxxorraxor 10mo ago
  With DEI you had to care about the same "structural issues®". It wasn't exactly employee representation and much more of a HR tool to sanction mostly low level employees. Usually I don't care about race and sex at work and I am not sad that DEI is gone. Creates room for issues much more relevant to work. Like working hours, salaries, holidays, health insurance and general work benefits. Stuff that matters.
  - mathw 10mo ago
    Applying those things equally to people regardless of skin colour, gender identity, sexuality or any other line along which people have historically been discriminated against isn't important?
    - lazide 10mo ago
      DEI explicitly took ‘we don’t do that’ off the table, by proactively discriminating based on those factors. And at first, when the pie is growing, that doesn’t threaten entrenched groups as much, so it mostly can happen. In a zero (or negative) sum game world (layoffs, hiring freezes), what do you think is going to happen? People with power will use the same tools to protect themselves or even acquire more power, and those without power will be ground under the same gears. I’ve seen it happen in every major society - from India to Chile to Europe to the US. In the US it’s getting particularly out of control (in both directions) for a number of factors - and very high publicity - but it’s way more blatant almost everywhere else in fact.
  - iteria 10mo ago
    That's because you are not impacted I assume. If you are from the DEI bucket then there is nothing more important. Every few years they come out with a study where all they do is change the name on resumes. Having a black sounding naming still, in modern day, greatly reduces your chances of getting an interview. Except, during the most current rendition of this study found that wasn't true at all at companies that had DEI policies. That is huge if people can determine your ethnicity based on your name. All your "more important" issues are predicated on the idea that you can get a job. For those who are unfairly discriminated against, they don't even get to your point. Who cares about employer healthcare when you have no employer?
    - lazide 10mo ago
      Sure. And those with power will protect their groups first - or lose that power. Which has been playing out for years now. And DEI took the ‘we don’t go racist/sexist/etc’ off the table, as the various groups were being blatantly racist, sexist, etc. So now it is being used against those groups.
    - tacitusarc 10mo ago
      My experience of DEI was as ideological cover to offshore jobs to India. While the executive team performed sweeping layoffs to push up the stock price and increase their own compensation, they paid lip service to DEI as if engaged in a karmic balancing act and that was their cheat code. And the company culture degraded as a result. Far more inter-group fighting, more politicking, more backstabbing, less cooperation. I’m not there anymore, but I hear they are trying to revert things back, slowly. Basically every project since then has been a failure and they’ve been coasting on their original success. Good people don’t need three letter acronyms to treat others fairly, and if someone is selling you new holier-than-thou rules, it’s worth asking what moral cost they no longer feel they need to pay.
    - raxxorraxor 10mo ago
      I am an ethnic minority, not visibly though and not from any DEI bucket. But that doesn't matter. Some DEI proponents perhaps meant well, but the way the went about was simply the wrong one. Criticism wasn't welcomed at all, even treating everybody the same regardless of sex or race was looked down upon. Words like racism were redefined and you had to adhere to certain dogmata. The classic approach to treat everyone equally is still better, even if there is some prejudice left. And that doesn't preclude any program that helps those in need. And here the same thing is true: Race and sex are irrelevant. Some proponents of DEI had their own problems with prejudice to solve in my experience. So perhaps the onus should be that everyone works on their own personal prejudices for now. Some things will be unfair, but introducing more unfairness doesn't solve any problems. And here DEI simply failed in its approach. A bad job market doesn't mean we can discriminate those that might have been more lucky regardless of reasons. The task would be to fix the job market. To propose two groups of minorities against some diffuse ethnic majority is simply childish, comes with multiple problems and it doesn't provide tangible benefits to anyone in the long run. I would argue it even entrenches prejudices and pits people against each other.
ChadNauseam 10mo ago
> It's not about productivity at all. > WFH forces employers to compete. It gives a lot of power to employees, because they can [...] work fewer hours, moonlight for multiple companies, etc Probably "working fewer hours" and "moonlight for multiple companies" has negative effects on productivity that employers would like to avoid.
- imcrs 10mo ago
  I've already kind of made it clear here where I stand on this, but I gotta tell you, you really do sound a lot like management. Do you really think your superstar programmers are well and truly doing intellectual work, the kind of work that produces business value, from the time they hit the coffee machine at 9AM to the time they grab their briefcase to go home at 5PM? If you believe this, I think you might be interested in bringing the Bobs in to discuss making our T.P.S. reporting process more efficient. They have thoughts on coversheets.
  - lukas099 10mo ago
    I’ll attempt a steelman and say, no, employees are not doing deep work from 9–5, but I could see being in an office 9–5 setting the stage for a lot of deep work to be done. Moonlighting for another company I could especially see as detrimental to focus at work.
    - p_l 10mo ago
      The nature of modern offices pretty much prevents deep work. You're not going to get deep work when you pack people like sardines into neat rows of desks, where pretty much at any time someone within one row away is going to be in a meeting - conducted of course over teleconferencing software. Or some people will talk (honestly, being in the office mostly translated to chit-chat for me).
      - jeena 10mo ago
        This is exactly my experience too.

by imcrs 10mo ago

imcrs 10mo ago

For your comment about the turn towards authoritarianism, yeah, there's a reason every DEI program at every large corporation was pulled back within a few months, and it's not because the C suite all reads the same Musk tweets on X. Employees started making demands of management to actually look at some... structural issues. Those demands had teeth because employees acted and organized as a bloc. Only a matter of time before other lines of questioning besides race and sex were explored at work. Yeah.

raxxorraxor 10mo ago
With DEI you had to care about the same "structural issues®". It wasn't exactly employee representation and much more of a HR tool to sanction mostly low level employees. Usually I don't care about race and sex at work and I am not sad that DEI is gone. Creates room for issues much more relevant to work. Like working hours, salaries, holidays, health insurance and general work benefits. Stuff that matters.
- mathw 10mo ago
  Applying those things equally to people regardless of skin colour, gender identity, sexuality or any other line along which people have historically been discriminated against isn't important?
  - lazide 10mo ago
    DEI explicitly took ‘we don’t do that’ off the table, by proactively discriminating based on those factors. And at first, when the pie is growing, that doesn’t threaten entrenched groups as much, so it mostly can happen. In a zero (or negative) sum game world (layoffs, hiring freezes), what do you think is going to happen? People with power will use the same tools to protect themselves or even acquire more power, and those without power will be ground under the same gears. I’ve seen it happen in every major society - from India to Chile to Europe to the US. In the US it’s getting particularly out of control (in both directions) for a number of factors - and very high publicity - but it’s way more blatant almost everywhere else in fact.
- iteria 10mo ago
  That's because you are not impacted I assume. If you are from the DEI bucket then there is nothing more important. Every few years they come out with a study where all they do is change the name on resumes. Having a black sounding naming still, in modern day, greatly reduces your chances of getting an interview. Except, during the most current rendition of this study found that wasn't true at all at companies that had DEI policies. That is huge if people can determine your ethnicity based on your name. All your "more important" issues are predicated on the idea that you can get a job. For those who are unfairly discriminated against, they don't even get to your point. Who cares about employer healthcare when you have no employer?
  - lazide 10mo ago
    Sure. And those with power will protect their groups first - or lose that power. Which has been playing out for years now. And DEI took the ‘we don’t go racist/sexist/etc’ off the table, as the various groups were being blatantly racist, sexist, etc. So now it is being used against those groups.
  - tacitusarc 10mo ago
    My experience of DEI was as ideological cover to offshore jobs to India. While the executive team performed sweeping layoffs to push up the stock price and increase their own compensation, they paid lip service to DEI as if engaged in a karmic balancing act and that was their cheat code. And the company culture degraded as a result. Far more inter-group fighting, more politicking, more backstabbing, less cooperation. I’m not there anymore, but I hear they are trying to revert things back, slowly. Basically every project since then has been a failure and they’ve been coasting on their original success. Good people don’t need three letter acronyms to treat others fairly, and if someone is selling you new holier-than-thou rules, it’s worth asking what moral cost they no longer feel they need to pay.
  - raxxorraxor 10mo ago
    I am an ethnic minority, not visibly though and not from any DEI bucket. But that doesn't matter. Some DEI proponents perhaps meant well, but the way the went about was simply the wrong one. Criticism wasn't welcomed at all, even treating everybody the same regardless of sex or race was looked down upon. Words like racism were redefined and you had to adhere to certain dogmata. The classic approach to treat everyone equally is still better, even if there is some prejudice left. And that doesn't preclude any program that helps those in need. And here the same thing is true: Race and sex are irrelevant. Some proponents of DEI had their own problems with prejudice to solve in my experience. So perhaps the onus should be that everyone works on their own personal prejudices for now. Some things will be unfair, but introducing more unfairness doesn't solve any problems. And here DEI simply failed in its approach. A bad job market doesn't mean we can discriminate those that might have been more lucky regardless of reasons. The task would be to fix the job market. To propose two groups of minorities against some diffuse ethnic majority is simply childish, comes with multiple problems and it doesn't provide tangible benefits to anyone in the long run. I would argue it even entrenches prejudices and pits people against each other.

ChadNauseam 10mo ago

> It's not about productivity at all. > WFH forces employers to compete. It gives a lot of power to employees, because they can [...] work fewer hours, moonlight for multiple companies, etc Probably "working fewer hours" and "moonlight for multiple companies" has negative effects on productivity that employers would like to avoid.

imcrs 10mo ago
I've already kind of made it clear here where I stand on this, but I gotta tell you, you really do sound a lot like management. Do you really think your superstar programmers are well and truly doing intellectual work, the kind of work that produces business value, from the time they hit the coffee machine at 9AM to the time they grab their briefcase to go home at 5PM? If you believe this, I think you might be interested in bringing the Bobs in to discuss making our T.P.S. reporting process more efficient. They have thoughts on coversheets.
- lukas099 10mo ago
  I’ll attempt a steelman and say, no, employees are not doing deep work from 9–5, but I could see being in an office 9–5 setting the stage for a lot of deep work to be done. Moonlighting for another company I could especially see as detrimental to focus at work.
  - p_l 10mo ago
    The nature of modern offices pretty much prevents deep work. You're not going to get deep work when you pack people like sardines into neat rows of desks, where pretty much at any time someone within one row away is going to be in a meeting - conducted of course over teleconferencing software. Or some people will talk (honestly, being in the office mostly translated to chit-chat for me).
    - jeena 10mo ago
      This is exactly my experience too.