Big tech companies are still trying to rally workers back into physical offices, and many workers are still not having it. Based on a recent report, computer-maker Dell has stumbled even more than most.
Dell announced a new return-to-office initiative earlier this year. In the new plan, workers had to classify themselves as remote or hybrid.
Those who classified themselves as hybrid are subject to a tracking system that ensures they are in a physical office 39 days a quarter, which works out to close to three days per work week.
Alternatively, by classifying themselves as remote, workers agree they can no longer be promoted or hired into new roles within the company.
Business Insider claims it has seen internal Dell tracking data that reveals nearly 50 percent of the workforce opted to accept the consequences of staying remote, undermining Dell’s plan to restore its in-office culture.
They didn’t opt to accept the consequences. They opted to look for another job once the salary expectations a jump make sense. Perhaps it’s what dell wanted in order to avoid headlines about layoffs.
And where would they go? It would have to be a smaller company as all the big tech companies seem to be laying people off.
Not necessarily a bad thing. End of last year I moved to a smaller company with better benefits and 30% increase on my salary.
Smaller companies are better IMHO. I’ve worked for evil giant software companies (via acquisition) and fairly small companies (~50 employees) and the only thing the big companies do better on is healthcare costs (volume pricing) and believe or not holidays. Maybe companies are just cheapening out but 10 holiday days was the standard. In 2017 I switched jobs and that company only had 6 holiday days a year (and they are terribly cheap in many other ways). I left that job and was back to 10 days. But that company got bought and the place that bought us only has 8 holiday days. At least they gave us 2 additional vacation days to make up for it.
Maybe companies are just cheapening out but 10 holiday days was the standard.
Holidays? What about vacation?
Last year the org I worked for was acquired, this year the new org I work for acquired another. So far my experience is the acquired company gets shit on lol.
My company was acquired last year and the new company basically gave us extra vacation days to “keep us whole”. They also adjusted our salaries to make up for a slight difference in 401k match, etc.
When Putin goes to Hauge(or coffin), I recommend you to look into working in Russia. We have by labour law 14 vacations and 28 vacation days, where each vacation is at leasy 14 days long. Also clarification for americans: we have paid sick days or rather 10 paid sick months, very basic UHC for foreigners and decent(in Moscow) state insurance(works as tax) for residents and citizens.
They’re all counting on AI to replace people and will be sorely disappointed
They’ve got plenty of time to make the jump since they can just coast along with their Dell salary until them. Quitting starts a clock until you have to just accept whatever is available, but staying employed and knowing you have to leave eventually let’s you start looking without the pressure.
Atlassian have proven (along with a load of other companies and academic studies) that forcing people to work in an office is an anchor on productivity.
CEOs that are forcing their employees to come back into the office are willfully pissing away productivity.
That is arguably negligent from an investment perspective
Edit: fixed the link
Its got nothing to do with this.
Dell are struggling financially, this is a great method to reduce workforce size with minimal cost.
And I’m highlighting that it’s short-termist and self defeating
Companies like atlassian do what they can to make sure they don’t lose their best talent, what I linked is documented proof of that working.
Dell are trying to reduce costs by reducing the reasons an employee would want to stay.
Do you think they’re gonna lose the employees they would choose to?
No, they’re going to lose their best.
It’s pissing away productivity for no tangible benefit and doing so in a pretty permanent way—who is going to work for a company with that reputation?
It’s not just them nailing themselves into a coffin, it’s basically them pointing the nail gun at their face.
Exactly. Employees are not cookie cutter duplicates. The more productive ones always have more options, even when you treat them all the same. This is worse for the company than firing people randomly.
Productivity is for companies who want substance.
We only want continuous stock price increases regardless of how much it rots a company from the inside out.
That’s for someone else to carry about after I’m gone.
Define “struggling”
Your existence
has nothing to do with Dell’s financials
I suspect that this has nothing to do with productivity for most companies. I’m not smart enough or really concerned enough with why CEOs are massive assholes to look into this - but I figured it has to do with other stuff like property.
If you own a building and rent out space to cafes and gyms or you charge for parking etc there’s a lot of incentives to get your little cash cows back in the building.
For my company, food is free as is the parking. But basically the same concept: all that food is being prepared and being wasted (donated).
They tried to justify that coming into the office is paying the salaries of the custodians, cafeteria workers, etc.
Right but the company that owns them likely owns the property or is its self owned by another company that also owns a company that owns the properties these people work in so it’s super important for their overall profits to keep these buildings filled.
Promotions aren’t a thing anymore anyways, are they? Only if you switch jobs can you get a raise
A few jobs back, my employer promoted me once within a year of starting from a new college graduate position to a junior position, then strung me along for three years with “you’re just not quite ready for a mid level position but you will be. Any day now!” This was all in spite of me doing the work of a senior position within the company for the last two years.
So I got a job at a different employer and went from a junior position to a senior position, like magic, nearly doubling my total income in the process. My coworker did the same, hopping from a senior position to a management position at my current employer. I’ve increasingly observed how corporate United States is painfully stupid and inefficient and it continues to boggle my mind
This is not just the US, it is the norm world wide.
It’s also not limited to job relations either. “New customer? Let me show you this sweet deal.” - “Oh, you’re already a customer? Then it’s full price I’m afraid”
You need to regularly review/change contracts.
Back in my (born 1996) days, the longer you were a customer the sweeter deals you had. 8 years already a customer? Maybe we can strike a cheaper offer rather than you running to someone else.
I might be older than your dad and I don’t recall seeing an offer like this. 😊
I am their dad and I have no idea what they’re talking about.
Used to be the norm here in Czechia, maybe your country wasn’t as progressive 🤔
Well, I think many people on lemmy don’t live in country that once was one of 15-states multinational conglomerate for universal healthcare, universal education, universal housing and long term planning. Not that such planning was very good at the end of it. Or not that it wasn’t occasionallly sidetracked with killing people.
I’m in Australia and we still do this? I have a loyalty discount for being a customer for 7 years, AU$57/month for unlimited data on my mobile and free calls to 40 countries ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They got rid of it here, sadly. Or at least i haven’t seen any loyalty behavior from the big brands lately.
I’ve increasingly observed how corporate United States is painfully stupid and inefficient and it continues to boggle my mind
B-b-but capitalism! Will rule out inefficient companies!
Yeah. The world is broken.
Going to use this chance to vent about the fact that when the senior guy on my team left for another company it was basically all but confirmed I would take over his role I had been there the longest, was already doing a lot of senior work, and was the giy people on the team came to when they needed help, to the point we spent the month or so after he handed in his notice to train me on what he did and give me access to the systems he managed. Then a week after he left my boss announced that the guy that had been there 3 months would be taking on the senior role.
I sure hope you are able to and are actively looking for a different employer. That sucks man…sorry to hear it.
Who’s kid was he?
Yeah, idk of people actually just get promoted to a new job. I always have to apply to av internally posted position. If I get it I guess I technically get promoted.
It seems like they gave a bunch of people a notice to find new jobs as a form of promotion
That may well be the point. Dell gets the head count reduction, improving the bottom line, without the headline about mass layoffs
Seems to me like this would disproportionately cause losses in the most talented employees
They know, they just don’t care. The payroll goes down, the profit goes up. The most talented are also the most expensive ones and they’re also the most expensive to dismiss legally on a layoff process. If they leave on their own they save Dell a ton of money. What they want is to keep operations without disturbing revenue, you don’t need the best talent to achieve that, you only need the good enough.
No. The CEO will stay. Everyone else is a replaceable cog.
Signed,
CEO of Dell
/sarcasmMichael Dell strikes me as an entitled dick.
10th richest person. Total dick.
yeah he seems like a Dellend
The problem is that the layoff isn’t targeted. Talented people can more easily find another job that will still let them work from home. That leaves Dell with a higher percentage of untalented employees than competitors.
It leaves dell with employees who do their job and have a life outside of work. They will put their hours in but not much more. They do not recommend change or new ways of getting things done, because they don’t care. They will do the minimum and punch the clock for years until they find another better paying job.
So the workers opted to continue remote work at the convenience of not getting promoted, and I bet my top dollar they lost any motivation they had and are all now looking for new gigs 😂
Looking for new gigs is currently the new normal regarding promotions anyway, according to HMW. Since companies have long shown that have no loyalty to their workforce and will lay them off as soon as they need their numbers to go up for shareholders.
And new hires to positions get paid better than promotions from within to the same positions. So it’s better just to routinely keep sending out résumés to openings.
So the no promotions threat is mostly a paper tiger.
It’s true, whenever I’m done with my salary I go for a new gig. Huge percentage of increase every time instead of this corp-speak “1-3%” bullshit. With job change I typically see around 30%
Remember people, the power is in the workforce.
The greatest con ever conducted was to convince the largest population of people on the face of the planet, the middle class that we have no power.
We hold literally all the power.
All we have to do is collectively as a society stand up to these corporations and tell them that we will work only on our terms not on theirs.
It’s not that the middle class has no power, it simply has too much to lose if they choose to revolt.
What if your revolution fails and you lose your money and your house? What if it succeeds and your new government decides you have too much?
That is why the middle class is a stabilising force in country’s politics. And if they lose their stuff, and feel like they have nothing to lose but their chains, then some higher ups lose their heads.
Gotta keep on a tight leash, but not too tight. God I love capitalism /s
Well, the revolt I was more or less referring to would be against private/public business.
We need to as a society start dictating how much things should cost.
Like inflation for example wouldn’t exist if as a whole population we simply didn’t pay the difference in increased price.
Business would eventually start pricing their good and services to where people wanted to pay as long as they paid.
Dell is out there just proving that the best promotions are external promotions.
haha get fucked dell
A nice and public “fuck you” to C-level staff in tech. Remote work isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Their intent is to lay off workers without any of the trappings of laying off workers. If some of them happen to stick around despite the reduced benefits, dell’s happy. IBM’s been doing it to rob people of their pension for like 60 years now.
If these companies were serious about on-site work and how much better it is, they would pay for time while commuting and transportation expenses.
I mean… yeah. a lot of us have realized that office jobs tend to be dead end. you’re great at what you do? awesome, the company views that as free labor. why promote you when they can just suck every ounce of work out of you for less?
Counter argument: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
I am familiar with that principle, yeah. it seems to me like it’s become more of a thing of the past. I definitely think that happened in the 60s and 70s (and we’re still dealing with the ramifications today) but I haven’t heard of any of my friends getting promoted at office jobs in years. it’s a younger and smaller sample size though so definitely possible both are at play
Those who cannot achieve excellence stay put. Those who can achieve excellence find a place where they are allowed to.
Like they were going to get promoted anyway. That’s not todays job market.
Promotions haven’t been a thing since the 70s Today you job hop because promotions are non existent
Dell Managers revealed as weenies.
Sad trombone? Small violin?
They prolly knew the risk otherwise they would never give that choice. Good for dell wagies!
