Nearly 50% of Dell's US Staff Defy Office Return, Report Says 78
Dell's recent return-to-office mandate has met significant resistance, with nearly 50% of US full-time employees opting to remain remote, despite potential career consequences, according to Business Insider. The policy, introduced in February, requires hybrid workers to attend office 39 days per quarter, while remote workers face promotion restrictions. Internationally, about a third of staff chose remote work.
Further reading: Dell Makes Return-To-Office Push With VPN, Badge Tracking.
Further reading: Dell Makes Return-To-Office Push With VPN, Badge Tracking.
Just another layoff without the layoff rules (Score:2)
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Company: Come back to the office and start doing real work.
Worker: No way.
Company: Great, thanks. You're fired.
Worker: Wait what?
Company: Bye.
Re:Real work (Score:2)
You're implying that real work hasn't been happening the past several years. Not like people at the office don't stand up, make a coffee, walk around for a bit, check their phone, grab a cookie or bag of chips or something, bullshit with various people and then sit back down. Easily 30 minutes wasted right there.
Re:Real work (Score:5, Insightful)
After lots of both direct and indirect interactions with coworkers during the past several years, I have come to assume that the people most resistant to remote work (aside from managers, of course) are people who don't have the self-discipline to stay on task themselves - the people who, when they are remote, routinely are nigh impossible to reach. That's fine, they seem to understand their own shortcomings; but I wish they wouldn't project - or at least understand that different people have different strengths and weaknesses.
For me, the thing is - I get more work done while teleworking than in the office, and I think it's largely a simple matter of there being fewer interruptions. I mostly write code and do system administration, both of which benefit from being able to focus for extended periods of time (coding especially). For me, at least, context switching comes with a significant cost... and I doubt I'm alone in that.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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If your entire job is responding to IMs, fine, then it's fair for others to expect you to respond quickly. But if your job is getting some _other_ kind of work done, others should expect a delay in responding to messages, whether you are in the next cubicle or in the next state, because you have work to do, and that takes concentration, which means not checking your messages and email all the time and responding to them constantly.
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when they are remote, routinely are nigh impossible to reach
I work in a hybrid model and it has been my experience that these same people are almost as impossible to reach when IN THE OFFICE as they are when remote. You basically have to go knock on their door if you need an immediate response. Some do this for reasons I envy -- they don't like unscheduled interruptions and treat Slack/Teams like e-mail rather than an instant messengers -- and some are just terrible at responding to messages.
I try to be immediately responsive to IMs, although, oftentimes the response is, "I'm currently engaged, is this urgent or can we connect at [later time]?" 90+% of the time it is not urgent.
Erm... IM does not require an instant response. It's more casual than Email but if someone doesn't respond for a few minutes don't get uppity. They can be doing something else (phone call, meeting, in a crucial bit of work, deep in meditation) and will respond when they get time. As you said, most of the time it's not urgent so it doesn't require an instant response.
Sorry, but it seems you're the one who's not using IM as it is meant to be used.
If you need to contact me immediately, use the phone, how
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For me, the thing is - I get more work done while teleworking than in the office, and I think it's largely a simple matter of there being fewer interruptions.
You are starting from the premise that those interruptions are not, themselves, work. And for a coder, they - you - are, mostly correct. But that isn't a universal truth for all jobs.
(The only Dell people I deal with are our account rep team. And given that everything they do that isn't interacting with me is done on the computer, there's no doubt it my mind that they are at least as productive working remote as they are in the office.)
I can see both sides of it, but I do certainly sympathize with the folks
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When I had to go to an office, I worked in a cube with an uncomfortable chair, single 20" monitor, obnoxious noises from all directions. There was nowhere to cook food and a good distance from the bathroom - which I had to share with multiple other people. I also had to drive 35 minutes each way to get there and back - and that's if there wasn't unusual traffic due to a crash, weather or whatever else.
Now I work from him. I have a dedicated office space with a nice chair, 2 32" monitors and no noise. I
Re: Real work (Score:5, Funny)
That water cooler isn't going to drink itself! Lol.
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Is Dell able to fire 50% of its employees?
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Is Dell able to fire 50% of its employees?
If they find a way to automate many of the tasks that were once done by WFH employees, then YES.
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If.
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Is Dell able to fire 50% of its employees?
If they find a way to automate many of the tasks that were once done by WFH employees, then YES.
I have a sneaking suspicion a lot of these "come back or else" companies are going to find in a few weeks to months that some of those employees were actually doing things. Management has this weird mindset that if you aren't in the office, you're doing nothing at all, and are therefore even more expendable than the warm bodies at a desk. In some cases, that may be true. But barring automaton getting better at a much faster rate than it appears to be? These companies are going to be scrambling to hire fresh
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They don't have to fire them all. They can fire any subset of the group, and now they can fire them for cause, meaning they get no unemployment insurance.
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Is Dell able to fire 50% of its employees?
Scuttlebutt I hear from people who have a good chance of knowing is Dell management is being coached they should reduce overall headcount from 130k to 100k. That's 25% rather than 50% but it's still an enormous reduction. We'll see whether they manage to do it without cutting revenue, velocity, or quality. That's not something you do by just tightening your belt, there needs to be substantive changes in how the company operates.
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A good start to cutting costs would be to get rid of the DEI department and then corporate communications and also HR.
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I'm pretty sure TX is a "right to work" state...they don't need a reason to fire anyone.
When facts matter. (Score:3)
Company: Come back to the office and start doing real work.
Worker: Uh, aren’t you the same boss that for the last three annual performance reviews has praised me for all the great work I’m doing? Perhaps we should sit down with your boss to discuss the definition of those doing “real” work here.
(Ain't it a bitch when reality tends to confirm four fucking years of running a global involuntary WFH study.)
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Why do companies care where people do their work as long as it's done in a timely manner?
Because if middle management isn't able to force you to listen to stories about their dog three times a week while you're trapped in your cube they start to get twitchy and think nothing's getting done.
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Long before COVID:
Potential employee: What is Dell's policy on remote work?
Dell: We are known for our generous policy on remote work.
Potential employee:Okay I’ll take the job. Is it okay I work from [remote location]?
Dell: As long you can meet all your deliverables
COVID happens and ends
Dell:You will have to come into work now or you might laid off.
Worker: I have been working remote for years before COVID
Dell: I have altered the deal. Pray I
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Worker: I'm taking my talents to South Beach.
Re:Just another layoff without the layoff rules (Score:5, Interesting)
If Dell fires 50% of their staff and is still successful, then they need to go ahead and fire everyone in HR and hiring as well. Having that level of baggage isn't an "oops we hired too many" it's a systemic failure by those hiring to find quality people.
But that 50% defying the RTO, they know they got the upper hand. Dell is either going to have to make concessions or make good on their threat. And the uppers aren't going to like either of those options. They thought the staff would blink and the staff is showing they've got the C-staff by the balls here.
Seems to have worked great for Twitter (Score:2)
But other than that it's going great.
Twitter builted extremely robust set of tools at great expense and it's running on its own and will continue to fo
Re:Just another layoff without the layoff rules (Score:5, Informative)
They never said "come back to the office or we'll fire you." They said "come back to the office or get used to the position you're in, because we're not going to promote you." For those who are at the top of whatever position they're in now, and have zero interest in management, it's not even a mild threat. For those who only plan to be around for a few years (average worker in the US changes employers every four years, apparently), it's even less than a threat.
Re:Just another layoff without the layoff rules (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it common knowledge that the only effective way to get promoted in tech is to leave to a better position?
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But that 50% defying the RTO, they know they got the upper hand. Dell is either going to have to make concessions or make good on their threat.
Having worked at Dell, they're going to fire people they want to fire and use failure to RTO as an excuse, as they always have. Those they want or need to keep, they will. Dell has been a shitty employer for a long time, they don't pay well, unemployment is at a low, and nobody gives a shit about the job anyway.
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The staff is probably aware by this point that workers who stay at the same company make a lot less than workers who move every couple of years so "promotion restriction" is a very hollow threat.
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One word: Outsourcing
Another pair of words: Economic Downturn
Outsourcing could solve some of the staffing problem resulting from a mass layoff since temporary works like that can come & go as needed.
But an economic downtown could help justify all of those departures with company bigshots pointing to the sales numbers and saying, "Business Is DOWN".
But then there is that supposed 3 or 4 percent unemployment rate in the US, depending on which month it is and if the BLS hasn't yet revised the previous figu
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If Dell fires 50% of their staff and is still successful, then they need to go ahead and fire everyone in HR and hiring as well.
In every tech company I've worked at, HR doesn't make hire/fire decisions and doesn't decide staffing levels. That's done by each product group. HR executes policies and manages benefits programs.
(Well, HR sometimes decides who to lay off. Not often though, more often VPs and directors make that call.)
In other words, the Alienware team decides how much to spend on people, the C-suite approves the plan and budget, and Alienware proceeds to hire the people they want.
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It's easier to push around H1B indentured servants who
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Didn't IBM say they were going to fire anyone who didn't comply? That's not what Dell has said.
Fire them then (Score:3, Insightful)
Musk shitcanned 90% of twitter and it runs better than ever.
How much deadweight do you suppose somewhere like Dell has? Fire them, and replace any truly needed positions with people willing to do the job, if you need to. I doubt they would have to though, I'm guessing these people are nothing but a drag on the bottom line.
Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)
This is employee rebellion in action. The pendulum had swung too far in favor of corporate power. It's nice to see employees starting to assert themselves again.
more like (Score:1)
They were expecting/engineering a recession (Score:1)
The combination of the inflation adjustment act, some anti trust law enforcement and a just plain strong economy driven by a large number of highly productive college graduates prevented that from happening and got us the soft landing we wanted. Inflation was effectively zero last month and that's in spite of
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If they were thinking that they must have been toddlers in the 1980s and never reviewed any real economic statistics: the 80s were the go-go 90s but the economy did OK with interest rates of 9-12%. 4-6% is not high and is beneficial in some ways (e.g. making it harder to speculate in single-family houses).
High interest rates have nothing to do with (Score:2)
We had several brutal recessions throughout the '80s and early '90s until the
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First, 3.3% is not zero.
Second, there essentially hasn't been a full time job created this year. All part time.
Third, the divergence between survey jobs and BLS 'jobs' is very wide at this point, indicating a lot of people taking multiple part time jobs to equal full time labor.
I suppose those who dont' remember the 1970s might believe this is not a bad situation, but it's a pernicious one that might never had ended if Volcker hadn't done what he did. You think evading the job losses and recession was a g
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That is not how a proper civilization solves the problem of supply and demand. You don't just sit arou
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None of that actually argues against it being the truth, just that you don't like it. Ok, that's legitimate, but it isn't going to go away until the problem is dealt with.
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I think rsilvergun was referring to month-over-month inflation, which was at 0.10% this month. https://ycharts.com/indicators... [ycharts.com].
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Understood. Thanks!
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Market crashes are not good for CEOs, many of whom would lose their own jobs as a result. Why on earth would they want that?
Singit! (Score:2)
"Bad boss, bad boss, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they DON'T come for you..."
Re:Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)
It's collective action. Dell can't really fire half its staff.
Unions aren't the only way to organize.
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You got that right!
RTO. Agile. Shit. (Score:2)
There are "policies" set by companies, that do nothing useful. They don't create better or more product or service. They don't accentuate the company's methods. They're just... stupid policies.
RTO vs WFH has had 4+ years to show a success or failure. GDP went up. Stockholdr went up. Manager ineptitutde isn't measured but I'll be the guy that says it went up. Consistent with those rankings, inept managers want "underlings" to RTO and stop WFH.
REALLY GREAT EMPLOYEES said "no shanks" and they're somewher
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> WFH - competent workers win
Quiet quitters win too. How competent worker productivity gets impacted in long term, if they face situation where not working pays as much as working.
People Skills (Score:2)
Good. (Score:2)
Michael (Score:2)
No Promotions for 50% of US Staff (Score:2)
Re:No Promotions for 50% of US Staff (Score:4, Interesting)
50% of the staff recognize that the only effective way to get promoted is to change employers. They will bide their time, collect their salary on minimal productivity, and sooner or later be gone to an employer that doesn't suck as much.
How many of the 50% were already remote before? (Score:2)
Before Covid, how many of the employees were already remote? If there were already a lot of remote workers, then they would tend to stay remote absent a really big push, like the threat of getting fired. The other factor to consider is how many of those workers really want to be at Dell. Consider Apple, which has never facilitated remote work. Pre-pandemic, very few workers were remote. Post-pandemic, very few workers are remote. Apple is a desirable destination, so most workers will follow Apple orde
This whole thing is bizarre to be (Score:2)
I got to work from home for 5 months in 2020. That's it. And for the last 2 months if that I was coming to the office between 1 and 3 times a week.
After that we were told to come back in. That wasn't up for discussion. They employ me and that's what they said. I can't just say I don't want to come in, as that's a breach of contract. They would just fire me and get someone else.
I find it incredible that people are still working from home because of Covid.
Large company/hybrid work - RTO ?why? (Score:2)
I'm in a megacorp with locations in many large US metros; the higher-ups, after trying a 100% RTO, and finding themselves unable to fill slots, settled on a 3/5 days in-office schedule. My immediate boss is at my location, *his* boss is in the NYC metro and *his* boss is mid-South. My team has people across multiple US timezones and an offshore contingent in India.
I think the main push for RTO is to justify the leases on office space these companies are already locked into; my corp is going more & mor
No surprise there. (Score:2)
Weird threat (Score:2)
When you look at this from another point of view, it's a very weird threat.
If you don't come back to the office, we won't promote you. And since we haven't fired you already despite years of repeated threats to do so, it's obvious that you are competent. All of the incompetent people still on our staff are in the office, and we will exclusively promote from the in-office group, increasing the probability you will soon have a incompetent boss.
I don't know how they think that this is either good for business