Dell is Making Everyone Return To Office, Too 102
Dell is the latest tech company to announce it's ending its hybrid and remote work policy. From a report: Starting March 3rd, Dell employees will have to show up in person five days a week.
In an email obtained by Business Insider, CEO Michael Dell writes that 'all hybrid and remote team members who live near a Dell office will work in the office five days a week. We are retiring the hybrid policy effective that day.'
"What we're finding is that for all the technology in the world, nothing is faster than the speed of human interaction. A thirty second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days," Dell writes. Despite this mandate, Dell also continues to sell remote work solutions, noting that remote work offers "benefits such as flexibility, reduced commute times, and cost savings for employees, while employers can access a broader talent pool, reduce overhead costs, and increase productivity."
"What we're finding is that for all the technology in the world, nothing is faster than the speed of human interaction. A thirty second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days," Dell writes. Despite this mandate, Dell also continues to sell remote work solutions, noting that remote work offers "benefits such as flexibility, reduced commute times, and cost savings for employees, while employers can access a broader talent pool, reduce overhead costs, and increase productivity."
What a [corporatocratic oligarchy]! (Score:3)
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It's to get people to leave of course.
MS Teams chats etc voice or text are quick and easy. Possibly more efficient than interrupting someone's concentration.
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I know that in my department, I won't be recommending Dell devices if they can't be trusted to support a remote-work arrangement.
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Not to mention that you can run Teams in Linux as a native client.
You could. That's "old Teams". There isn't a "new Teams" native client for Linux yet. Teams under Linux is only browser based now (and really picky about the browser). I switched to Teams under Android.
Re: What a [corporatocratic oligarchy]! (Score:2)
I'd imagine they are because it would quickly become obvious if they weren't.
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Chats/calls in Teams do not break concentration you say? Interesting, as I have found those to be just as interruptive as in person chats/calls. For certain types of communication Teams/Slack/whatever else is similar do tend to be better for conveying information. For other types it is significantly worse.
5 days a week is quite a lot. Between 1 and 3 days per week should be fine for practically every job. Better management of who is coming to the office on which day and hour, is far more productive for the
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Remind yourself that you are in charge of your time. If someone asks you a question on Slack, glance at the notification to see what it is - if it's an outage or something that merits prompt attention, then give it that attention. Otherwise finish your thought on what you're doing and get back to them in a few minutes.
Any competent organization that recognizes the inefficiency of knowledge workers having to context-switch would have absolutely no problem with that. It's actually the published policy for
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Not if you don't look at the chats. Maybe the kids check for updates every few seconds, but I have gone for hours before I noticed that somebody asked me a question in Teams.
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I should also add that there are been several occasions where an hour of Teams chat leads me to just walk over to the guy's cube to talk directly and clear everything up in minutes.
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In Neo-Confederate America, means of production seizes YOU!
America is Neo something, just not sure it's Confederate; they wanted to keep all the black/brown people ... /s
I'm pretty sure their real estate department ... (Score:1)
I'm pretty sure their real estate department asked why they continue to pay for a thousand empty buildings.
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Last I remember, their real estate department was a separate company owned by his wife. Which is apparently completely legal.
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Can't get people to the office when they quit/reduction of force. Seems lose/lose.
Unless you pay them for the hassle of going in.
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Can't get people to the office when they quit/reduction of force. Seems lose/lose.
Unless, of course, it's meant to trigger a round of "shadow layoffs." You don't have to pay severance to people who up and quit.
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You're acting like the quitting isn't the goal.
Don't have to pay severance to people that self-select out of it on some self-righteous crusade.
Layoffs (Score:2, Insightful)
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The really unfortunate part is that they're laying off the people they most can't afford to lose. Those who find it easy to get a job elsewhere will do so, those who can't will plod in to the office every day and do the bare minimum needed to avoid being fired.
RTO is the dumbest policy I've ever heard of, whether it's to do stealth layoffs, or to "enhance productivity" by throwing people into situations where they'll be distracted all day and unable to work in a healthy environment. It costs companies who d
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Re:Layoffs (Score:4, Insightful)
If work from home didn't work, then how are they producing these amazing returns for their investors over the last five years?
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Dell's stock hit its all-time high price in April, 2024 (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DELL/). Even at today's price of $103, their stock value is TRIPLE what it was in 2019.
If work from home didn't work, then how are they producing these amazing returns for their investors over the last five years?
PC companies profited greatly from the pandemic. It wasn't even so much WFH as much as the paradigm shift that required buying a bunch of new hardware. Once that hardware was bought and people were settled down for WFH, the incremental need for new hardware dropped.
WFH benefited Dell, but it was the WFH for their customers rather than for their employees that mattered.
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Tangentially, all sorts of companies profited greatly during the pandemic. People were stuck at home, and buying stuff online seemed like a way to amuse themselves. Streaming services did well. Video gaming did well. Pretty much anybody who was selling anything that could be brought to your home did well, and so did companies (such as reviews sites) that helped you get hold of that stuff.
Unfortunately (and foolishly), a lot of people who ran these companies seemed to believe the gravy train would last forev
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Times change, we change. This RTO is merely because managers fear their dicks will fall off if they cannot swing them around an office full of proles.
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RTO is bad in the sense that it is what most people want over any other sort of benefit they can be provided. So over time, companies that are fully remote become far more competitive with these legacy dinosaurs and their real estate.
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companies that are fully remote become far more competitive
Can you cite any evidence to support this claim?
Are companies that WFH performing better than those that RTO?
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I mean what evidence would you accept? My claim is more based on logic. Let's say you have group of companies competing for the best engineer and WFH is the most important thing to that engineer. Don't you think that the company that offers a WFH position is going to be the most competitive and have the best chance to hire said engineer? Now scale that up to all potential employees. Companies that support WFH will, over time, end up with the best talent compared to RTO companies.
If you google for studi
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I mean what evidence would you accept?
Differences in stock price, revenue, profit, or growth.
My claim is more based on logic.
Many logical things aren't actually true. The physics of Aristotle was way more logical than the physics of Einstein and Heisenberg.
Your logic is based on the assumption that WFH is cheaper (almost certainly true) and that WFH employees are just as productive (which is exactly what RTO advocates dispute).
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Well, again, there are studies out there claiming it's economically better. But I can't and won't put those forward as any sort of evidence. I trust that you can find those on you own and make your own judgements. But if you care to dispute my logic on the matter I'm open to debate it. I have personal experience with this and being unemployed for all of 2024, I have been very focused on the topic.
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I think WFH can be just as productive, but it certainly depends on the job. But there's lots of consultant companies, (Parsons, Hagerman) across industries where all/most people are WFH and have been for years. Sometimes there's occasional on site customer visits, but again, those have cratered since the flight, food, and hotel costs have skyrocketed, at least where I work.
It seems to me that for a lot of IT / Tech etc work - sitting at their desk using their internet to get to your hybrid cloud stuff is no
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Also: if you are a remote-friendly org, you can recruit from a much larger pool of talent.
An organization that is hell-bent on their workforce going to the same buildings every day can only really recruit the area where those buildings are unless they want to pay people to relocate to those buildings.
A small software shop in a tiny southwest Colorado town can be competitive with engineers in big cities if they're remote-friendly. And that was before the pandemic. Now that a lot of people have had the tast
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This is me. I do pipeline development for a small VFX studio based out of Philadelphia. They have a tight little pipeline that's all cloud based and they've done work on some Emmy winning shows. We're currently only 20 people in size. But we could spin up to 120 if needed and we can pull people from across the globe to work for us.
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you can recruit from a much larger pool of talent.
Listing reasons why WFH SHOULD improve performance is not the same as evidence that DOES improve performance.
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Every single company who put out statements saying they were AMAZED at the productivity during WFH Covid?
And that productivity *went up* during those times?
We were here. We remember that.
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Every single company who put out statements saying they were AMAZED at the productivity during WFH Covid?
PR statements are not evidence of improved performance, even if you cited any of them, which you didn't.
And that productivity *went up* during those times?
You saying that productivity went up is not evidence that productivity went up.
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RTO is bad in the sense that it is what most people want over any other sort of benefit they can be provided. So over time, companies that are fully remote become far more competitive with these legacy dinosaurs and their real estate.
WFH is desirable for some people. However, it's not near the top of the list for most people. First is compensation (absolute amount or at least an amount over some expected threshold). Second is possible growth and promotions. Third is job stability. Fourth is good bosses/coworkers. WFH may be important, but it's not going to more important than these other considerations.
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it's not near the top of the list for most people
How can you make this claim? What data do you have to support it?
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You're straw-manning. No one said these companies weren't profitable. They said that remote work saves money. I don't know how you equivocate the two.
Secondly, things change... and COVID changed things a lot.
I've had the privilege of being able to work from home since before the pandemic. For 15 years I was self-employed, but when I re-entered the workplace in 2018 I was able to find remote work. COVID was the first time that a lot of professionals across a lot of industries suddenly saw that work from home
Re: Layoffs (Score:1)
Because of covid you gave your workers something they wanted: WFH.
Now you are taking that away.
The good workers will be annoyed but find work elsewhere.
Thd bad workers will be annoyed but have to stay.
You are filtering your workers by their employability.
That is bad for your company.
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I fully believe that you hate WFH. But why should everyone else massively upend their lives to placate you? In reality, I think smart companies would just let the people who want to come in come in, and those who want to WFH WFH. In the long run we might see companies kind of sort between in office and WFH companies and employees sort there also. The only reason why forcing it suddenly is bad is because you don't have the self selected sorting done slowly but you get a mass of people leaving if they can, an
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The real problem will happen is when nearly all companies mandate RTO
That's unlikely.
WFH/RTO has a value that differs by person. Some are willing to WFH for far less money. Others prefer to go to the office.
So there are market opportunities for companies to offer lower pay to high performers who really want to WFH.
Eventually, the market will find an equilibrium. Some companies will eat the rent and higher payroll to see everyone at their desks. Others will save money by paying less and avoiding rent. Others will offer hybrid models.
Workers might work in the office early in t
Re: Layoffs (Score:2)
Because looking for another job, even in a strong market, is a chore.
Re: Layoffs (Score:1)
But if it becomes RTO, I will have to find another job.
Which is a PITA.
Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
"What we're finding is that for all the technology in the world, nothing is faster than the speed of human interaction. A thirty second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days," Dell writes
I usually see the opposite.
There is a half hour meeting to supposedly clarify or define something that could have been done perfectly well, and far more quickly, in five or ten minutes, via asynchronous means like email.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
I will admit we are social animals, and you can get a lot more communication through a physical group meeting than you can through a remote meeting.
I will also claim it isn't worth it. Tally up all the time lost to commuting, the extra time off for extra commuting if you have a doctor's appointment or something to take in the middle of the day. The inability to work because you're home with a sick child. The unnecessary watercooler chats.
If your job is 99.99% on a computer, you should do it wherever the hell you're most comfortable. It's easier for everyone and definitely less expensive for the company. It's not like there aren't a ton of secure remote desktop and VOIP solutions out there, and per seat they cost less than a parking space and a cubicle along with associated support systems like bathrooms.
Virtual meetings are good enough in almost all cases.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
And how long did that perfectly worded email take?
I'm not arguing against email being an effective method of communicating but voice communication is better for discussions. Being in person also allows someone to "read the room".
What I've seen from hybrid work is that some people are really motivated to maintain their level of work and others are not. I have not seen anyone become more productive working from home (I'm in supply chain, not IT) though I have definitely seen people abuse it. It only takes 1 or 2 bad apples to spoil it for everyone, I've already heard rumblings from a few members of management wanting to bring everyone back full time but it has not gained any traction (luckily).
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And how long did that perfectly worded email take?
Who said anything about perfectly worded? It was more likely to be well specified though, since I had to write it down.
The response is more likely to be well specified too.
Which, quite frankly, is why many people seem to want to avoid writing stuff down. They may not admit it - even to themselves - but it's easier to sling some vague BS, and avoid nailing down requirements, in a face to face meeting than it is when typing.
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On Wednesday I stood up from my desk, walked about 20m to the desk of the Sales manager, gave him a quick update, got immediate feedback, and was back at my desk in 2 minutes.
I could have sent an email that he may or may not have responded to anywhere from 5 minutes to the next day.. but I chose to have a very simple conversation and both parties were satisfied.
If it was a very detailed update with lots of numbers and required in
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I don't know why we're all acting like slack doesn't exist. When explaining out loud is easier you press the huddle button, it's too easy. That takes care of informal planned communication.
The problem is the type of communication that being in person benefits is the both informal and unplanned variety. Like water cooler talk. Or who you talked to on the way back from the Sales manager's desk. Taking smoke breaks when you don't smoke, etc. I'll admit there's some value there, but it's also the kind of crap y
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I was unaware that the only two possible tools for this are face-to-face co-located conversation, or email.
Ever heard of a phone? Did anything of material importance in your quick update gain any context from being at his desk that he couldn't have gotten over the phone? Or in an async "updates" thread in Slack?
My team doesn't even do video stand-ups any more in favor of an "async standup" thread in slack where you tell everyone wtf you're doing, and read wtf everyone else is doing. Takes 30 seconds of m
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What I've seen from hybrid work is that some people are really motivated to maintain their level of work and others are not.
You're implying that those who are not would be more productive in the office. What you typically see is if someone is not motivated to work at home, they aren't motivated in the office either. At least at home they can't distract others in the team with off topic conversations over coffee.
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And how long did that perfectly worded email take?
An email is written by one person.
A conversation in a conference room may involve 20 people, 18 of which don't understand or care about what the other two are saying.
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At a previous employer whenever we would have these huge meetings with 20+ people in them, I would start multiplying the average salary of the person in the room by the amount of people in the room to come up with a rough cost of the meeting. I would then go to my manager and say "I went to meeting X because I was tagged as required. Of the 20 people in the meeting, 6 actually spoke words. That meeting cost somewhere around $15,000 and we did not get $15,000 of value out of it. Can we just invite people
Re: Nonsense (Score:1)
1. One or two out of how many?
At what % does this cost more than the rent savings, for example?
2. If your boss cannot detect and terminate those people, HE is the problem.
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>What I've seen from hybrid work is that some people are really motivated to maintain their level of work and others are not. I have not seen anyone become more productive working from home (I'm in supply chain, not IT) though I have definitely seen people abuse it. It only takes 1 or 2 bad apples to spoil it for everyone, I've already heard rumblings from a few members of management wanting to bring everyone back full time but it has not gained any traction (luckily).
This is just bad management. What wo
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I usually see the opposite.
Extremes are possible to find for every example. There's plenty of meetings that could be more efficient in an email, plenty of emails that would be more efficient in a conversation. But the damning thing here is that you can already have a conversation while working remotely. The fact that Dell thinks the only communication is email shows they fundamentally don't understand technology, which is quite impressive for a company that has 10+ different communications headsets in their sales portfolio.
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I usually see the opposite.
Extremes are possible to find for every example. There's plenty of meetings that could be more efficient in an email, plenty of emails that would be more efficient in a conversation. But the damning thing here is that you can already have a conversation while working remotely. The fact that Dell thinks the only communication is email shows they fundamentally don't understand technology, which is quite impressive for a company that has 10+ different communications headsets in their sales portfolio.
A good point. If it absolutely has to involve speech (or visuals) there's no reason not to use Teams/Zoom/whatever.
I don't know what these people do in their face to face time, but if it's something that can't be done via Teams/Zoom, then I don't want to do it with my coworkers ...
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Also, just because everybody is in the office, doesn't mean your teammates are in the *same* office as you. They've got operations in many cities, so often teams are spread out across the country or even around the world. Those so-called chance encounters or quick discussions, might happen with people on totally different projects, which doesn't generally improve efficiency for you *own* team's projects.
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Now only if there was some form of digital communication that allowed for two-way, or even multi-way realtime video and voice for situations that warrant discussion.
And if only everyone already knew how to operate these amazing tools, and already had the hardware and software installed.
Rub shit in my face and tell me to smile (Score:4, Insightful)
I am really starting to think executives have no empathy. Whether its a stealth layoff, worries about corporate real estate, or just ignorant power tripping... there seems to be zero willingness to actually act like human beings, even when it's more profitable to do so. Not only do you have to go back to the office, you have to pretend to believe their obvious lies about why they're forcing it.
'Member back in the good old days when bad people sometimes got 'random' beatings until they smartened up, left the area, or just died? I don't, but I'm starting to pine for them anyway.
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If you haven't been contacted by the manager about it, you're one of the employees
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>It's absolutely a stealth layoff.
And this is the unethical behavior that enrages me. You want layoffs? There's a price to pay for the staff reduction.
Making people miserable so they leave in a way that saves the company some money and lying about it to make it an easier plan to execute? That's evil. That managers, HR, and legal sit down and plan this out is only not 'Final Solution' creepy because they're not actually killing people, but it's exactly the same kind of complete lack of humanity that s
Re:Rub shit in my face and tell me to smile (Score:4, Interesting)
According to Jordon Peterson (a clinical psychologist of some controversy), humans have something of an instinct to be assholes to their subordinates. His evidence for this is an analysis of many social animals (including, famously, the lowly lobster) and ways in which they are assholes to their subordinates.
Basically its an instinct to maintain one's position of power by asserting it in ways that remind the subordinates who the boss is. Specifically, ways that make them suffer a bit. Too much of this invites rebellion of course, but too little of this results in erosion of one's power.
And, about empathy, I remember reading (separately) that actual studies have been done that show that high-powered executives actually do lack empathy. More specifically, they completely lack the ability to think "from the perspective" of one of their subordinates, and describe how those subordinates would feel and react to policy decisions that the executives made. It's apparently some kind of neurological change that happens once people acquire authority over others, and it probably is also rooted in deep pack-survival instincts (put bluntly: too much empathy means an unwillingness to sacrifice a subordinate for the greater good, which in turn makes the whole pack suffer and/or die).
Re:Rub shit in my face and tell me to smile (Score:4, Insightful)
An easy mistake, but actually over the last decade his area of specialization has been grifting
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Remote work is no good for Dell, but trust us, our remote work solutions are right for you.
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Sure, but what are are the other options? Microsoft's work from home solution? Google's? Amazon's? Apple's? They all made their employees return to the office months ago.
Hell, even Zoom made their employees return to the office, and they were the COVID era poster child for remote meetings.
Re: LOL (Score:2)
I note the vague qualifier though (Score:2)
"... who live near a Dell office ..."
So now, define "near".
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So now, define "near".
The Dell RTO mandate applies to anyone in a 50-mile radius.
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The Dell RTO mandate applies to anyone in a 50-mile radius.
Even non-Dell employees? That's incredibly harsh!
Nothing is faster ... (Score:2)
Great for the office football pool. What about getting some actual work done?
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Nothing ruins productivity faster than human interaction.
That depends on the job.
Coders do better with minimal interaction. Salespeople do not.
One university did a study to see which department's professors spent the most time collaborating with colleagues.
The winner was the mathematics department.
"speed of human interaction"... (Score:4, Insightful)
nothing is faster than the speed of human interaction.
Assuming "human interaction" in this context means talking to people, there's always the phone and or vid calls.
A thirty second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days
If an employee can't recognize when a high-bandwidth exchange (like vid/phone) is needed to move things along, that employee probably doesn't understand the source material.
Conversely, if an employee doesn't make thiemselves readily available for phone/vid calls, I could see that being a problem... but it's not a problem you solve by deciding that any instances of such employees means that none of them know how to communicate effectively.
This Dell policy change sounds to me simply like someone's nervous that people are goofing off... and that they'll be more productive when watched. That is possibly true of some people, but it'd be a better move to let job evals do the sorting.
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Assuming "human interaction" in this context means talking to people, there's always the phone and or vid calls.
But how could Dell know that phone and video calls exist? I mean sure they manufacture headsets for it, some with specific Teams integration, but how can we be sure they are able to follow the existence of these products to this logical conclusion?
Return to Office? (Score:5, Funny)
But I don't *wanna* use Word!
Re: Return to Office? (Score:2)
This meeting should have been an email (Score:2)
> A thirty second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days," Dell writes.
He then proceeds to not elaborate why that thirty second conversation needs to be in person and not just over the phone, or how he intends for that thirty second conversation to not be a fifteen minute digression about the weather or sports or what we did last weekend on company time.
The saying is "this meeting should have been an email" - nobody with actual work to do ever says "this emai
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>The saying is "this meeting should have been an email" - nobody with actual work to do ever says "this email should have been a meeting".
I would never say never on that one. Yes, the vast majority of meetings I go to result in me being resentful and frustrated at having management mandate my time be wasted and that I smile and nod at the right moments while it's happening... but sometimes a 10 minute meeting will get more done than a week's worth of email back-and-forth. ...It still doesn't need to be
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nobody with actual work to do ever says "this email should have been a meeting".
False. Never-ending email chains that start pulling in ever more people like some kind of attention-sucking black hole absolutely should be meetings that are time-boxed discussions that remain on topic, where decisions are made.
And why does everyone do this shit over email? Email is were automated feeds from github, datadog, and AWS go to be ignored. Any signal I actually want is presented in a Slack channel, PagerDuty, or on my calendar. Email discussions are a huge waste of time, and anyone serious ab
I for one (Score:1)
Great, this will make workers more accessible (Score:2)
Or you wait on hold for someone in some department and what was previously a 2 - 5 minute hold has turne
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Sending login credentials through an insecure channel like SMS is a bad idea. I'd go silent too if I had told you the proper way to do it, and you continued to insist upon the wrong way.
There are other, misguided reasons why someone might not answer a question, but the scenario you described isn't a good look for you.
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>The worst thing to happen since this covid work-from-home movement is that people have become inaccessible or difficult to interact with. Want to get login credentials for a platform?
To me this feels more like a process problem. What did you do before COVID if that one person was on vacation or leave? What if they were in meetings all day most of the time?
More than that, it's a lack of maturity problem in your systems. If you need to login to something, why doesn't your standard account have the permiss
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Hang on.
You have to go ask someone, singular, about credentials for systems access? And they're empowered to blow you off and block you for a week?
Have they never heard of Vault or 1Password? Or AWS Secrets Manager? Or literally any other credential manager that's ever existed that allows granular permissions?
What happens if that guy gets hit by a bus? Can nobody ever access that system again? If he goes on vacation, does access to that system similarly go on vacation until he bothers to return?
Return t
Why would managers want person to person? (Score:2)
I couldn't be because remote communications are on-the-record could it?
Managers want to play power dynamics that they can't put on the record and it scares them to death to think that some employee has their phone sitting beside them recording the screen/audio.
Manager vs tech agenda (Score:2)
A thirty second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days,
That is true for a manager, but a bunch of thirty second conversations may ruin an engineer productivity. Remote work is good for that, because nobody will come for a thirty second conversation when you need hours-long focus on a specific task
Remote vs in office (Score:1)
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>BUT Federal Govt.....get your collective @sses back to work in office. We the taxpayers pay you to be available in an expensive, rented or owned office building and permitting taxpayer funded employees to just enjoy 100% remote time is ridiculous and doesn't serve the public as they are supposed to do
OK, explain this one to me. I don't think I have ever noticed where a federal employee is physically when I've interacted with them. To the extent it might matter, Social Security offices have closed all ov
a caht/voice/video call does that too, much faster (Score:2)
if their goal is efficiency and cutting the time for interactions... then sure.. e-mail is the slowest (digital one)
In person is not faster than a quick call or video call or chat on teams or slack, or whatever you want to use.
So if they are indeed trying to reduce the time, then they should force all workers to go back home... stop wasting time scheduling in-person talks, walking between cubicles/floors, knocking on doors.. waiting until the person is available for the in-person talk. Hope they brought al