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Comment by aunty_helen | Hacker News Reader

I’ve sat in an all hands like that before. Literally 50k$ an hour being wasted listening to some guy we’ll only ever see once talk about his sons 18th birthday.

Weird experience.

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I think it's a power move. Nobody got up and said, "Fuck you, I have better places to be." So they win. You probably thought it was about the business or something.

I have 100% opened up a laptop and tuned out a meeting like that. Never go to a corporate meeting without a laptop.

I used to do that too. Then I got accused of not being a team player or whatever. OK, fine.

Turns out sitting on my ass and listening to something useless pays the same.

Owner of the company spent half the meeting talking about how they take their grandkids anywhere in the world they want to go when they turn 16...I look at the audience paying rapt attention and I'm thinking 'this is a little odd'

Then he mentioned the 'merger of equals' and I thought 'this isn't good news'

Narrator: It wasn't.

Also been on one of those. One of the employees raised the fact salaries had been on a freeze for the last two years. Answer from VP doing the all-hands meeting: "My wife also wanted me to buy a new boat this year but I could not"

Started looking for a new job that same minute...

Same here- if they start talking about their kids, it’s over for someone, possibly lots of someones.

It's about power, just like mandating going back to the office.

There are lots of reasons other than power to want people on-site. This is a strawman.

Mandating it is a power move. You can give folks the option to come back to the office if they so chose, and let others work from home if they want to.

This implies the company has set itself up to do remote work well. Not every company has, not even through the pandemic. Many are still struggling to get back to the performance they were once at.

It isn’t always a power move, even if HN wants it to be; and yes, I realize that’s an unpopular opinion here.

Yeah, I surround myself with people who have their stuff together but don't feel compelled to go around flexing about it.

To be fair, it was the general manager’s bosses boss. No body was surrounded by him and by the time we were due another visit by this position, he had been promoted on.

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