Dell Says Remote Employees Won't Be Eligible for Promotions: Report
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
It sucks all around.
This also removes the loophole of a company reducing an employee's salary to minimum wage rather than laying them off. They could still quit and get unemployment.
I think I'm more effective at my job in certain conditions, they disagree. I don't get the histrionics and accusations about an employer's intentions. At a certain point it's an important adult thing to be able to recognize you're just in disagreement with another party over something subjective, and you're not being victimized.
Though… that does make the stakes for losing good folks a lot higher as well.
Some companies acknowledge, support, and empower those who generate the value and fully embrace the servant leadership ideals, most do not.
The biggest impact AI will have is empowering those in leadership positions to further extend their leverage against labour to drive down compensation and working conditions.
I believe that this will create a vacuum for smaller, more agile organisations empowered by the likes of AI and employees who are motivated and appreciated to emerge and dominate.
The free market should consign the tie-wearing corporate performative productivity dinosaurs to history. Only results matter. Nimble startups with ~1 - 10 employees + AI + contracting with other companies can run rings around the average 100-person corporate team.
A bad boss doesn't undermine it, bad reports yes. It would be an otherwise ideal way of working.
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/three-things-to-know-abo...
> A survey of 5,458 Americans that Bentley University recently conducted with Gallup shows that your own employees’ answers — their attitudes and expectations — might vary widely depending on the generational cohort.
> Everyone wants a four-day workweek. The survey asked what actions employers could take to increase employees’ well-being. The No. 1 answer was to offer a four-day 40-hour workweek in place of a five-day 40-hour workweek. Overall, 77% of respondents said this would improve their well-being. But among younger workers ages 18 to 29, a whopping 82% favored a shorter workweek.
> That finding was presented to a group of 25 CEOs, none of whom saw a four-day workweek as viable. However, some companies that have participated in experiments with four-day 32-hour workweeks have seen good results for well-being and productivity and have made the change permanent. Older executives might not see employee wellness quite the same way as younger employees — and leaders who figure out how to successfully manage in ways that better support well-being might have a recruitment edge.
Like remote work, even in the face of data, the 4 week workweek is considered "unviable." But it eventually will be as those in positions of leadership and power retire or age out. Make change where you can, otherwise, hold fast.
If proper remote first companies can out-execute in-office companies and show better revenue performance, doesn't matter what middle management says. In Dell's case, a company that doesn't need expensive office space and HCOL employees should be able to provide cheaper office equipment than Dell as well.
No matter how unbiased management thinks they are, they will still promote the people they see in the office more.
However, job hopping is still the fastest way to get promotions/raises so I'm not sure it matters.
I was just pointing out the problem is there, unstated, in other companies that allow remote.
I have been home based since 2006 and I wouldn't be opposed to going into the office under the right circumstances. And there are things you have to do when you are remote that just naturally occur when you are in the office with your peers day-to-day, but it doesn't impact my work. Maybe if you are more junior and rely on your peers more it might impact it that way but usually ppl seek me out for help instead of the other way around.
Then something like remote work comes along that actually helps all these and they throw it away. Shows their words are meaningless.
If they can make money letting you work from home, they will. Unfortunately most companies have long-term leases or ownership of commercial real estate, which is getting less and less valuable by the minute. The value of these obligations outweighs the value created by not having to have people work in the office. So back the workers go.
They decided they wanted everyone to work on site in a smaller number of offices. Some folks were just laid off, many others were told they had to move or find a new job. But they made an exception for me and said I could keep working remote - but would not be eligible for promotion unless I moved to work on site. I switched jobs and doubled my pay. (Still remote.)
More discussion a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39728252
I think you might have hit upon why Dell wants people back in the office.
It sounds like mgmt really wants people to RTO and has realized that de jure RTO backfires so it's trying to figure out the right "incentives" to get the desired results. There's this element of, "we really think you're that dumb," that they seem to keep deluding themselves with.
> "because of your race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information."[0]
Things like whether you are working remote or in-office, your political beliefs/affiliation, personality, where you choose to live, what color you died your hair, whether you re-heat salmon in the office microwave...these are generally not covered by charges of "discrimination" in the USA.
I think this is a pretty harsh framing. They directly ask for input from someone with expertise (indirectly making it known that their existing belief is not backed by relevant expertise). Then they state what their existing belief is. It reads to me like an invitation for someone to correct their existing belief.
Instead, they said:
> "Seems like a pretty obvious discrimination lawsuit."
Which is the difference between lazy inquiry and spreading misinformation.
That is also not true, because many locales in the US have requirements that reach beyond the minimums required by federal law.
While there are protected classes that benefit from flexible working locations (people with some disabilities, for example), working from home in and of itself isn't a protected class, so there's no real chance for a lawsuit on that grounds.