Dell responds to return-to-office resistance with VPN, badge tracking | Hacker News Reader

Dell responds to return-to-office resistance with VPN, badge tracking

arstechnica.com

19 pointsaarghh11 comments

I’d love to see senior leadership lead by example at some of these companies. If they’re doing badge tracking they could have a live leaderboard of the leadership’s total time in office. I bet it would make interesting viewing.

Guaranteed they'd cheat that somehow. Have some dev hard code 996 hours with some fluctuation. Betting pool on who spots the first downright lie. Then suddenly system goes down.

> Some suspect Dell's suddenly stringent office policy is an attempt to force people to quit so that the company can avoid layoffs.

The good news: you’ve selected for all the employees willing to put up with meaningless edicts.

The bad news: you’re stuck with ‘em because everyone else left.

I predict that life with get easier for IT because the remaining people will be really good at following arbitrary rules. Productivity will crater but that’s a problem for next quarter, right?

Funny how Dell supported remote work, until Michael Dell's family investment LLC started more heavily investing in office real estate.

Did you happen to have a source? Not that I think this is at all unlikely, just curious about it!

I unfortunately couldn't find the great article that first clued me into this connection but this article from 2023 details some of his (more specifically MSD, his capital investing company) investment into office real estate - https://therealdeal.com/magazine/national-april-2023/dell-di... . One happens to be an office to residential conversion but many of the others mentioned are staying as offices.

> the corporation's human capital management software

How's my fellow human capital stock going today?

> An unnamed person reportedly "familiar with Dell" claimed that those failing to show up to a Dell office frequently enough will be referred to Dell COO Jeff Clarke.

It's the corporate equivalent of being sent to the vice principle's office in high school.

Don’t most big firms that have return to office mandates do this now? It’s hardly unique to Dell.

What's next? Implanting RFID chips in employees to track them? Maybe I shouldn't give Dell's management any ideas ...

Good luck with that. Seemed to work fine during the pandemic. What’s changed. Oh that’s right yeah. Nothing. What’s the issue here? Control. That’s all it is.

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