Nearly half Dell's US workforce has rejected RTO. Rather WFH than get promoted (2024) | Hacker News Reader

Nearly half Dell's US workforce has rejected RTO. Rather WFH than get promoted (2024)

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196 pointsthis_weekend178 comments

Old story from 6 months ago:

Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40729588

For a lot of software engineers - especially those of us who are actually senior engineers, not folks who've been working for 2 years since graduation - I don't think a promotion makes sense, anyway. From here, it's Staff or Principal (or management, which is fine for some folks, and anathema to others), and the raise does not justify the amount of effort the next level would require.

A lot of us are happy where we are, level-wise, and if we do want a significant raise, others have pointed out - we're more likely to get it by interviewing, not by getting promoted.

Now, granted, if you're gung-ho and really want the responsibility and the more interesting work that Staff/Principal will give you, fuckin' go nuts - I'm happy there are ambitious folks out there. I just want to do my job and then go play with my kid.

The next level is also a pyramid level - aka - competition and stack rank and often political. A lot of people cannot be bothered with petty politics.

As a Principal engineer, I would refuse to RTO and would look for another position or do the same and continue WFH if it's rewarding enough.

Most of the Staff/Principal engineers around you are not there because they don't have other (sometimes much better on the face of it) opportunities - we're here because of inertia and realm expertise.

Being financially secure and not caring about a promotion is the biggest superpower you can have at a tech company. Work on whatever projects you want. Skip whichever meetings you want. Don't want to waste multiple days writing a pointless report? Fine. Don't want to participate in org politics? All good. As long as you are doing decent work and have a good reputation among your peers the threat of firing will always be an empty one. And soon you'll start to realize how much of the work people do at any company, especially at higher levels, is just performative ass kissing.

Every single terrible job experience is the result of a shitty power tripping manager. Take away the manager's power over you and suddenly your job will be fun and fulfilling again.

> Being financially secure and not caring about a promotion is the biggest superpower you can have at a tech company.

And not being in the country on an H1B…

This is not a rant against H1B Visa holders. It’s a condemnation of the system that makes their ability to stay in the country contingent on their job.

I saw it first hand at AWS. When Amazon started Amazoning when I was working there, I knew what was up and wasn’t stressed, didn’t jump through the hoops to stay off PIP and when they gave me the choice of getting 4 months severance and “leave immediately”. I took the money and ran and got another job in 3 weeks.

My coworkers who were there on H1B, were definitely afraid, even if they did have more than enough money to hypothetically tide them over.

I knew I could get a job, a contract, start independent consulting or do something before my money ran out. That wasn’t an option for them.

For those who don’t know how the PIP process works at Amazon…

- if you choose to “leave immediately” instead of working through the PIP, you got one month of base pay for every year and partial year you worked there.

- if you failed the PIP (and you will), you got 1/3 of the original amount.

- of course you can appeal. But if you fail (and you will). You get 1/2 of the 1/3.

You think H1-Bs are bad? Trying being on an L1 :)

Why is L1 any worse ?

Unless I'm mistaken, you can transfer employers on an H1-B, and you have 90 days to find a new job if you get laid off. On an L1 you are immediately out of status when your employment is terminated, with no option of transfer

I don’t feel as bad for L1 Visa holders. They came over specifically because they were already working for a specific company and that’s no different than being deployed in the military overseas and then having to leave once you leave the military.

From what I read, it’s also much easier to get and L1 Visas aren’t subject to the same caps and red tape.

I personally wouldn’t even move across the country beholden to a single company

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38474212

I would be very hesitant to create roots in another country - like buying house - dependent on one company and not having a back up plan and the expectation that it was temporary and a way to save a lot of money

I voluntarily went on an L1 so my spouse could work. H1b spouses cannot work.

Do you consider a “temporary deployment” (using my military analogy) or do you want to permanently be in the US?

From the context of my previous comments, I hope you don’t read that as anti- immigration question

My situation is already a little different because prior to my L1 I was already working in the USA on a different visa. So I worked in the USA, then outside the USA, then returned to the USA (upon which I picked the L1 over the H1B for my spouse). My feelings on whether I want to stay permanently have changed a bunch of times, but in the end, I probably won't get a choice. Both L1 and H1B have time limits, and due to COVID and my company doing various layoffs I probably won't get a green card in time.

When Elon cracked the whip in Twitter, everyone on H1B interviewed and eventually left. At the end, most people left at Twitter were US citizens and a few H1Bs. Yes they may not have the ability to just quit on a whim, but they certainly have the ability to quit. And that’s what people do.

Sure they can quit on their own volition.

But they couldn’t do like I could when I saw the writing on the wall when I was about to get Amazoned

Options for me:

1. F** it. I will just quit and start working on building up my own independent cloud consulting business (I worked in Professional Services)

2. Stick around until the official PIP comes and get a 3+ month severance and survive until my next vesting period. One of my former coworkers suggested this. He was a director at an F500 company and said he could at least get me a very well paying contract until he could get a position created for me once I got PIPd. He wanted me specifically.

3. The option I chose was to work for another consulting company that didn't offer sponsorships - I asked for another coworker who was looking.

> And not being in the country on an H1B…

> This is not a rant against H1B Visa holders. It’s a condemnation of the system that makes their ability to stay in the country contingent on their job.

They are always free to go back to their home countries.

Neither the US, nor their employer, is obligated to guarantee them anything more than the circumstances and conditions that the visa holders agreed to in the first place. The circumstances and conditions that the holders agreed to because they decided, voluntarily, that they would be better off in the US than in their home countries.

And companies take advantage of the situation. If they paid taxes and have the money to stay here without government assistance - besides unemployment that is paid into by their employer - who is it hurting to give them more than 60 days to find another job??

H-1B visa holders are generally not eligible for unemployment insurance benefits.

https://www.chugh.com/news/h1-b-workers-unemployment-benefit...

That’s even a better argument for extending the time they have to find another job.

> Every single terrible job experience is the result of a shitty power tripping manager.

Having been both employee and manager, it's hardly that one-sided. For example, having an employee coming in high is not the manager's fault.

why do you think employee had to get high :)

LOL

BTW, as my career progressed, I tended to shift my view of the manager as less of someone telling me what to do into a partner who was empowered to remove obstacles to my doing the job successfully.

> a partner who was empowered to remove obstacles to my doing the job successfully.

This is actually one of defined and quite successful current management models.

Mediocre managers hire, create, and retain mediocre reports, with an emphasis on create.

I welcome AI that replaces the mediocre bottom 80% of managers that lower a companies bottom line. The top 20% won't be replaced soon.

I once got a new boss who was one of these power trippers. He and I didn't get along. But I was making my customers happy and I was making his boss happy; my job was completely secure.

At review time he told me in a very condescending tone "I just don't think I can recommend you for a raise this year."

My response was "Oh good. That means I can do whatever I want."

Nobody had ever said that to him before. Shortly afterward he took a leave of absence for mental health reasons.

good on you!

Power move. Well done.

>Being financially secure and not caring about a promotion is the biggest superpower you can have at a tech company.

Highly relevant:

TIL what "FYIFV" means at Microsoft. "Fuck You, I'm Fully Vested" means that a person is so rich from Microsoft stock that he can be completely honest to coworkers and can leave anytime. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ax59rb/til_w...>

I welcome our new AI middle management overlords.

May the PHBs R.I.P.

It doesn't work like this at all. PHBs exist because top management doesn't want to be even remotely concerned with employee management. Actually, not that many people do: you have bosses above you who expect you to push things in one direction, then you have your reports who tell you their story, you understand both sides have their merits but one is more important so in order to keep your job you do what you are expected to do. With some teams everything works fine, in other cases things go downhill. When you compare this with working with machines, it can be exhausting, unless you enjoy this kind of challenges.

But is this ivory tower hands off manager good for companies?

It seems the Musks and Ghosns of management reject this hands off approach and achieve great results.

Speaking as someone who tracked up the management chain….

Senior Software Engineer was the best job I ever had. The perfect balance of autonomy and responsibility.

150%.

I loved, loved, loved being a technical SME and engineer.

It was incredibly satisfying and fun. I got greedy and also enjoyed systems, so I moved into an architect role, then director/exec.

I have a great job and enjoy the company and mission… but the politics is exhausting.

I just had my annual “career check-in” or whatever they are calling it now at work. I’m at the crossroads level: stick as being a software engineer and accept I’m not smart enough to ever be promoted again on software engeering track, or head for management track.

My guess is I would be either an excellent manager or an appalling one. Either way, I have absolutely no wish to do it. My wife is saying I should go for it in order to continue climbing the ladder.

I can’t pretend I’m not glad to see someone who would have been happy sticking as well. Hopefully you get the chance to demote yourself soon :)

When I think of the SWE career ladder from IC to management, this Mitch Hedberg quote comes to mind:

"When you're in Hollywood and you're a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things. All right, you're a stand-up comedian, can you write us a script? That's not fair. That's like if I worked hard to become a cook, and I'm a really good cook, they'd say, 'OK, you're a cook. Can you farm?'"

There's a reason there are IC and manager tracks at most companies employing devs. You can keep refining your craft as an IC and become a Staff/Principal/Distinguished. No need to become a manager to get promotions, more money and/or more responsibility.

For what it’s worth I don’t think that being promoted into a staff or principal role is about intelligence per se any more than going into management is. I was a principal engineer at my previous company, joined my current company as a senior engineer, and this time opted to try out the management ladder.

If anything, I think I probably exercise my technical expertise more as an engineering manager than I did as a principal engineer, but that’s probably a matter of difference in company culture and my current team. Generally I think both roles end up leaning on a mix of systems thinking, interpersonal skills, and generally the ability to have a vision and sell it to other people. As a principal engineer I was focused on the technical systems and the vision was about ways to make the organization I was working in more effective by setting a vision for what areas we invested in technically, how systems owned by different teams worked together, and in some cases involved getting hands on to help out or build a prototype.

As a manager I’m focused on an area of the product, business outcomes, and how to ensure that my team is productive over both a short and longer time horizon. It means setting a product vision, understanding the technical and organizational work needed to get there, and selling that vision to get the time and resources needed. Sometimes it means getting my hands dirty to build a prototype, or to take things off my team’s plate so they can be more effective.

I’ve been lucky that my recent jobs have all had enough interesting deep technical problems to go around and I’ve still been able to do some of that work, but neither role has involved the kind if regular deep technical work I had as a senior IC.

I think real senior roles are generally the place with the hardest technical problems, and moving up in any direction sets aside some of those problems in favor of learning to get leverage from influence.

When you liked the role of Senior Software Engineer, was the situation that you could trust that others in the company were doing a good job of covering the responsibilities outside your scope?

Or was it because the scope was nice, and you didn't much care what happened outside the scope?

(Both are valid ways that people look at jobs, at different times, and in different situations. Just interested in anecdata and insights into how I should think about hiring.)

I'm enjoying being a manager. My team is pretty small, though, only 3, sometimes 4 other people. I still do a lot of programming, but I'm also mentoring--which I find very rewarding--and I have a meaningful voice in some decision making. Also, my boss trusts me, and encourages me to use his authority on occasion, too (a plan I've come to calling "weaponizing the org chart"). I don't think I could do that if I was "just" a senior developer.

If it was so great, why did you not go back to it? Do you mean that it was great, if you disregard the pay? Or are you now overqualified and unable to downshift into it?

Me too. The reason my current and previous companies can handle their high throughput is 100% from my architecture but I have no actual responsibility and stress in my position.

I’m sure I could make a gnarly salary somewhere but I’m extremely happy with the free time that I have. Beats any other job that I’ve had by a mile.

Yea, I’ve worked with folks in management who are just laser focused on the idea that offering leadership or management positions as a carrot to good developers is appealing. For some it is, but most of the time I find people just want to work on interesting problems and be appreciated for it.

The more important question is: how much is the pay raise from Senior -> Staff. For even the companies that pay generously, like Facebook, the median pay increases by about $150k in the US. If you look at companies like Dell, levels.fyi reports that the increase is barely $15k (https://www.levels.fyi/companies/dell-technologies/salaries/...)

Now if I were to choose, getting paid 15k less and stay remote in a LCOL area vs get that pay raise to live in a presumably more expensive city to RTO, it’s a no brainer. Even if I live in a HCOL area and I don’t go to the office, it is still a win. I live in the Bay Area, relatively close to the office and just commuting to the office, if I use public transportation, is about $300/month ($3600/year). If I drive, pay for parking, bridge tolls, and pay for lunch, I suddenly start spending $2000/month to RTO ($8 toll, $16 lunch and $25 parking 5 days a week). I’d need almost $40-50k pre tax raise to break even, which most companies refuse to give. And that is on top of time I waste commuting and the added work responsibilities I now have to take on.

The incentives to RTO are really not there.

The problem with the raise is that you often end up getting hired into a role at the high end of the comp range for that level, since during the application you have leverage. When getting promoted, you have less bargaining power - what are you going to do, refuse the raise because it's too small? So you get promoted out of highly paid senior into underpaid staff.

If you really want to be staff, you can try interviewing elsewhere for that position, and negotiate to get the high end of that.

When companies promote internally, they have a huge advantage against random employers on the market: There is vastly less uncertainty about the employee's value. The promotion you get has every reason to be competitive with open positions on the market. But they often seem to promote into underwhelming positions, perhaps they figure the employee would value staying at the same company.

The problem with staff though is that it is harder to meet expectations when you change companies than if you stay at the same company. The role often requires you to be able to navigate organizational barriers effectively to do your job. And at a new company, you need to be exceptional at making connections if you want to continue to be remote. At your current company, the time you put in as a senior allows you to have those connections and therefore continue to perform as a staff engineer. This barrier is why a lot of people continue to work at the same company with underwhelming raises.

The concept that you would rather promote a mediocre employee who works in the office over a star who decides to work at home is just absurd, and horrible for business. I cannot imagine it actually being implemented.

It's consistent with both theories about rto -- one that remote work harms productivity (and someone working remotely cant be more productive than their office peers) and the other postulating its just a power move

Sadly, I was at the receiving end of this. FWIW I don’t work at a tech company, but rather at the IT department of a University in Florida.

This is basically how the federal government works. Employee-A is a "rock star", she is extremely productive, does great work, inspires others to do great work - the rest of the team basically depends on her, but she has to drive her kids to school in the morning and is sometimes 5 or 10 minutes late to the office. Employee-B is basically useless, does as little as possible, helps no one, but is always on time to the office. Now, take a guess who's gonna be promoted. ... I used to do civilian contracting; I saw this situation many times. Totally demoralizing.

Perhaps they believe their own management abilities are strong enough that mediocre enhanced by close management is better than good but out of management's reach.

There's a lot of assumption I don't agree with in that, but I would assume their logic is something like that.

The truly essential people who want to WFH will just ignore the directive and their managers will cover for them. I assume they don't show up in this 50%.

The rest are literally calling Dell's bluff that any potential promotion would be less valuable (monetary or well-being). Good on them!

I mean that's the thing. At the end of the day not WFH is at least another 2 hours of your day dedicated to work things.

That's an absolutely massive chunk of time.

I wouldn't give all 2 hours to work, but you're not wrong.

Hardly "at least" two hours a day. The average one-way commute in the United States is under a half hour; the state with the longest average commute (New York) is at 33 minutes.

https://www.census.gov/topics/employment/commuting/guidance/...

Being able to take a few minutes out of the workday here and there to attend to minor home duties (laundry, pets, deliveries, etc.) is a pretty significant extra perk on top of the time savings of avoiding the commute.

Yes and you do these things during the day and not during the time when everyone else is home from work. I go shopping at various times, but when I go to the stores during the "return from work" rush hour right after common work end times, it's way more busy, queues are longer, etc. WFH is the best.

You're missing the parts that aren't the commute.

Depends. I can also axe showering, changing clothes, make breakfast during standup, do laundry during my lunch, be there for packages rather than visiting a depot, etc.

A tremendous amount of time is saved just by being home.

I love that I can workout on my lunch while wfh and not be peer pressured to sit at some overpriced mediocre cafe with coworkers like in the office. Also not having all the constant office junk food and sweets in my face is awesome.

I used to commute a 30-40 minutes in the morning from S. Austin to midtown. The reverse route could easily take 2+ hours. I finally quit taking the freeway and started going a thru-town route. Then it took 3 hours, but one hour was spent eating dinner. It sucked and I could easily have written the same software at home (and also avoided marketing people randomly popping in to ask about a feature because they didn't want to speak to my manager (who actively shielded us when he could)).

God only knows how long that route takes now, but guaranteed the suck level has not gone down.

I live in the fastest growing area of the fastest growing big city in the county. Traffic is the only reason I refuse to go back to an office. It can take 45 minutes to reach the freeway 5 miles from the house and then most of the mega corps are 45-60 miles from this location.

While the data you cite is correct, this seems to include the entire working population. I'd be willing to bet that the average office worker has a much longer commute than the average worker.

For example, I suspect the average waiter or retail working isn't going to favor a far away location over something close to them. They all probably offer similar compensation and work environments. However, a white collar worker is more likely to take a faraway job if it pays well.

I still have to get up, get ready for work, and then head in.

I can do that to the amount I need to in about 15 minutes WFH, but it takes much longer if I'm going into the office.

That’s more personal time, not work time. It’s not like they’re subtracting your commute from the time you have your butt in the seat, and most savvy employees aren’t going to spend an extra 2 hours working at home.

if i use personal time for work commute, i count that as time wasted.

Ever since RTO I bill my time commuting to/from the office. I can WFH and did so for years. So they can pay for it or fuck off.

Right, your time wasted, not your employers.

exactly, and i don't give my time for free other than to friends and family

also who even gets promoted internally and in what way? usually it is meager salary gain for a lot of new responsibilities

99% of time if you want to get promoted or get a pay rise you apply somewhere else if you want your pay to match your responsibilities.

In a certain big database company attempts at such moves for anyone whose position didn't involve huge political sway (let's say the kind of positions directly making decisions on direction of company at global scale) was met with HQ announcing that they are going to remotely track badge reader data and apply "firing with cause" for consistently skirting RTO to both employee and managers...

I am not an oracle, but I know people who work at similar companies, with similar decrees, and the Important People just ignore this and I assume the SVP's administrative assistant (who holds the REAL day-to-day power at most companies) just makes the problem go away.

well, yeah, the actual Very Important People can. Generally those who can probably tell a VP to "go fsck yourself" in more colourful language and expect no real consequences.

After only seven years in the industry, a promotion doesn’t make much sense to me right now.

I want to write good code and build great products. But in the corporate world, visible work is more important than good work. So, there are two options for me: either be a staff engineer or a manager. While staff seems like the obvious choice, in most companies, staff engineers are just managers who code. The number of meetings and admin work goes through the roof. Not to mention the nasty politics and mind games you have to play just to survive.

So, if I have to choose between staying at home or getting promoted, WFH is the obvious choice. Oh, and I learned late that hopping jobs is far better than chasing promotions for my financial and mental health.

> in most companies, staff engineers are just managers who code

managers, by definition, have direct reports while ICs do not. for L5/L6 roles you're a mix of tech lead/architect/product mgr, with broader scope. you do have more meetings, but they're typically ones where your input is needed, not just ceremonial bs.

I’d love to expand the scope of my work and do better stuff. But meetings without concrete agendas are the bane of my existence, and even as an IC, I’ve had to sit through far too many.

Post-senior paths are kind of hazy, and I’d rather job-hop than climb these ladders. The number of times I’ve gone “above and beyond” only to hear, “Sorry, we don’t have the budget for a raise,” is exhausting.

I can't comment on Dell specifically, but as someone who WFH and remote friendly companies, the vast majority of people not working from the office are people who moved for more affordable housing (mostly purchasing, not for renting).

I'd have loved to stay and live near our nice offices and biked or short drive to work, but it literally wasn't affordable and just got worse over the 10 years I was in-office.

You reach an age where you have make a decision on these life choices and so WFH/remote it was. It wasn't really a choice when no company would pay enough to afford a home near their offices (married with children) - so sorry/not sorry?

Smart move. One typically needs to move jobs to get promoted anyways.

I’ve yet to work for a company where promotion isn’t a scam anyway compared to job hopping.

You put in way more work than preparing for interviews for a raise that is often less than job hopping.

You want me to grind for two years for a raise when I can just be a C player and get it from someone else with stories about being an A player?

100%. I worked at a particularly late age FAANG, at this point advancement was few, far between, and was very, very, easy to predict. And the predictive factors were a toxic stew.

TL;DR: got here first | overworks | never ever does anything that could possibly be construed as challenging authority, such as having original ideas in front of someone ranked higher than you, or trying to help create some semblance of process.

Being absurdly incompetent at writing maintainable code that had serious, consequential, misunderstandings of the material needed to implement it? That's fine.

it's a feature, not a bug, to do just good enough a job to rush exec misunderstandings into prod, as long as anything wrong with it can be dissembled verbally, unless someone else wants to dig into the code.

This would have sounded horribly cynical and bitter and loser-speak when I was younger. Now that I saw it first hand, it clarified for me why people do startups and turnover is high, given it was a $300K/year job if you just show up 20 hours a week, and 40 hours a week for a month or two a year.

Younger me: lesson here is either care, and do a startup, or don't care and do the family and skiing or whatever.

Your plan of "I should go bank money for a few years so I can leave and do my own place safely" panned out great.

Your plan of "wow...standards are this low? People will see it and care, certainly if you're doing extremely impactful work" was completely wrong.

I find what you wrote difficult to understand.

me too, on re-read. I can tell from the score it resonated so maybe there's too much insider baseball. TL;DR advancement in your current position is rare in big tech, and there's too much animal spirits to overcome inherent bias

One of the many lessons I've learned (so far) in my career is to do a job you don't mind, maybe even enjoy, on a team you like and ignore the whole ladder climbing game.

Promotions are overrated and if you are in software you should be making a comfortable living from the beginning.

More money can be helpful, but it isn't worth the stress of chasing promotions and playing the political games required at higher levels.

* you, interviewing for a new position

Interviewer: “mr. so-and-so, I see that you worked as XXXXX at YYYY for ZZZZ number of years, can you tell us about the core reason your career stagnated and you were not promoted in all that time there?”

* assumes you somehow got the interview…

I've literally had that exact question asked, minus the word "stagnated." The answer is because job title has little to do with scope, responsibility, or skill. At least at any company outside the most massive FAANG type companies.

I've also had interviews where I had to explain long gaps in employment, another topic many assume will be uncomfortable or a red flag. It all comes back to telling a good story at the end of the day, explain what you learned, why you were in that position, and how you are better for it.

> on a team you like

I cannot over-stress how important this is.

Being on a bad team will drain you fast, no matter how interesting the work is.

Meanwhile, churning out widgets is something you can do if you enjoy the people you're doing it next to.

Is job hopping to get a bump in salary still a thing nowadays? Serious question.

I haven’t needed to look for employment in the past year or so, but I’ve heard some terrible things about the job market, enough that I’d be surprised if it was still possible given how slow hiring seems to be.

A long time to get hired is a disaster when you're currently unemployed. As a background thing while you're currently employed it's no big deal. If you are someone who intends to change jobs every 2 years or something you just start the process earlier. I think the job market is usually kinder to those looking for a change in jobs too unfortunately, since your current employer is an implicit vouch for you.

Learned it the hard way. Multiple times. Being an A player isn’t worth the effort in most places.

Open plan offices are a waking nightmare. If you want people to return to office maybe make offices reasonable places to work.

I think this will just encourage the further replacement of American citizens with H-1B's from India who will do whatever upper management demands, because they have no choice.

I look around my workplace and see Indians building simple CRUD APIs because allegedly Americans can't? lol.

Do any of the office employees get promoted? Dell hasn't grown much in years, so I assume promotion opportunities are close to zero. Wait around 20 years until your boss retires?

It'd be interesting to see their attrition numbers for that. If Dell is losing employees at higher levels you would see promotions opportunities whether the company grows or not.

Good. If I have to go back into the office it may as well be with a fat pay raise and a new mission, the likes of which are more likely with a new company.

COVID was such a waste of a catastrophe. We all briefly figured out that maybe people who work at a computer all day don't actually need to travel every day to a special computer in a special building. And that we don't need mass tourism and mass migration.

But everyone was determined to learn absolutely nothing from it, and just go back to normal but even worse.

WFH was the best thing to come out of COVID.

"was" might be unfortunately too accurate.

> back to normal but even worse.

Yep, I had no problem finding remote jobs before Covid. Now I get no interviews, every application rejected due to competing with literally thousands of remote "applicants" per job.

We learned that corporate leadership folks are willing to make workers suffer out of ideology and ignore data. Valuable signal.

Suffer and die

If you're looking for Covid response lessons to learn, WFH is pretty low on the list in my opinion.

We saw how fragile our entire system is from infrastructure to food. We saw how quickly a bit of fear turned an entire political party (at least in the US) from vilifying big pharma to putting it on a pedestal, handing over mountains of money, and creating legal cover for any and all liability. We saw how strong of a grip the news media has over society, turning public opinion on a dime as new recommendations/talking points came down. We saw how intertwined social media and the government really is.

WFH feels like a quaint novelty to me in the context of what all went wrong and what lessons were missed during the pandemic response.

The party you are thinking about isn’t the party that was against the science of vaccines

Left vs right and their position on masks and the vaccine varied by country, and in the us it flipped early on, I want to say something like 19weeks from the first case in the US Vice and Fox swapped talking points. That was truly strange. I'm not smart enough to understand how the oligarchy in the US works, or how various news sources align.

The left was never against vaccines. If you look at the states and their policies, the anti-vax policies are all Republican

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/political-party-affiliat...

That isn't accurate, the US left (or at least the Democratic party) was very much against warp speed and vaccines while Trump was still in office. Many Democratic politicians, including Biden and Harris if I'm not mistaken, apoje out against Trump's vaccine program and the risk of forcing through testing under such extreme circumstances. That changes as soon as Biden, rather than Trump, owned the vaccine programs.

The vaccines weren’t approved until 12/11/2020 after Trump had lost and wasn’t widely available until the first few months of Biden’s administration.

Again who has been the anti vax party since 2020? Trump is literally trying to appoint an anti-vaxxer to his cabinet

hardliner GOPers… https://youtube.com/shorts/v_EUa1buffQ?feature=shared

can send you one for every single one… GOP became “anti-vax” when they realized they can make it a political issue after they fucked up everything imaginable covid related (and paid the price for it in 2020 elections)

Do you not recall the general Democratic sentiment of a vaccine while Trump was in office and he was the one pushing for it? Many Democratic leaders were on the record calling it Trump's vaccine and either implying or directly saying that they wouldn't trust it and that it couldn't be rushed through the process.

If you're referring to RFK as the anti-vaxxer, unless I'm mistaken he has been pretty clear that he isn't opposed to vaccines in general. I don't know all of his arguments or views, but the limited stuff I've seen from or about him indicates that he was opposed to the Covid vaccine and the process it was rushed through with little to no scientific study. I haven't seen him argue against all vaccines, my guess is he is more in favor of the more standard approach of things like attenuated virus vaccines.

RFK believes that vaccines cause autism

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0mzk2y41zvo.amp

Sure, he has said this but the few times I've heard him discuss it in any length he raises concerns over how little we know given how vaccine safety studies are done. He also raises examples of individuals he has met with stories that, in his opinion, are concerning enough to raise questions for him whether there is a link between certain vaccines and autism rates.

> Vaccination has probably saved more lives and is better researched than most, if not all, aspects of healthcare.

It's worth noting that the fact checking article you linked to doesn't really include much in the way of fact checking. They don't include and then discredit specific studies or data points that RFK uses. They do include a few quotes from credentialed individuals like the one above, though it ultimately says nothing and includes fluffy words like "probably saved..."

With that said, I have no idea how much of a smoking gun there might be linking vaccines to autism. My point here isn't that RFK is right, but it is important to at least represent his arguments accurately and to discredit with proper data to show that his view isn't backed by the data.

> Sure, he has said this but the few times I've heard him discuss it in any length he raises concerns over how little we know given how vaccine safety studies are done. He also raises examples of individuals he has met with stories that, in his opinion, are concerning enough to raise questions for him whether there is a link between certain vaccines and autism rates

His “concerns” about autism has been debunked repeatedly and not taken seriously by anyone in the scientific community. He was claiming a link between autism and vaccines for vaccines that did go through the standard approval process and have been around for years.

There is no “data” about vaccines link to autism.

> There is no “data” about vaccines link to autism.

Vaccine use and autism rates are pretty well correlated. In no way does that imply causation and I agree that RFK leans too heavily into thinking that link exists, but it is also the case that we don't have much good scientific data there either way.

Studies for vaccine safety generally don't follow a timeline necessary to pick up links to autism or similar conditions that either take years to develop, or show up one generation down. That isn't unreasonable, the number of confounding factors there would be next to impossible to isolate over such a long time. That still leaves us with little more than modelling and epidemiology to either prove or disprove the link though, at least as I read that the argument couldn't be settled either way.

For those who don't believe you: Biden, Harris, and Pelosi all saying they won't trust any Trump vaccine <https://www.newsweek.com/anti-vaccine-covid-trust-skepticism...>

Is this not trusting a “Trump vaccine”?

> Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, Democratic speaker of the United States House of Representatives, has said any vaccine must meet safety standards before being released if it is to be accepted by the public.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/23/gop-voters-vaccines...

> Among Democratic voters, 76 percent said they “care more about potential health benefits than the potential health risks of vaccines.” But among Republicans, it’s split evenly: 51 percent care more about the potential health risks, while 49 percent care more about the benefits.

> > Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, Democratic speaker of the United States House of Representatives, has said any vaccine must meet safety standards before being released if it is to be accepted by the public.

This alone is a big flip in what they ultimately supported though. The Covid vaccine was rushed through with limited, and flawed, studies and didn't meet any existing safety standards. The studies that were done were extremely limited in duration and only tested for the most severe safety issues that may show up within days of getting the vaccine. The studies also didn't cover a broad enough range of ages or preexisting conditions to support a blanket statements that it was safe for everyone to take.

It's also worth noting that they never did any meaningful safety studies to validate the idea of taking more than the original one or two shots. Safety of booster shots, which were initially were said to not be required at all, was never studies and the recommendation was based only on the view that the original shots were safe and they weren't aware of reasons why a booster wouldn't be.

Its important for me to note here that I'm not even saying whether they did or did not turn out to be safe, only what was studied and how decisions were made.

There was no flip flop. It wasn’t Democrats not trusting the scientists, the FDA or the pharmaceutical companies. Trump was putting pressure on the FDA to even skip what they thought was prudent.

The FDA did skip what they thought was required for vaccines though. The EUA and safety/efficacy studies done were extremely rushed and pretty damn sloppy, and that doesn't even touch on whether issues with the data were buries by pharmaceutical companies or regulators at the time.

holy shit - you wrote this with the straight face???! wow if so!!!

So it isn’t mostly the Republican Party that is anti-vax?

Republican party was having sex with the vaccines and salivating over them until they all flip-flopped because they realized there are political points to be made by fear mongering - especially un-educated - mission accomplished

Are you agreeing or disagreeing that the anti-vax movement is mostly Republican?

Tough question because of course they both love and don’t love vaccines! Currently they might be anti-vaxx, earlier they want to inject not only you but your cats and dogs and parrots, tomorrow… who knows :)

The Covid vaccine didn’t exist until after Trump lost. How could they have been pushing it?

https://youtube.com/shorts/v_EUa1buffQ?feature=shared

you do realize that even though trump lost there were few congresman and senators that were republican right?

and of course the most famous anti-vaxxer is RFK Jr - a Democrat. Democrats were anti-vaxxers before it was cool. Rand Paul was stupid enough to believe by now fully retracted study about the “link” between vaccines and autism

Are you really claiming RFK JR - a Trump supporter and the person Trump wants to be the head of Health and Humam Services to be a mainstream Democrat?

But yet you dismiss the then Speaker of the House of Representatives?

These are the Republican Governors who fought against vaccines

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/17/governors-covid-vac...

you do realize RFK Jr was Democratic PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN THIS ELECTION OF 2024? :)

you are too funny mate…

it was easy to fight the vaccines in late 2021, it just became cool thing politically to rile up MAGA base. all those governors were kissing the top of the needles when that suited them politically

He ran as an independent - not a Democrat.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/09/rfk-jr-announces-he...

So now the Republican Governors, the former Republican Speaker of the House who was against vaccines in 2015 were all anti-vax, Trump’s presumptive nominee as the Head of Health and Human Services is anti-vax, but it was the Democrats who are anti-vax?

Can you name on Democratic governor, Senator or Representative who railed against Covid vaccines after they were approved in December 2020?

RFK Jr ran as a Democrat until the party blocked the primary process and wouldn't let anyone challenge Biden.

There was very much a primary process in the Democratic Party and his stated reason for running as an independent from the article I linked to.

“ We declare independence from the cynical elites who betray our hope and who amplify our divisions. And finally, we declare independence from the two political parties.”

What was this primary process you are referring to? They didn't allow debates, Biden didn't take part, and we ended up with a candidate selected by committee rather than by primary vote.

Debates with who? RFK never tried to get on the ballot as a Democrat.

You do remember that Trump also didn’t take part in any of the primary debates either?

RFK was a primary nominee along with other Democrats that wanted to challenge Biden for the spot. RFK absolutely tried to get on the ballot as a Democrat by registering as a candidate with the party, but he couldn't get on the ballot when the party aligned behind Biden.

I do remember that Trump skipped the primaries and I also take issue with that. If the Republican party had any backbone they would have made clear that only candidates taking part in the primary could be on the party's primary ballots.

We had a democratic election with two candidates that took no part in primaries. Though not unprecedented in US history, its a huge problem in my book.

RFK was a primary nominee along with other Democrats that wanted to challenge Biden for the spot.

it is insane you have to even write this but here we are... :)

Though not unprecedented in US history, its a huge problem in my book.

huge problem but more of a problem on a democratic party side. while trump did not want to participate in the debates, he won the primary by getting enough votes to become a republican presidential nominee. not a soul voted for kamala to be democratic presidential nominee... while many different "excuses" were made why her campaign failed this by itself was an issue that was not discussed enough. in my small personal circle 2 people specifically said they voted for trump in large part because of this

anyone (read pretty much everyone) who is now supposedly anti-vaxx was salivating over them previously. I am not telling you Dems are anti-vaxx (other than RFK Jr and other than those who were against Trump rushing the vaccine approval), I am telling you Republicans are now flip-flopped because that is what they do - more advantageous politically on the “right” to be anti-vaxx :)

When were the Republicans ever pro-vax? I posted a link where Rand Paul in 2015 was skeptical of vaccines. At the time he was the highest ranking Republican and third in line for the presidency.

I posted you a link to desantis speech ( https://youtube.com/shorts/v_EUa1buffQ?feature=shared ). if you follow that along you will find the same from all GOP governors and senators and congressman (and President himself of course)

Trump started Warp Speed and was pushing for a vaccine while still in office. At that time many Democratic leaders were on the record calling it Trump's vaccine and implying or directly saying they wouldn't trust it and that any vaccine would have to go through the normal process of safety and efficacy studies before it could be used.

You also recall that Trump was trying to rush approval of the vaccine even more than Fauci and the other experts at the FDA

https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/27/trump-has-launched-an-al...

Sure, though that doesn't really say anything about what others did. If we want to use what Trump says and does as the bar for everyone else, people would be doing very little wrong.

I am saying that Democrats didn’t voice a distrust of the scientists, Fauci or the FDA if left to their own devices. Their well founded distrust was of Trump pressuring the FDA to skip their own safe guards

I'm not sure what that shows though. There are many reasons one party may not voice distrust in the FDA or a particular scientist.

It is worth pointing out that plenty of Democrats, and I'll stick with party leadership here, spoke poorly of scientists who broke ranks and didn't follow the pushed narrative. The debate over where the virus came from is a great example, a small number of scientists publicly raised concerns that it was a lab leak and everyone from party leadership to Fauci, the CDC, and the FDA attempted to discredit those individuals with direct statements and pressure on media organizations to do the same.

It is now, but before the Republicans made being anti-vax a part of their identity politics, anti-vax was a fringe belief not necessarily aligned to a specific political polarity (the "vaccines cause autism" set) generally associated with alternative medicine/faith healing, etc and libertarianism (objecting to being forced to take vaccines on principle.)

Of course mistrust of vaccinations have been prevalent in non-white populations due to things like the Tuskeegee syphilis program and other instances of the US performing medical experiments on the populace.

Very few Black Americans even know about the Tuskegee syphilis program these days and it rarely comes up (I’m Black by the way).

The reason that uptake in the COVID vaccine wasn’t lower at first was because like everything else, health care is worse in the Black community.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9974364/#:~:text=By....

It’s been part of the Republican Party talking points since way before 2020.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna301646

Rand Paul was speaker of the House at the time.

In the UK and Israel the left are still against vaccines (not specifically covid vaccines). Prior to covid anti-vax was either religious or leftist conspiracy in the US. It is like how the dnc in the us started to support civil rights as early as FDR, and then the tipping point with LBJ that drove all the racists to the gop. Parties flip flop on things all the time. Russia used to influence the left primarily, now they use the right. The games are visible, but not comprehensible to me.

I remember this and this really disillusioned me wrt to the so called left/right divide. At the very beginning it was considered a right wing thing to worry about viruses, and doing so was linked to anti-chinese racism.

Then it all flipped on it's head, and 1984 style, no one seems to remember. Liking vaccines was always progressive. We've always been at war with east asia (but don't mention where in east asia the virus came from).

I'm not sure what you're getting at, do you mind clarifying?

For clarity on my end, the american Democratic party was going after big pharma and the Sackler family specifically for the opioid epidemic. In comes concerns over Covid (or CoV-2) and the same party completely embraced big pharma and vaccines developed under EUA. Hell, the President tried multiple times in televised speeches to push everyone to get vaccinated for fear of killing the elderly and dying over Christmas holiday.

You don’t see the difference between going after the Sackler family for underplaying their part in the opioid crisis and still being in favor of vaccines?

Or is it that you don’t see going after gouging American consumers for the same drugs that other countries get a lot cheaper?

The first Covid vaccine wasn’t approved until December 11, 2020 after Trump had lost the election and wasn’t available widely until March or April of 2021.

> You don’t see the difference between going after the Sackler family for underplaying their part in the opioid crisis and still being in favor of vaccines.

I didn't say there are no differences, of course there are. I also wasn't talking about all vaccines, or even vaccines at all really. I was trying to point out that just before the pandemic we had Democratic politicians and much of the media demonizing big pharma companies, and just a few months after all of that disappeared and those same companies were being handed billions of dollars, given even more legal liability cover, and were being talked about as saviors of us all.

> Or is it that you don’t see going after gouging American consumers for the same drugs that other countries get a lot cheaper?

There are some politicians going after this and that's a good thing, I don't see it as the most important problem with big pharma though, and the progress here has been slow to nonexistent.

> The first Covid vaccine wasn’t approved until December 11, 2020 after Trump had lost the election and wasn’t available widely until March or April of 2021.

Agreed, that's the correct timeline. Trump was still in office when Warp Speed began and he was originally the one pushing for a vaccine. Many Democratic leaders were on the record calling it Trump's vaccine and implying or directly saying they wouldn't trust a vaccine he rushed through the process, effectively calling it a political move to get something out and claim that he fixed it.

> I was trying to point out that just before the pandemic we had Democratic politicians and much of the media demonizing big pharma companies, and just a few months after all of that disappeared and those same companies were being handed billions of dollars,

You realize that operation Warp Speed was championed by Trump right? Even if that weren’t the case, the company controlled by the Sackler family had nothing to do with the vaccines that came to market.

> given even more legal liability cover, and were being talked about as saviors of us all.

This was also championed by Trump…

And the entire idea about saying that Democratics were going after abuses by Big Pharma was saying they were against medicine is like saying when they were going against the manufacturer of the Pinto they were against cars.

> You realize that operation Warp Speed was championed by Trump right?

I'm not sure if you read my full comment before replying, I specifically called this out in my last paragraph.

Edit: to include that I'm also not supporting Trump or saying he did things well. I'm only making a comparison of the Democratic party leaderships' opinions and statements before and after Biden took office. What was Trump's vaccine and had to go through standard safety tests before they would consider it became Biden's victory with a vaccine rushed through EUA, required for all federal employees, and recommended for everyone including children who were never even studied (unless you consider a test population of 30 statistically significant).

Trump was pressuring the FDA to even skip their safe guards and the FDA had to push back. Trump wanted the approvals before the election - two months earlier than it was approved.

It was approved before the inauguration. No one thought it was “Biden’s victory”

I'm not arguing with you regarding Trump, I don't think he handled it well at all. I raised his name only for context around the timing of the Democratic leadership flipping position on the vaccine programs.

Biden and his campaign would disagree with you though he frequently spoke highly of the vaccine and his administration's role in it. Prior to the election Biden was one of those calling it Trump's vaccine and raising concerns over rushing it and the safety of it in general.

He wasn’t criticizing the FDA or the makers. He was critical of Trump trying to pressure the FDA.

I would be surprised if there was no pressure on the FDA coming from the Biden administration. I also don't personally know how to stack up the issue of governments pressuring the FDA, who is part of the executive branch, and social media and news companies meant to be entirely separate from the government.

No one forgot. The lasting effects are here and real.

> special computer

I would work on the same laptop at an office that I do at home. I doubt they would even provide me an ultrawide 2nd monitor that I also use at home.

Wage suppression tactics aren't the same as productivity-enhancing tactics

An exclusively WFH remote team is dangerous to those team members subject to mandatory RTO directives - especially at Dell - and especially dangerous to middle managers incapable of justifying their existence. I have the receipts.

Another possible reason: managers making RTO decisions are trying to protect their own salary from cheaper international competition by forcing RTO on their reports.

We're on, what, year 2 of the WFH-RTO wars? It's a roller-coaster for sure.

I don't get why some companies are so obsessed with RTO for jobs like software engineers, who have no reason to be in the office anyway and tend to have enough technical savvy to figure out slack and zoom (which people use in the office too btw). I mean, if I set aside my cynicism. What do they get out of it?

All these tech companies are in very high COL urban areas. In fact, they always put their office in some downtown area as well, so even going to the cheaper suburbs of the area is not always feasible due to commute. It seems like they would save so much money by letting engineers WFH:

* Less money spent on office lease, existing office space can be leased to someone else

* Less money spent on utilities, kitchen snacks, custodial...

* You get more chances to "suck people in" to do just one more thing after hours, since they basically live in their office now (I thought that was the management dream?)

* Since the WFH can work in a low COL area, they might accept lower pay

* The paycheck becomes more efficient, as both sides pay less tax. Also, often RTO means moving to a state which has much higher state income tax as well.

* Child care costs can be massively reduced for the employee, reducing salary expectations

* You have a bigger pool of people to hire, not just people in your area

* I suspect employees subconsciously count commute towards "hour worked" and adjust their hourly pay accordingly - with WFH the commute is 10 seconds so their subjective pay increases further

* A common WFH play is to relocate to a low tax, small govt state which also has fewer regulations for the employer, which saves even more money

* People might be more likely to eat at their desk, rather than: Walk to restaurant, order, eat, walk back...

* No physical contact probably means fewer HR incidents, less work for HR, so you can reduce HR headcount

The savings and efficiencies seem crazy, an I'm baffled how they figure that RTO is a good idea. I get that they have this fear that WFHers will watch Netflix all day instead of working... But honestly, when's the last time you had a software job where, when you miss your targets (KPIs, Jira tickets, whatever) you could get away with "but boss, I've been in the office all day this week! It's not my fault I couldn't get it finished". All these roles are already heavily biased towards deliverables rather than how many hours you spent delivering.

Being in the office isn't even the worst part. But the office is always in a location that's extremely hostile to employees. Why can't they open a second office in some cheap place like rural Arkansas, where the workers can get cheap quality housing with a short commute, and send some managers over there? There's something to be said for working in your pyjamas, of course, but this seems like a pretty good compromise.

As for trying to get someone who is already WFH to RTO... Sheesh. Suppose they do relocate back within commuting distance. They got into a lease or mortgage, that would otherwise be a bad deal, just so they could come to your office. Who's to say you don't lay them off anyway in a few months? And then they'll be stuck with a house they don't need or want. This creates a risk for the employee, that must be mitigated by having an even higher salary expectation.

RTO seems like swimming against the current in so many ways. Maybe I'm missing something really big here.

does anyone really believe they are going to just promote people who don’t work from home instead of by merit?

Interesting framing - why is this a bad thing for Dell or the employees? It isn’t like a BS hybrid environment where everyone knows, but it isn’t written anywhere, that being in-office is an important part of career growth.

There are benefits for employees working at home, there are benefits to companies for employees coming to work. Letting people self-select seems like a great way to have a culture that acknowledges the benefits and weaknesses of both modalities.

I suspect this is bad for dell because employees called their bluff, Dell would probably be negatively affected by only promoting from half of their talent pool. It's unclear how this is bad for workers, since they didn't "defect" (in a game theorhetic sense)

I’m not sure it is bad to filter out people from the potential leadership pool that aren’t invested in the culture and style Dell wants. They get the best of both worlds - strong ICs who weren’t bought in and are going to job hop anyways, and self-selected people who want to rise in the company.

I’d prefer this as a filter to the old school “first in, last to leave” bullshit.

So you value passion for the company culture and style over, say, effectiveness, ingenuity, and performance? The idea that you would not just promote the best people because they work at home is just absurd and bad for business.

To add, the best people will almost certainly pick the work from home option, leaving behind those who would have difficulty finding another job if they lost the current one. Hence this means you’d actively have worse employees, just for some company culture.

> To add, the best people will almost certainly pick the work from home option

Citation needed.

Do you think only ineffective, low performance people will go into the office? This is a "yes and" situation, not a binary one.

There will be high performers who choose to stay at home and there will be high performers who choose to go in. Between the two, they're going to choose the ones that go in. They clearly place some sort of value on having people in office, whether that is to help grow new employees, build a specific in-office culture, or because they want their leads and leaders to have physical, face to face interactions.

I just don't believe it is bad for them to be transparent about what they want, to use it as a filter for who they're going to promote, and set expectations accordingly. If you don't like it, you can choose not to work there.

There's two possible interpretations here.

One is that Dell wanted to use stay at home as a filter for promoting people that believe in it, the other is that Dell was using promotion as a stick (as in carrot and stick) to get people to come into the office.

We can't really say which of these they're doing, but my vote would be the former.

It depends on what it means for the workers. I can see Dell being the place that wants everyone grinding hard (whether they actually do is another matter).

So Dell may view these employees as those disengaged and just there for a paycheck.

WFH employees are interchangeable with employees in other countries (India, Poland come to mind). As a manager, I don't care where you work if you are not in the office, so I'll find the best employee at the lowest possible price.

False. I need you on my timezone or really close to it. I have been dealing with software development teams that are 12 hours off and they have settled into a pattern of ill-communication because it is simply too difficult to sync up properly. They dig in on analysis for stories on their time and have to ask questions of us. The following day they get an answer and have to reply again for more clarification. All this after having groomed with the business and having standups together early mornings. I could go on and on, but it royally sucks. I'm trying to fix it, but the end goal is to switch the teams to ones in my timezone. Not to mention how discriminatory and hateful US devs are to India devs...it is just constant bullshit.

Unless you notice that all your WFH are actually the good employees, and the in-office end up being lack luster sycophants that you do not want to promote. From the POV of executive this is a nightmare.

I have WFH a lot and never really had any issues with it and generally preferred it over commuting. But I did miss the in-office connection. Having taken a 100% remote leadership role, it hit me why all these executives are freaking out and mandating RTO. If your job is to communicate in the course of creating and changing processes to drive the company forward, then your job is easily twice as hard when everyone is remote. Sprinkle in a handful of offshore teams and...

No one ever gets on camera. I and other leaders set an example and get on camera for every meeting, but most employees and contractors do not follow suit. So, I lose any body language communication from them, and if they can see mine, I don't get the feedback from that since I can't see them. Very subtle loss of information but it adds up to be huge. You end up having to pull everything out of ICs to get them to engage. It is fucking exhausting. Not only that, when you multiply this across the organization it obviously compounds and can spiral into a lot of uncertainty.

Additionally, you are in meetings constantly where you are fixed in position in front of your station. For those of us on camera it seems to take a lot more energy than being in person, like you have to stage yourself since you can always see your image and you are subconsciously paying attention to it and adjusting. Contrasted with being in a meeting where you are in the room with nearly everyone at once where a matrix of (again) body language is constantly feeding information to everyone. All of that is lost. Even if we are all on camera I cannot focus on every tile and we certainly not making adhoc one-on-one body language connections as the meeting progresses.

To the average employee, they don't care about losing all that if they can skip the commute and spend more time with their family. I totally get it, but for leadership it is soul crushing.

I don't think anyone believes leadership have souls anymore.

Don't have time.

Good.

Managers pull your heads out of your ass and lean into the change in working habits.

There's a lot you can do to maintain the benefits of office work, just realize you aren't peoples #1 priority and you never were.

Where would one get a list of these WFH Dell employees? Asking for an HR friend ....

I'm sure your HR friend has a linkedin recuriter subscription that allows them to blast any dell employee with a cold linkedin message.

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