Yet another company doing RTO layoffs to avoid paying severance
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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Financials coming up too. Got to make it look like they're 'taking action' on poor performance.
I hate how inhumane money makes us.
It's odd too. A lot of places have offices in various cities too. So you can live in one city, and your team works in a different city or state. So their micromanaging isn't possible since you'll be at a completely different office. It just doesn't make sense. So we enter the "quiet layoff" stages.
Next headline will read, "Have companies started their own version of quiet quitting by forcing employees back to the office in an effort to get them to quit or he fired."
Yeah my company’s office is 20 miles from where I live. I rarely go into the office, usually just for company events. Because the entire team I manage is based in India… so I would just be going into the office to have virtual meetings there instead of where I live. Thankfully they are on a fully remote policy, if they decided to change that I’d probably seek another job
I do exactly this 3 days a week…
I would probably voluntarily go in 1-2 days a week because it’s nice to get out sometimes. However, a mandatory 3 days feels dumb.
Now now, some of the executives probably sincerely miss harassing their employees.
100%
Is there any case law on whether RTO constitutes constructive dismissal for unemployment purposes?
You don’t triple your software output by going to the office. You can improve it by getting developers uninterrupted time with a healthy line of workable items ahead of them.
This is probably going to have the opposite effect they desire.
I'm at a near FAANG sized software company and the CEO literally tells us he knows we will take a hit to productivity. Even goes as far to say "we're profitable, this isn't about profitability, it's about working together".
This is after laying off almost 10% of the company earlier this year.
They just want to be able to pin the mega offices they own onto "expenses for employees" and make the chart look better. Line goes up and all.
Quality of life is worse, productivity is worse, it’s more expensive. It’s a nice way to increase costs.
So many positive reasons.
What Im realizing is that they still win even if the product gets worse. They don't care about the product. They care about the short term gains that come from fucking around with their bottom line expenses and then presenting that to shareholders as value gain.
Modern day capitalism rewards nothing of value.
The CEO literally has only one duty, and its fiduciary duty to the stock holders.
They can be sued and removed if they’re not doing what’s best for the shares.
That’s the biggest problem in society these days as far as I’m concerned
Yup, incentives at publicly traded companies are way out of whack and its killing us all slowly
There’s just so much more value in “line goes up” than in “I make decent toasters”
And only quarter by quarter. No long term responsibility to the shareholders.
I'm a senior backend coder, and there's nothing I love more than knowing what I need to do, knowing how to do it and a day with no meetings. Everything else is garbage that needs to be minimized if you want me to work at my maximum capacity, so I have to assume anyone who adds garbage wants something other than for me to be maximally efficient.
I've left two jobs in the last three years over RTO and the org I work for now has a PO box for mail and no physical office.
“Boomer company pushes boomer policies, more at 10.”
more at 9
The boomers are in bed by 10
Time to move farther away from the office.
Say... 51 miles?
What a stupid policy.
Incredibly
Now I wonder if it is like road miles or... direct line in a map.
If we want to maintain the flexibility of working both remotely and in the office, we must be better stewards of getting into the office
I don't want to maintain the flexibility of working both remotely and in the office, I just want to work remotely
It is vital to our culture and our shared goals – tripling development output, building winning products, and winning new clients – that we spend more meaningful time together, in-person
Same idiotic nonsense repeated by all corpos. Just because you said it, doesn't make it true. Also, what "culture" are you talking about? You are a corporation making software etc.
Right now, 1 in 4 of you are working in the office three days a week. By October, we want to see that number closer to 3 in 4. We appreciate your attention and support
These are people, not numbers. What "support" are you appreciating exactly? Is the office return a voluntary action that will help support the company or is this a business order? Cut the bullshit and name things properly.
I feel like everyone should slow way down when getting back to the office. Just work slower. Force those numbers down.
Returning to the office means that you can meet up with coworkers after work and form a union.
Haha, good point!
Even within the office you can waste so much more time with:
- More small talk and banter!
- Walking to and from meeting rooms stopping to chat with everyone on the route!
- Who needs a large travel mug? Use the smallest coffee mug you can find to maximize trips to the break room coffee machine!
- Don't forget to chat with everyone you pass going to and from, you've got important team building and collaboration to encourage!
- Whoops, I guess you must have forgotten how the break room coffee machine works with all that WFH time, but I'm sure you'll figure it out if you just keep trying! Remember that many hands make light work, so assure any well meaning coworkers that you've totally got this. Improve those problem solving skills!
- Wow, who left the break room in such a mess? Show everyone that you're a real team player by meticulously cleaning it every time you use it! Cleanliness and personal health make for good company health!
- You can easily multiply the time taken up by basic communication between teams by communicating something with a stop at one person's desk, an IM to another person, a call to a third, and then finally a follow up email to all of them reiterating everything for a paper trail!
- For bonus points you can maximize everyone's time wasted instead of just your own by never even sending that paper trail follow up email, leaving every person involved in the group effort with a different incomplete understanding of what's going on! You've got to encourage more interpersonal communication to help everyone become a stronger cohesive team!
- Remember that every minor interuption to focus has been shown to cause a roughly 30 minute delay in regaining your previous focused efficiency levels! Just as someone is getting back into it, make sure to apologize for your previous interruption. I'm sure they'll appreciate that you're thinking of their productivity!
It's too easy to draw from all the BS I've seen from timewasters and idiots, shove it through a calculating cynic engineer-type mindset for maximizing inefficiency, and tie it up in a nice HR speak sacharine bow.
Send help. I'm a sysadmin stuck on a project working close with HR. I don't know if I can take another cheery "company culture" cliche.
Wow, yet another industry-trailing company showing why they are no longer relevant in big tech. They just sell overpriced garbage tech to other old, falling behind companies.
ProTip: Move.
Pro tip: move jobs
Yet another reason not to work for IBM (as if another one was necessary).
I have to assume somebody's done a cost analysis on rto and determined that keeping their boots on our necks is more profitable in the long run than employees being happier and more productive.
This just layoffs with a different name.
And no severance payout
IBM is the poster child for never considering the long term effects of its actions. At one point or another in history, IBM was the #1 company making software, databases, managed compute, personal computers, servers, Unix, laptop computers, servers.
I have to assume somebody's done a cost analysis
I don't get why you assume there's a cost analysis that could be accurate over the reported productivity increases of working remotely.
It's likely the obvious, a change that isn't good but it's done anyway because people in a company often do not do what's good for the company, they chase what's good for them personally.
Yeah they're going to drive down costs by having employees quit due to RTO 🤣
Has any one company lost more marketshare than IBM?
Xerox, maybe. They invented the future, then said "eh it'll never catch on" and gave up on it.
Gotta justify all those facilities expenses!
IBM's so old they make money from leasing their properties.
My company has a mandatory 3 days in office policy already. However, they haven’t given any details about how it’s calculated.
If I have a vacation Monday & Tuesday do those count toward my days or not? If not what if I’m out Monday - Wednesday? We have unlimited PTO so there is no formal record keeping of my days off. How does my boss (or whoever is counting my days) factor in considering my PTO? If I did 5 days one week does that mean I could do 1 day the next week? What about traveling for work?
50 miles! What a shit commute.
Keep in mind, this is apparently the same company who, back in the day, invited EVERYONE from a site into an all-hands meeting in their biggest room, then cut the power. They'd all been terminated without warning, and security guards with flashlights led each victim to their desks to pack up their personal gear and GTFO.