[HN Gopher] Dell: Return to office or give up promotions
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Dell: Return to office or give up promotions
Author : bbzjk7
Score : 44 points
Date : 2024-03-28 00:40 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newsnationnow.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newsnationnow.com)
| al_borland wrote:
| I was told this before the pandemic. The whole pandemic kind of
| helped me out in that respect (at least so far).
|
| The problem with most office mandates is that they just require a
| person be in an office, any office. In my experience, this means
| it is very possible to be in an office with a bunch of people
| that do completely different jobs, so all day is spent on the
| phone. If I need to be on the phone all day anyway, I might as
| well be at home where it's quiet, so I can hear people, they can
| hear me, and there aren't any distractions.
|
| Forcing people to relocate just to sit alone in a cubicle on a
| phone all day doesn't improve productivity, it just makes people
| upset.
|
| I do think meeting people in person has a lot of value, but
| office mandates aren't the only way to handle that.
| ajford wrote:
| Yep. Current employer is doing the same. Team member goes into
| the office 3 days a week, and all our calls are now very noisy
| with other people in the background. There's only two of us in
| this location so all our team meetings are video calls anyways.
| What point is there to going back in at all in that situation?!
| haltIncomplete wrote:
| There's no real point, not in a physical science way
|
| It's all contrived political points; contracts, socialized
| norms the elders in charge refuse to negotiate.
|
| The stubbornness and selfishness of the gerontocracy, to
| serve the dying and dead is gross. Some kind of mental
| illness fueled by their huffing leaded gas and growing up in
| world war/Cold War paranoia made it so they cannot escape the
| idea life is 24/7 militarized economic production.
| higeorge13 wrote:
| Why just elders? I see modern start ups and companies, ran
| by 30/40yo C-suite mandating return to the office.
| olliej wrote:
| Elders here I think means "the kind of people who care
| more about personal status than any actual value to the
| company", so that means most C-suite asses.
| j45 wrote:
| This is always funny to hear and I agree.
|
| I have worked remote for almost 20 years.
|
| Just because remote is new to the masses doesn't mean
| remote or hybrid is new.
|
| Some companies started in person.
|
| They are only so efficient in person let alone remote
| haltIncomplete wrote:
| They learned it from somewhere.
| leros wrote:
| Even before the pandemic, I went into the office mostly to work
| alone at my desk or go into a conference room alone to zoom
| with someone in another office.
|
| The only benefit I got out of the office was lunches and
| hallway conversations, which do have some value to be fair.
| wil421 wrote:
| The place I work did RTO so I spend all day talking to people
| across the county and exactly 0 people in office. The main
| coworker I work with is outside DC and we spend a portion of
| the day on the phone together. Same as before.
| closeparen wrote:
| This. If employers are asking employees to sacrifice commute
| and residence flexibility, the least they can do is also
| sacrifice hiring and team composition flexibility, so that you
| actually reap the benefits of in-person collaboration.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Some more discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39728252
| ralphc wrote:
| Do they still get raises? My whole career I was a developer, it's
| what suited me best and it's what I wanted. A couple of times I
| considered going for tech lead or architect but those were parts
| of the job I didn't want to do. And oh hell no to management. If
| you're telling me I would get to work from home and not be
| badgered into going into management, I say sign me up.
| paulddraper wrote:
| At functional companies, raises and promotions are both
| connected to scope of contribution.
| andrewdubinsky wrote:
| Employees accept work-from-home & look for a work-from-home job.
| New applicants see on-site only and apply elsewhere.
|
| Choices:
|
| 1. Hire desperate people who will come in 2. Accept that high-
| talent staff are unavailable to your company 3. Pay 30% more than
| the market for on-site staff
| olliej wrote:
| IE promotions and compensation are not performance based so don't
| bother doing more than the bare minimum?
| neilalexander wrote:
| It's about the clearest way that they can tell you that they
| value your presence more than your skill without actually
| saying it.
| j45 wrote:
| It shouldn't be, but this is a pretty honest take and message.
|
| Visibility is different and harder remotely.
| SillyUsername wrote:
| If I worked for Dell I'd hear this as "Return to office or get a
| job elsewhere for insta-promotion."
|
| Draconian workplace rules just lose your best people, haven't
| companies learnt this yet?
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Lose them to where? Anecdotally, it's almost impossible to find
| a new job right now even for exceptional employees.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| The current market will not last forever and once it turns
| around we're probably looking at a Great Resignation on
| steroids given the pent up demand for changing jobs.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > get a job elsewhere
|
| I haven't asked, but they're probably okay with that too.
| grecy wrote:
| It is incredible they are so openly saying that promotions are
| not based on work performance. That certainly gives me no
| motivation to perform better.
| yoshicoder wrote:
| Having talked to many friends at Dell (interns and full time), I
| have a few observations about this:
|
| 1. I know many people on HN hate the idea of RTO, and for good
| reasons, but one downside I saw of remote was that junior
| engineers struggled to get mentorship and guidance as well as an
| in person setting. A lot of the learning junior engineers get is
| through water cooler talk, informal suggestions, and off the cuff
| comments, rather than stuff brought up in stand-ups or
| asynchronous slack messaging
|
| 2. Dell already seems to have a culture of trying to avoid
| promoting junior engineers quickly/for multiple years, through
| avenues such as the rotation program which ensure you don't get
| promoted for at least 2 years.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| With regard to your second point, that seems to be entirely the
| fault of Dell - no? If they wanted to encourage junior
| engineers with promotions, maybe they should, you know, promote
| them? Rather than inventing silly games and trapping them in
| loops.
|
| I understand your first point however. Can't imagine how
| interns and early engineers are supposed to learn without
| having a highly available set of mentors to learn from.
| yoshicoder wrote:
| I totally agree with what you are saying, My point was that
| this policy just seems to be another one of those policies to
| get them to not be promoted. More hoops you may call it
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Ah indeed, seems we are in agreement.
| Longlius wrote:
| I have zero trouble mentoring juniors remotely. These are kids
| who grew up playing videogames online and it's extremely easy
| to mentor them via regular teams call. Being unable to do so is
| a skill issue the part of senior devs to properly leverage
| modern collaboration tools.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > via regular teams call
|
| I actually find that mentorship happens best in irregular
| interactions, as the help is needed.
|
| Secondarily, I find that personal connection/rapport is
| invaluable in delivering feedback, and is possible but more
| difficult to do via screens.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Is that on your resume? "Highly skilled in properly
| leveraging modern collaboration tools."
|
| Wow, sounds impressive, haven't seen that before, tell me
| more.
|
| I'm really awesome at Zoom.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| RTO it's such an emotional affair that most people just can't
| think rationally. Exemplar motivated reasoning.
|
| I work in a hybrid mode and it's so obvious to everyone how in
| person communication is more effective. People will often say
| "let's discuss this once I get to the office" all the time.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| >I know many people on HN hate the idea of RTO
|
| The six months we were WFH were the worst six months of my
| career. Nothing got done.
|
| Granted, I am in a specialized field and most of my work
| requires calibrated equipment in purpose-built labs but so many
| people just wanted to sit at home and click around on Digikey
| and complain about SolidWorks being slow on their laptops.
|
| I could never do the kind of engineering that doesn't result in
| a physical object that exists in the real world. The group
| photo at the end, standing next to a new thing that nobody else
| on Earth has ever seen, makes dealing with all of the PMPs
| worth it.
|
| edit: and software guys need to put on some god damned clothes
| and come into the office, too. I'm not paid enough to
| troubleshoot over email or slack the hacked-together nightmare
| of a virtual environment that "works on my machine" but throws
| ten thousand errors when set up on a test stand.
| bradleyg_ wrote:
| Blocked in Europe, here's an archive - https://archive.is/PWZvN
| janalsncm wrote:
| Most companies only promote once or twice per year. But if you
| leave, you can get promoted any time of year.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Isn't that a given? Out of sight, out of mind.
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