I wonder if they shared the "data" in the memo. Otherwise, this should be considered a magical myth that the company's leadership simply believes.
Its a total myth that sales people need to be in the office.
The other aspect that was really hard was working your ass off all month to hit your quota, then the first of the month? You get to start all over again. The constant stress and roller coaster of whether you make your numbers every month probably took like 3 years off of my life.
I also worked at places where guys had everything wired. They had their client list and when they ordered and it was a walk in the park every month to hit their numbers, get to President's Club and get that free Hawaiian vacation.
I honestly don't miss anything about it.
They never share the data. The data is "management wants it that way." I manage a completely remote team, I couldn't care less if they were in person, they work fantastically this way.
E: forgot a quotation mark. Please forgive my indiscretions.
Remote work is hard, you need technology, culture, and people all working together to make it efficient. You can't just buy a Slack/Zoom license and expect to suddenly have a productive remote work environment. On the other side, they probably have spent decades to improve physical offices, meeting rooms, desks, seats, lights, it's not a surprise that probably every corner of the space was designed for helping people work better. When they say "we believe RTO is better", it's difficult for me to argue, because of course you can believe one way is better than the other since you didn't really try the other!
I wish these companies just find a different way to lie. It's not "we tried and it didn't work". No, you didn't try at all, because leadership does not care or too lazy to change for themselves.
Why would they? Quoting imaginary data is a plausible explanation to all interested parties. They don't need to prove anything to employees - just make them leave ALREADY. This immediately shows spending decrease to investors and makes them happy.
Quality decrease is a problem they won't have to explain for the next 2 quarters.
EDIT: this topic was just demoted from 1st to 5th page, with 45 points after 2 hours of being posted. No more fresh comments under such moderation.
Previously [0] [1]
It's not the employees fault if they trusted the company wouldn't screw up home office, all these companies made employees believe they could have better working conditions, until they forced everyone to go back to the office.
I don't blame the employees but the employer for making broken promises and manipulating their employees into thinking the company is better than the competitors.
RTO is a tool used to cause no-severance departures of workers who are expensive to fire but can be replaced by cheaper workforce, in a way that will go unnoticed to investors during the next quarter.
EDIT: this topic was just demoted from 1st to 5th page, with 45 points after 2 hours of being posted. No more fresh comments under such moderation.
Yep. I seem to recall this happening well before COVID, like at IBM (which was a pioneer for remote work) and Yahoo.
- kids do remote school for whatever reason. This works when parent is at home, but not if parent is at the office.
- kids are < age when it's okay to leave them at home, but > age when it's okay for them to walk home from school.
- Have to be at work at 9, school drop-off starts at 8:35. School is 45 minutes from the office.
There are a lot of ways people organize their lives.
The cool thing about sales teams is you don't have to micromanage them in the office as they are one of the few teams in the company where results are unambiguous.
Sadly, while we are all used to Texas state government hostility to public goods, even in my home state of Maryland, apparently bus trip lengths have now doubled. In an era of declining public investment, it's apparently easier to save money on non-teacher staffs...
It's a natural experiment to behold as a curious scholar of systems, but also deeply disappointing to watch as Rome does not burn, but fades out in various ways. We could make better choices; we choose not to at scale.
[1] https://direct.mit.edu/edfp/article/16/4/558/97130/Are-All-F...
[2] https://direct.mit.edu/view-large/figure/4256961/edfp_a_0031...
Per FRED[1], median personal income in 2023 was ~$21/hr. Per ADP's most recent survey[2], median pay for people who did not change jobs was ~$29/hr.
Given that context, it is not surprising that the pool of people who can qualify for these jobs (no criminal record, drug screen, etc.) and who want them also demand to be paid near the median income.
(You of course know this, but I want to contribute this data point for the discussion.)
> We could make better choices; we choose not to at scale.
Honestly, this is the American Way. One day our luck will run out and we will fail or be forced to make better choices.
> Honestly, this is the American Way. One day our luck will run out and we will fail or be forced to make better choices.
Amen.
My kids start school at 8:40 and the train to work leaves at 8:54, meaning that if everything goes perfectly (no disasters at dropoff, train on time, I get the folding bike unfolded quickly and ride like hell, though I like that part) I get to the office at 9:27. I don't think it would be physically possible for me to do a 9:00 AM start time.
Like it get that remote work is wayyyyyyyyy better and RTO sucks, but let's not make up lies
What the hell does "physically possible" have to do with anything? Did you ever go to school? The doors may not be locked, but unless the school has some kind of defined pre-care program, they're not ready to take care of random kids dropping in early. That's why they have a start time.
My kids' school has a 20 minute drop off window. They have an pre-care option, but you have to sign up for it (and pay) because they have to juggle staffing levels. You can't just physically dump your kid outside the door and leave because you'd like to.
This may be easier for you understand: A store opens at 9AM, but you're available at 8AM and have to be in the office at 9AM. Can you just drop in at 8AM to get your shopping done? No, if the employees are even there, they're busy with "getting ready for the day" tasks. Same thing goes with schools.
Depending on when you have to leave for your commute, the doors may well be locked. And doors being unlocked does not mean you are allowed to leave your child there without ramifications. Again -- leaving a child in a school building without agreed-upon supervision is still a clear display of negligence.
Anyway, these are not serious solutions.
It doesn't matter that the 9-year-old comes home on a bus vs walking. They still are not allowed to stay at home by themselves for hours after school every day, even if they take the bus.
It's not the conveyance, it's that the parent is no longer on the premises at all.
I simply chose walking because most of the kids in our neighborhood walk to school.
And teens need to live even farther from their school to qualify for a bus, but teens don't walk any faster than non teens. Most kids don't really want to spend the better part of an hour each way going to/from school.
I would beat the bus when I did so, but only because I went to a charter school and there was a solid 40 minutes of sitting and waiting on a second bus at a different school that we were initially bussed to built into the bus commute.
Anyways, just reminiscing.
If you as an employer provide a leave of just 15 days for the father (I've seen really big companies do this), and just a few months for the mother, don't be surprised if people lose productivity or just straight up leave when they have children.
Most EU countries have great paternal leave policies. Most other countries could learn something from them.
Somehow, it has become acceptable to forget raising a family for the sake of working, and it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies.
Edit with some more thoughts:
95% of all the time you will spend with your parents is gone. [1]
If your child is raised by a caretaker, you're losing a huge chunk of all the time you'll get with them. On your deathbed, would you feel proud of having delivered another feature instead of spending a bit more time with your family and children?
HN is full of temporarily-embarrassed CEO-wannabes-in-waiting who tend to side with the disruptor, not so much with the disruptees.
And daycare is booooooonkers expensive. I'm sure a lot of people were like "hmm, $3k/mo or constant low-key distraction... how bad can it be"
> A sales-team member who's a parent said they started searching for additional childcare arrangements
and
> Under the hybrid model, one worker was able to leave the office at lunchtime to manage pickup times and shared childcare duties with their partner, who worked from home. The worker said managers were flexible about people signing on later from home to complete their hours.
> Their productivity numbers had not fallen, they added.
Secondly, RTO means a lack of flexibility in work hours even if you did 40/week. People who didn't have to commute, who had time to take their kids to school or pick them up, now don't have that pre- and post-work time to help kids.
Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring the kids are not killing themselves. But you can’t just leave them at home incase they kill themselves. They call that neglect.
Be glad you don’t have to sort out childcare or deal with people thinking you “weren’t really working”.
I just meant examples exist. I can’t use these things since I live 3000 miles from parents and my neighbours and friends all work full time anyway.
Incidentally I understand this is a challenge in China where the retirement age was recently raised and grandparents often provide care.
Are you speculating or telling from personal experience?
If the first the answer even common sense will give you is no.
If the later you contribute to the problem that a vast majority of responsible workers pay the bills for a minority who overstretched the system.
Only if you think it's impossible for people to work while their children are home.
Lots of daycares close by 6pm. Good luck leaving the office, commuting, picking up the kid on time.
Edit: Dell is a pet friendly company, bringing animals to office is employment perk, and should not be a problem! There are no limitations on species, and humans are technically animals!!!
https://jobs.dell.com/en/dell-pets-scruffy
https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/flexible-work-solutions-can-...
On the essence of the policy, this is a quiet layoff, same as Amazon's (which further threatens managers with layoffs if they do not enforce the 5day rto for their reports).
in some places childcare arrangements can only be made once a year, in others they have waiting lists going back years.
i can't imagine most people be able to make long term arrangements over a weekend
I am hoping that this will lead people to, prior to accepting a job (deal with the devil, more often than not), look into the pedigree of the company and evaluate based on how people within are treated if they want to work for such a place. In other words, I doubt that Dell was sunshine and roses until now. Or in other words: when someone you don’t like is screwed over, be prepared for that next someone to be you.
This is incredibly relevant to my own life. I wish people would contemplate this more - at work, with proposed laws, etc.
If you need a scapegoat. The correct place for the blame is management.
Nearly everyone on our team does more work from home than they did sitting at the office. There are a couple notable slackers, but they're not parents. I suspect that's because parents have necessarily become adept at making a schedule and sticking to it.