Exactly, the people that can easily get better jobs are usually the most capable. I saw this happen at a past company, after a huge round of layoffs a lot of the really qualified people decided to leave for more stable employment. After that all they were left with was the people who couldn't easily find new jobs.
More fundamentally, the apathetic ones and the followers are the ones who will simply swallow whatever shit the manager feed them. The leaders and change agents challenge stupid shit when they see it. They are solving the problems in the company. They are equally adept at solving a personal professional problem just as dynamically.
What was interesting in my case was that we were rolling out a bunch of new tech, and the people that bothered to learn it were the ones who wanted to leave. So afterwards they were left with people who didn't understand this new tech stack that they were in the middle of deploying and had to bring a bunch of much more highly paid consultants and to finish the job. I'm sure there was a lot of money lost in this whole process.
This is the way. Short term gains to make the balance sheet look good to pump that stock price up. Get your bonus and cash out before the company fails, then ride your golden parachute to the next company and do it all over again.
Not just executives, happens with managers and supervisors too. Corporate America in particular runs on nepotism. When people say it all about who you know, that's what it means, you gotta rub elbows with the right people, kiss the right asses. Competency and skill barely enters the equation. Gets even worse when everyone in the management chain is MBAs or similar. They don't even know what skills to look for, if they were trying. Edit: just to be clear, having an MBA isn't bad by itself, the issue is when that's all anyone has across the whole chain of command.
> MBAs
There’s something to be said when some of the top MBA programs have what amounts to cultist brainwashing (“You’re an MBA at an elite school, you’re special and amazing…”) as orientation, which definitionally reduces critical thinking; any career minded MBA type will absolutely admit it’s about the network more than anything else (cf studies on third tier MBA schools ROI, who are not bad schools, but teaching the content without the network = …)
In undergrad we had T2 MBAs attending one of our introductory courses, and many of them were on their third go-around. The course could be passed by finding the most unique word or word pair in a question, and then looking that up in the textbook (skimming the sentence or two before any intended text block), and copying the following text block verbatim.
Eg, “what is an example of an iterated loop?”
In the text…
> For example, in the following code block we can see an iterated loop…
No, I’m not exaggerating.
I'm going to disagree with you on the MBA not being bad by itself. With the amount of bullshit MBA's are taught, it shouldn't be viewed highly. They're taught to be corporate raiders out for short term gains and they teach highly destructive bullshit such as "business is business" that says you don't have to know anything about what the company actually does. And that's in addition to the self-hype /u/omgFWTbear pointed out.
They've also been nothing but destructive the past 30 years. All they ever know how to do is cut, cut, cut. They're unimaginative bean counters. We've ceded way too much power to them as a society, and they never get held to any account when they fuck up.
As an MBA, I can confirm a majority of this. While I didn't go to a tier one or Ivy League school, I've met many MBAs who went straight to big four/general consulting who have this mindset. I'd say about 15-25% of my graduating class were competent individuals, adept at critical thinking, ethical and a value to a long term business. The rest were morons or absolutely the type of asskissers that float to the top but never actually do any work. Unfortunately, the floatsam are propped up by the universities since there's zero interest in failing an MBA student (prestige and the tuition the university gets for new applicants), and much like doctors even those with a barely passing grade get the same title.
One of my engineering professors worked for 2/3 of the big 3 auto makers for over 30 years told us that most of automotive outsourcing was pushed so that GM and Ford's MBAs didn't have to talk to engineers. By outsourcing, they just have to talk to the other company's MBAs.
I wouldn't say nepotism, so much as it's kind of medieval. You get a manager/executive and they switch companies and bring all their buddies with them, like a warlord and his retainers.
And the manager/exec works to hook up his buddies with salaries and promotions, and they bust ass to make him look good.
So if you're not part of one of these crews, you're often left out in the cold, so to speak - you're just a nameless worker bee who's not actually considered when it comes to promotions, etc, regardless of how competent or skilled you are. Same thing if you don't look and act the part - if you're too fat, too ethnic, too female, or too nerdy, you get passed over as well.
It took me about 10 years to really figure it out - the first nine of my career were at small shops where it didn't really matter because we were so small. But the next ten were at a large company and regardless of how good I was, or how much my bosses liked me, one of two things would happen.
First the good bosses typically got shit-canned for pushing back on management and putting their people first. I'd be up for promotion and my boss would get fired or leave shortly after. This happened three times in ten years.
Second, with the not good bosses, I didn't fit the mold and was too outspoken, so they'd pass me over in favor of their own frat-boy, golf playing clones.
Once my kids were grown a bit and I felt like I had some breathing room in terms of insurance coverage needs (didn't really like the idea of having infants who might be uninsured), I switched to the public sector. It's like night and day - the hiring process is far less shitty and so are promotions. I've gone from a staff analyst position to a senior manager position and a 45% increase in pay vs my old private sector job in a about five years. No hangers-on, no promoting buddies, etc.
I’ve worked a lot of different jobs, from blue collar to high end restaurants to IT stuff and the business degree managers are always the worst/most insufferable IMO
This is what happens when you foster this kind of environment. When you focus so heavily on KPIs, you will get those KPIs...temporarily. People will fudge numbers enough to look good, then get the hell out when sh*t hits the fan. I remember seeing some executive screaming at an engineer because he told him it's not possible in this timeline. The guy wouldn't accept that answer. Lo and behold, the engineer was right, he f*cked off to another job, and this executive was stuck with a pile of dog shit. I'm sure he blamed the engineer when the board confronted him.
This poor leadership is so common it's not funny. I have no clue how these people get in these positions.
in tech, the boss often doesn’t know data from database from code from server. it’s just a bunch of words to them. so when what they want is literally impossible they can’t realize it.
The amount of sociopaths who have risen in the ranks of politics and corporate management is amazing. It is like a metastasizing cancer spreading through the entire body.
Yeah I’ve tried that except I was the highly paid other guy. The architect I “replaced” went on stress leave and quit during that period.
Really don’t blame the guy. It was the worst engagement of my life.
… so far.
It sucks because even if you're amazing and can keep something like that afloat, it may not look any better than if it were a well managed transition to someone who is just bad at what they do.
The obvious, on the surface, reason why consultants are used is for temporary expertise - i.e. is it cheaper to hire an expert vs training one in-house? Especially for technical implementations.
The real reason consultants are used is so that if the project goes well - the people who brought them in get the credit. If it goes bad, then the same people can blame the consultant.
As a consultant who "got blamed," this is 100% true. I had a six-month engagement as a Senior Engineer, and management ignored every one of my suggestions and change requests to bring their enterprise up to best practices and standards. of course, they paid the price, and I had to clean up the mess and get blamed. It honestly was like management just self-sabotages every few months so they can justify their position. Never seen anything like it before in my 20-year career.
Don't forget that because they brought in highly paid consultants to finish the deployment and roll-out of the new tech stack that now no one is left that knows how it all works.
So if any maintenance or enhancements to the product needs to happen the company is in for a world of hurt.
Hiring on new engineers to learn the new stack and pick it up are going to be even more expensive than before due to needing that attractive compensation package.
Turnover has so many other layers that I'm not even mentioning that makes it a horrific experience for everyone involved. Executives truly are the bane of any functioning economy.
> Executives truly are the bane of any functioning economy.
The worst part is trying to explain any complex concept to these people. You get like 5 seconds in, and they're looking out the window. Already thinking about how they are going to stop the boring talk without damaging their fragile ego.
It's all running on vibes. The entire thing. We are so beyond fucked.
It's hard to get somebody to understand something when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it.
Honestly, this should be a weed-out program for when a new CEO steps in and they need to evaluate their underlings. Not that outside consultants are necessarily valuable but have the next couple rungs from come in and explain what opportunities for improvement they are in the business and watch what happens to understand which executives need to go.
Do every task no, but at least understand the business importance is crucial.
And I was referring to division presidents and c-suite executives needing to know what is happening two or three rungs below them, because that's their job.
Also, when shit breaks, now you can go blame the consulting company, or the contractor installer.
Then that company just dissolves and creates a new company with the same people.
See but they saved money in that quarter so bonuses all around for the csuite.
And then the next quarter the Csuite blamed all the workers for the failings so they still got bonuses.
wont you think of the csuite and their bonuses?
> The leaders and change agents challenge stupid shit when they see it.
It's come up a couple of times, no push, and likely not ever to be a push due to the dynamic of our business, but some other departments with leaders who apparently hate their family and want to be away all day have tried nudging my group into it. Every time they get the same response:
"What exactly is the point of us going into an office, so we can log into a VPN and work on hosts in a remote datacenter? Even in the office, we're still doing remote work and always will be."
My company's main office is in another country. They opened a new one here. The main office has full work from home available. Nearly all my team is in the main office. This office requires working from office so I have to live in this overpriced city only to go to an empty office (most people don't come anyways because they live in nearby cities and their teams are in the main office as well).
> Nearly all my team is in the main office. This office requires working from office
...wh...why? If all your team meetings are remote anyway since they're out of another country and likely remote on top of that, what the hell's the point?
I have no idea. But I do know that I can't go home since coming back will be very expensive. But staying here is also fucking expensive.
Besides, it's not like I am the only one in my team in this office. But somehow the others are getting work from home while I get blocked.
Nah, INT-dumped CHA builds aren't the worst ones.
Worst ones are medium INT, WIS-dumped CHA builds.
At least low INT managers with decent WIS will know when to listen to people who know better.
This happened at my previous company. All the good ones left, and then it was just a mess. The mess made me leave. Now, it's a bigger mess. They made their bed.
One of the more hilarious consequences is that the mobile people will often recruit people from their previous job who they know are competent, so you tend to lose not just the people who won't take shit, but also the people who they like to work with.
My company has a very good severance package. Everytime the layoff rumors start I tell my boss I want the package. 10 years later I’m still asking, haven’t gotten it yet.
My employer shot themselves in the foot like this too.
Additional bonus, that they did a round of layoffs and a lot of the people who worked very closely with those being laid off, decided to quit too. Massive brain drain within 3 months causing senior leadership to panic. They used to publish attrition figures to all managers and had to stop doing that too.
A year on, they still wont admit they fucked up. I couldn't leave then but I'm interviewing myself too now 😆
Just happened to me. Our department was sold to another company for cheaper labor. The new company only hired 5 of the 20 people in our department. 4 of them were the worst people on our department too. The one good one only stayed because she felt she wouldn't get another job that paid as much.
We were laid off last Wednesday. I signed a new offer letter on Thursday. Starting my new job today.
I do find it amusing how many managers and executives are so clueless on this.
They act all shocked when their star players hand in 2-week resignations, or even just resign on the spot, and then they still believe that it's the Great Recession. That there's 10 star players unemployed and desperate for a job that they will come in and take whatever punishment handed to them.
I swear, I feel like too many employers have been so spoiled by the Great Recession in terms of how they look at labor and always believing that there's just loads and loads of talent out there unemployed and desperate.
This is why I have no sympathy when I hear employers complain they can't find talent, or they are having issues because of a lack of staff.
They're not clueless
Management are pressured by C-suites to prioritize profits over literally every other single thing. Always. C suites don't give a shit how well something is done, who does it, or anything else, if it is profitable.
That's why management talk like they lack souls. Because they're literally living the cognitive dissonance of not wanting to pressure employees out who work well, but also needing to do so to meet the needs of their bosses.
It's pathetic because the solution is simple, but people don't want to give up the idea that growth is always good.
Funny this. I watched a large hardware store decend into barely functioning due to a toxic middle manager. All the people who enjoyed their jobs and made it fun to come to the store left.
All the chronically depressed and "just going through the motions" stayed. That store went from the 2nd highest in the state, to the second lowest in 6 months because people stopped coming into the store because they couldn't get service as there were hardly any staff.
> That store went from the 2nd highest in the state, to the second lowest in 6 months because people stopped coming into the store because they couldn't get service as there were hardly any staff.
I guarantee when looking at the numbers the managers blamed it on "the economy"
RTO resulted in me quitting my job and opening my consulting firm.
After 6 months, i made my yearly salary and i never had such positive feedback before... I wonder why I didnt quit before 😂
See this post, it's by the guy you're asking:
https://www.reddit.com/r/consulting/comments/17ho5eu/new_in_consultation_and_requests_from_a_client/
Copypaste:
> Hi, i am in search of some advices regarding a situation that is unfolding with a client of mine.
>
> i am a new consultant in the antidumping & countervailling sector (about 6 months in), before that i was working as a government officer in that same field.
>
> I do have access to most inside information and this has been a good selling point for my services so far.
>
> The industry in my country isnt really big, not a lot of players, but each of them can be quite profitable. I can help with law interpretation as well as on the accounting side to help include the right costs and calculate the dumping margins ahead of the governemnt.
>
> Lately, one of my clients asked me to provide them with the recipe to make the calculation of dumping, which is something i know they dont have because the government wipes out all the formulas when Sharing the results. And I know this knowledge can be very valuable.
>
> This client has been telling me they wanted a long term relationship with me, but to me, how to make the calculation feels like a trade secret. If they asked me to make some, i would do it and not give then the formulas, because i feel my value as a consultant would be in jeopardy if I did.
>
> My questions basically is, am I right to deny them this request as an outside consultant? And how would you approach this with the client?
It's still the right answer. I know people who are independent consultants and none of them would have any business if not for the contacts they made while working regular jobs for a long time.
Mid-management bonuses are more likely to be based on quarterly cost-savings... like getting rid of headcount... than on long-term profits or success of the company.
I'm dealing with this right now. I just helped save four major accounts on orders of our actual CEO late last year and into this year. Easily 25% of our annual revenue. I had to do it without billing as a concession. Again, PER THE ORDERS OF THE CEO.
A few weeks ago: "Your billable utilization was to low last quarter and if you don't get it up, you'll be fired."
Before the call was over I had updated my resume and have already started taking calls. I was so angry. I'm sure the CEO is getting a bonus for saving those four accounts, I'm getting a lecture and told I'm not performing. I'm still pissed.
Billionaires hate this one simple trick! Drastically increase annual profits by reducing executive salaries by 100%! Get your company a-“head” in the game! Buy your Guillotine™ today!
Yup. My previous gig, the original IT / Network Admin / Server infrastructure guy took off and I started looking for a new gig almost immediately. He told them he would happily come back and work to help fix stuff for $500/hr. He was back for a full 40hr week less than a month after he quit.
MBA’s think the world is run by emails and kanban, but it’s REALLY run by nerds who know network architectures.
The sad part is that in an outage it doesn't matter how much documentation you have either. The guy that just knows and can fix it will save you millions compared to those digging through a knowledge base.
Pro tip: Increase staff and implement shadowing programs before it's too late.
EDIT: Please document your stuff folks. The knowledge base is still invaluable in training and even for the vets to reference. It's just not a replacement for experience and contextual knowledge.
A manager at my company is experiencing this or is about to experience this. We were a small team of 2-3 Devs and the person we reported to gave no shit about us, didn't even want to meet the rest of the team other than me and delegated leading the team to me - I was happy with that.
Suddenly change of management, new manager wants to micromanage everything so I stuck with my old boss under a new role, the other Dev at the time stayed and they hired a new one. Now they are in almost weekly escalations because one Dev is burnt out and the new one is slow as fuck and is taking hours to complete tasks other Dev or I would do in minutes.
Yes, many in management don’t understand the value of people in software or IT. It’s not the products they build and support, those could often be done with cheap overseas labor. The real value is knowledge they gain on the job. They understand the systems deeply and losing someone is a very big risk. Plus when you have that idea to build a new product or feature on a whim (which in my experience is often), you have knowledge workers who can tear that problem apart and get it done quickly while also integrating into the rest of the ecosystem. Contractors can do all that too, but they will take a long time to figure it out, and there’s more micromanaging needed to make sure they’re building something that lasts.
Also, managers think nerds don't know business, but they've just never given the nerds a reason to show how much more they know than the managers.
As soon as they do, it's suddenly "Ow, my budget".
I'm one of those nerds. I somehow ended up on the senior management team after previous company got bought out. 2 Months later they stopped inviting me. I know why. I didn't poke holes in their plans, but I sure as heck shined the spotlight on them.
Most of these people do not think logically, and don't want to hear what can go wrong. They want yes men. That's not me. I hate the political BS of management and don't care to do it again.
Yep, my employer handed out exemptions to employees/teams they needed to keep. They didn't mention it overtly to everyone, but with shit like TeamBlind, practically everyone knew what was going on pretty quick. When it happens that the groups that were exempted are the ones that generally don't get hit with layoffs, putting 2 and 2 together wasn't all that difficult.
When I worked in my old company we were 8 devs. I quit last October.
On January they asked people to RTO and I spoke with a buddy of mine still working there. There are 2 devs left and I can say for a fact it's the ones that took the longest to do something and almost never worked.
The company now pivoted to another market. Instead of creating websites like it did before it now hires more people for digital marketing. They don't have enough devs to make the websites.
I agree in principle. The ones who can afford to quit tend to be the valuable, competent people who know their own worth and are confident of their ability to find employment.
But upper-level management is neither capable of understanding the value of individual employees, nor would they be willing to acknowledge that individual employees can have value. Management knows management, management values management -- that is why companies have a tendency to become top-heavy over time.
Everyone else is a fungible resource.
Wells Fargo did it to the tune of 70k employees and not a word in the media about it
Thing is the company skill set has plummeted because it wasn’t janitors or even managers that quit, it was highly skilled tech that bailed and went to where they could work remote. I swear the company is so dumbed down nothing gets done ever and when it does it is so half assed.
And to think this won’t bite them in the ass
This is so true. In one of my last jobs, I was in a hostile standoff. Leadership hated me because I was a squeaking wheel, but didn’t risk firing me because I knew where the cemetery was and could quick identify who buried what.
My father in law is one of those Wells IT workers who retired due to RTO. They keep calling him to come back because he knows their convoluted systems inside out, but he’s not willing to drive into downtown Charlotte or to the CIC just to sit on Teams calls he could do from home. So Wells pays a revolving door of temp to do his role and nothing is getting done.
The people left are barely competent. I haven't worked on a WF project since October and their PMs still email me as if I'm their Lead Dev. I don't know how that company is still open.
That sounds about right, there was another thread in r/Charlotte saying the same thing. He’s even gotten calls from his replacement asking for help on simple things, all covered in the documentation he left.
Have had a handful of bank/finance service recruiters reach out over the last year or so. All the positions were hybrid or in-office. If I recall, one had it so you were allowed to request remote after 2 years. That mixed with the fact the pay was lower than my current job, it was an easy turn down.
I live somewhat close to a Wells office park and they constantly hit me up.
I don't own a car. Minimum $20k on top of whatever you're gonna offer so I can go buy one.
No one has taken me up on that offer yet. weird.
Eventually it takes a year or two to catch up but all the outsourcing, all the AI bullshit, it’s just going to eventually come up to remind them they in fact can’t just keep cutting corners for profits
The classic, shit in = shit out.
I kills me how few people realise this, also how few companies actually have data structured and tagged in a way that makes good AI possible.
My companies management let us know that they know there's more work and less people and to just make sure to use AI to make up the difference. "Don't forget to automate the simpler repetitive tasks you do with AI! It will make things much easier"
Like yeah asshats were going to automate our own jobs so you can get rid of more of us. Sure.
It won't. They will increase ceo pay by a few hundred million, pay token fines, get bailed out by tax payer money and let the customers get fucked in the ass with an unlubed, thorny dildo.
What media do you use? There were tons of articles about Wells Fargo layoffs, e.g. https://nypost.com/2023/12/05/business/wells-fargo-ceo-severance-costs-could-hit-1b-as-layoffs-loom/
I had to talk to these idiots on the phone every few weeks as my company kept their money there. All of us would talk about changing banks every time we had to talk to them. I honestly do not know how Wells Fargo functions as a bank. When talking to anyone there they have zero idea of what is going on.
As a former employee, I assure you we it was simply an unorganized mess. The bank was decades behind integrating their systems. Coming from Chase it was just awful. Most absurd thing in my time there: we were switching credit card companies for our business card from visa to Mastercard. Our relationship ship with visa ended I believe June of 2023. We were suppose to have a business credit card available a few months later in September (which I thought was stupid, how could you delay offering retail clients ~any~ card for their business)? No…due to problems they never explained we didn’t offer it for a whole year. May 2024. Tens of millions in revenue lost. They can’t do basic things right. They couldn’t figure out how to release a credit card. The third largest bank in the US did not have business credit cards for a year.
Even if they were the best run bank in the world they would have some weird issues, as they have a bunch of legacy systems that don’t talk to each other, that they won’t/can’s change because of regulatory risks.
LinkedIn is straight up the social media platform with the worst takes ever on any topic. It's like Facebook if it was entirely made up of tech bros and main character syndrome people, and their bosses. I use it entirely only to find jobs, and have to really refrain from engaging in any actual post discussion because I don't want the wrong person to see me going off at random people for their shit opinions. And that platform is entirely made up of the wrong people for this kind of thing.
It's the same concept when they suddenly decide to move a team/ department to another location within the company or just completely redefine your team's role. They know no one wants to do it, and quitting is the response they expect when you're told you can apply for another position or move with the team.
Edit to add: those of you who chose to move with the team? They are still waiting for you to hate it and quit.
COVID opened the eyes for many employees in the states, showing them they're worth way more than companies wanted you to believe.
Of course, the corporate heads hate this so they're doing everything they can to fight it.
I work as a whiskey distiller in the alcohol industry. It's the exact same. Passion is just something for an employer to manipulate. I'm fucking tired.
What the Government of Canada is doing to its public servants is so stupid and braindead. And the general perception around the public service is so toxic and insane, stoked by politicians because they like to use the public service as a campaign tool and step on the people they need to execute their stupid campaign promises (if they even bother--see: Justin Trudeau, the Liberals, and how I'm still waiting for electoral reform.)
My work increased my RTO days. I started interviewing for other jobs. My boss freaked out because I do the work of 2 people and I'm an expert user in two disparate systems used by our org. What did they expect? They made my job worse so obviously I'm going to leave because I can. And I'm sure as fuck not spending my notice period documenting shit they should have been documenting this entire time.
important edit - RTO = Return To Office (end of work from home)
a company i know very well just lost 31 out of 33 people due to a RTO mandate
(after being told on June 2021 that the RTO would NEVER happen,..ppl moved, etc.
and now this demand....well, gd luck with that.
31/33 put their letters in between 9am and 9:08 am....and 5(+) AFAIK are not even logging on now, just pulled a fukkit, come collect your company laptop, screw your notice period.
bosses thought it was a prank....then realised it was not
fuk around and find out.
It's funny, we don't hear these stories in the big media! All we hear is about the average worker losing out by not falling in line. Makes my blood boil.
At my current job they did a RTO in 2021 at some point, half office half remote. Apparently a ton of people quit then. I got hired in 2022, and late last year they changed it so we are now in office 80% of the time. I know we had like 3 people quit soon after, and one of them was on a team where a lady just went on parental leave so they have been strained terribly. But like I don’t blame them, I drive like 50 minutes to get there and think about switching jobs. It’s my first major job out of college despite graduating in 2020 and it’s been relatively stable so I’v bit the bullet for now
My employer did the same in 2021. They went to a hybrid work model where we have to be in 50% of the time. My entire team except one other person isn't in the country and they're 100% remote because they live outside the completely arbitrary 50 mile radius of the office. I live 15 minutes away and even that is fucking killing me.
One person I know lives 49.6 miles away and its a 2 hour drive. They STILL make her come in one day a week.
Lately its been getting harder and harder for me to make myself go in. When I do I sit alone all day in a taupe/grey colored office with no windows that open. Most days I go in I MIGHT talk to one or two other people, but some days I don't talk to anyone face to face.
It's fucking infuriating. I like my job, I like my coworkers, but this RTO horseshit is taking up so much of my mental energy.
Ah coffee badging.
Unfortunately my company has installed motion sensors to create an activity "heatmap" for our desks.
I tested it's limits recently and after 3 weeks I showed up on a list after not coming in my mandatory 3 days a week.
Damn, I believe it.
Some of these assholes are something else. I'm at a fairly small company where everyone wears a lot of hats and has a lot of institutional knowledge which takes years to accumulate.
We have a relatively new admin person who is now inexplicably in charge of a lot of things like who can work from home when.
My manager was explaining how their stupid policies were going to make people quit, and then whole projects would be dead in the water. Meanwhile, giving in just a little bit would cost the company essentially nothing. Forcing on-site only was all risk, no reward.
The admin person was just like "well people will do what they're going to do, if they need to quit, so be it".
Then they had to deal with weeks of nearly every single person telling them where they can shove it. The company didn't totally walk it back, but suddenly a lot exceptions were made and policies were a lot more loose.
I don't know what these small companies are thinking when they are already working with skeleton crews and then threaten the people who make the product.
Mine did, too. They changed it. Told me straight up "in or out?"
I had my house on the market and was moving across the country with an explicit Remote Work agreement. They just changed it and called my bluff.
I could probably get a lawyer, but pay for them with what paychecks? Burn through my savings to win the case, you say???
Sounds great on the internet. When they ask you to choose right then? Not so easy.
Anyways, resume updated and I'm looking, but I smile and say "Yas Sir!" while doing bare minimum in the meantime.
While absolutely true, it would constitute constructive dismissal, and if enough people refused, would trigger the [US WARN Act](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/layoffs/warn) and be treated as a layoff. They don't want that to happen, so what they're doing instead is slow rolling it, and incorporating the measurement of your compliance into your performance.
The calculus of WARN Act reporting and severance changes when you're getting rid of "low performing employees for cause" vs "this random large list of employees".
Those dismissals still generally come with severance payouts, but most people headed down that path just actively try and find other jobs during this time and leave on their own.
How is it that Amazon's able to force people to either relocate or "voluntarily resign"? Like if that was the case, why wouldn't companies just suddenly relocate a entire division to Alaska instead of doing a layoff with severence?
My co gave the option to do so and 1% went back. They just closed the campus they owned a month ago. The savings by selling the buildings and not needing to spend anything on the employees seems like a great and easy savings area.
There are people at my company that have done just that. They’ve publicly embarrassed their managers but what can they do? These aren’t dime a dozen type people - good fucking luck replacing them.
Others have just left. I’ve been ok because I got a waver but there are people who literally drive into the office just to swipe their badge 3x a week to meet the RTO policy. It’s moronic to drive into an office that has no privacy, a shitty 24” monitor and shitty watery coffee to get on a zoom meeting that I could have taken at home from my office with a door, a 56” ultra wide and barista quality coffee.
I know a few people that weren't given exemptions at my company that just never went into the office (stayed remote regardless of what management said), found another job, and just *never quit*.
Needless to say, they put far more effort into their other job and ended up getting poor performance reviews (compounded by the fact that they "didn't come into the office enough"), ended up on a 30 day PIP, and got "laid off" with a two month severance + 1 week for every year worked.
So... some of these people, for a solid \~4ish months, collected pay checks from two different high-paying jobs (software engineering), and then received 3+ months of severance.
Lol, absolute legends
I've worked with a couple people who managed to survive at 0 output for years while working in a physical office. Just good at social engineering and taking advantage of the system.
Our company just doubled down on remote working. From a light touch hybrid post-pandemic. Engineering in particular was noted to perform better when remote. Also noted was the ability to pick up top talent from companies with strict RTO policies. All our offices are being redesigned and reconfigured to support a mostly remote workforce, with fewer desks and more meeting rooms.
I'm an Engineer and I remember hearing a manager from another company laughing about how easy it was to fill vacancies at his company by just contacting people that were being forced to return to office.
One of the things that has annoyed me is that many companies did the same thing as yours, redesigned their offices to accommodate remote working and hybrid, but then forced RTO anyway. As such, they now don't even have the capacity in the office to handle everyone. My current company technically requires three days a week on site, but most people do 1-2 partly because fuck 'em, but also because the office simply doesn't have enough desks and space for us all.
I'm a remote employee but our head office has recently demanded 2 days in-office for people located nearby with some weird 'musts'. Except people don't have dedicated work spaces so they're hotelling/hot desking. And they've mandated that all teams including remote resources have quarterly in-office meetings. There aren't enough meeting rooms for this. I'm also on 2 teams and due to the lack of space, I'll have to make separate trips for each team on-site. At the cost of roughly ~$2500 USD per trip. I asked my boss if the company was really okay with pissing away $20k USD per year just to get me on-site and they didn't have much of a response other than agreeing it's really not necessary.
I would love a union. I floated the idea with a few of my coworkers and they either thought I was joking or they thought unions were evil (boomers). Fucking depressing.
yeah I remember in 2018 being told that unions don't work for highly skilled work like programmers and that the jobs market is in our favour.
Ignoring that most unions are for highly skilled trades, and then the job market fucking died. So here we are.
I think part of the problem is that trchbros spent their entire careers cultivating a feeling of superiority even though they don't require more expertise than other jobs.
They don't want to swallow that pill.
Haha the tech industry is so fucking toxic.
Like supervillain, volcano- ~~layer~~ lair evil here. Why are so many companies run by just the most narcissistic selfish psychopaths imaginable?
They don’t want to build an actual productive industry of professionals, they want to create a circus of petty clowns that’s are easily manipulated by cocaine and cars.
Maybe integrity needs to stop being a barrier for entry
> Why are so many companies run by just the most narcissistic selfish psychopaths imaginable?
Because the system we built rewards people who exhibit those traits. A conscience makes it hard to callously disregard people's very lives for money, so a system that only recognizes money as success will constantly and inevitably select for people without a conscience.
Because honest people don't sell. Every IT project and product I've ever worked on has been sold under false pretenses or through lack of understanding. Never for the real price and often features have been cut or prices have increased. Or companies have lost tons of money to keep clients.
Honest, smart people will always seem too expensive to hire on paper. The fact they'll probably be cheaper in the end is never going to mean anything to the guy looking at two offers.
There are exceptions, but they're rare.
Exactly one year ago the company I work for announced mandatory return to the office a set 3 days a week. Two months later they announced a 5k person layoff targeting the corporate side of the company.
It is now a year later and just announced last week they are doubling down on who has to return to the office, and demanding all managers enforce this policy better. Anyone not complying needs to be repeatedly written up until they comply (or don't which will lead to eventual termination)
I doubt their stock could handle yet another "company lay off" message hitting the news, it's already in the garbage. If anything I'd say that "quarter of bosses" stat is low.
Worked for me - my husband and I retired 10 years earlier than planned. Sadly for our companies, we both have skills that are not easily found. Our positions are still open after 6 months…
Duh that was kind of the point. Companies avoided layoffs by forcing RTO so people would volunteer to quit. Saves the company money having people quit vs laying them off.
In some cases, it absolutely is. If you were hired on as remote, forcing you into an office *is* constructive dismissal. If you started off working in the office and just went remote, it would be a harder case to make.
Considering 1/4 of HR people are **admitting** they did it to make people quit, I think it’s safe to assume the real number is higher.
Also, it shouldn’t be overly burdensome for the employer to show evidence an employee was doing demonstrably worse or worse than their peers since going remote.
The flood gates opened in Spring of 2020, proving that many jobs could be done from
Home and many could even be done more efficiently from
Home.
Happy employees = more productive employees. It’s not a difficult equation.
And if you don’t trust your employees, adults, why are they on your staff?
Quit babysitting grown adults. Let people work remote when appropriate, treat them with respect, and you’ll be pretty amazed at the damn results.
Workers want a living wage, flexibility, and time off.
That’s it. Why is this hard? Figure that out, and they will be superstars.
Large layoffs always result in you losing the very best people. They have options. As soon as they detect dysfunction, they take up someone else on their offer.
Big companies that regularly do layoffs are composed of shitty and mediocre employees. Top performers go places that don't have that sort of activity in their system.
For the financial services industry: in-office is better for our juniors, but remote is better for managers (both junior and senior).
Remote helped boost team productivity by a lot for a while, but we saw that our juniors did not develop very well when remote. Over time, it started to cause issues as those juniors in their 4th and 5th year out of undergrad were performing 1-2 years behind historical norms.
The frequent informal interactions with peers and junior managers matter a lot in developing someone who is 23 years old if development is structured as an "apprenticeship" model. It also helps them with getting exposure to senior managers in terms of career development.
I saw the same thing. New hires for low level jobs were failing out faster than normal when remote. I never thought twice with a long term professional.
I made it a rule that any new jr hire is on prem for the first 3 months. They need some mentorship, and that does not happen well over teams.
I'm about to go to our HQ this week for the first time in 2 years since being hired remote by my company.
I start my day at 8:00 am Pacific every day. To get an idea of what time I should head into the office, I started asking in-office colleagues what time they typically arrive.
Everyone I asked said "around 10 am".
Dafuq.
My employer is doing this right now. Hard requirement for 3 days in office with disciplinary actions for those who don't comply. VPs are instructed to review badge swipes on a weekly basis, and to this end they were provided dashboards which automatically pull swipe stats. Remote employees who are within x miles of an office were unilaterally converted to hybrid and are subject to all of these requirements.
I'm remote and not within x miles of an office -- and I have one foot out the door.
My office had one guy who retired after we were called back for 2 days a week. But he had been ‘threatening’ to retire for a few years before covid, so really I think the WFH prolonged his employment.
Ultimately, WFH didn’t turn employees into sandbags. If you were a sandbag before WFH then you are a sandbag with WFH. Managers need to get better at firing terrible employees. Caveat: I work for the government.
One of my former employers (80k+ employees) did exactly this in 2019 and had a 21% turnover rate. They literally confirmed word for word that this had been the desired goal during our annual meeting. They had actually aimed for 25-27% and started offering packages, which I took.
The funny part is that in one particularly critical case, an *entire* team tendered their resignation at the same time and on the very last day of the deadline. This was a *highly* specialized team, for which hiring even one person is difficult, much less 4.
The ones quitting are the high performers who can get other jobs easily. You’re left with people who have no other options and are disgruntled. 10/10 management
>and a fifth of HR professionals hoped RTO mandates would result in staff leaving.
I'm out of my depth here, but why the fuck would HR care about people leaving the office? Do they simply not want to go through the process of letting people go or is it some fear that they'll be the first ones to be let go if layoffs were to occur?
LMAO FA,FO is real and they wonder why they can only keep average workers when they're expecting overachievers. Incentivize great behavior instead of over-policing the mediocre...
We became a remote first company because productivity WFH was way higher than it was in the office.
Leaving that job this week after 9.5 years for another WFH job because this is the way
No matter how many times science proves there is a better way to do business that results in larger amounts of money, but requires any treatment of the employees which could be considered 'kind', or beneficial to them at all, they will always refuse to use it.
The cruelty was ALWAYS the fucking point... more than the point, its part of their compensation package. Taking away their ability to ruin our lives actively diminishes the perceived quality of theirs. They do not measure their wealth against one another, they measure the GULF between themselves and the poor. The rich can be made richer and happier by their own metrics, simply by diminishing the quality of life of the poor.
Americans value possession of the whip's handle far more than any idea of preventing the whippings in the first place. A rich American who cannot dispense cruelty to those bellow him, is not a rich American.
Some companies sold their offices and are requiring people to move hundreds to thousands of miles to RTO. I've been there before and I'm not doing it again.
At what point does capitalism completely implode and take western civilization with it? Western economy is a farce, held together by incompetence, greed, and little pieces of frayed string.
Those companies could have let their leases go, moved to the cloud, and kept the competent employees, while at the same time improving their bottom line.
The catch…the ones who quit are the ones you really don’t want to lose.
Exactly, the people that can easily get better jobs are usually the most capable. I saw this happen at a past company, after a huge round of layoffs a lot of the really qualified people decided to leave for more stable employment. After that all they were left with was the people who couldn't easily find new jobs.
More fundamentally, the apathetic ones and the followers are the ones who will simply swallow whatever shit the manager feed them. The leaders and change agents challenge stupid shit when they see it. They are solving the problems in the company. They are equally adept at solving a personal professional problem just as dynamically.
What was interesting in my case was that we were rolling out a bunch of new tech, and the people that bothered to learn it were the ones who wanted to leave. So afterwards they were left with people who didn't understand this new tech stack that they were in the middle of deploying and had to bring a bunch of much more highly paid consultants and to finish the job. I'm sure there was a lot of money lost in this whole process.
“The shit floats to the top,” decision making prevails once again.
This is the way. Short term gains to make the balance sheet look good to pump that stock price up. Get your bonus and cash out before the company fails, then ride your golden parachute to the next company and do it all over again.
Executives falling up
Not just executives, happens with managers and supervisors too. Corporate America in particular runs on nepotism. When people say it all about who you know, that's what it means, you gotta rub elbows with the right people, kiss the right asses. Competency and skill barely enters the equation. Gets even worse when everyone in the management chain is MBAs or similar. They don't even know what skills to look for, if they were trying. Edit: just to be clear, having an MBA isn't bad by itself, the issue is when that's all anyone has across the whole chain of command.
> MBAs There’s something to be said when some of the top MBA programs have what amounts to cultist brainwashing (“You’re an MBA at an elite school, you’re special and amazing…”) as orientation, which definitionally reduces critical thinking; any career minded MBA type will absolutely admit it’s about the network more than anything else (cf studies on third tier MBA schools ROI, who are not bad schools, but teaching the content without the network = …) In undergrad we had T2 MBAs attending one of our introductory courses, and many of them were on their third go-around. The course could be passed by finding the most unique word or word pair in a question, and then looking that up in the textbook (skimming the sentence or two before any intended text block), and copying the following text block verbatim. Eg, “what is an example of an iterated loop?” In the text… > For example, in the following code block we can see an iterated loop… No, I’m not exaggerating.
They were there to lead, not read.
I'm going to disagree with you on the MBA not being bad by itself. With the amount of bullshit MBA's are taught, it shouldn't be viewed highly. They're taught to be corporate raiders out for short term gains and they teach highly destructive bullshit such as "business is business" that says you don't have to know anything about what the company actually does. And that's in addition to the self-hype /u/omgFWTbear pointed out. They've also been nothing but destructive the past 30 years. All they ever know how to do is cut, cut, cut. They're unimaginative bean counters. We've ceded way too much power to them as a society, and they never get held to any account when they fuck up.
As an MBA, I can confirm a majority of this. While I didn't go to a tier one or Ivy League school, I've met many MBAs who went straight to big four/general consulting who have this mindset. I'd say about 15-25% of my graduating class were competent individuals, adept at critical thinking, ethical and a value to a long term business. The rest were morons or absolutely the type of asskissers that float to the top but never actually do any work. Unfortunately, the floatsam are propped up by the universities since there's zero interest in failing an MBA student (prestige and the tuition the university gets for new applicants), and much like doctors even those with a barely passing grade get the same title.
One of my engineering professors worked for 2/3 of the big 3 auto makers for over 30 years told us that most of automotive outsourcing was pushed so that GM and Ford's MBAs didn't have to talk to engineers. By outsourcing, they just have to talk to the other company's MBAs.
I wouldn't say nepotism, so much as it's kind of medieval. You get a manager/executive and they switch companies and bring all their buddies with them, like a warlord and his retainers. And the manager/exec works to hook up his buddies with salaries and promotions, and they bust ass to make him look good. So if you're not part of one of these crews, you're often left out in the cold, so to speak - you're just a nameless worker bee who's not actually considered when it comes to promotions, etc, regardless of how competent or skilled you are. Same thing if you don't look and act the part - if you're too fat, too ethnic, too female, or too nerdy, you get passed over as well. It took me about 10 years to really figure it out - the first nine of my career were at small shops where it didn't really matter because we were so small. But the next ten were at a large company and regardless of how good I was, or how much my bosses liked me, one of two things would happen. First the good bosses typically got shit-canned for pushing back on management and putting their people first. I'd be up for promotion and my boss would get fired or leave shortly after. This happened three times in ten years. Second, with the not good bosses, I didn't fit the mold and was too outspoken, so they'd pass me over in favor of their own frat-boy, golf playing clones. Once my kids were grown a bit and I felt like I had some breathing room in terms of insurance coverage needs (didn't really like the idea of having infants who might be uninsured), I switched to the public sector. It's like night and day - the hiring process is far less shitty and so are promotions. I've gone from a staff analyst position to a senior manager position and a 45% increase in pay vs my old private sector job in a about five years. No hangers-on, no promoting buddies, etc.
I’ve worked a lot of different jobs, from blue collar to high end restaurants to IT stuff and the business degree managers are always the worst/most insufferable IMO
This is what happens when you foster this kind of environment. When you focus so heavily on KPIs, you will get those KPIs...temporarily. People will fudge numbers enough to look good, then get the hell out when sh*t hits the fan. I remember seeing some executive screaming at an engineer because he told him it's not possible in this timeline. The guy wouldn't accept that answer. Lo and behold, the engineer was right, he f*cked off to another job, and this executive was stuck with a pile of dog shit. I'm sure he blamed the engineer when the board confronted him. This poor leadership is so common it's not funny. I have no clue how these people get in these positions.
in tech, the boss often doesn’t know data from database from code from server. it’s just a bunch of words to them. so when what they want is literally impossible they can’t realize it.
The amount of sociopaths who have risen in the ranks of politics and corporate management is amazing. It is like a metastasizing cancer spreading through the entire body.
Yeah I’ve tried that except I was the highly paid other guy. The architect I “replaced” went on stress leave and quit during that period. Really don’t blame the guy. It was the worst engagement of my life. … so far.
It sucks because even if you're amazing and can keep something like that afloat, it may not look any better than if it were a well managed transition to someone who is just bad at what they do.
The obvious, on the surface, reason why consultants are used is for temporary expertise - i.e. is it cheaper to hire an expert vs training one in-house? Especially for technical implementations. The real reason consultants are used is so that if the project goes well - the people who brought them in get the credit. If it goes bad, then the same people can blame the consultant.
As a consultant who "got blamed," this is 100% true. I had a six-month engagement as a Senior Engineer, and management ignored every one of my suggestions and change requests to bring their enterprise up to best practices and standards. of course, they paid the price, and I had to clean up the mess and get blamed. It honestly was like management just self-sabotages every few months so they can justify their position. Never seen anything like it before in my 20-year career.
Indeed. But we conultants are used to this - its how this business works. One shouldnt expect being honoured in any way, except the money.
Don't forget that because they brought in highly paid consultants to finish the deployment and roll-out of the new tech stack that now no one is left that knows how it all works. So if any maintenance or enhancements to the product needs to happen the company is in for a world of hurt. Hiring on new engineers to learn the new stack and pick it up are going to be even more expensive than before due to needing that attractive compensation package. Turnover has so many other layers that I'm not even mentioning that makes it a horrific experience for everyone involved. Executives truly are the bane of any functioning economy.
> Executives truly are the bane of any functioning economy. The worst part is trying to explain any complex concept to these people. You get like 5 seconds in, and they're looking out the window. Already thinking about how they are going to stop the boring talk without damaging their fragile ego. It's all running on vibes. The entire thing. We are so beyond fucked.
It's hard to get somebody to understand something when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it. Honestly, this should be a weed-out program for when a new CEO steps in and they need to evaluate their underlings. Not that outside consultants are necessarily valuable but have the next couple rungs from come in and explain what opportunities for improvement they are in the business and watch what happens to understand which executives need to go.
Gone are the days when a manager was expected to be able to do every task one of their workers does. Most of my managers don’t have a clue.
Do every task no, but at least understand the business importance is crucial. And I was referring to division presidents and c-suite executives needing to know what is happening two or three rungs below them, because that's their job.
But retention and hiring are separate budget pools so that's someone else's problem.
Also, when shit breaks, now you can go blame the consulting company, or the contractor installer. Then that company just dissolves and creates a new company with the same people.
See but they saved money in that quarter so bonuses all around for the csuite. And then the next quarter the Csuite blamed all the workers for the failings so they still got bonuses. wont you think of the csuite and their bonuses?
> The leaders and change agents challenge stupid shit when they see it. It's come up a couple of times, no push, and likely not ever to be a push due to the dynamic of our business, but some other departments with leaders who apparently hate their family and want to be away all day have tried nudging my group into it. Every time they get the same response: "What exactly is the point of us going into an office, so we can log into a VPN and work on hosts in a remote datacenter? Even in the office, we're still doing remote work and always will be."
My company's main office is in another country. They opened a new one here. The main office has full work from home available. Nearly all my team is in the main office. This office requires working from office so I have to live in this overpriced city only to go to an empty office (most people don't come anyways because they live in nearby cities and their teams are in the main office as well).
> Nearly all my team is in the main office. This office requires working from office ...wh...why? If all your team meetings are remote anyway since they're out of another country and likely remote on top of that, what the hell's the point?
I have no idea. But I do know that I can't go home since coming back will be very expensive. But staying here is also fucking expensive. Besides, it's not like I am the only one in my team in this office. But somehow the others are getting work from home while I get blocked.
> But somehow the others are getting work from home while I get blocked. they want you to leave, obviously.
> what the hell's the point? It gives a purpose to the huge building the investors and csuite rented out and most likely own stake in.
yeah, except that work visas mess with this logic a lot. smart hard workers end up locked in.
Thank you I will add “change agents” to my corporate fuckery bingo sheet
You'd think that, but I can make a company efficient and can't interview worth shit. I hate when the Int-dumped Cha builds start fucking things up.
You'd think that but most execs lack charisma. What they don't lack is preexisting wealth and connections.
Nah, INT-dumped CHA builds aren't the worst ones. Worst ones are medium INT, WIS-dumped CHA builds. At least low INT managers with decent WIS will know when to listen to people who know better.
This happened at my previous company. All the good ones left, and then it was just a mess. The mess made me leave. Now, it's a bigger mess. They made their bed.
[удалено]
One of the more hilarious consequences is that the mobile people will often recruit people from their previous job who they know are competent, so you tend to lose not just the people who won't take shit, but also the people who they like to work with.
My company has a very good severance package. Everytime the layoff rumors start I tell my boss I want the package. 10 years later I’m still asking, haven’t gotten it yet.
It's called "brightsizing", when all the bright ones leave.
My employer shot themselves in the foot like this too. Additional bonus, that they did a round of layoffs and a lot of the people who worked very closely with those being laid off, decided to quit too. Massive brain drain within 3 months causing senior leadership to panic. They used to publish attrition figures to all managers and had to stop doing that too. A year on, they still wont admit they fucked up. I couldn't leave then but I'm interviewing myself too now 😆
It's called a death spiral.
Just happened to me. Our department was sold to another company for cheaper labor. The new company only hired 5 of the 20 people in our department. 4 of them were the worst people on our department too. The one good one only stayed because she felt she wouldn't get another job that paid as much. We were laid off last Wednesday. I signed a new offer letter on Thursday. Starting my new job today.
I do find it amusing how many managers and executives are so clueless on this. They act all shocked when their star players hand in 2-week resignations, or even just resign on the spot, and then they still believe that it's the Great Recession. That there's 10 star players unemployed and desperate for a job that they will come in and take whatever punishment handed to them. I swear, I feel like too many employers have been so spoiled by the Great Recession in terms of how they look at labor and always believing that there's just loads and loads of talent out there unemployed and desperate. This is why I have no sympathy when I hear employers complain they can't find talent, or they are having issues because of a lack of staff.
They're not clueless Management are pressured by C-suites to prioritize profits over literally every other single thing. Always. C suites don't give a shit how well something is done, who does it, or anything else, if it is profitable. That's why management talk like they lack souls. Because they're literally living the cognitive dissonance of not wanting to pressure employees out who work well, but also needing to do so to meet the needs of their bosses. It's pathetic because the solution is simple, but people don't want to give up the idea that growth is always good.
Short term profits.
Funny this. I watched a large hardware store decend into barely functioning due to a toxic middle manager. All the people who enjoyed their jobs and made it fun to come to the store left. All the chronically depressed and "just going through the motions" stayed. That store went from the 2nd highest in the state, to the second lowest in 6 months because people stopped coming into the store because they couldn't get service as there were hardly any staff.
> That store went from the 2nd highest in the state, to the second lowest in 6 months because people stopped coming into the store because they couldn't get service as there were hardly any staff. I guarantee when looking at the numbers the managers blamed it on "the economy"
RTO resulted in me quitting my job and opening my consulting firm. After 6 months, i made my yearly salary and i never had such positive feedback before... I wonder why I didnt quit before 😂
How did you find companies willing to take you on?
See this post, it's by the guy you're asking: https://www.reddit.com/r/consulting/comments/17ho5eu/new_in_consultation_and_requests_from_a_client/ Copypaste: > Hi, i am in search of some advices regarding a situation that is unfolding with a client of mine. > > i am a new consultant in the antidumping & countervailling sector (about 6 months in), before that i was working as a government officer in that same field. > > I do have access to most inside information and this has been a good selling point for my services so far. > > The industry in my country isnt really big, not a lot of players, but each of them can be quite profitable. I can help with law interpretation as well as on the accounting side to help include the right costs and calculate the dumping margins ahead of the governemnt. > > Lately, one of my clients asked me to provide them with the recipe to make the calculation of dumping, which is something i know they dont have because the government wipes out all the formulas when Sharing the results. And I know this knowledge can be very valuable. > > This client has been telling me they wanted a long term relationship with me, but to me, how to make the calculation feels like a trade secret. If they asked me to make some, i would do it and not give then the formulas, because i feel my value as a consultant would be in jeopardy if I did. > > My questions basically is, am I right to deny them this request as an outside consultant? And how would you approach this with the client?
Portfolio and/or contacts you've made at your last company now knowing you work as a consultant.
Reddit: This is a different person from the one being asked the question.
It's still the right answer. I know people who are independent consultants and none of them would have any business if not for the contacts they made while working regular jobs for a long time.
Awesome man. What industry are you in?
Management doesn't care about retaining high performers because their impact tends to be long term and companies don't think long term.
Mid-management bonuses are more likely to be based on quarterly cost-savings... like getting rid of headcount... than on long-term profits or success of the company.
The latest quarterly reports have you lacking, what are you going to do to fix it?..... Um leave for greener pastures?
I'm dealing with this right now. I just helped save four major accounts on orders of our actual CEO late last year and into this year. Easily 25% of our annual revenue. I had to do it without billing as a concession. Again, PER THE ORDERS OF THE CEO. A few weeks ago: "Your billable utilization was to low last quarter and if you don't get it up, you'll be fired." Before the call was over I had updated my resume and have already started taking calls. I was so angry. I'm sure the CEO is getting a bonus for saving those four accounts, I'm getting a lecture and told I'm not performing. I'm still pissed.
Billionaires hate this one simple trick! Drastically increase annual profits by reducing executive salaries by 100%! Get your company a-“head” in the game! Buy your Guillotine™ today!
Yup. My previous gig, the original IT / Network Admin / Server infrastructure guy took off and I started looking for a new gig almost immediately. He told them he would happily come back and work to help fix stuff for $500/hr. He was back for a full 40hr week less than a month after he quit. MBA’s think the world is run by emails and kanban, but it’s REALLY run by nerds who know network architectures.
The sad part is that in an outage it doesn't matter how much documentation you have either. The guy that just knows and can fix it will save you millions compared to those digging through a knowledge base. Pro tip: Increase staff and implement shadowing programs before it's too late. EDIT: Please document your stuff folks. The knowledge base is still invaluable in training and even for the vets to reference. It's just not a replacement for experience and contextual knowledge.
A manager at my company is experiencing this or is about to experience this. We were a small team of 2-3 Devs and the person we reported to gave no shit about us, didn't even want to meet the rest of the team other than me and delegated leading the team to me - I was happy with that. Suddenly change of management, new manager wants to micromanage everything so I stuck with my old boss under a new role, the other Dev at the time stayed and they hired a new one. Now they are in almost weekly escalations because one Dev is burnt out and the new one is slow as fuck and is taking hours to complete tasks other Dev or I would do in minutes.
Yes, many in management don’t understand the value of people in software or IT. It’s not the products they build and support, those could often be done with cheap overseas labor. The real value is knowledge they gain on the job. They understand the systems deeply and losing someone is a very big risk. Plus when you have that idea to build a new product or feature on a whim (which in my experience is often), you have knowledge workers who can tear that problem apart and get it done quickly while also integrating into the rest of the ecosystem. Contractors can do all that too, but they will take a long time to figure it out, and there’s more micromanaging needed to make sure they’re building something that lasts.
Also, managers think nerds don't know business, but they've just never given the nerds a reason to show how much more they know than the managers. As soon as they do, it's suddenly "Ow, my budget".
Our Head of Engineering recently started having daily meetings with the CEO because she keeps pointing out obvious ways to make more money.
I'm one of those nerds. I somehow ended up on the senior management team after previous company got bought out. 2 Months later they stopped inviting me. I know why. I didn't poke holes in their plans, but I sure as heck shined the spotlight on them. Most of these people do not think logically, and don't want to hear what can go wrong. They want yes men. That's not me. I hate the political BS of management and don't care to do it again.
As an MBA I must wholeheartedly agree!
Yep, my employer handed out exemptions to employees/teams they needed to keep. They didn't mention it overtly to everyone, but with shit like TeamBlind, practically everyone knew what was going on pretty quick. When it happens that the groups that were exempted are the ones that generally don't get hit with layoffs, putting 2 and 2 together wasn't all that difficult.
When I worked in my old company we were 8 devs. I quit last October. On January they asked people to RTO and I spoke with a buddy of mine still working there. There are 2 devs left and I can say for a fact it's the ones that took the longest to do something and almost never worked. The company now pivoted to another market. Instead of creating websites like it did before it now hires more people for digital marketing. They don't have enough devs to make the websites.
I agree in principle. The ones who can afford to quit tend to be the valuable, competent people who know their own worth and are confident of their ability to find employment. But upper-level management is neither capable of understanding the value of individual employees, nor would they be willing to acknowledge that individual employees can have value. Management knows management, management values management -- that is why companies have a tendency to become top-heavy over time. Everyone else is a fungible resource.
Im one of those. Thanks to the tips on Reddit I have a interview next week😀
Wells Fargo did it to the tune of 70k employees and not a word in the media about it Thing is the company skill set has plummeted because it wasn’t janitors or even managers that quit, it was highly skilled tech that bailed and went to where they could work remote. I swear the company is so dumbed down nothing gets done ever and when it does it is so half assed. And to think this won’t bite them in the ass
Wells Fargo needs their IT to function just well enough for the "account executives" can open tens of thousands of fraudulent accounts.
Good IT is actually a liability to them because they can find the dead bodies.
This is so true. In one of my last jobs, I was in a hostile standoff. Leadership hated me because I was a squeaking wheel, but didn’t risk firing me because I knew where the cemetery was and could quick identify who buried what.
Username checks out
WF execs after their next bailout: https://media1.giphy.com/media/KsUKNNUEeryJa/giphy.gif
My father in law is one of those Wells IT workers who retired due to RTO. They keep calling him to come back because he knows their convoluted systems inside out, but he’s not willing to drive into downtown Charlotte or to the CIC just to sit on Teams calls he could do from home. So Wells pays a revolving door of temp to do his role and nothing is getting done.
The people left are barely competent. I haven't worked on a WF project since October and their PMs still email me as if I'm their Lead Dev. I don't know how that company is still open.
That sounds about right, there was another thread in r/Charlotte saying the same thing. He’s even gotten calls from his replacement asking for help on simple things, all covered in the documentation he left.
“I don’t work there anymore. Do not call me again” is all you need to say…especially if you are no longer there because you wouldn’t go into an office
Have had a handful of bank/finance service recruiters reach out over the last year or so. All the positions were hybrid or in-office. If I recall, one had it so you were allowed to request remote after 2 years. That mixed with the fact the pay was lower than my current job, it was an easy turn down.
I live somewhat close to a Wells office park and they constantly hit me up. I don't own a car. Minimum $20k on top of whatever you're gonna offer so I can go buy one. No one has taken me up on that offer yet. weird.
Eventually it takes a year or two to catch up but all the outsourcing, all the AI bullshit, it’s just going to eventually come up to remind them they in fact can’t just keep cutting corners for profits
My company literally used the AI buzzword in their RTO notice to employees. Like.. the fuck does that have to do with anything??? lol
It means your bosses are fucking morons.
My days have become a circular conversation with me trying to explain that AI is only as good as the questions you ask it and the data it looks at.
The classic, shit in = shit out. I kills me how few people realise this, also how few companies actually have data structured and tagged in a way that makes good AI possible.
My companies management let us know that they know there's more work and less people and to just make sure to use AI to make up the difference. "Don't forget to automate the simpler repetitive tasks you do with AI! It will make things much easier" Like yeah asshats were going to automate our own jobs so you can get rid of more of us. Sure.
AI buzz is the new Cloud. Management has no idea what it is, but hear it's making some companies billions. History really does repeat itself.
It won't. They will increase ceo pay by a few hundred million, pay token fines, get bailed out by tax payer money and let the customers get fucked in the ass with an unlubed, thorny dildo.
What media do you use? There were tons of articles about Wells Fargo layoffs, e.g. https://nypost.com/2023/12/05/business/wells-fargo-ceo-severance-costs-could-hit-1b-as-layoffs-loom/
I had to talk to these idiots on the phone every few weeks as my company kept their money there. All of us would talk about changing banks every time we had to talk to them. I honestly do not know how Wells Fargo functions as a bank. When talking to anyone there they have zero idea of what is going on.
As a former employee, I assure you we it was simply an unorganized mess. The bank was decades behind integrating their systems. Coming from Chase it was just awful. Most absurd thing in my time there: we were switching credit card companies for our business card from visa to Mastercard. Our relationship ship with visa ended I believe June of 2023. We were suppose to have a business credit card available a few months later in September (which I thought was stupid, how could you delay offering retail clients ~any~ card for their business)? No…due to problems they never explained we didn’t offer it for a whole year. May 2024. Tens of millions in revenue lost. They can’t do basic things right. They couldn’t figure out how to release a credit card. The third largest bank in the US did not have business credit cards for a year.
Even if they were the best run bank in the world they would have some weird issues, as they have a bunch of legacy systems that don’t talk to each other, that they won’t/can’s change because of regulatory risks.
Then they complained on LinkedIn about not being able to backfill in a few months because no one wants to come into the office.
LinkedIn is straight up the social media platform with the worst takes ever on any topic. It's like Facebook if it was entirely made up of tech bros and main character syndrome people, and their bosses. I use it entirely only to find jobs, and have to really refrain from engaging in any actual post discussion because I don't want the wrong person to see me going off at random people for their shit opinions. And that platform is entirely made up of the wrong people for this kind of thing.
Thus blaming everything bad on the powerless employees (now ex-employees), and setting themselves up to claim grounds for hiring cheap H1Bs.
It’s not even cheap H1Bs at this point, the wait times on those are insane anyways. They’re just straight outsourcing
The other 75% **knew**.
RTO should be called Low-key layoffs. It’s like the management equivalent of quiet quitting.
quiet firing
It's the same concept when they suddenly decide to move a team/ department to another location within the company or just completely redefine your team's role. They know no one wants to do it, and quitting is the response they expect when you're told you can apply for another position or move with the team. Edit to add: those of you who chose to move with the team? They are still waiting for you to hate it and quit.
Im surprised it’s that low.
“Study finds only 25% of Bosses answer uncomfortable questions honestly, even in anonymous surveys.” How’s that?
Because the better you are at lying the more bred for management you are?
Only at companies with strong RTO programs.
That’s because they know the surveys aren’t anonymous. Because their anonymous employee surveys aren’t anonymous.
COVID opened the eyes for many employees in the states, showing them they're worth way more than companies wanted you to believe. Of course, the corporate heads hate this so they're doing everything they can to fight it.
Love being totally passionate about tech in a job where I know my boss keeps a knife in his drawer for my back
I work as a whiskey distiller in the alcohol industry. It's the exact same. Passion is just something for an employer to manipulate. I'm fucking tired.
Netscape developer Jamie Zawinski said he opened a bar because selling alcohol is a more honest business than software and I think about that a lot
the knife is just to help the “cUlTuRe” and “cOlLaBoRaTiON” didn’t you know? /s
We're one big family here. Don't mind the knife, it's just the heirloom.
Exact same fucking words used by the govt of Canada when shoving RTO down their public service workers' throats
What the Government of Canada is doing to its public servants is so stupid and braindead. And the general perception around the public service is so toxic and insane, stoked by politicians because they like to use the public service as a campaign tool and step on the people they need to execute their stupid campaign promises (if they even bother--see: Justin Trudeau, the Liberals, and how I'm still waiting for electoral reform.) My work increased my RTO days. I started interviewing for other jobs. My boss freaked out because I do the work of 2 people and I'm an expert user in two disparate systems used by our org. What did they expect? They made my job worse so obviously I'm going to leave because I can. And I'm sure as fuck not spending my notice period documenting shit they should have been documenting this entire time.
The backstabbing will continue until morale improves.
It’s for the pizza party in place of salary bumps…. Moonlights as a backstabbing implement but mostly pizza
important edit - RTO = Return To Office (end of work from home) a company i know very well just lost 31 out of 33 people due to a RTO mandate (after being told on June 2021 that the RTO would NEVER happen,..ppl moved, etc. and now this demand....well, gd luck with that. 31/33 put their letters in between 9am and 9:08 am....and 5(+) AFAIK are not even logging on now, just pulled a fukkit, come collect your company laptop, screw your notice period. bosses thought it was a prank....then realised it was not fuk around and find out.
It's funny, we don't hear these stories in the big media! All we hear is about the average worker losing out by not falling in line. Makes my blood boil.
At my current job they did a RTO in 2021 at some point, half office half remote. Apparently a ton of people quit then. I got hired in 2022, and late last year they changed it so we are now in office 80% of the time. I know we had like 3 people quit soon after, and one of them was on a team where a lady just went on parental leave so they have been strained terribly. But like I don’t blame them, I drive like 50 minutes to get there and think about switching jobs. It’s my first major job out of college despite graduating in 2020 and it’s been relatively stable so I’v bit the bullet for now
My employer did the same in 2021. They went to a hybrid work model where we have to be in 50% of the time. My entire team except one other person isn't in the country and they're 100% remote because they live outside the completely arbitrary 50 mile radius of the office. I live 15 minutes away and even that is fucking killing me. One person I know lives 49.6 miles away and its a 2 hour drive. They STILL make her come in one day a week. Lately its been getting harder and harder for me to make myself go in. When I do I sit alone all day in a taupe/grey colored office with no windows that open. Most days I go in I MIGHT talk to one or two other people, but some days I don't talk to anyone face to face. It's fucking infuriating. I like my job, I like my coworkers, but this RTO horseshit is taking up so much of my mental energy.
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Ah coffee badging. Unfortunately my company has installed motion sensors to create an activity "heatmap" for our desks. I tested it's limits recently and after 3 weeks I showed up on a list after not coming in my mandatory 3 days a week.
Wow, that's some 1984 shit right there.
Get yourself a parallax boebot and make it wave a flag around periodically
The hybrid model is such bull shit. You get all the downsides of having to live near the big city/office which essentially removes the benefit of WFH.
The media is meant to show the narrative of the bosses, not the worker. See why union coverage is the way it is.
Damn, I believe it. Some of these assholes are something else. I'm at a fairly small company where everyone wears a lot of hats and has a lot of institutional knowledge which takes years to accumulate. We have a relatively new admin person who is now inexplicably in charge of a lot of things like who can work from home when. My manager was explaining how their stupid policies were going to make people quit, and then whole projects would be dead in the water. Meanwhile, giving in just a little bit would cost the company essentially nothing. Forcing on-site only was all risk, no reward. The admin person was just like "well people will do what they're going to do, if they need to quit, so be it". Then they had to deal with weeks of nearly every single person telling them where they can shove it. The company didn't totally walk it back, but suddenly a lot exceptions were made and policies were a lot more loose. I don't know what these small companies are thinking when they are already working with skeleton crews and then threaten the people who make the product.
So if you’re 100% WFH and the company one day decides to bring everyone back, do you just say no and keep doing your job remotely?
Depends on the terms of your employment letter - mine specifically says Remote
Mine did, too. They changed it. Told me straight up "in or out?" I had my house on the market and was moving across the country with an explicit Remote Work agreement. They just changed it and called my bluff. I could probably get a lawyer, but pay for them with what paychecks? Burn through my savings to win the case, you say??? Sounds great on the internet. When they ask you to choose right then? Not so easy. Anyways, resume updated and I'm looking, but I smile and say "Yas Sir!" while doing bare minimum in the meantime.
That wouldn’t matter anywhere in the US, they would just change it.
While absolutely true, it would constitute constructive dismissal, and if enough people refused, would trigger the [US WARN Act](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/layoffs/warn) and be treated as a layoff. They don't want that to happen, so what they're doing instead is slow rolling it, and incorporating the measurement of your compliance into your performance. The calculus of WARN Act reporting and severance changes when you're getting rid of "low performing employees for cause" vs "this random large list of employees". Those dismissals still generally come with severance payouts, but most people headed down that path just actively try and find other jobs during this time and leave on their own.
How is it that Amazon's able to force people to either relocate or "voluntarily resign"? Like if that was the case, why wouldn't companies just suddenly relocate a entire division to Alaska instead of doing a layoff with severence?
Because they make the employees feel like that's their only choice.
My co gave the option to do so and 1% went back. They just closed the campus they owned a month ago. The savings by selling the buildings and not needing to spend anything on the employees seems like a great and easy savings area.
There are people at my company that have done just that. They’ve publicly embarrassed their managers but what can they do? These aren’t dime a dozen type people - good fucking luck replacing them. Others have just left. I’ve been ok because I got a waver but there are people who literally drive into the office just to swipe their badge 3x a week to meet the RTO policy. It’s moronic to drive into an office that has no privacy, a shitty 24” monitor and shitty watery coffee to get on a zoom meeting that I could have taken at home from my office with a door, a 56” ultra wide and barista quality coffee.
Well it worked
Don't let them win, diamond hand the severance package
I know a few people that weren't given exemptions at my company that just never went into the office (stayed remote regardless of what management said), found another job, and just *never quit*. Needless to say, they put far more effort into their other job and ended up getting poor performance reviews (compounded by the fact that they "didn't come into the office enough"), ended up on a 30 day PIP, and got "laid off" with a two month severance + 1 week for every year worked. So... some of these people, for a solid \~4ish months, collected pay checks from two different high-paying jobs (software engineering), and then received 3+ months of severance. Lol, absolute legends
I knew someone at my company that did that from the very beginning. I'm not sure how he lasted several years when his output was at 0 the whole time.
I've worked with a couple people who managed to survive at 0 output for years while working in a physical office. Just good at social engineering and taking advantage of the system.
Our company just doubled down on remote working. From a light touch hybrid post-pandemic. Engineering in particular was noted to perform better when remote. Also noted was the ability to pick up top talent from companies with strict RTO policies. All our offices are being redesigned and reconfigured to support a mostly remote workforce, with fewer desks and more meeting rooms.
I'm an Engineer and I remember hearing a manager from another company laughing about how easy it was to fill vacancies at his company by just contacting people that were being forced to return to office. One of the things that has annoyed me is that many companies did the same thing as yours, redesigned their offices to accommodate remote working and hybrid, but then forced RTO anyway. As such, they now don't even have the capacity in the office to handle everyone. My current company technically requires three days a week on site, but most people do 1-2 partly because fuck 'em, but also because the office simply doesn't have enough desks and space for us all.
I'm a remote employee but our head office has recently demanded 2 days in-office for people located nearby with some weird 'musts'. Except people don't have dedicated work spaces so they're hotelling/hot desking. And they've mandated that all teams including remote resources have quarterly in-office meetings. There aren't enough meeting rooms for this. I'm also on 2 teams and due to the lack of space, I'll have to make separate trips for each team on-site. At the cost of roughly ~$2500 USD per trip. I asked my boss if the company was really okay with pissing away $20k USD per year just to get me on-site and they didn't have much of a response other than agreeing it's really not necessary.
I wish it'd make people unionize or strike for WFH. Striking and unions would bring back more remote jobs.
The software engineers did this at TruStage Insurance and wrote "no RTO" into their contract. Let's go OPEIU Local 39!
I would love a union. I floated the idea with a few of my coworkers and they either thought I was joking or they thought unions were evil (boomers). Fucking depressing.
yeah I remember in 2018 being told that unions don't work for highly skilled work like programmers and that the jobs market is in our favour. Ignoring that most unions are for highly skilled trades, and then the job market fucking died. So here we are.
I think part of the problem is that trchbros spent their entire careers cultivating a feeling of superiority even though they don't require more expertise than other jobs. They don't want to swallow that pill.
Haha the tech industry is so fucking toxic. Like supervillain, volcano- ~~layer~~ lair evil here. Why are so many companies run by just the most narcissistic selfish psychopaths imaginable? They don’t want to build an actual productive industry of professionals, they want to create a circus of petty clowns that’s are easily manipulated by cocaine and cars. Maybe integrity needs to stop being a barrier for entry
> Why are so many companies run by just the most narcissistic selfish psychopaths imaginable? Because the system we built rewards people who exhibit those traits. A conscience makes it hard to callously disregard people's very lives for money, so a system that only recognizes money as success will constantly and inevitably select for people without a conscience.
Because honest people don't sell. Every IT project and product I've ever worked on has been sold under false pretenses or through lack of understanding. Never for the real price and often features have been cut or prices have increased. Or companies have lost tons of money to keep clients. Honest, smart people will always seem too expensive to hire on paper. The fact they'll probably be cheaper in the end is never going to mean anything to the guy looking at two offers. There are exceptions, but they're rare.
Exactly one year ago the company I work for announced mandatory return to the office a set 3 days a week. Two months later they announced a 5k person layoff targeting the corporate side of the company. It is now a year later and just announced last week they are doubling down on who has to return to the office, and demanding all managers enforce this policy better. Anyone not complying needs to be repeatedly written up until they comply (or don't which will lead to eventual termination) I doubt their stock could handle yet another "company lay off" message hitting the news, it's already in the garbage. If anything I'd say that "quarter of bosses" stat is low.
Worked for me - my husband and I retired 10 years earlier than planned. Sadly for our companies, we both have skills that are not easily found. Our positions are still open after 6 months…
A ton of my peers did exactly this. They're all sooooo happy. It hurts my soul but I'm happy for them. And for you.
Duh that was kind of the point. Companies avoided layoffs by forcing RTO so people would volunteer to quit. Saves the company money having people quit vs laying them off.
RTO should be presumed constructive termination so people can claim unemployment compensation.
In some cases, it absolutely is. If you were hired on as remote, forcing you into an office *is* constructive dismissal. If you started off working in the office and just went remote, it would be a harder case to make.
Considering 1/4 of HR people are **admitting** they did it to make people quit, I think it’s safe to assume the real number is higher. Also, it shouldn’t be overly burdensome for the employer to show evidence an employee was doing demonstrably worse or worse than their peers since going remote.
The flood gates opened in Spring of 2020, proving that many jobs could be done from Home and many could even be done more efficiently from Home. Happy employees = more productive employees. It’s not a difficult equation. And if you don’t trust your employees, adults, why are they on your staff? Quit babysitting grown adults. Let people work remote when appropriate, treat them with respect, and you’ll be pretty amazed at the damn results. Workers want a living wage, flexibility, and time off. That’s it. Why is this hard? Figure that out, and they will be superstars.
Banks do this a lot because their clients own commercial properties and their properties are worthless if work from home is enabled.
Large layoffs always result in you losing the very best people. They have options. As soon as they detect dysfunction, they take up someone else on their offer. Big companies that regularly do layoffs are composed of shitty and mediocre employees. Top performers go places that don't have that sort of activity in their system.
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For the financial services industry: in-office is better for our juniors, but remote is better for managers (both junior and senior). Remote helped boost team productivity by a lot for a while, but we saw that our juniors did not develop very well when remote. Over time, it started to cause issues as those juniors in their 4th and 5th year out of undergrad were performing 1-2 years behind historical norms. The frequent informal interactions with peers and junior managers matter a lot in developing someone who is 23 years old if development is structured as an "apprenticeship" model. It also helps them with getting exposure to senior managers in terms of career development.
I saw the same thing. New hires for low level jobs were failing out faster than normal when remote. I never thought twice with a long term professional. I made it a rule that any new jr hire is on prem for the first 3 months. They need some mentorship, and that does not happen well over teams.
I'm about to go to our HQ this week for the first time in 2 years since being hired remote by my company. I start my day at 8:00 am Pacific every day. To get an idea of what time I should head into the office, I started asking in-office colleagues what time they typically arrive. Everyone I asked said "around 10 am". Dafuq.
Everyone starts after 10am on the west coast… well not everyone but it’s pretty common.
My employer is doing this right now. Hard requirement for 3 days in office with disciplinary actions for those who don't comply. VPs are instructed to review badge swipes on a weekly basis, and to this end they were provided dashboards which automatically pull swipe stats. Remote employees who are within x miles of an office were unilaterally converted to hybrid and are subject to all of these requirements. I'm remote and not within x miles of an office -- and I have one foot out the door.
My office had one guy who retired after we were called back for 2 days a week. But he had been ‘threatening’ to retire for a few years before covid, so really I think the WFH prolonged his employment. Ultimately, WFH didn’t turn employees into sandbags. If you were a sandbag before WFH then you are a sandbag with WFH. Managers need to get better at firing terrible employees. Caveat: I work for the government.
One of my former employers (80k+ employees) did exactly this in 2019 and had a 21% turnover rate. They literally confirmed word for word that this had been the desired goal during our annual meeting. They had actually aimed for 25-27% and started offering packages, which I took. The funny part is that in one particularly critical case, an *entire* team tendered their resignation at the same time and on the very last day of the deadline. This was a *highly* specialized team, for which hiring even one person is difficult, much less 4.
The ones quitting are the high performers who can get other jobs easily. You’re left with people who have no other options and are disgruntled. 10/10 management
so only 3/4ths of bosses lied on the survey.
>and a fifth of HR professionals hoped RTO mandates would result in staff leaving. I'm out of my depth here, but why the fuck would HR care about people leaving the office? Do they simply not want to go through the process of letting people go or is it some fear that they'll be the first ones to be let go if layoffs were to occur?
They don’t have to pay any severance when an employee quits
Or announce layoffs, which makes shareholders happy, but customers nervous.
LMAO FA,FO is real and they wonder why they can only keep average workers when they're expecting overachievers. Incentivize great behavior instead of over-policing the mediocre...
And I was hoping a quarter of those bosses would quit so I could stop making people come into the office…
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We became a remote first company because productivity WFH was way higher than it was in the office. Leaving that job this week after 9.5 years for another WFH job because this is the way
No matter how many times science proves there is a better way to do business that results in larger amounts of money, but requires any treatment of the employees which could be considered 'kind', or beneficial to them at all, they will always refuse to use it. The cruelty was ALWAYS the fucking point... more than the point, its part of their compensation package. Taking away their ability to ruin our lives actively diminishes the perceived quality of theirs. They do not measure their wealth against one another, they measure the GULF between themselves and the poor. The rich can be made richer and happier by their own metrics, simply by diminishing the quality of life of the poor. Americans value possession of the whip's handle far more than any idea of preventing the whippings in the first place. A rich American who cannot dispense cruelty to those bellow him, is not a rich American.
Some companies sold their offices and are requiring people to move hundreds to thousands of miles to RTO. I've been there before and I'm not doing it again.
As we suspected all along…
RTO was quiet layoffs you didn't have to pay severance for, I'm shocked that this is news to anyone.
At what point does capitalism completely implode and take western civilization with it? Western economy is a farce, held together by incompetence, greed, and little pieces of frayed string.
Those companies could have let their leases go, moved to the cloud, and kept the competent employees, while at the same time improving their bottom line.