And Dell said “Great, thanks, saved us a ton on severance packages and allowed us to replace our high paid tenured employees with hungry graduates who are prepared to work themselves to death for peanuts”
who are prepared to work themselves to death for peanuts
…while having no idea what they are doing
That’s not this quarter’s problem, silly!
Yeah that’s the next CEOs problem.
That’s a problem for next months Me to fire you for!
Truth.
Been job hunting in similar fields for a while and as a middle-aged person, I simply cannot get a callback from any of these companies, then when you actually visit them and see some of their workforce, you rarely see anyone over late-20’s, and it’s all these high-energy, eager-to-please, eager-to-work-for-recognitionbucks, fresh-outta-college kids who can be exploited and turned over rapidly.
I am job hunting because the previous company I managed was bought out, downsized, and all the senior employees making more than entry level wages were cut. This is happening everywhere.
More and more technology, overseas outsourcing options, and general service/gig systems for filling job openings has left companies treating workers as disposable as toilet paper.
This is because almost every business is now part of a huge chain of ownership, and the shareholders at the top, groups of very rich old white dudes, just gather together in their hooded cloaks and look at the bars and graphs every month and decide what investments are to be amputated, and which to be kept. Before going back to their private sex islands.
High paying jobs with tons of new graduates have an oversaturated supply problem. It’s no surprise that when people figure out that becoming a software developer is easy street to 150k+++ WFH that there was a huge rush to get those jobs… now that there are TONS and TONS of young junior devs there is no shortage to hire someone for near minimum wage.
Why pay 400k for a senior developer when you can hire a mid-level for ~100k to be a manager, and 4 juniors for 60k a piece, and augment them with chatgpt to help them learn what they are skill gapped by.
Plus junior devs are so desperate you can force them to come into the office, something the dev divas ten years ago refused to do back when there was a huge shortage of coders.
Absolutely correct, I watched this happen to our tech team before I was also thrown in the chipper.
And it doesn’t help that a lot of the young people trying to get into coding and tech fields are not what you would call titans of confidence and charisma, these are mostly introverted and thoughtful people who have studied most of their lives under the belief that meritocracy exists, and they can prove themselves in the business world by doing great work and being a good employee.
Meanwhile glance over at the sales side of the building and there are people there making six figures a year who do next to nothing but party and tell lewd jokes, but are absolutely invulnerable to layoffs and downsizing as long as they can talk to clients and joke about sports with the CEO.
The disillusionment around the business world is real and unsustainable.
God my last sales team were annoying. You can hear their bullshit from the floor above. They never shut up.
Every job I’ve had I’ve ended up becoming a liaison of sorts between the sales teams and the operational teams because I seem to be the Daywalker, who can walk between worlds and communicate with the techy nerds, take their issues to the loud sales assholes and make it all work.
It’s not an enjoyable role but it always earned me high marks because nobody else can stomach it.
I had the misfortune to have to share an office with a bunch of sales morons. I can recommend Bose idiot-cancelling headphones. What a bunch of selfish noisy fuckwombles.
I would like live in this world. We are trying to hire, and it’s basically as hard as ever. Senior developers are super hard to get, or even to talk to. Even if you pay above average rates.
There’s plenty of “LinkedIn senior” developers, tho. But after 3 years of C they can’t explain a static variable or can’t define a promise claiming to be js experts.
and this is why we are going to have a surge in enshittification in every piece of software and engineering around. eagerness and high energy does not replace decade of experience and ability to hold your composure against corporate pressure to do shady shit (if anything eagerness to please enable it)
Since the shareholders only care about 6-month projections, they will always choose a shitty, short-term successes with rushed products with patches later or promises of continued bugfixing, than spending more money and time to make something that users approve of and passes all requirements.
The shit is already running pretty deep.
It’s like seeing the Dracula myth reborn. They periodically come to wreak great violence, but always draining. Always unseen. Always feeding.
They work in tech, promotions are achieved by moving employers. Internal mobility is always terrible in tech companies.
Very much this. I have never switched employers and not received a sizable salary bump in the process. This isn’t quite “don’t threaten me with a good time” territory, but it’s not far removed from it.
Yup. It’s the same fucked-up psychology corps use for their customers. Like running ads for super discounts for new customers. Existing customers that have never missed a payment? Fuck-em. Instead of giving 1% “thank you” for good customers, corps would rather lose the good customers and pay a premium to find new ones.
So it goes.
If you get a new customer, you may get one for several years without adding any new effort.
Yuuuup lowest pay bump I have gotten was 10k highest was over 50k with the potential of a bonus. I got low balled for a long years and am now like pay me. Wish I would have seen/known my worth long ago before getting taken advantage of
I’m admittedly not familiar with the data, but I have the impression that this is true with quite a few fields, tech or otherwise. I think they prey upon loss aversion.
I think it is just American working culture. Corporations slowly eroded benefits over the years to where we are today and your salary is pretty much stuck at a 3% cost of living raise if you are lucky. My last job had an HR cap at 10% and my boss “pulled some strings” to get me an 8% bump (with a ton of extra responsibilities) and I still made 20k less than the fucking new hires. I still stayed 2 more years.
Not just American unfortunately… crap ass managers use the internet too, the news spreads… beyond the marginal raise i get due to inflation every year i only ever get a decent raise by, well, changing companies.
I’ve never been promoted in a job and the biggest pay increase I’ve ever gotten was 10%. Switching jobs never failed to get me at least 30% more and a promotion.
Dell announced a new return-to-office initiative earlier this year. In the new plan, workers had to classify themselves as remote or hybrid.
Those who classified themselves as hybrid are subject to a tracking system that ensures they are in a physical office 39 days a quarter, which works out to close to three days per work week.
Alternatively, by classifying themselves as remote, workers agree they can no longer be promoted or hired into new roles within the company.
Holy corporate oppression, Batman! That’s a shitty deal no matter which option you choose.
I’m glad they’ve got themselves into a sticky situation.
Also, this observation was funny (in a sad way):
One person said they’d spoken with colleagues who had chosen to go hybrid, and those colleagues reported doing work in mostly empty offices punctuated with video calls with people who were in other mostly empty offices.
One major downside of hybrid working really is that if you are having a meeting where even a single person is not there, then the entire meeting may as well be a video call. If you are on a video call, then why do you need to be in the office for it?
At my job we work with physical objects, so being in office is a requirement at least part of the time, but if I’m just going to be in meetings for most of the day, there is no way I’m going into the office just to sit on video calls all day.
You mean to tell me, three days a week, they have to:
- wake up extra hours early
- pack a lunch or plan to pay for one
- put on hard pants
- drive their own vehicle in traffic, with their own gas and wear/tear
- pay for their own parking.
- do the exact same work in their designated space
- drive back home in traffic 9 hours later
All for the same pay and several hours away from my family, home, or bed?
No fucking thanks.
Going remote was the best fucking raise I ever got, and it didn’t cost them a dime.
So you could just got he the office days straight and don’t show up for the rest of the year… interesting… but considering promotions are everything but lately i’d just go remote anyway.
That’s a horribly deceiving title. They just stayed remote and made themselves ineligible for promotion.
Business Insider claims it has seen internal Dell tracking data that reveals nearly 50 percent of the workforce opted to accept the consequences of staying remote, undermining Dell’s plan to restore its in-office culture.
ineligible for promotion
This seems like an empty threat to me. Every promotion I’ve ever gotten internally has come with a negligible pay increase (~4%). The best promotions I’ve gotten have been leaving to take a new job somewhere else (~20-50%).
And that 4% just buys you a year before inflation cuts it back down again. Searching for a job from home is easier.
Promotions haven’t been worth it for 30 years. Most people stick around cuz it’s a PITA getting a new job
Can confirm. ^^’
Though I am just going to resign on Monday and give myself the push.
duuuude get a new job before you quir the old one
That would be the dream, but it hasn’t panned out, and my long notice period is hampering me. I’m not going to continue slogging it out here indefinitely, and I don’t need to.
I don’t need any additional anxiety to discourage me from getting out of this before I just burn out and am in a worse position.
I saw a handmade sign in a floating workshop for ships, it stated “Please Resist Entropy”. That has inspired me ever since. It sounds like you are resisting entropy and good for you. Wish you better times and a better job. o7
Fuck the notice lol
It’s contractual, I’m going to serve my notice period.
Good luck! Everything will work out eventually.
fair enough, and I’m sure you know what you’re doing. I’ve always felt that I’m in a much, much stronger position saying I’m employeed but I’d prefer to work for you rather than them suspecting that I just need some job, any job ya know
anyway, hope you work it out
Thanks, it’s the culmination of a lot of thought and a previous attempt by my manager and I to rework things to make it better but hasn’t really worked out. Onwards and upwards, I’d still intend to find a job during the 3 months notice period before I’m set loose so ideally I won’t lose the “tempt me away” factor before I get a new gig.
Only if he still has any fucks to give
Or bills to pay. Or mouths to feed.
If they think about those, there are still fucks left to give.
If promotion means becoming a manager… no thanks.
I went from doer to manager, even though I’m now expected to do and manage… it isn’t enjoyable.
Yeah but, if it was remotely enjoyable, then you might make 2 or maybe even 3% less profit for the lazy, workshy scroungers who own the company.
We can’t have that now can we?
Probably while updating their resumes and looking around for replacement jobs in case they find a better one. I know I would.
Man these sensational titles for articles have been setting such a deceiving narrative. I feel like I’m in a veiled world since like 2015
nobody knows whats going on anymore
Lol, more a hope than a plan
Anyone want to start a company. Work from home. We’ll split profits among ourselves. We can. Build blackjack lottery machines and webhookers
I will start developing the webhookers!
I’ll run quality control on the webhookers!
We’ll call it HookerGPT
SlutGPT
I’ll start integrating the webhookers with Slack.
Well that’s a word I’ve never seen before lol
Just use AI. People can’t tell.
They just wanna live an unreal fantasy and jerk off.
I’ll test the blackjack machines
This would be a handy way to get rid of half your staff, but the people you chase away are usually the ones you want to keep. As per the Dead-Sea Effect, the ones who will leave are the ones who generally are more able to, who will be your most employable people, and thus your most talented. Usually.
Making work suck, and letting the best half of the staff bail, seems like stupid and a game show.
I read somewhere that convincing people to quit was party of some companies’ plan when demanding return to office, but as you pointed out, they probably lost their top 10% or more in the quality workers group. So do that introvert parasites can have their “corporate culture” (or more critically, justify leading that bigass office building).
I think you mean extrovert parasites
So much the better, as far as those executives are concerned.
Let’s say you want to cut costs and you know you have momentum and a long lag where your total incompetence won’t make a difference to business results in the short term, so cut costs by getting rid of the top talent.
Now if they outright just fire every good person, well that looks obviously stupid, but if those good people just… up and quit… well they are hardly to blame, and don’t have to pay out those massive severances. You get your annual bonus which is big, and your big restricted stock payday might be delayed two years, but they know, realistically, they can probably coast a good 3 or 4 years before the game is up. Or if you have a supremely strong ‘business brand’, you might be able to coast indefinitely as the big shots will never believe that brand isn’t good anymore.
Doesn’t matter in the world of next quarter vision. So shortsighted.
If this country cared about the environment or workers’ safety, they’d fine companies who make employees work in the office/on site when they could work from home instead.
Imagine how many people die every year commuting to jobs they could have done from home
If the commute was included in workplace deaths and injuries, I wonder where it would rank with OSHA’s statistics
Problem is most of the folks influencing those that make laws also have huge real estate portfolios of commercial real estate.
Friends don’t let bosses purchase Dell computers.
When I got hired at my job where I could write and dictate policy, the first thing I did was write up a new IT Purchasing Policy with a “Banned Manufacturers” section right up top with HP right at #1 and Dell at #2
What did you prefer? Lenovo?
Lately, Lenovo. It was Asus and Lenovo, but lately they’ve been shitting the bed IMO. And MSI is about to join HP and Dell if I have to replace one more of their damn shitty ass fans
Sounds like that list is getting pretty short
System76!
Their product quality and servicing are top notch but they don’t have a good price/performance ratio. “Lemur Pro” starts at 1.4k and this gives you Intel GPU & 8GiB RAM. https://system76.com/laptops/lemur#specs
MacBook pros!
What’s the issue with Dell? Everyone I know at work with Dell laptops likes them. I’ve used XPS 15 and 13 in the past and they’ve been generally fine. Battery life sucked but I haven’t ever seen an x86 laptop with what I would consider good battery life.
Considering that HP is the other choice that most businesses consider, I’d take the Dell 100% of the time. HP’s laptops are complete and utter trash.
Lenovo is at the top of the enterprise devices game right now. I always say they operate in cycles and usually each brand trades every 2 years who is at number one.
I still will always shit on HP. And HPE Aruba switches are absolutely trash.
Funny, I try to block anyone in my department that wants to purchase a Lenovo. My most recent experiences with them have been a faulty battery driver that was known online for at least six months before it was brought to my attention that the model I purchased for someone (their choice) refused to recharge, and Lenovo continued to deny any problems on their side… We returned the laptop as unusable because the only way to charge it was to boot into the BIOS screen. The last time I dealt with them, the corporate rep I worked with was right on top of emails and phone calls until we made a purchase, then refused to answer my contacts after that. After a month of trying to get in touch with him I finally called the main line, and the person I spoke with said “oh he just walked by my desk, let me grab him”. The excuse I was given was that he had been too busy to respond.
Basically every time I’ve been forced to purchase a Lenovo for someone, there has been zero support provided and half of them had to be returned. Granted, I haven’t bought any since COVID but I really hope I never have to deal with them again.
Lenovo: it may as well be Huawei.
You… don’t follow that rule?
And fuck Carly Fiorina for destroying HP.
What about for personal use? I’m in the market for a relatively high end machine around $2k, but build quality is pretty high up on my priorities.
Framework
Lenovo should be out just by virtue of being a Chinese company. You should not trust critical security devices to Chinese companies.
Riiiight… trust American companies instead… definitely so…
HP’s laptops are complete and utter trash
a) yes b) perhaps that also describes their management
perhaps that also describes their
managementeverything
Our shop has two options (for security and management, they keep the options lean). Dell Windows 11 machines and Mac. The suckiness of the Dell ecosystem, combined with Windows 11 being fairly terrible, has pushed most all of my colleagues over to Mac over the last few years. Even most of the ASP.NET developers are on Mac at this point. This just solidifies that direction even further.
My company has one option, Lenovo with locked down Windows 11. We didn’t want to deal with the IT dept constantly, so we told them we need Macs and bought them ourselves, despite most of our team (including me) not liking Apple. We don’t need macOS for anything, we just build software for Linux servers and Windows desktops, but here we are because of stupid corporate policy.
I use a Lenovo running Linux at home, and my next laptop will probably be a Framework. But I use macOS all day because IT depts kinda suck. They won’t allow Linux either, if it’s company hardware, it runs company images, or stock in the case of Apple…
Ours basically added MacOS as an option because they didn’t want to manage Linux and there are standard security tools for it. I don’t mind MacOS, it has its quirks, but it beats W11. I had an HP with Linux there before the company decided to drop it and I do miss it, but knowing I’d have to now have a Dell with Linux if they still had the option, I’ll take the Apple hardware knowing all the issues the windows guys have.
Eh, I’d take an enterprise Dell with Linux over macOS, but I’d take macOS over Windows.
I honestly don’t understand IT departments sometimes…
Others said their local offices had closed since the pandemic
This part is wild. So they closed down the office and then punish the employees for not coming into the office. Tell me this is illegal.
Quiet unionizing?
we should fucking hope. Might catch on
Dude… you’re getting “or else.”
Lolbruh. Go ahead and tell me to go to the office 5 days. I’ll peace the fuck out.
I peaced out at 2. Manager was a bit of a prick, and the office was bright, hot, cramped, loud, and had no visual or audio privacy.
No fucking thanks.
Found a job thanks to my peers and it’s a little more pay and 100% remote as per the union contract. Wheeee. Work anywhere in the country.
Work anywhere in the country
can you remote while out of the country?
The problem is taxation for the employer usually. But you can become self employed and pay your taxes locally as your own employer and invoice your sercices to the company you work with.
This is what I did some years ago without moving borders.
As intended. A Layoff by any other name…
Not for 50% of the company though. They’re going to have a rough couple years ahead of them.
I wonder if this method doesn’t overproportionally eliminates valuable workers, who can easily switch companies.
Sounds like a problem for the next CEO. I got quarterly metrics to meet. When shit hits the fan cause all the talent left I’ll just eject with my golden parachute.
Pretty much.
Capable employees don’t raise a huge stink.
They quietly put the word out to a few people they know and play along until something interesting appears on the horizon.
Then when they’re good and ready they just “suddenly” fuck off to somewhere nicer for them.
Your move, Bitch!
That’s consistent with my office, plus a hiring freeze so nobody new coming in.
Fortunately, for me, my cardiologist told them to pound sand. Working from home now since 2018.
