Wendy Sparrow: Dell gave employees an ultimatum to return to office some of the week or accept they were never eligible for a promotion ever again. Half the employees shrugged and stayed remote. arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024...

Dell gave employees an ultimatum to return to office some of the week or accept they were never eligible for a promotion ever again. Half the employees shrugged and stayed remote. arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024...

Dell said return to the office or else—nearly half of workers chose “or else”arstechnica.com Workers stayed remote even when told they could no longer be promoted.

promotions now are like 60% more work and responsibility for an extra 10k a year no thanks

Whoa, whoa, WHOA!! Hold da phone, hooool da PHONE!!! At 10% (insanely good) that's 100k base salary! Where are YOU working that you get 10k raise, I'll take that job so fast I'll leave a dust devil in my wake!

Before you pack my housing costs $6k/month

Holy crap. $6k would take care of EVERYTHING for me... ...if I could work remotely. But that's 6k *after* housing?

The whole point is you don't get to work remotely, otherwise no promotion.

I was essential and remote work wasn’t an option.

I'm 55, I don't give a darn about promotions, I want income. If this person is clearing 6k AFTER housing costs, and I can still work remote? I will sign a 20 year contract, crawl into a barrel on Wednesdays, and wear a shirt that says, "Boss's Bitch" on Zoom calls.

Learn to read please

Have you heard of this strange human invention? It's called "manners". They give you this fantastic ability to give people some slack, all without looking like an arrogant ass! You should get yourself some, they're really nice!

read it again

Yeah, that's horrifying. Ooof!

Housing costs are 6k.

SF?

Oof. Can anyone on Bsky afford SF???

I sure as fuck wouldn't be able to, lol Boston rents are getting there, though. maybe I'll move to Worcester or something >_>

okay but you have to go into the office for that extra 10k and....

San Mateo becomes only county in California where you need to earn more than $500K annually to afford a median-priced homewww.paloaltoonline.com $518,400 – that's how much you need to earn annually to afford a median-priced home in San Mateo County. In neighboring Santa Clara County, you need $468,000. Higher borrowing costs and a shortage of...

I’ve gotten 10k raises. And I think at the time my base salary was barely 100k, if that. My company bases our yearly salary increases partly on winning contract renewals. It’s not quite profit sharing, but it’s close. The client is happy enough to pay more, so we get paid more!

I do believe a lot of our contracts are fully remote, and I’m remote 90% of the time. Now, the other 10% of the time I’m doing stuff like racking 40 kg servers by myself, but at least I’m not being micromanaged!

Yeah, having a real reason to show up is fine. Showing up so you can do Zoom calls from your Official(R) Corporate(C) Desk(TM), not so much.

The *only* time I turn my webcam on is when it’s full of poof.

I’ve taken this offer a few times. I’ve also gone some long stretches either unemployed or poor. It can definitely be shitty to have that high responsibility. I have that now. But it’s also nicer to be able to afford things than not. And now I’m so stressed but I always have groceries.

And yeah, it’s super privileged to be talking about that kind of raise. And yet here I am, generally trying to negotiate at least that when I change jobs, because I’m so exhausted and I want to be able to maybe retire someday and maybe travel in the meantime and I owe so much student loans.

Many promotions don't put you over in that next salary bracket, so screw it.

"We'll get promoted when the next CEO reverses the policy". 🤷‍♂️

as plays go that would be suuuuuch a bad idea here

why

the CEO is the founder of the company, has run the company for all but four years of its existence, and actually took the company private for like 6 or 7 years... essentially, Uncle Mike gets to do whatever he wants to do with Dell, unless he gets involuntarily removed or drops dead.

Clearly, they do not care enough about the piddling pay increase they'd get for the massively increased stress load to care about getting promoted.

I think it's a good move, actually

My neighbor has been ordered back to the office after four years, and on the day of the deadline he's just going to stay home and work and see what they do. He's got two decades in, so the severance will give him lots of time to find a new job if they try to call his "bluff". (it's not a bluff)

This happened at my friend's office at the nyc hq of a major bank, and the guy is still working from home. it's been years. (tbf they have a hiring freeze and he's sort of unpleasant so no one really wanted to fire him or have him around full time but its working out for him!)

He's weaponizing being an asshole! 😆

There's been a big push to move everyone in Ottawa back to working in offices downtown because the businesses that rely on foot traffic from all the people stuck in office buildings raised a big stink. So people have to pay for parking and commuting to placate downtown businesses. It sucks.

yepppp. Same here, with our governor and mayor also putting pressure on businesses to get people back to "normal." Totally short sighted.

Somebody really needs to start selling Vaguely Unpleasant Odour brand cologne for these situations. Like, nobody thinks you need a shower but.. are you, perhaps, the undead?..

Eeehh...you aren't entitled to severance if you get fired for insubordination. Your neighbor MIGHT wanna rethink their plans.

Two decades is a *lot* of institutional knowledge. I'm guessing that he represents a bus-factor of 1.

I learned a new term today! Thank you! Also, LOL! LMAO, even.

I had to look it up too. And he is definitely a bus factor of 1.

Ah. He's a COBOL/FORTRAN programmer, LOL! Let us know how it goes!

After 4 years of WFH, a change in venue could be considered a "material change" to the terms of employment. A unilateral decision to change the job without any offer or consideration could be considered "constructive dismissal" if they fire you for refusing.

Oooh, good point. He's had other coworkers resign already because they can't do the commute. Something to relay to them.

📌

Maybe not where you are, but he's in the clear here.

Ahh, someplace OTHER than the uber-capitalist employment Hell, known as the USA.

Turns out threats of not being promoted aren't much of a threat if they didn't have faith you would do it in the first place.

This isn't said enough in my opinion.

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