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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Dell: Return to office or give up promotions
deprecative wrote 24 min ago:
This sounds like the thing a strong SWE union would prevent. Shame
we're all ninja rockstar 1000000000x devbros.
worthless-trash wrote 1 hour 16 min ago:
Once again companies fail to recognise that people will read this as
"build skills at dell, then leave".
Justsignedup wrote 2 hours 9 min ago:
Incoming layoff notices. Stupid decisions are usually explained by a
desire to get voluntary resignations.
datavirtue wrote 6 hours 1 min ago:
Isn't that a given? Out of sight, out of mind.
janalsncm wrote 6 hours 2 min ago:
Most companies only promote once or twice per year. But if you leave,
you can get promoted any time of year.
bradleyg_ wrote 6 hours 59 min ago:
Blocked in Europe, here's an archive -
URI [1]: https://archive.is/PWZvN
yoshicoder wrote 8 hours 12 min ago:
Having talked to many friends at Dell (interns and full time), I have a
few observations about this:
1. I know many people on HN hate the idea of RTO, and for good reasons,
but one downside I saw of remote was that junior engineers struggled to
get mentorship and guidance as well as an in person setting. A lot of
the learning junior engineers get is through water cooler talk,
informal suggestions, and off the cuff comments, rather than stuff
brought up in stand-ups or asynchronous slack messaging
2. Dell already seems to have a culture of trying to avoid promoting
junior engineers quickly/for multiple years, through avenues such as
the rotation program which ensure you don't get promoted for at least
2 years.
snakeyjake wrote 5 hours 35 min ago:
>I know many people on HN hate the idea of RTO
The six months we were WFH were the worst six months of my career.
Nothing got done.
Granted, I am in a specialized field and most of my work requires
calibrated equipment in purpose-built labs but so many people just
wanted to sit at home and click around on Digikey and complain about
SolidWorks being slow on their laptops.
I could never do the kind of engineering that doesn't result in a
physical object that exists in the real world. The group photo at the
end, standing next to a new thing that nobody else on Earth has ever
seen, makes dealing with all of the PMPs worth it.
edit: and software guys need to put on some god damned clothes and
come into the office, too. I'm not paid enough to troubleshoot over
email or slack the hacked-together nightmare of a virtual environment
that "works on my machine" but throws ten thousand errors when set up
on a test stand.
AlotOfReading wrote 13 min ago:
I can't relate to the sentiment here. I also do the kind of work
that results in physical objects in the real world. Conservatively,
95% of that work can be done with an SSH connection or the postal
system. Most of the rest are fine with a webcam to a bench
somewhere. The remaining day every 3 months or so I'm fine meeting
in-person, but I don't want to organize my life around it.
My experience is that the infrastructure you need to do effective
remote work is also the same infrastructure you need to debug
issues in the field, so you may as well build it upfront.
The_Colonel wrote 5 hours 38 min ago:
RTO it's such an emotional affair that most people just can't think
rationally. Exemplar motivated reasoning.
I work in a hybrid mode and it's so obvious to everyone how in person
communication is more effective. People will often say "let's discuss
this once I get to the office" all the time.
bluefirebrand wrote 2 hours 10 min ago:
If working in an office actually meant in-person communication,
people might be more okay with it
I'm not coming back to an office just to talk to the rest of my
team on the computer anyways because they are distributed in
different provinces and countries
That's dumb
Longlius wrote 7 hours 3 min ago:
I have zero trouble mentoring juniors remotely. These are kids who
grew up playing videogames online and it's extremely easy to mentor
them via regular teams call. Being unable to do so is a skill issue
the part of senior devs to properly leverage modern collaboration
tools.
listenallyall wrote 3 hours 12 min ago:
Is that on your resume? "Highly skilled in properly leveraging
modern collaboration tools."
Wow, sounds impressive, havenât seen that before, tell me more.
I'm really awesome at Zoom.
paulddraper wrote 5 hours 42 min ago:
> via regular teams call
I actually find that mentorship happens best in irregular
interactions, as the help is needed.
Secondarily, I find that personal connection/rapport is invaluable
in delivering feedback, and is possible but more difficult to do
via screens.
TheCycoONE wrote 1 hour 55 min ago:
Then they or you can slack call irregularly...
ShamelessC wrote 7 hours 45 min ago:
With regard to your second point, that seems to be entirely the fault
of Dell - no? If they wanted to encourage junior engineers with
promotions, maybe they should, you know, promote them? Rather than
inventing silly games and trapping them in loops.
I understand your first point however. Canât imagine how interns
and early engineers are supposed to learn without having a highly
available set of mentors to learn from.
yoshicoder wrote 7 hours 33 min ago:
I totally agree with what you are saying, My point was that this
policy just seems to be another one of those policies to get them
to not be promoted. More hoops you may call it
ShamelessC wrote 5 hours 43 min ago:
Ah indeed, seems we are in agreement.
SillyUsername wrote 8 hours 41 min ago:
If I worked for Dell I'd hear this as
"Return to office or get a job elsewhere for insta-promotion."
Draconian workplace rules just lose your best people, haven't companies
learnt this yet?
grecy wrote 4 hours 23 min ago:
It is incredible they are so openly saying that promotions are not
based on work performance.
That certainly gives me no motivation to perform better.
paulddraper wrote 5 hours 40 min ago:
> get a job elsewhere
I haven't asked, but they're probably okay with that too.
ThrowawayR2 wrote 5 hours 52 min ago:
Lose them to where? Anecdotally, it's almost impossible to find a
new job right now even for exceptional employees.
bdw5204 wrote 5 hours 35 min ago:
The current market will not last forever and once it turns around
we're probably looking at a Great Resignation on steroids given the
pent up demand for changing jobs.
j45 wrote 9 hours 13 min ago:
It shouldnât be, but this is a pretty honest take and message.
Visibility is different and harder remotely.
olliej wrote 9 hours 19 min ago:
IE promotions and compensation are not performance based so donât
bother doing more than the bare minimum?
neilalexander wrote 4 hours 30 min ago:
It's about the clearest way that they can tell you that they value
your presence more than your skill without actually saying it.
andrewdubinsky wrote 9 hours 38 min ago:
Employees accept work-from-home & look for a work-from-home job.
New applicants see on-site only and apply elsewhere.
Choices:
1. Hire desperate people who will come in
2. Accept that high-talent staff are unavailable to your company
3. Pay 30% more than the market for on-site staff
ralphc wrote 11 hours 10 min ago:
Do they still get raises?
My whole career I was a developer, it's what suited me best and it's
what I wanted. A couple of times I considered going for tech lead or
architect but those were parts of the job I didn't want to do.
And oh hell no to management.
If you're telling me I would get to work from home and not be badgered
into going into management, I say sign me up.
paulddraper wrote 5 hours 38 min ago:
At functional companies, raises and promotions are both connected to
scope of contribution.
ChrisArchitect wrote 23 hours 34 min ago:
[dupe]
Some more discussion:
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39728252
al_borland wrote 1 day ago:
I was told this before the pandemic. The whole pandemic kind of helped
me out in that respect (at least so far).
The problem with most office mandates is that they just require a
person be in an office, any office. In my experience, this means it is
very possible to be in an office with a bunch of people that do
completely different jobs, so all day is spent on the phone. If I need
to be on the phone all day anyway, I might as well be at home where
itâs quiet, so I can hear people, they can hear me, and there
arenât any distractions.
Forcing people to relocate just to sit alone in a cubicle on a phone
all day doesnât improve productivity, it just makes people upset.
I do think meeting people in person has a lot of value, but office
mandates arenât the only way to handle that.
greedo wrote 2 hours 21 min ago:
Our company has two major locations, with redundant datacenters at
each site. The colleagues I work with the most are at the other site,
so going into the office does me no good. Now TPTB might decide to
shut down the other datacenter (BC/DR be damned), but that's a good
five years away.
closeparen wrote 7 hours 17 min ago:
This. If employers are asking employees to sacrifice commute and
residence flexibility, the least they can do is also sacrifice hiring
and team composition flexibility, so that you actually reap the
benefits of in-person collaboration.
wil421 wrote 9 hours 33 min ago:
The place I work did RTO so I spend all day talking to people across
the county and exactly 0 people in office. The main coworker I work
with is outside DC and we spend a portion of the day on the phone
together. Same as before.
leros wrote 9 hours 54 min ago:
Even before the pandemic, I went into the office mostly to work alone
at my desk or go into a conference room alone to zoom with someone in
another office.
The only benefit I got out of the office was lunches and hallway
conversations, which do have some value to be fair.
ajford wrote 10 hours 15 min ago:
Yep. Current employer is doing the same. Team member goes into the
office 3 days a week, and all our calls are now very noisy with other
people in the background. There's only two of us in this location so
all our team meetings are video calls anyways. What point is there to
going back in at all in that situation?!
haltIncomplete wrote 10 hours 5 min ago:
Thereâs no real point, not in a physical science way
Itâs all contrived political points; contracts, socialized norms
the elders in charge refuse to negotiate.
The stubbornness and selfishness of the gerontocracy, to serve the
dying and dead is gross. Some kind of mental illness fueled by
their huffing leaded gas and growing up in world war/Cold War
paranoia made it so they cannot escape the idea life is 24/7
militarized economic production.
al_borland wrote 1 hour 45 min ago:
I think a lot of it has to do with justifying real estate
holding, which have likely fallen significantly in value since
the pandemic, as remote work had increased. Selling at the worst
time is likely out of the question, so they try to make it worth
holding on to.
higeorge13 wrote 9 hours 22 min ago:
Why just elders? I see modern start ups and companies, ran by
30/40yo C-suite mandating return to the office.
haltIncomplete wrote 8 hours 8 min ago:
They learned it from somewhere.
j45 wrote 9 hours 4 min ago:
This is always funny to hear and I agree.
I have worked remote for almost 20 years.
Just because remote is new to the masses doesnât mean remote
or hybrid is new.
Some companies started in person.
They are only so efficient in person let alone remote
olliej wrote 9 hours 17 min ago:
Elders here I think means âthe kind of people who care more
about personal status than any actual value to the companyâ,
so that means most C-suite asses.
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