Technology

It’s almost worse than actually just laying off x% of a workforce—you stress everyone out and force them to contemplate leaving, some amount do (achieving the ulterior motive) and the rest who didn’t leave now have increased workload and are also immiserated by being forced to commute to a stupid cube farm some portion of the week. It’s like they found a way to make layoffs affect everyone more than they already did in the past.

Man I'd be so mad if I'd built up a sweet severance, only to have to quit for better work

If you are buying a laptop, Framework is where it is at. Huge focus on a quality product as well as repairability and interoperability between parts.

I got fucked by them over a decade ago. Naively bought an Alienware for college. Burned out two motherboards on it while it was under warranty which they replaced. Naturally it burned out a third one outside of my warranty window which they refused to help with unless I paid them half the value of the laptop. Told them no thanks, instead I’ll tell everyone I know that their hardware is garbage.

They are doing you a favor. I bought my kid a Dell laptop (xps13) for college and 6 months later the battery life dropped from 12 hours to 2 and Dell support said it was normal and refused to do anything about it. That was after the original order which was supposed to take 6 weeks for delivery (bad enough) actually took 14 weeks. It arrived two days before they left for school. Worst experience ever.

The replacement MacBook Air was delivered to their dorm the next day and has been flawless since (over a year now). It actually cost less too.

Have you seen what they did to the XPS?? It's a tragedy.

Of those adversely affected, most have more than eight years of experience at Dell and most are 40–55 year old women, we're told.

I think you are basically arguing that the policy is equal, whereas the article is basically arguing that the policy isn't equity. Two different values. You are not wrong, it's an equal policy. But the article is right in saying that the policy isn't equity.

What the hell does RTO have to do with women specifically? It’s a mandate regardless of gender.

Nothing. This is very lazy journalism and boring rage-bait.

As a generalization, take any bad thing "Rising mortgage rates":

"Mortgage Rate Hike Disproportionately Impacts Women, Minority Communities"

As the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates in an effort to curb inflation, recent studies suggest that these measures may be adversely affecting women and minority communities more than their counterparts. The reason behind this disparity lies in existing wealth gaps between various demographic groups.

Women and minority households tend to have lower median household income levels compared to white men, according to data from the US Census Bureau. This means they often start with smaller down payments for homes and rely on riskier loans, such as adjustable-rate mortgages....

Congratulations, you have now turned a generic news story into some cheap click-bait. Note: with a small amount of work you can apply this technique to any negative news story.

There was a unionization attempt at Dell once. They laid off the entire group and moved their jobs overseas.

~~I might be a moron, but how can a business be down in revenue but up in profit?~~

Edit: confirmed moron. Their expenses were just that much lower.

But it's also tail time, right? Right?!

and lose you the better employees that have options

They don't see these as better employees, they just see costs.

It sounds like Dell is just run by assholes.

RTO is coming from Michael Dell, a millionaire who is out-of-touch with the actual people this policy is going to hurt.

I don't believe for a second that Dell doesn't know where all their offices are and their plan for each of them.

They closed a ton during covid. Many offices that remain open are touchdown only without enough space to accommodate the staff in the region.

They seem to have picked the worst possible way to demand RTO that reveals how weak their management is.

The RTO push came from the very top. Most directors cannot justify or defend it, but their job is to pass it along. Upper management doesn't give a shit about their employees.

All RTO demands are short sighted and lose you the better employees that have options, but doing it the way they are causes far more employee morale damage and will hurt the company longer than if they had a clear plan for what RTO was.

This RTO is going to effect senior employees who were hired to be local to customers then became remote. Forcing them to quit or retire means you can replace them with cheaper employees, outsource their job, or simply push their work onto the remaining staff.

Not to mention, anytime I see something neboulous about AI to solve problems without specifics I roll my eyes because it is quite obviously some idea thought up by someone who is caught in hype without any understanding of the utility of it. It reeks of some exec telling their subordinates, "I hear this new AI thing can solve all our problems, make it happen and don't come back until you have it implemented."

Management has no idea what to do with AI except buzzwords and promises for the gleefully ignorant customers asking for AI.

Dell specifically has been super gung ho on work from home. Michael Dell had some article in Forbes or something a couple years ago that was hyping how great WFH had been for the company. They were actually paying people to WFH since it saved the company money. Dell's business model benefitted heavily from WFH since companies had to buy more computers and peripherals to support a remote workforce.

So, the "return" to office seems like a pretty naked attempt to cause people to quit without having to pay severance.

I had an asus rog laptop where after years of daily use the power port had gotten detached from the motherboard at least for one of the connections

Disassembled it and soldered it back in place and got a few more years out of it