Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dell workers can stay remote – but they're not going to get promoted

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 48 posts

Re: Dell workers can stay remote – but they're not going to get promoted

#31

Post by idiotsecant »

barfbagginus wrote: post #28
MichaelMug wrote: post #4

It's important to be aware that in some orgs, being fully remote may potentially impact your promotion opportunities, even if not explicitly stated in a policy. In my personal experience, after going fully remote, my manager implied that it could limit my ability to advance, and that ended up being the case. At least in my company, face time with leadership seems to carry weight when it comes to promotions. For me, t…

That's fine. Just work to sabotage the org because they have a discriminatory noninclusivist and inaccessible policy. When that stops then stop the sabotage. Keep in mind that many people - especially marginalized people and neurodiverse people - are dying or living in poverty because companies are like this. Eventually those kinds of companies will die or change, and we have an opportunity to exert pressure to kill…

Or...get a different job? No need to start the revolution, just vote with your feet.

Re: Dell workers can stay remote – but they're not going to get promoted

#32

Post by justapassenger »

barfbagginus wrote: post #28
MichaelMug wrote: post #4

It's important to be aware that in some orgs, being fully remote may potentially impact your promotion opportunities, even if not explicitly stated in a policy. In my personal experience, after going fully remote, my manager implied that it could limit my ability to advance, and that ended up being the case. At least in my company, face time with leadership seems to carry weight when it comes to promotions. For me, t…

That's fine. Just work to sabotage the org because they have a discriminatory noninclusivist and inaccessible policy. When that stops then stop the sabotage. Keep in mind that many people - especially marginalized people and neurodiverse people - are dying or living in poverty because companies are like this. Eventually those kinds of companies will die or change, and we have an opportunity to exert pressure to kill…

[dead]

Re: Dell workers can stay remote – but they're not going to get promoted

#33

Post by iancmceachern »

Everytime I've been promoted I've been given disproportionately more work/stress/responsibility vs the increase in pay, sometimes not even any increase in pay.

Maybe it's not bad to not seek promotion and use it as a metric if career success?

Re: Dell workers can stay remote – but they're not going to get promoted

#34

Post by barfbagginus »

idiotsecant wrote: post #31
barfbagginus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine. Just work to sabotage the org because they have a discriminatory noninclusivist and inaccessible policy. When that stops then stop the sabotage. Keep in mind that many people - especially marginalized people and neurodiverse people - are dying or living in poverty because companies are like this. Eventually those kinds of companies will die or change, and we have an opportunity to exert pressure to kill…

Or...get a different job? No need to start the revolution, just vote with your feet.

I prefer to vote with my feet by kicking the company in the shins repeatedly until it improves - it's for its own good and for the good of the stakeholders.

That's how I gained control of my current organization. I ousted the unreasoning capitalists and made it a completely remote worker own commune. Soon we'll be open sourcing our product.

Re: Dell workers can stay remote – but they're not going to get promoted

#35

Post by yungporko »

ethanbond wrote: post #15
Chyzwar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never got this explanation. In all teams I was so far, it was clear to everyone on what is individuals performance. It is just managers were pretending not to see, as it would involve them making hard decisions/work. My working theory that, in most medium to large companies most management people are not interested in success/financials of company as they are mostly salaried. Actual success of a project is secondar…

Okay so your theory is that managers know who would be good to promote, but they literally pretend not to and simply choose someone they’d like to hang out with instead?

i have witnessed exactly this first hand

Re: Dell workers can stay remote – but they're not going to get promoted

#36

Post by The_Colonel »

Chyzwar wrote: post #11
ethanbond wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems excessively cynical (and self-excusing). The reality is it’s incredibly hard to measure engineering work even in the best case scenario, never mind something as abstract as software and in as opaque an environment as a modern remote/hybrid workplace. Seems more likely they’re relying on bad heuristics because it’s hard to do much else?

I never got this explanation. In all teams I was so far, it was clear to everyone on what is individuals performance. It is just managers were pretending not to see, as it would involve them making hard decisions/work. My working theory that, in most medium to large companies most management people are not interested in success/financials of company as they are mostly salaried. Actual success of a project is secondar…

Your "extremely clear" is subjective and not measurable, which will become a problem esp. when trying to compare across individual teams.

Re: Dell workers can stay remote – but they're not going to get promoted

#37

Post by The_Colonel »

lamp_book wrote: post #29
StableAlkyne wrote: post #20

Not going to get promoted* *By Dell Most places have politics and limits around promotions. The best way is to self-promote into the role you want at another company. Besides, your employer will drop you in an instant if they think it brings in profit. Why shouldn't you do the same?

Remote is a clear competitive advantage for both attracting talent and reducing cost. Companies that can’t hack it will be left behind.

Despite many people wishing it to be true, it's still very unclear what effect remote work (and the associated async communication) has on productivity. A couple of self-selected (and usually elite) companies are not representative of industry.

Re: Dell workers can stay remote – but they're not going to get promoted

#38

Post by pjmlp »

MichaelMug wrote: post #4

It's important to be aware that in some orgs, being fully remote may potentially impact your promotion opportunities, even if not explicitly stated in a policy. In my personal experience, after going fully remote, my manager implied that it could limit my ability to advance, and that ended up being the case. At least in my company, face time with leadership seems to carry weight when it comes to promotions. For me, t…

In my experience many promotions require some kind of grease games that I am not willing to play along anyway, even on site.

Plus promotions mean even more work selling the soul into the company, no thanks.

Re: Dell workers can stay remote – but they're not going to get promoted

#39

Post by Chyzwar »

The_Colonel wrote: post #36
Chyzwar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never got this explanation. In all teams I was so far, it was clear to everyone on what is individuals performance. It is just managers were pretending not to see, as it would involve them making hard decisions/work. My working theory that, in most medium to large companies most management people are not interested in success/financials of company as they are mostly salaried. Actual success of a project is secondar…

Your "extremely clear" is subjective and not measurable, which will become a problem esp. when trying to compare across individual teams.

Why do you need to compare across teams? Management often create an elaborate once a year process with peer feedback to justify the lack of action. Even then, nobody will write truly negative feedback.

If you are manager of a team, you see individuals output in the form of PRs, bugs, tickets and team activity. Instead of wasting time on one to one, managers should just review people work.

What I often see is a combination of:

  1. It is human nature to promote people that you like. People that play the game will gradually get influence and be promoted even if every project they did was total disaster.
  2. Underperforming developers are promoted to underperforming managers. This save managers from firing a person and keep team output constant without need to hire another competent developer.
  3. Driving organisation change and pushing others to do better is a career suicide. You will be universally disliked as you will highlight other people incompetence and force them to work and make risky decisions.
 4. People base salary is not based on performance, there is just no incentive to do well. Main reason why startups are successful is size and stock options distributed to employees.

Re: Dell workers can stay remote – but they're not going to get promoted

#40

Post by helsinkiandrew »

MichaelMug wrote: post #4

It's important to be aware that in some orgs, being fully remote may potentially impact your promotion opportunities, even if not explicitly stated in a policy. In my personal experience, after going fully remote, my manager implied that it could limit my ability to advance, and that ended up being the case. At least in my company, face time with leadership seems to carry weight when it comes to promotions. For me, t…

> being fully remote may potentially impact your promotion opportunities, even if not explicitly stated in a policy

Exactly. People go to lunch together, for a drink afterwork, or chat in the lift, a manager or other worker might have a technical question/problem and ask someone near them or at the coffee machine.

Whatever policy and advancement process is in place at an organisation - a lot of choice is at the human level (even in the most egalitarian organisation) and more visible people will get the opportunities.

Post reply on HN