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Dell's sudden 5-day RTO order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

businessinsider.com

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Re: Dell's sudden 5-day RTO order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

#11

Post by milesskorpen »

giantg2 wrote: post #8
milesskorpen wrote: post #4

It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to the office means you need to find child care it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time on those days.

It depends on the level of needs for the child. There's a certain age range where a child can basically take care of themself for a few hours bur can't be trusted to be home alone (or haven't met the legal age).

Yeah, I can understand that.

Re: Dell's sudden 5-day RTO order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

#12

Post by giantg2 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #7

This is just downsizing while suppressing negative PR/investor fear. I'd caution anyone who invests or any of these companies that RTO, you should treat this like any other layoff from the perspective of company performance -- because it is.

Bonus points are that the ones affected most are families, so the companies save even more on the benefits they don't have to cover. Basically, this is roundabout maritial/family status employment discrimination.

Re: Dell's sudden 5-day RTO order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

#14

Post by ryandrake »

milesskorpen wrote: post #4

It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to the office means you need to find child care it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time on those days.

This is a good point. When I started working remotely, I was really clear with my spouse that this doesn't mean that I'm suddenly available to supervise the kid, do work around the house, go pick things up at the store, and so on, just because I was physically at home. I'm still working just as if I was in the office, just without having to drive to a separate building.

Re: Dell's sudden 5-day RTO order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

#15

Post by eesmith »

milesskorpen wrote: post #4

It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to the office means you need to find child care it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time on those days.

I don't see mention of someone working full-time while also doing full-time child care. I see people who have part-time child care who now need full-time, like:

> A sales-team member who's a parent said they started searching for additional childcare arrangements

and

> Under the hybrid model, one worker was able to leave the office at lunchtime to manage pickup times and shared childcare duties with their partner, who worked from home. The worker said managers were flexible about people signing on later from home to complete their hours.

> Their productivity numbers had not fallen, they added.

Re: Dell's sudden 5-day RTO order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

#16

Post by SvenL »

milesskorpen wrote: post #4

It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to the office means you need to find child care it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time on those days.

Hanging all day in meetings also feels like not working full time…I have to admit, there are meetings where I sit with my child’s and build legos. Those are the most productive meetings I have…

Re: Dell's sudden 5-day RTO order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

#17

Post by runako »

milesskorpen wrote: post #4

It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to the office means you need to find child care it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time on those days.

Lots of legit reasons. Some I have seen:

- kids do remote school for whatever reason. This works when parent is at home, but not if parent is at the office.

- kids are age when it's okay for them to walk home from school.

- Have to be at work at 9, school drop-off starts at 8:35. School is 45 minutes from the office.

There are a lot of ways people organize their lives.

The cool thing about sales teams is you don't have to micromanage them in the office as they are one of the few teams in the company where results are unambiguous.

Re: Dell's sudden 5-day RTO order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

#18

Post by stonethrowaway »

ryandrake wrote: post #9

> "To harness this energy and grow skills, we believe our sales teams need to be together in the office," the memo added. "Additionally, our data shows that sales teams are more productive when onsite." I wonder if they shared the "data" in the memo. Otherwise, this should be considered a magical myth that the company's leadership simply believes.

They’ll probably justify it using some outdated Gartner shit anyway.

Re: Dell's sudden 5-day RTO order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

#19

Post by rkharsan64 »

milesskorpen wrote: post #4

It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to the office means you need to find child care it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time on those days.

There's nothing wrong with caring for your child. The cause of this situation is insufficient paternal leaves, not having and raising children.

If you as an employer provide a leave of just 15 days for the father (I've seen really big companies do this), and just a few months for the mother, don't be surprised if people lose productivity or just straight up leave when they have children.

Most EU countries have great paternal leave policies. Most other countries could learn something from them.

Somehow, it has become acceptable to forget raising a family for the sake of working, and it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies.

Edit with some more thoughts:

95% of all the time you will spend with your parents is gone. [1]

If your child is raised by a caretaker, you're losing a huge chunk of all the time you'll get with them. On your deathbed, would you feel proud of having delivered another feature instead of spending a bit more time with your family and children?

[1]: https://seeyourfolks.com/

Re: Dell's sudden 5-day RTO order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

#20

Post by jimbob45 »

milesskorpen wrote: post #4

It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to the office means you need to find child care it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time on those days.

You're implying that none of them are on part-time daycare because they should easily be able to convert to full-time daycare now. That is false. You cannot simply convert up if the daycare does not have capacity, to say nothing of the associated costs.
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