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

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

#41

Post by camgunz »

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.

When they're between 1.5-5 you don't really have to watch them all the time, but you can't leave them alone. Depending on your job (fine for my partner when she's being a PM, not fine for me when I'm being an SWE) that can be manageable.

And daycare is booooooonkers expensive. I'm sure a lot of people were like "hmm, $3k/mo or constant low-key distraction... how bad can it be"

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

#42

Post by dboreham »

ryandrake wrote: post #14
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.

Strong boundaries. But the divorce is going to burn a bunch of your work time..

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

#43

Post by burnte »

garciasn wrote: post #34
burnte wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 never share the data. The data is "management wants it that way." I manage a completely remote team, I couldn't care less if they were in person, they work fantastically this way.

Of course they don’t; because, none of this has anything to do with any measurable KPI(s) other than “we said so.” E: forgot a quotation mark. Please forgive my indiscretions.

Exactly. I get just as much from my people if not more when they're remote because I hire good people with good work ethics. They're responsible people who do the jobs I trust them to do. This is just control-fetish appeasement.

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

#44

Post by hexfish »

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.

Implying you're full time producing value - head in the game - when you're in the office?

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

#45

Post by xutopia »

jhoechtl wrote: post #25

This one I do not understand. How could you do any meaningful work in Home Office without child care? I mean did they help their kids doing their home work while on job? That was ok during the covid craze but otherwise a no go.

It's not having full time kids at home it's having real world schedules that make it really hard to fit a commute on top of picking up kids.

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

#46

Post by rootusrootus »

linotype wrote: post #13

So are parents to blame for RTO then? I’m starting to wonder as the child-free folks I know are producing more WFH than they were pre pandemic.

> So are parents to blame for RTO then?

If you need a scapegoat. The correct place for the blame is management.

Nearly everyone on our team does more work from home than they did sitting at the office. There are a couple notable slackers, but they're not parents. I suspect that's because parents have necessarily become adept at making a schedule and sticking to it.

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

#47

Post by ckemere »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #29
runako wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

These are all legitimate but I found my self a bit bewildered that the concept of a school bus is absent entirely from the apparent thought process, given I rode the bus for the vast majority of my primary and secondary schooling

As a parent in the Houston Independent School district, one of the recent changes made by the state-appointed superintendent (we were taken over recently) was to fire all the bus drivers and rehire as contractors. The result is that elementary and middle school are combined, bus stops are up to 3 miles from home address, and bus trips are often in excess of 2 hours (for what should be ~20 minute drives). I also took the bus all growing up, but I walked a few blocks to my bus, and the route was only about 50% longer than driving directly.

Sadly, while we are all used to Texas state government hostility to public goods, even in my home state of Maryland, apparently bus trip lengths have now doubled. In an era of declining public investment, it's apparently easier to save money on non-teacher staffs...

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

#48

Post by CalRobert »

ars wrote: post #31
entropicdrifter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all legitimate but I found my self a bit bewildered that the concept of a school bus is absent entirely from the apparent thought process, given I rode the bus for the vast majority of my primary and secondary schooling

At least by me you have to be more than 1.5miles from the school to get a bus - that's a half hour walk! Doable certainly, but not fun, especially in the winter - or worse, when it's hot! And teens need to live even farther from their school to qualify for a bus, but teens don't walk any faster than non teens. Most kids don't really want to spend the better part of an hour each way going to/from school.

A bike can make 1.5 miles an easy ride (I rode 4 miles to school in HS) but it's really rare to have safe bike routes in most places, sadly.

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

#49

Post by 4star3star »

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.

Think elementary age children who go to school. Most parents would not want a first grader to have to be home alone for a couple hours. School age kids don't need 100% interaction while at home - they just need to be safe, and their parents need to be available occasionally. I would imagine returning to the office means finding after-school care in many cases.

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

#50

Post by whatever1 »

Commuting sucks, remote has enormous benefits yada yada, however: The problems (childcare, commuting, etc) that the employees present as huge obstacles, were there before covid and people were managing. The c suites will not break a sweat over these.

On the essence of the policy, this is a quiet layoff, same as Amazon's (which further threatens managers with layoffs if they do not enforce the 5day rto for their reports).

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