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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

#51

Post by ckemere »

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).

This is probably between age 6 and 11, so with the average 1.94 children family with ~2 year spacing, there's a need for something like 7 years of after school monitoring...

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

#52

Post by zzyzxd »

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.

I believe. Because I know companies like this have almost never spent resources to attempt to improve WFH environment.

Remote work is hard, you need technology, culture, and people all working together to make it efficient. You can't just buy a Slack/Zoom license and expect to suddenly have a productive remote work environment. On the other side, they probably have spent decades to improve physical offices, meeting rooms, desks, seats, lights, it's not a surprise that probably every corner of the space was designed for helping people work better. When they say "we believe RTO is better", it's difficult for me to argue, because of course you can believe one way is better than the other since you didn't really try the other!

I wish these companies just find a different way to lie. It's not "we tried and it didn't work". No, you didn't try at all, because leadership does not care or too lazy to change for themselves.

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

#53

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

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.

I think it is more that you can paper over any gaps with hybrid. Kids below a certain age need 100% available adults (not necessarily doing anything, but they need to be there). Leaving a kid alone for “just 15 minutes” is not going to fly. WFH gives you that availability to make a quick cutover to handle any disruption: kid is sick, full day care option does not start until 10a, sitter is late, etc.

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

#55

Post by bee_rider »

CalRobert wrote: post #36
creativenolo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn’t find any mention of employees doing full-time childcare in the article. But I suspect you don’t really understand the issues. If you need an extra hour childcare because of your commute you are unlikely to find childcare that covers that one hour only and works around you. You most likely need to find afternoon/early evening cover. Good luck. Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring th…

Something like that might include a casual arrangement like a neighbour watching them after school before you get home, a grandparent dropping by, etc.

I’m don’t quite get what you mean. It wouldn’t be that unexpected in a nice friendly community for a neighbor to help out occasionally, but people don’t just work occasionally, right?

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

#56

Post by bee_rider »

dboreham wrote: post #42
ryandrake wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

It seems like a healthy relationship to me… they communicated and understood each other’s needs.

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

#57

Post by pie420 »

CalRobert wrote: post #35
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

School buses are increasingly rare - https://www.vox.com/life/373743/school-bus-transportation-ki... My kids start school at 8:40 and the train to work leaves at 8:54, meaning that if everything goes perfectly (no disasters at dropoff, train on time, I get the folding bike unfolded quickly and ride like hell, though I like that part) I get to the office at 9:27. I don't think it would be physically possible for me to…

you don't think it's physically possible to drop your kids off at school early? The school doors are locked until 8:39am and there are zombies and werewolves patrolling outside making entering the building early, or waiting outside physically impossible?

Like it get that remote work is wayyyyyyyyy better and RTO sucks, but let's not make up lies

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

#58

Post by entropicdrifter »

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.

I used to occasionally walk home from school in high school, about 3 miles. Not very many sidewalks as it was a semi-rural area (there were some in town but only for like 1/3rd of the walk), and I had to walk across a highway overpass, which was a bit sketchy to do on foot.

I would beat the bus when I did so, but only because I went to a charter school and there was a solid 40 minutes of sitting and waiting on a second bus at a different school that we were initially bussed to built into the bus commute.

Anyways, just reminiscing.

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

#60

Post by entropicdrifter »

CalRobert wrote: post #48
ars wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sadly untrue where I grew up. The hills were brutal, walking and taking longer was preferable to not feeling your legs lol
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