this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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[–] Boozilla@lemmy.world 194 points 1 month ago (11 children)

Alternative headlines:

  • Dell wants to contribute to global warming for no good reason.
  • Dell wants to expose workers to death by automobile for no real reason.
[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 168 points 1 month ago

Dell looking to cut workforce without layoffs.

[–] blindbunny@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 month ago

We need an alternative headlines community

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[–] Pogogunner@sopuli.xyz 161 points 1 month ago (7 children)

So Dell wants to do a layoff of sales staff, and is going to lose their best performers first.

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Dell's inside sales team probably has a much flatter bell curve, performance wise, then their outside (traveling) reps.

So yes, they are looking to do a layoff without the headlines, or severance, but probably aren't as concerned where on the bell curve those employees rank.

Middle and lower management of those teams is absolutely sweating bullets about their teams getting wrecked, but big picture, whatever impact the C Suite is expecting, clearly isn't enough to outweigh whatever net outcome they're hoping for here.

Edit: also, I pretty much guarantee that any of their far high-end outliers on the inside sales team bell curve, will be given an exemption by whoever is 2 or 3 levels above their direct manager.

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[–] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 130 points 1 month ago (17 children)

Why the fuck would any office worker whose job is 100% on a computer need to be in an office? I don't understand why companies want to pay for all of that electricity and real estate just to make people sit in cubicles.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 88 points 1 month ago (20 children)

To prevent a crash in the commercial office real estate market.

[–] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 54 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Meh fuck the commercial real estate market. Turn all the buildings into micro apartments or tear them down and install fields of solar panels.

[–] sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works 43 points 1 month ago

I've been screaming its just wage theft. My city provides tax breaks for occupancy (employees prop up the local economy buying lunch). They are making me pay for gas, time, and car maintenance (and lunch but fuck them, I'll just not eat) for this tax break which goes to C-level bonuses/shareholders. Its just another way of skimming off the top of employee wages.

We worked fully remote for nearly 2 years and the hybrid policy just keeps getting worse and worse. Coupled with quarterly riffs, I also suspect this is to avoid severance pay/unemployment while accelerating the down sizing. Yet our CEO bonus keeps going up and up despite our stock plummeting since the end of COVID lock downs.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Tear them down and build houses. Flood the market of every major city with houses so it becomes unprofitable to buy thousands of houses just to rent.

Then home sales go up, and millenials can ACTUALLY buy houses in their lifetime!

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[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Missing the point. The office executives are in bed with the real estate execs.

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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 20 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Some people are bad at working remote, and want to drag the rest of us down with them, too.

Yes, it's a slightly different skill set to work remote. You have to be better at the written word. You can't just roll up to someone's desk and be like "have a minute?" (which is fucking awful anyway). You also need to be responsive and set your status appropriately. A lot of coworkers just wander off and leave their slack status as active. To my mind if you're running an errand longer than taking a dump, you should update your status.

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[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

So managers and other poor personality types have someone to torment. This is said flippantly but I'm quite serious.

[–] curiousaur@reddthat.com 9 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I'll go out on a little limb, it might be sales specific. My company is 100% work from home. All the engineers and product and design work remote, maybe come into the office once a week just because.

The sales team however is strongly encouraged to come in as much as possible. I think it's a morale thing. Sales teams become these weird cults, maybe necessarily. It's really hard to pick up the phone and make a call when you've been rejected 5 times in a row. The teams little ceremonies are designed to help push through that.

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[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

probably because their cost is sunk in the real estate already and no one wants to buy it.

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[–] bamfic@lemmy.world 98 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

Unironically how I live my life

[–] letsgo@lemm.ee 69 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Quite right too. The most important factor for me when buying a computer is that the sales droid is in an office. All those CPU, RAM and disk numbers are secondary to that.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I just buy whichever one is called "gamer computer" and has the prettiest LED lights on the case. Thats how you know it's the good shit!

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[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 37 points 1 month ago

Because making calls and using a computer requires a specific lacale...

[–] mEEGal@lemmy.world 33 points 1 month ago

lmaoooo Murica is just 10 companies in a trenchcoat pretending to be a country

[–] blindbunny@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 month ago (2 children)

They would ask you to return to the ashes if the office burnt down.

[–] Clbull@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I used to work for a major business outsourcer. One of their contingency plans in case an office burned down or had to be evacuated was literally to make everybody work in another office 50 miles away.

It was so bad that they weren't even willing to reimburse travel costs. It was either get there or be fired.

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago

And in an unlikely turn of fate, the backup office burned down too.

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[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I quit answering my dell sales buy. His quotes have been above what I can get buying right off the website. Their premier login must tack on a 25% charge.

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[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 23 points 1 month ago

Now they can play golf together instead of by themselves.

[–] PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk 20 points 1 month ago

Unless it's the initial outreach team or on-premises staff, sales would be one of the few roles totally suited to remote working.

Some of the more creative or collaborative roles I can see the argument for hybrid working - even if it's just one day a week or month in the office - but sales, customer service, or first line support seems to be the last area you'd impose a return to work mandate on.

That said, I haven't got extortionate office rents to justify 😂

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I'll be looking for work in about 3 months and my hard line is wfh.

I will never work in an office with people again.

[–] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I totally get it. Good luck though, make sure you find a landing space first. WFH jobs are decreasing and are getting much more competitive. They're also, unfortunately, prone to be suddenly or slowly shifted to in-office positions. Trying to work a mandatory period of WFH into your contract might be useful, but that'll be pretty difficult.

As long as you are very employable and in the right field you should be fine. Using "transitional WFH" as a way to entice workers is becoming more commonplace and employers are often not transparent about it.

A friend works in HR at a place that hires as "WFH" and doesn't mention at any point that there is already a timeline in place for two days in office after six weeks and then full time in office after three months. It's not stipulated anywhere, it's a "new policy" that comes down... on the same timeline... for every new employee. Lol

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[–] qarbone@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago

I'm beginning to think companies are doing this to get people to leave by themselves

[–] Awesomo85@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The most important lesson I have learned throughout my career is that large corporations are not worth working for. Too much "HR" interference.

The best work environments I have ever been a part of is when I worked for smaller businesses that were still made up of actual people and not nameless/faceless/soulless "corporate HR departments", who's sole purpose is to "make corpo more money no matter the means".

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[–] Kiernian@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago

More like "sales teams are the reason middle managers think ALL employees slack off when not watched."

I get that sales is a SUPER depressing culture, a ridiculously antiquated work environment, and full of some utterly soul-sucking mandates from above, but I have never seen, in any workplace, a team that needs someone constantly riding herd on them like the sales team.

Every place I've worked, every place that a place I've worked has had as a client, and every business I've ever visited had the same problem -- sales people are largely unmotivated because their job has a much higher chance to SUCK OUT LOUD than most of the other jobs at a given company.

When five figure quarterly bonuses, daily friendly team competitions for gift cards, more paid-for-by-the-company outings than the c suites get and pickle ball on company time twice a week aren't enough to hype people up to do their actual job, something is really fucking wrong with the job expectations.

[–] Venicon@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

It’s creeping back in the UK here too. I think hybrid works best for me, can collaborate 2 or 3 times a week and stay at home and be more productive to actually DO the work.

[–] GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Time to fire half the workforce.

Before you do that... I have a better idea

This is how they cull us now. Make us quit.

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