Well, yeah. Isn’t the whole point of these foolish office mandates to get people to quit? That way they can reduce their workforce without the cost and negative press of another round of layoffs.
Layoffs are not bad press. Not to the shareholders, the only ones who matter to these types. I used to think “oh, layoffs mean the company isn’t doing so good,” but shareholders see “they reduced cost but lost no customers, thus increasing value of the company should it be sold.”
I hate that that’s the case.
I’ve been trying to lose weight, so I chopped off my leg just below the knee. I’m several pounds down, and I didn’t have to stop eating even a calorie. It’s amazing.
The only issue is that now I don’t have a leg and exercise may be difficult….
Yeah but that’s FUTURE you’s problem, not current you, so it’s totally fine!
And you’re still alive right? /s. Akin to the people who said Musk’s firing of twitter employees was a genius move because the site was “still running” after all that.
Yup! And anyone can cauterize a wound, so you don’t even need the extra expense of a hospital trip!
I’m sure the other leg can make up for it, and it should be grateful for the extra work.
Just sell the body to some other rube and move into a new one that still has both legs. It’s easy. What are you, poor?
This is true, and it’s weird because these same companies used to hire like crazy because only growth mattered. Finally real financial discipline is being applied. The tech company I work for is open about the fact that revenue-per-employee is something like half of FAANG companies and they want that to change.
Go into the office and waste every resource you can.
Plug in a fan + heater + aquarium + massage pad at your desk and leave everything on constantly even when you leave
Print every email and throw it in the trash.
Make coffee 50x a day and pour it down the sink
Flush a whole roll of TP every hour
Leave sinks on in the bathroom
Use entire tubs of soap to wash your hands
Turn on the microwave for hours at a time
Heat/cool office thermometer to force HVAC into overdrive
Open new browser windows until your computer crashes and repeat until the network goes down
Company wide meme emails that everyone participates in (team building) that crash servers and dominate inboxes
Pour sugar/crumbs everywhere so there’s pest problems
FORM A UNION
(nuclear option) introduce bedbugs to all your bosses offices
Ok waste paper, mhmm, coffee, yep, microwave, good thinking—
FORM A UNION
Woah, woah calm down Satan.
This guy RTOs.
You forgot the most important one: deliver just enough to not get fired, but way less than you did before RTO. Then point to the stats and show the massive productivity drop after RTO.
All that stuff together is probably only one salary per team, except for the Union. I think the Union is the winning idea.
Bedbugs in executive offices is best. Make them feel the pain.
FORM A UNION
Ok Tyler Durden, that’s about the only reasonable proposal.
negative press
pretty fucked up that quiet firing via RTO bullshit is less negative press than just laying people off
It’s just less visible/explicit. It’s still bad press when it gets noticed and called out like in this thread, it’s just sneakier.
Probably. But this way you have no control on who quit, with a good probability that are the better ones.
True, but execs see statistics, not people. And maybe it’s cheaper to rehire the good ones with a higher salary than deal with severance packages.
Engineering is a skilled trade. We need our own union like every other skilled labor group.
And they are smart enough to put us at the very bottom of the management ladder, even though we’re not actually management. That way we can’t legally unionize. In the U.S. at least.
That way we can’t legally unionize. In the U.S. at least.
This must vary state-by-state, or have exceptions, because I could name examples of them (but I would rather not dox myself).
It’s not every company, but that is what mine did. We’re “management” but we don’t manage anyone.
Given how “business-friendly” the US has become, I imagine there are all sorts of loopholes that only work in favor of the corporation.
There doesn’t need to be loopholes anymore. The SC will just blatantly rule in favor of companies.
In case anyone has missed it, they’re done with loopholes, done with being sly and coy. They are saying the quiet parts, they are marching proudly, they are confident and unafraid. We need to make them afraid again.
The right wing and its corporate masters are done hiding in shadow. Loopholes and subterfuge are for chumps when you can just change the rules without consequence.
Classifying employees as management without having actual management duties is a violation of federal labor law. You might be owed back wages/overtime. Could be worth looking into. A class action lawsuit against a previous employer I had led to hundreds of employees getting checks for thousands of dollars, even after lawyers took their fee.
Some technical jobs can be legally classified exempt from overtime. That is different than being classified as management.
They just give us the PM title and call it a day. No court is going to take that seriously and allow a massive lawsuit.
I agree. I’m in pre-sales working at an AWS partner and honestly our whole team is treated as dispensable.
I have been laid off from every job (5 in total) since the pandemic. We are a subhuman commodity. Companies that are hiring now are exploiting the market by offering lower salaries.
Meta and Amazon are in their hiring season and they’ll start their layoffs again next spring or summer. And somehow, everyone forgets this fucked up cycle keeps happening in perpetuum.
We need to stop being afraid of mentioning the U word. We need better protection and rights as employees.
At Amazon literally every employee is dispensable. They have a firing quota.
Edit: to be clear I’m talking about the Amazon divisions outside the warehouse. They make managers fire a certain percentage of people on a regular basis.
Depending on your country, that is the norm. Engineers here have at least 2 national unions to choose from, finance have a couple of unions, same with teachers, admin staff, etc. etc.
As usual, this is probably just US being victim of 'merican exceptionlism.
“Skilled labor” is such a bullshit concept
There are jobs that take weeks to learn, jobs that take years to learn, and there are even jobs that take a decade+ to learn. You ain’t putting the three-week old newbie in the latter two roles.
That’s true, but it devalues other labor which can be similarly/more difficult or skilled. I skimmed this article, but it seems to convey what I mean:
https://www.shrm.org/executive-network/insights/reshaping-narrative-time-retire-term-unskilled-laborI understand what people mean when they say “skilled labor” and I don’t think it’s intended negatively normally fwiw
Never quit in these situations, or they win.
Do the absolute fucking minimum you can, or even less so you piss off management, until they have to fire you, which they can’t outright as after a certain number of years they have to give warnings and trainings first.
That’s stupid. Don’t get fired for cause, that only hurts you. Spend your time looking for a new job, then quit and leave ASAP.
Split the difference, spend as much of your time on the clock job hunting and doing the bare minimum. Then quit without notice mid shift for the new job.
I work for a real shitty company with a lot of people who do things just to justify their jobs. This leads to stupid mistakes happening that can cause MASSIVE disruptions for the entire workforce. One such stupid mistake happened this week and caused my team (and several others) a shitload of unnecessary work. Yesterday a guy on my team who works in an already understaffed office had enough and told me that he’s done, and quitting. I can’t blame him, he is in a very shitty situation and I wouldn’t have stayed as long as he has… but if he walked out it would have put that entire location, the rest of our team both locally and extended, in a much worse situation. What it wouldn’t do is hurt the company or the executives.
I’m all for people finding better jobs and leaving toxic environments, but it really does no one any good to pick the absolute worst time to walk out. That’s petty and will burn a lot of bridges, and depending on your situation and industry could come back to haunt you down the road.
if he walked out it would have put that entire location, the rest of our team both locally and extended, in a much worse situation. What it wouldn’t do is hurt the company or the executives.
That’s not your problem, that’s the company’s problem. You still get paid the same. If you have issues, take them to your supervisor, and go on with your life.
