back to article Dell ends hybrid work policy, demands return-to-office despite remote work pledge

Dell Technologies intends to end its hybrid work arrangement in March, requiring those previously allowed to toil from home part-time to spend their entire five-day work week within corporate walls. The IT biz also expects those who work remotely but within an hour's drive of a Dell office to commute in every working day …

  1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "That email chain could have been a 30-second chit-chat"

    And the next day everyone who took part in the chit-chat has a different recollection of what was decided. And the chit-chat was probably a break in the 3 hour meeting.

    Asked whether Dell has any financial data that suggests working from the office leads to better productivity or results, a spokesperson said, "We continually evolve our business so we're set up to deliver the best innovation, value and service to our customers and partners. That includes more in-person connections to drive market leadership."

    That's a really long-winded way to say "No."

    1. Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck

      "well, it does give our outdated deadweight management something to micromanage...."

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        "well, it does give our outdated deadweight management something to micromanage...."

        Part of the issue some companies might have is not having managers that can set goals and supervise a department when they can't see the members. For some work it is a benefit to have people in the same room working together, but I've been in plenty of situations where having that creates too many distractions. This is made worse as companies have moved from offices, to cubicles to long tables with no assigned seats. Some jobs need almost no in-person interaction. I've noticed in some offices that even though everybody is "at work", they communicate via phone, email, PM's and rarely face to face so increasing the separation from meters to kilometers isn't a big deal.

        In amongst this are people that are making demands that government subsidize childcare more or single mums that say they can find a job since what they qualify for won't pay enough to put their children in care while they are at work. A WFH position could solve the problem. The arguments that factory workers can't work from home so why should somebody else be allowed are silly. It's like saying that since construction workers don't get HVAC neither should office workers.

        Hybrid working can be a happy meet in the middle. Groups get together as needed and then fan out to work on their bit of work whereupon the group reconvenes to put the pieces together. Members of the group can communicate if they like or if there is a need. A company can maintain premises that are mainly a large set of meeting rooms for groups to schedule as needed with some offices for more static functions such as shipping/receiving. If they want a London address, fine, they can have a small suite and save heaps of money over needing several floors of a high rise so employees have a place to sit and plug in their noise-cancelling headphones to recharge. With the savings, they can also have a location in Leicester, Birmingham and Glasgow that act as sales offices along with whatever other functions are appropriate. .

    2. simonlb Silver badge
      Facepalm

      a thirty-second in-person conversation can replace an email discussion that goes on for hours or days

      Would a Zoom, Teams or similar video call suffice, as that can also be recorded?

      1. tyrfing

        This assumes you are allowed to record, and think to do so, and can search the recording.

        Many organizations don't allow it, or allow only for certain purposes (none of which are "quick calls"). Sure you can search the transcript, if one is produced.

        1. sabroni Silver badge
          Facepalm

          re: This assumes you are allowed to record, and think to do so, and can search the recording.

          Um, you can't do any of those things with a 30 second in-person conversation either....

      2. doublelayer Silver badge

        Yes, a video call can replace an in-person discussion most of the time. However, in my experience, it isn't as easy to have an impromptu video call. Many people, sometimes including me, tend to schedule those on the calendar meaning hours of delay and avoid having calls unless it is obvious that we need one. Therefore, in my experience, there is an advantage to quick communication when people are nearby one another and meet anyway. Depending on the company though, going to the office might not do any of those things. If the team is not in the same place, then being in the office just means that scheduling a video also involves finding a space to be in while you do it or dealing with office noise. Some teams might not need to do this as often either, making the office an expensive way to get that marginal improvement, both in straightforward financial costs of having the building and in other costs like people being more tired after commuting.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          "Therefore, in my experience, there is an advantage to quick communication when people are nearby one another and meet anyway."

          And the one who was deep into something gets their concentration broken.

          1. MachDiamond Silver badge
            Pint

            "And the one who was deep into something gets their concentration broken."

            Have a coupon for a free pint!

          2. doublelayer Silver badge

            This is a reason why I prefer offices with walls. It introduces a barrier to someone interrupting you for ten seconds, but if a quick meeting is useful, then it's not hard to have one. Another thing a lot of modern offices have not bothered with, eliminating or at least significantly reducing their utility. Of course, depending on what you're doing, the frequency of when that is useful varies. Even limited to my experience as a programmer, some tasks involve a lot more coordination among a team of programmers and others can be done without much collaboration at all. Jobs other than programmer probably have a lot more differences that I'm mostly unaware of.

            This is where someone trying to optimize productivity would compare the options and determine what worked the best, possibly with some experiments. If close collaboration was useful, then they could put those people together or just encourage people to set up calls quickly and flexibly rather than sticking to the stricter schedules I'm used to. If people didn't need that, then they could use different structures. Instead, they seem to select something and just mandate it based on no reasons at all, because if they had any reasoning, they could probably get somewhere by being explicit about what their reason was.

        2. Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck

          Very childish way to handle the modern office phone call. Whether we had cameras on or off on our teams calls depended on whether we were planning to share a screen or VM window during the discussion or not. We rarely used video of _ourselves_ except for team meetings and gatherings, and those videos often got shut down once a presentation was started by whomever was running the show.

          You remind me of people that used to let all their calls in the office go to voicemail so they never had to actually talk to anybody. That never worked with me. If I needed something from you and you weren't answering, I went and found you wherever you were trying to hide from your job.

          1. doublelayer Silver badge

            Perhaps it was unclear from the two comments I wrote saying so, but I wasn't describing the rigid scheduling as positive. However, if you're going to argue against it, you have to understand why it happens. It happens for the reason that people disagreed with my comment: expecting to be able to call someone and talk right now interrupts those people during their work. Many people I know pushed back against that, and I think they pushed back too far to the extent that, if a discussion is going to take long enough that it doesn't happen over chat, they want it scheduled with a calendar invitation. This is especially true when it's more than two people meeting. However, your approach can also annoy people who are concentrating on something and are expected to stop working on their thing to help you at a time of your choosing, which isn't likely to help either.

            I also agree with you about video. I don't turn it on and have never found that to be a problem. However, there are some people who want to have video on and will ask you to if you don't, and even if it's just a voice call, there are reasons why people might seek out a separate space in an office to have the call. Maybe they find it distracting if there's a lot of background noise during their call. Maybe they plan on discussing things they don't want anyone to easily overhear (so it looks like the ransomware was worse than we thought / the programmer [who sits next to me] had a bug in their code which broke us for two weeks and refused to fix it / can you confirm that they are going to cancel that project). An office without walls can still be unhelpful for calls even if the cameras stay off.

        3. John Robson Silver badge

          Ask question on chat application, get an answer that's maybe not quite right - "can we chat", person presses the chat key and the call is established.

          How hard is that?

          But then I haven't really used email for work in a while... Maybe the issue is that you are expecting people to use email when other, more flexible communications options would serve better - a 30 seconds chat isn't a replacement for an email chain, because it should never have been an email chain if it could be resolved in a thirty second conversation.

      3. MachDiamond Silver badge

        "Would a Zoom, Teams or similar video call suffice, as that can also be recorded?"

        Shrink that down to a phone call between 2-3 people rather than firing up the spyware. It's why I discourage customers from contacting me via Text. I used to be able to have Text shut off, but the phone co. won't do that anymore. I can have an interaction via a voice call that takes a couple of minutes rather than Texts going back and forth for 1/2 an hour. I can also put my head set on and be doing other things while talking to somebody. With Text, it's that alone. For me, Text is a waste of time. It's better to drop me an email with everything I need to know if time isn't a big factor and not a string of emojis to work through.

        Not being in-person and using an audio-only communication method removes the arm waving and funny faces, but maybe that's a good thing.

        1. John Robson Silver badge

          It's almost as if different people communicate in different ways... who ever would have thunk it?

          1. FirstTangoInParis Silver badge

            Oh have a trillion upvotes! Different people DO communicate (and learn) in many different ways. At university in the 80s, lecturers asked us to buy their big expensive book. I decided I’d watch the lectures instead and take notes. Not that I am a skinflint (ok just a teensy bit) but I’m never going to read the book as that makes me doze off. Nowadays we have e books which can be searched for the right bit, and with a subscription is massively cheaper too.

          2. MachDiamond Silver badge

            "It's almost as if different people communicate in different ways... who ever would have thunk it?"

            We also communicate different things in different ways.

    3. keithpeter Silver badge
      Pint

      "That email chain could have been a 30-second chit-chat [on Zoom | Teams | Whatever]"

      My experience suggests that synchronous video conferencing can work for gaining a common understanding, and indeed be useful in fending off email chains of prodigious size and complexity. Depends on how things are in the organisation.

      @simonlb got in first. Icon.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        If you are spread out over different time zones who gets to join the meeting at their local 3am?

        1. keithpeter Silver badge
          Windows

          @ Dr S

          True and valid point but I can't help thinking that such a distributed team would not, presumably, be subject to a Return To Office mandate unless the company had a very large travel budget.

          I was thinking more of the situation I have which is 15 centres in a large city and managers trying to manage aspects of provision across those centres. In fact come to think of it some of the buildings I have worked in would require a trek with provisions for some meetings.

          1. Joe W Silver badge

            The menu states "an office" not the whole team in a single office location. So: no. They will have to RTO and still pick up the phone to talk (or video call). I have to work with people across the country, so RTO would be really stupid. I have a small team locally, we meet in person on two days (i.e. we are in the same office location on those days and have a 30 min meeting) every two weeks (yeah... about,,, not really constantly). Good enough

            1. keithpeter Silver badge
              Windows

              Yes, I'm in favour of local arrangements and 'good enough' is fine in my book.

              OA was suggesting that Dell is not mandating RTO for those more than 1 hour from an office.

          2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            A company can have offices in different time zones on different continents.

            1. SundogUK Silver badge

              Pretty sure they're not mandating a return to the office for people who work in a different country. Although there could obviously be places in Europe where your commute is less than an hour and still crosses an national border...

          3. MachDiamond Silver badge

            "I was thinking more of the situation I have which is 15 centres in a large city"

            In a big city, getting around during a business day can be significant amounts of time. It can be faster to travel twice as far between villages rather hiring sherpas and mounting an expedition across a big city.

        2. MachDiamond Silver badge

          "If you are spread out over different time zones who gets to join the meeting at their local 3am?"

          For people where that's an issue, it's moved away from WFH to people on different continents or on opposites sides of one.

        3. SundogUK Silver badge

          The Americans.

    4. Fred Daggy Silver badge
      Holmes

      One size does NOT fit all

      Counterpoint "Your 30 second meeting is my 30 minute context break". Meaning the bozo that comes up to me when I am in deep thought just cost me 30 minutes of productivity as I zen back in to the topic.

      Sure, some "thought lite" topics are much quick to get back to. But if I wanted thought lite, i'd be in management.

      Seriously, its like "there is only one true way" when forcing "back to the office" mandates. Real life means there are a variety of solutions to the problem at hand.

  2. steviebuk Silver badge

    All quit so we don't have to pay you

    That is what these return to work movements are about. Hoping everyone then quits so they don't have to pay them redundancy.

    1. NapTime ForTruth
      Mushroom

      Re: All quit so we don't have to pay you

      The ideal employee response would be for every employee to quit. Every employee in every service, business unit, location just stops showing up.

      It's not a practical response, but it's probably the right one. The alternative is something along the lines of "...but if I don't let them run me over with a truck twice a day, how ever will I make a living?"

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge
        Holmes

        Re: All quit so we don't have to pay you

        In reality, people need to eat.

        So what actually happens is that most people "accept" it, but put less effort in, stop doing some of the "above and beyond" that all companies rely on, and begin looking for somewhere else.

        So productivity falls immediately - if only because everyone is tired and demotivated.

        Then over the next "while" the best employees find another job elsewhere. Perhaps not WFH, but a shorter commute or sufficiently more money to cover their losses.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: All quit so we don't have to pay you

          "Perhaps not WFH, but a shorter commute or sufficiently more money to cover their losses."

          Or perhaps a shorter work day to absorb the time taken by commuting.

      2. Kane
        Joke

        Re: All quit so we don't have to pay you

        ""...but if I don't let them run me over with a truck twice a day, how ever will I make a living?""

        Have you any idea how much damage this bulldozer would suffer if I were to let it roll straight over you?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: All quit so we don't have to pay you

          I'd be more concerned about the resulting paperwork if you did though.

          1. Kane
            Joke

            Re: All quit so we don't have to pay you

            "I'd be more concerned about the resulting paperwork if you did though."

            They'd be in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard'.

    2. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: All quit so we don't have to pay you

      "That is what these return to work movements are about. Hoping everyone then quits so they don't have to pay them redundancy."

      Yep, and then they can get back to managing people the way they think they know how. Sorting out how to manage people working remotely might be turning out to be too hard.

  3. ReggieRegReg

    Most companies are starting to enforce at least three days in the office - being cynical I suspect there's something else going on - perhaps someone is asking the obvious question:- "if home is that person's usual place of work - when was the last time a work area assessment was done? Are the lighting conditions correct? The chair? The desk? Would companies become liable for maintaining the standard home "office" (kitchen table?) working conditions?

    1. sarusa Silver badge
      Devil

      I think it's mostly managers and execs realizing that WFH exposes that they're not doing much, and the micromanagers and managers/execs who loooooove walking around and wasting your time for half an hour talking about the vacation they took recently being upset they have nobody to 'manage'.

      The other thing, as noted repeatedly, is getting people to quit without having to call it a layoff.

      1. ReggieRegReg

        And the damage to property investments - an accidental bit of self-harm. The value of commercial square footage starting falling off a cliff - it has stabilised now.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nonsense

    With IM and video calling you can still have that chit chat.

    What about all the interrupting chit-chats that aren't work related that happen in the office? And people taking sick days because they're burnt out from commuting.

    Also these boneheads don't realise that most people are more that capable of wasting work time just to get to 5pm at a desk in the office as they are at home.

    And as a counterpoint it's gone midnight as I type this, and because my brain is in the right mode I'm coding. If I were forced into an office, my employer would not get that benefit.

    1. abend0c4 Silver badge

      Re: Nonsense

      It's not even clear that "those who work remotely but within an hour's drive of a Dell office" will be returning to the same office as their colleagues. Or indeed their managers.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Nonsense

        Or that the Dell office has space for them.

        1. tyrfing

          Re: Nonsense

          There was a recent meeting where someone asked our boss about return to work (2 out of 5) and office space. Since before everyone went home the office was jammed, this was a valid concern.

          He waffled about the studies they had done, then said two things:

          1. we could support more, e.g. 3 out of 5.

          2. they based this on "less me and more we".

          The second one parses out to everyone getting a small desk, sufficient to put your laptop down. Everything else is "collaboration space". I guess on the idea that the return to office is to enable greater amounts. Never mind that the ones who haven't yet returned are the ones who don't need to collaborate, or only rarely.

          The first point seems to parse out to "don't complain, or we will make it worse for you".

          1. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Nonsense

            "The second one parses out to everyone getting a small desk, sufficient to put your laptop down. "

            Forget working on a laptop. I'm spoiled rotten with 2x 27" monitors at a nicely ergonomic height. (Self-employed, btw). I would never work in a "hotel" office where I had to cart around a laptop and a pack full of office supplies. Not everybody is going to be able to work on a tiny patch of table with colleagues having conversations on their phone cms away. Last night I was working on a project for a customer and had all sorts of stuff laid out around me along with my main reference books on the shelf above and to the left. I've shuddered in horror at what companies have done to the office worker in terms of space to do their jobs.

        2. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Nonsense

          "Or that the Dell office has space for them."

          Or that the offices can accommodate the required number of reserved loos with different pictograms on them.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Nonsense

          You clearly haven't been to Round Rock then ....

  5. MrRtd

    Talk about first world problems

    At this point, in office requirements are the least of any American's problem.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Talk about first world problems

      This is true, but why add an extra layer of diarrhoea to that particular turd sandwich

      1. Like a badger

        Re: Talk about first world problems

        Because it's always the garnish that truly makes a dish.

    2. TimMaher Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: “least of any American’s problem.”

      Yup.

      You have Donald.

      1. MrMerrymaker

        Re: “least of any American’s problem.”

        Yeah that was his point.

  6. Mickey Porkpies
    Facepalm

    blah blah

    This more about cost tied into property investment and how we can't have all these posh offices empty and some tired old working practices rather than data driven productivity.To get the best people Dell need to compete with employers offering hybrid approach and for me as a corp customer this speak volumes on the old dog no new tricks scale. Anyone who has had the misfortune to trial their hybrid personal AV kit will know how little they know about how people work from home.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: blah blah

      Thing is, they used to be more into home office. And this was years before COVID. They were downsizing office space across the board. Then out of the blue it’s all RTO.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: blah blah

        Short organisational memories. They see others doing it and join on the bandwagon.

    2. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: blah blah

      "This more about cost tied into property investment and how we can't have all these posh offices empty and some tired old working practices rather than data driven productivity."

      To me, that's a "sunk-cost" fallacy. Putting people back in those offices means spending more on the property rather than finding a way to get rid of it. Accountants will see that the HVAC is still costing money since it can't be turned off completely but don't understand how much harder is must be run to take away the heat from a load of people and their machinery. If it's a downtown office in a dense city center, all of the services required will cost more since a plumber is going to adjust their rates to cover the congestion charges, the cost to park, the time it takes to get to and from. It's not like they can take public transportation with all of their tools and parts. For a large office, there's nearly always some sort of trade working on something and all of that comes at a premium.

      If they can't offload the property right away, it will be less expensive to have it vacant than occupied, just because.

    3. ReggieRegReg

      Re: blah blah

      Yes that's a big part of it - companies fell over themselves to reduce office space during C19 thinking they are saving money. Then it probably dawned on them their capital investments, pensions, lending, everything is tied into the real estate market - they were cutting their own throats.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: blah blah

        "Then it probably dawned on them their capital investments, pensions, lending, everything is tied into the real estate market - they were cutting their own throats."

        It had been thought that investing in commercial space/buildings was as risk free as one could get. Covid lockdowns come along and the real risk-free investment is finally revealed, toilet paper!

  7. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

    Puffery rejected

    That Dell "oh we didn't really mean what was said" has more than a smack of Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company about it. It is one of the defining cases in UK contract law, rejecting a number of defenses, including puffery. Yes, it's a UK case but the principles seem sound enough.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Puffery rejected

      "Injects bleach, inserts powerful light source, swallows horse wormer"

    2. AVR Bronze badge

      Re: Puffery rejected

      Lacks the explicit offer seen in that case though; accepting a job where permanent WFH isn't referenced in the offer would be a much less open and shut case. If an offer is made like that, yeah you could try to take them on. And if you were in many parts of the US they could then fire you anyway for minimal or no reason.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: Puffery rejected

        In the civilised world, anything that's "normal practice" for longer than about six months becomes contractual.

        So if you've been WFH or Hybrid for six months, it's part of your contract now and it is unlawful for your employer to change it unilaterally.

        Unless you're in the USA, in which case you can probably get unemployment benefit but nowt else.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Puffery rejected

          "In the civilised world, anything that's "normal practice" for longer than about six months becomes contractual."

          Good luck arguing that. Getting everything written into an employment contract is vitally important. Don't rely on verbal or inferred/implied. If you take a job with the understanding that it's WFH or hybrid, that should be in your contract. For positions that don't normally come with a contract, you have to accept that terms and conditions may alter with minimal notice.

          1. Richard 12 Silver badge

            Re: Puffery rejected

            No, it's the actual law in the UK, EU and a few other places.

            You'd need to show evidence those conditions existed of course, but proving where someone has been working is very easy.

            Other ways an employer might screw over their employees like a verbal promise at hiring or removing a future benefit are more difficult to prove, of course. So make sure you forward emails about such things to an account outside their control.

            None of this is available in the USA of course, and it also tends to shock US-headquartered companies when they lose the tribunals.

  8. sarusa Silver badge
    Devil

    Well, it's Dell.

    Dell is a shitty mediocre company making shitty mediocre (but cheap!) PCs for shitty mediocre companies, and they've got the management to go with it.

    If you have email chains going on for days it's because your IT is completely effed up, as you'd expect from a shitty mediocre corporation. Nobody should be doing timely things in email, it's for slow things. They should be using slack (or similar), where I can get answers to things much faster, but still at the other person's convenience, instead of walking halfway across the building to disturb them when they're in the middle of something.

    And then of course when WFH you don't have to put up with the f@#$ing sales guy with his phone on speaker mode and top volume and him bellowing into the phone about the stupidest shit which may or may not be about actual work. Numerous studies show that when people are working in typical shitty open offices, they all put on noise cancelling headphones/earbuds and interact even less with their cow-orkers because they f@#$ing hate them from inescapable close contact with them.

    In other words, this is the typical bad management flailing of a company whose stock is going down down down down down.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Well, it's Dell.

      "Nobody should be doing timely things in email"

      I've successfully conducted a conversation in near real time between myself in UK & someone in California discussing a piece of genealogical evidence that had just come to light. Near real time because it would involve pauses to thing about something or look something up. But we used the evidence to resolve a problem by email in under an hour. It was as effective as standing in front of a board brainstorming.

      1. sabroni Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: discussing a piece of genealogical evidence that had just come to light

        Good job that didn't need to be private.

        But it was a fascinating read!

    2. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: Well, it's Dell.

      This isn't about email versus chat like Slack or Teams. Either of those can be used for a long thread with lots of participants who misinterpret things or have communication difficulties. In most cases, I prefer email because it makes it a little easier to organize things if you have good subject lines and you can manually organize threads. I certainly do when there are twenty of them that may all get updated. Nothing prevents a Slack thread from going similarly off the rails. It isn't necessarily any faster than email because people can wait to write their message until they have information they need or just some spare time.

      The tool is not the factor here. The factor is knowing when a synchronous meeting would be more efficient and doing it, ideally just as long as necessary to resolve this issue and then stopping. In an earlier comment, I've stated my anecdotal experience that there can be an advantage to an environment where meeting synchronously is easy so people do it more often, but that most return to office schemes do not create that environment. From what I understand of Dell's plan, they are unlikely to get that advantage but are likely to harm and annoy their employees.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Well, it's Dell.

        "This isn't about email versus chat like Slack or Teams."

        I agree. The issue is more one of being face to face, in real time communication (voice call, etc) or batched comms using something such as email. Each one can be appropriate for different sorts of needs. Time is often an issue so email/text or other method that swaps written messages can be the slowest if speaking the information would be faster and the accuracy was the same. If you are conversing with somebody and need to pause frequently to find a reference, make a calculation or consider you answer, email might be slower, but also much more accurate. The only advantage I can think of for in-person communications is where sketching/diagramming will be very useful. It can be done electronically, but we all learn how to wield a pencil from a young age so we can be better with that over using a mouse to draw something. I know a few artists that are hopeless on a computer, but can make amazing drawings by hand. I can't even get them to learn how to make good scans of their work so I wind up doing it for them.

  9. JimmyPage
    FAIL

    Cognitive dissonace

    If firms flogging IT kit to make productivity better can't make their own productivity better, then it's not the best advert.

    Customer : "I'm setting up a business with remote working, what IT kit do I need ?"

    Dell: "Ours, of course"

    Customer "But even you don't use it to remote work. Sorry. Who else is there ?"

    Also an inability to get remote working isn't the workers problem. It's the several layers of parasitic management that sits above them. Layers that are vital to ensure opaqueness in all decisions so there is no danger of the executives getting the blame.

    1. ITMA Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Cognitive dissonace

      Dell seem to have a revolving door of account managers, especially for small businesses.

      We regularly get new ones we've never heard of, sometimes two or three at a time. Seems like they are all trying steal each other's commission.

      And all seem to be from the same geographic area where call centres (and labour) are cheap.

  10. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

    That email chain could have been a 30-second PHONE CALL

    FTFY.

  11. spireite Silver badge

    Not improved the bottom line after RTO??

    Well, colour me surprised.

    Everyone I know who has been forced to RTO, had switched into a quiet quitting mode.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Probably fed up with everyone "working" from home ignoring their email.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Those working from home ignoring their email to get stuff done. When they're in the office it's so much easier for a micro-mangler to wander up and personally break someone's productive train of thought.

    2. JimmyPage
      Flame

      Probably fed up with everyone "working" from home ignoring their email.

      If you need a response in real time, then you shouldn't be using email.

      Once again, this is a management problem.

      For myself, having worked on the RFCs in the 80s (that were already over a decade old) on email, I find the modern obsession with phone calls a fucking insulting mystery, Especially when trying to contact companies.

      You know the world has gone upside down when 20-something year olds are telling 60 year olds that wanting to use email is "so last year" and you really need to call.

      And you can shove your "X" right up your arse.

      1. Philo T Farnsworth Silver badge

        Re: Probably fed up with everyone "working" from home ignoring their email.

        > If you need a response in real time, then you shouldn't be using email.

        And I wonder how often that occurs.

        When the building's on fire, maybe?

        Taking a moment to give a bit of thought to a message instead of blurting something out or blasting off a text has its advantages.

        And, yes, I do find it mildly incongrouous that email is now to be considered thoughtful, given its earlier history of flame wars and such nonsense, but perhaps that's just because I've aged (as opposed to have grown up).

        A few years ago, due to a slow healing injury, I spent six months out of the office, working remotely, and look back upon that half year as some of the most productive time spent in that particular job.

        No two hour meetings, no jabbering lab assistants in the hallways, nobody's contorted idea of music blaring away*, no delivery people trundling outside my office door.

        Virtually all of my communication was via email, other than a weekly telephone call that rarely lasted more than ten minutes, since I arranged it so that I could present first then hang up and get back to work.

        Not to mention that my own home computing setup was far better than the antiquated trash they have me.

        And, of course, not having to commute was like getting a couple hundred bucks a month raise at no cost to them.

        ________________

        * To be sure, they probably thought the same of my notion of music, so fair's fair.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Probably fed up with everyone "working" from home ignoring their email.

          "> If you need a response in real time, then you shouldn't be using email."

          I can see where it would be better to send information via email for accuracy reasons. If there's a time constraint, a follow up call to let the person know the email has been sent and a timely response is needed will work. I prefer my customers do that since it's easy to talk while driving if I have my headset on but I'd have to stop if I needed to make notes. They can tell me about what they need and send the particulars in an email and I know I'll need to check that as soon as I can. I can also tell them when that might be.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Probably fed up with everyone "working" from home ignoring their email.

        Right we should resort to nuclear signal fires since they also don't pick up the phone ever, and are 400 miles away.

        The level of defensiveness around this is very very telling.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Probably fed up with everyone "working" from home ignoring their email.

          The 400 miles away might mean a different time zone so they've wither finished work or not yet got up. I'm sure you'll personally be delighted to be woken up an hour early to pick up a work phone call or interrupt your evening meal.

          "The level of defensiveness around this is very very telling."

          Indeed it is.

      3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Probably fed up with everyone "working" from home ignoring their email.

        "If you need a response in real time, then you shouldn't be using email."

        And if you don't need a response in real time you should consider whether demanding it anyway might constitute an unwarranted interruption - and realise email might be better.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Probably fed up with everyone "working" from home ignoring their email.

          Most unwarranted interruptions actually come from people who are (maybe subconsciously) avoiding having to engage their brain. Or read. Sending an e-mail would involve having to come up with a fully formed question after having at given the subject at least a moment of consideration (actually, that's wishful thinking, because you can take any e-mail, hit 'forward', pick a distribution group out of the hat and simply put 'FYI' on the head of it.).

      4. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Probably fed up with everyone "working" from home ignoring their email.

        "You know the world has gone upside down when 20-something year olds are telling 60 year olds that wanting to use email is "so last year" and you really need to call."

        They want to Text. I see plenty of people that will dash off a text while out shopping to see if their SO would like this or that for tonight's dinner. WTH, why not call and ask them. In the mean time, they're blocking up the aisle with the trolley since they couldn't be bothered to pull off to the side so people can pass.

      5. An_Old_Dog Silver badge
        Windows

        "So Last Year"

        Ask "the kids" if they've chopped off their feet as "so last year" and unnecessary, now that we've got mobility trolleys.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Headline: 41 years later, Dell discovers "doublethink"

    Orwell predicted this. Big Brother Mike instructs us to believe simultaneously that:

    “If you are counting on forced hours spent in a traditional office to create collaboration and provide a feeling of belonging within your organization, you’re doing it wrong. (Michael Dell, 9/7/2022 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/culture-key-hybrid-work-michael-dell/)”

    and

    "Starting March 3, all hybrid and remote team members who live near a Dell office will work in the office five days a week".

    Meanwhile, employees have no designated work areas, no local personal item storage, no dedicated PCs, and no clue as to how these directives will be implemented. And 12,500 layoffs later, one must wonder if this RTO is really an enabling technique to reduce headcount since AI is going to fix all of our problems and satisfy all of our needs. Or if it's just a means of kissing Trumpian ass because His Orangeness hath decreed that all Federal employees shall RTO, and since Dell has a significant number of Federal contracts, they better damn sight toe the line.

    Sad. So sad.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Headline: 41 years later, Dell discovers "doublethink"

      I suppose a post on linkedin doesn't count.

      1. MrMerrymaker

        Re: Headline: 41 years later, Dell discovers "doublethink"

        LinkedIn never counts.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Headline: 41 years later, Dell discovers "doublethink"

          Exactly. So Dell the man never really said it and it isn't in any way hypocrisy.

    2. SundogUK Silver badge

      Re: Headline: 41 years later, Dell discovers "doublethink"

      Statements made almost three years apart are not 'simultaneous'. People who change their minds due to changed circumstances are generally held to be more intelligent than those who can't.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Headline: 41 years later, Dell discovers "doublethink"

        The first statement didn't hold that "For now... " or "Given the current climate..."; it was presented as a statement of fact. The facts didn't change in the intervening three years. As a former Dell employee, I can attest to the increased productivity and employee satisfaction that arose from the location flexibility that came from that policy (COVID or not, it still made more sense than forcing people to sit in cubes). Some folks work better in an office setting. Let them. Some folks work better remotely. Let them. Apparently Dell didn't learn that lesson, even as the company paid it lip service.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IT Consultant

    "Asserting a thirty-second in-person conversation can replace an email discussion that goes on for hours or days". This was written by someone who hasn't actually worked in a modern office for years. No one in a modern office sends emails like that anymore. If you are remote, you either send a chat message or click and make a call using the message app, That call can be a video call if needed. Need other people in the call? Just add them with a click of a button. It doesn't matter where they are physically. Things have moved on a lot since the author of that comment actually worked in an office. For the last 30 years I have worked as a permanent employee and as a Consultant at large banks, insurance companies, IBM and yes, even at Dell itself. It used to be that co-location was critical for an office to work effectively. But this isn't the year 2000 any more. We proved during Covid this can work, and it's only managers who either are bad at their job, or have let the tech in their office get so far behind the times, that still think people need to be co-located. Either way, that is a problem with the managers, not the people doing the work.

    1. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: IT Consultant

      "still think people need to be co-located."

      Way back when, there wasn't the communication options there are now so having everybody in one office with mail boys running about with memos was the norm. Marketing would need to be in the office so management could review and approve (or demand changes) to new advertising any time they wished. With all of that digital, those teams could be anywhere and provide samples of what they are working on in minutes. There isn't the need to put together a whole presentation with mocked up materials to pitch the concepts to management.

      There's still an awful lot of bias for certain industries to be in certain cities, but a token presence can be just as good as having to lease several floors to have everybody there. Let's say that instead of WFH or a remote lash up with somebody having to travel to the big city several days a week that a functional group is in a satellite office where it's nicer to live and leasing some commercial space upstairs on the high street is not that expensive. People can be close to home and if they need to nip out to pick up the kids from school, that can just be factored into the work day as an extended tea break. An added benefit for companies that have outside sales people is those satellite offices can include a base for sales staff so they are closer to customers and can provide personal support more easily to a region. A big reason I used one source for packaging when I had a manufacturing company was their sales person was awesome. He'd stop by once in a while to see what I needed and suggest ideas and would be able to come by quickly if I called. It didn't matter if the company moved further away since I'd still be getting the same level of service by having a nearby person to work with. This is why I know that the lowest price for things doesn't always embody the most value. I could buy cardboard boxes online for a few cents less each, but without any support. If the delivery was wrong, it would be my time on hold trying to get it sorted rather than handing it off to their sales person to fix.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Austin’s & Round Rocks traffic will seriously sucks ass..

    Even more than it already does when thousands of Dellbots have to come back in. Already Austin’s traffic is fucking awful and this will make it even more hell!

    One wonders if Michael will be back in office from his Dell Mountain lair off of Bee Cave Road in Westlake hills?

  16. LybsterRoy Silver badge

    Out of interest how many people who advocate WFH would accept PBR (payment by results) rather than a fixed salary?

    1. Big_Boomer

      Fine by me.

      Before Covid I was already WFH 3 days per week so I just switched to 5 days. My productivity (measured) went up by 50% in the following year and I now have a permanent WFH contract. Yes, there are undoubtedly people who coast when WFH but those same people also coast when in the office. If manglement fails to deal with those people regardless of where they work from, then that is a manglement failure, not a WFH problem. There is no reason why WFH/Hybrid working practices can't be made to work if the managers get with the times. My manager handles a team of 11 people in 7 different countries with no problems and only a couple of us are in an office at all regularly. We collaborate very well, both within our team, and with the rest of the company, but then our company is spread across the world so we have always been forced to collaborate remotely and work flexibly as it's difficult to get California, UK, and China on the same video conference if nobody is willing to work outside their regular hours. It can be made to work if there is a will to make it work.

      Lots of jobs require you to be in an office, but if you spend most of your day at a desk, then chances are your job could easily be done remotely. In my experience most of those who argue against remote working are those who are stuck in the past and just want everything to "go back to how it was". Well, the world has changed and it will undoubtedly change again, but it will never "go back to how it was".

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      AC because I share register discussions at work ;)

      My WORD yes! As long as all the engineers were on a level playing field.

      I'd be down to a 2 or 3 day week.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Pay by results?? What do you think we get paid for?? I work in IT and at the end of the week you have to deliver. If you don't then it's obvious to everyone. We work as an agile team so your tasks are all visible on the board. If you're not delivering you're holding up other people and the release. We already get paid for results. Honestly, it's a comment like that, that makes me wonder if managers actually have any clue about how a modern office works. Managers, perhaps instead of forcing people back to the office, spend some time understanding how your people work.

  17. Colin Guthrie

    Drop in salary by the back door

    The WFH "revolution" (aka "necessity" due to global pandemic) has handily coincided with increased inflation and a cost of living crisis for many workers. As a result, the fact that workers didn't need to commute and thus saved a significant amount of money as a result, has meant that wages often didn't go up as much as they should, but there was little outcry because everyone was better off anyway. By enforcing a RTO now, but not increasing the wages in line with the increased commute costs, it's effectively a pay cut by the back door.

  18. Roj Blake Silver badge

    Dell the Man

    How many days a week will Big Mike be in the office?

  19. PCScreenOnly

    AI bubble goes pop, RTO in effect, share price dives

    shows that RTO is no where near as good as without RTO shareprice up in 2024 by 80+%

  20. Dizzy Dwarf

    Next thing

    They'll be dropping Dress-down-Fridays.

    Bastards.

  21. I should coco

    Untrustworthy

    Having a supplier treat its staff so blatantly badly in the press and not really manage the PR fallout is a bit of a shocker. I for one will not be considering any Dell HW for our enterprise as I can guarantee that the people at Dell building it/deploying it will not have a vested interest, possibly the opposite.

    Speaking to peers in the group and the attitude is one of reciprocation.

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