Staff say Dell's RTO mandate is a stealth layoff, especially for women | Hacker News Reader

Staff say Dell's RTO mandate is a stealth layoff, especially for women

theregister.com

38 pointscroes21 comments

The working world is still incredibly unfair to women. Source: I witness my wife's struggles. Fortunately for us we were able to have our children during the covid wfh boom and it was so good for our family. She was able to progress in both her career and we were able to raise our children. Now our children are still young and she only needs to go in 2x/week but we see the tide turning. Most of her peers that are women are unmarried or don't have children.

> The working world is still incredibly unfair to women.

Is it unfair to women, or just the primary care-taker? This is a real world distinction single-fathers will understand. While the answer is "both", it is important to distinguish between them.

I was about to pounce, but this ratio has really compressed since the Great Society single parent household boom.

1968: 7.3X more women

2017: 4.4X more women

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/04/25/the-cha...

There are lots of ways the working world is unfair to women besides just things being tough for primary care-takers who tend to be women. Indeed the expectation that women will be the primary caretaker is one such example. Of course men suffer as a result of this unfairness as well, but that's all the more reason to make things better.

Well yes. it gets nuanced. The answer is anyone involved in raising the child. Both parents, grandparents that are still working even. Neighbors, aunts, uncles.. We are both WFH/hybrid which allowed us the flexibility to work crazy work hours and swap hands to take care of children. My wife works 50-65+ hours 6mo of the year and 40 the rest so having that flexibility between 3pm and 8pm really helps. If you have to RTO that flexibility disappears and just crushes work life balance because it's not acceptable to just leave the office at 2:30. If everyone you know if stuck at the office or in a commute till 6pm there is no shared community to help with the child.

Its worth mentioning that renote work is still a thing only in the US. In most other OECD countries (in Europe or Japan for example) it's all in-office with at most 1-2 days hybrid if you are lucky.

Yup and look at their birth rates. Companies/Countries are screwing themselves by not allowing flexibility to raise a family during their workers 20s and 30s.

In Japan, I understand that it's exacerbated by how expensive the costs of having a child at all – the medical costs, the costs of childcare etc. [1]

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/will-japans-new-plan-to-boost-birth-ra...

yeah and I imagine the costs balloon if you need childcare 10-12 hours a day instead of 5 or 6. In Japan they work sort of insane hours so that's why I say 12. We're able to survive on only 6 hours a day by aligning our schedules to offset but if we're both in the office FT then that's no longer an option and the childcare costs would double for us.

The US isn't much better. We're also below the replacement rate. We're just not as xenophobic with our immigration. Which is saying something.

Starve the beast.

Source?

I’m working in EU and the vast majority of my friends and colleagues are remote first, with maybe 1-2 days in the office/week, mostly for socialising.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-americans-work-from-home-eur...

https://www.livemint.com/news/world/return-to-office-stark-d...

Anecdote but I'm in Asia, my office is in the city I live in and I am free to work from anywhere.

Anecdotal of course but this isn't my experience at all, I don't know of any current or ex-colleagues that are working in offices at all. I think in southern Europe it's common to have more onsite.

I think there's a bifurcation between the startup/tech world, who indeed work a lot from home, and all the other tech workers in non tech industries (bank, insurabce, govt, corporate), who have mostly long since been recalled to office (in non US OECD countries).

> In November, Dell reported Q3 fiscal 2024 revenue of $22.3 billion – down ten percent year-over-year. Profits were healthy, however, at over $1 billion for the quarter, a 317 percent year on year rise.

Why are people cancelling their netflix subscriptions if they are still making a salary?

Is that a real question? There are about infinity reasons one might decide to stop paying for a service.

Need to do like Meta with a company-wide building and space management system integrated with ERP and hotdesking.

Also, old Github-style WfM collab and workflow is how to retain good people without herding them into offices with ass-in-seat concentration camp mentality.

The ignorance and stupidity of pointy hair management driving away top talent with worse conditions, disrespect, and inconvenience is completely counterproductive and ultimately a self-imposed foot machine gun.

Bit more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39454151

Reply on news.ycombinator.com