46 points

What the hell does RTO have to do with women specifically? It’s a mandate regardless of gender.

Reads article.

Ahh. Nothing. One department happened to be more heavily impacted for females, so suddenly it makes Dell a “boys club” (someone quoted in the article). The only reason provided was the possibility of women with spouses in the military that couldn’t move.

Yeah, that’s really stretching there and then slapped into the title for rage bait.

RTO mandates are newsworthy by their own right. No need to rage bait with nonsense to accompany it.

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0 points
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No. This is not legally correct in the US. Discrimination can be direct (women have to RTO, but men don’t) or indirect (everyone has to RTO, but women are statistically way more likely to be forced to quit their jobs due to the change). This is called disparate impact and is a serious issue.

Now, is this happening in this case? Possibly. Likely too early to tell.

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3 points

What the hell does RTO have to do with women specifically? It’s a mandate regardless of gender.

Nothing. This is very lazy journalism and boring rage-bait.

As a generalization, take any bad thing “Rising mortgage rates”:

“Mortgage Rate Hike Disproportionately Impacts Women, Minority Communities”

As the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates in an effort to curb inflation, recent studies suggest that these measures may be adversely affecting women and minority communities more than their counterparts. The reason behind this disparity lies in existing wealth gaps between various demographic groups.

Women and minority households tend to have lower median household income levels compared to white men, according to data from the US Census Bureau. This means they often start with smaller down payments for homes and rely on riskier loans, such as adjustable-rate mortgages…


Congratulations, you have now turned a generic news story into some cheap click-bait. Note: with a small amount of work you can apply this technique to any negative news story.

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39 points

Of those adversely affected, most have more than eight years of experience at Dell and most are 40–55 year old women, we’re told.

I think you are basically arguing that the policy is equal, whereas the article is basically arguing that the policy isn’t equity. Two different values. You are not wrong, it’s an equal policy. But the article is right in saying that the policy isn’t equity.

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11 points

Our first source cited personal experience of the return-to-office order’s impact and told us only two men were affected, compared to 29 women. Our source made calculations about the impact using internal data, and suggested women will bear the brunt of the RTO mandate.

“Per sample data pulled, this group is disproportionately female,” with women whose partners serve in the military perhaps especially impacted as life in uniform often means relocation.

Again, that’s a huge leap they are making.

The sample set could have simply been from a female heavy department. Other departments could be disproportionately male afflicted. We have no idea what their sampling covered, and given how incredibly biased the source seems to be, that’s more than enough reason for me to doubt their methodology.

Again, RTO is not inheritantly sexist, as this article claims. If you’re intentionally targeting departments with disproportionate representation to specifically marginalize them, then that’s discrimination. If this is a corporate policy expanding many departments, and one happens to be disproportionately represented by a gender, then it’s far harder to substantiate claims of prejudice.

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2 points

That’s what systemic bias is.

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-10 points

Unless an org has clones 1-for-1 by literally every metric, then by your usage, nothing is equity, ever.

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28 points

It sounds like Dell is just run by assholes. I don’t believe for a second that Dell doesn’t know where all their offices are and their plan for each of them. They seem to have picked the worst possible way to demand RTO that reveals how weak their management is. All RTO demands are short sighted and lose you the better employees that have options, but doing it the way they are causes far more employee morale damage and will hurt the company longer than if they had a clear plan for what RTO was.

Not to mention, anytime I see something neboulous about AI to solve problems without specifics I roll my eyes because it is quite obviously some idea thought up by someone who is caught in hype without any understanding of the utility of it. It reeks of some exec telling their subordinates, “I hear this new AI thing can solve all our problems, make it happen and don’t come back until you have it implemented.”

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2 points

Dell specifically has been super gung ho on work from home. Michael Dell had some article in Forbes or something a couple years ago that was hyping how great WFH had been for the company. They were actually paying people to WFH since it saved the company money. Dell’s business model benefitted heavily from WFH since companies had to buy more computers and peripherals to support a remote workforce.

So, the “return” to office seems like a pretty naked attempt to cause people to quit without having to pay severance.

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11 points

It sounds like Dell is just run by assholes.

RTO is coming from Michael Dell, a millionaire who is out-of-touch with the actual people this policy is going to hurt.

I don’t believe for a second that Dell doesn’t know where all their offices are and their plan for each of them.

They closed a ton during covid. Many offices that remain open are touchdown only without enough space to accommodate the staff in the region.

They seem to have picked the worst possible way to demand RTO that reveals how weak their management is.

The RTO push came from the very top. Most directors cannot justify or defend it, but their job is to pass it along. Upper management doesn’t give a shit about their employees.

All RTO demands are short sighted and lose you the better employees that have options, but doing it the way they are causes far more employee morale damage and will hurt the company longer than if they had a clear plan for what RTO was.

This RTO is going to effect senior employees who were hired to be local to customers then became remote. Forcing them to quit or retire means you can replace them with cheaper employees, outsource their job, or simply push their work onto the remaining staff.

Not to mention, anytime I see something neboulous about AI to solve problems without specifics I roll my eyes because it is quite obviously some idea thought up by someone who is caught in hype without any understanding of the utility of it. It reeks of some exec telling their subordinates, “I hear this new AI thing can solve all our problems, make it happen and don’t come back until you have it implemented.”

Management has no idea what to do with AI except buzzwords and promises for the gleefully ignorant customers asking for AI.

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2 points

Agreed, it’s definitely coming from the top! I didn’t realize they had closed a ton of the other offices during the pandemic, but I suppose it’s not surprising either. It also seemed like a lot of remote hiring happened during the pandemic?

Most of the people I know personally affected are in that category (remotely hired or relocated), and most of those people are women. Small sample size with lots of bias, but I’ve been pretty upset the whole situation. It definitely feels/looks like a way to quietly push a bunch of folks out… whether overtly or as a “bonus” for upper management, it has the same unfortunate effect.

I guess it is what it is, but what it is ain’t good. It feels good to commiserate though, thank you stranger!

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12 points

and lose you the better employees that have options

They don’t see these as better employees, they just see costs.

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5 points

Friendly reminder: We are all cogs to the machine that is capitalism regardless of what we personally believe.

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44 points

In November, Dell reported Q3 fiscal 2024 revenue of $22.3 billion – down ten percent year-over-year.

Hm, maybe this is trying to hide post-pandemic contraction…

Profits were healthy, however, at over $1 billion for the quarter, a 317 percent year on year rise.

IT’S UNION TIME

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3 points

But it’s also tail time, right? Right?!

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13 points

There was a unionization attempt at Dell once. They laid off the entire group and moved their jobs overseas.

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7 points
*

I might be a moron, but how can a business be down in revenue but up in profit?

Edit: confirmed moron. Their expenses were just that much lower.

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3 points

I have an old 2014 era Dell Latitude E something and the laptop itself is alright if a little slow running no but the battery refuses to charge and you buy a new charger and it works for a little bit and then still refuse to charge again. A new battery didnt help either. So it’s always tethered to the wall, which is pretty annoying.

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1 point

Their old Latitude’s especially the C, D and E series were amazingly solid, easy to work on and had interchangeable parts. I missed those. Even better, you could get certified to work on them and then order parts only replacements under warranty so you never had to ship your laptop out.

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2 points

I had an asus rog laptop where after years of daily use the power port had gotten detached from the motherboard at least for one of the connections

Disassembled it and soldered it back in place and got a few more years out of it

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1 point

Can it just be an effort to lay off the idiots who can’t wear a mask? Consulting the photo, I see someone who after THREE YEARs still doesn’t understand YOUR NOSE GOES IN THE MASK.

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5 points

This looks like a stock photo to me. It is mildly infuriating that the model refused to properly wear a mask during a photo shoot.

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