California Tech Company's 'Return-to-Office' Video Mocked as Bizarre, Cringe-Worthy (sfgate.com) 240
With subsidiaries like WebMD and CarsDirect, the digital media company "Internet Brands" has over 5,000 employees — and 20 offices in expensive locations like Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City.
Their solution? Create a cheery corporate video on the company's Vimeo account announcing a new (non-negotiable) hybrid return-to-office policy.
SFGate.com calls it "the return-to-office fight's most bizarre corporate messaging yet." Executives from Internet Brands' internet brands are so wide-eyed and declarative, they appear to be at their breaking point in wanting more workers at the office. "Too big of a group hasn't returned," CEO Bob Brisco complains, near the video's opening. The vehicle to deliver that message has it all: rapid jump cuts, odd sound mixing and executives clearly reading their lines from teleprompters. There's plainly faked office b-roll and the obvious use of green screens. There's even some enthusiastic (and awkward) sashaying to the New Orleans classic "Iko Iko" — one wonders if participating employees received compensation.
Interestingly, "Iko Iko" is a song about a collision between two rival tribes, which opens with a threat to "set your flag on fire." But subtitles on the video translate the song's Creole patois word "Jockamo" into the corporate-positive phrase "we mean business." It's like the executives started their brainstorming session by watching 12 music videos, an iMovie editing tutorial and the entirety of "The Office" Season 1. Mixed in with the corporate b-roll of a copy machine spitting out paper and a too-loud video of a hand crushing a Dr. Pepper can, the company's executives sketch out the vibe of a return-to-office plan — though no specifics.
The video ends with CEO Bob Brisco thanking the team, before gently adding "I want to leave you with this. We aren't asking or negotiating at this point. We're informing, of how we need to work together going forward....
"Thank you, in advance, for your help."
The video has since started going viral on Reddit's "Work Reform" subreddit, with a headline calling it a "bizarre and cringe video mocking working from home and threatening employees who continue to avoid the office." (This take drew 1,300 upvotes, and 241 comments, like " 'By the way this is a threat' is a nice way to end it.")
Footage of at least some of the executives was clearly just spliced in front of still photos showing what offices look like. But besides the wooden delivery, what really struck me is how generic all the words were:
Their solution? Create a cheery corporate video on the company's Vimeo account announcing a new (non-negotiable) hybrid return-to-office policy.
SFGate.com calls it "the return-to-office fight's most bizarre corporate messaging yet." Executives from Internet Brands' internet brands are so wide-eyed and declarative, they appear to be at their breaking point in wanting more workers at the office. "Too big of a group hasn't returned," CEO Bob Brisco complains, near the video's opening. The vehicle to deliver that message has it all: rapid jump cuts, odd sound mixing and executives clearly reading their lines from teleprompters. There's plainly faked office b-roll and the obvious use of green screens. There's even some enthusiastic (and awkward) sashaying to the New Orleans classic "Iko Iko" — one wonders if participating employees received compensation.
Interestingly, "Iko Iko" is a song about a collision between two rival tribes, which opens with a threat to "set your flag on fire." But subtitles on the video translate the song's Creole patois word "Jockamo" into the corporate-positive phrase "we mean business." It's like the executives started their brainstorming session by watching 12 music videos, an iMovie editing tutorial and the entirety of "The Office" Season 1. Mixed in with the corporate b-roll of a copy machine spitting out paper and a too-loud video of a hand crushing a Dr. Pepper can, the company's executives sketch out the vibe of a return-to-office plan — though no specifics.
The video ends with CEO Bob Brisco thanking the team, before gently adding "I want to leave you with this. We aren't asking or negotiating at this point. We're informing, of how we need to work together going forward....
"Thank you, in advance, for your help."
The video has since started going viral on Reddit's "Work Reform" subreddit, with a headline calling it a "bizarre and cringe video mocking working from home and threatening employees who continue to avoid the office." (This take drew 1,300 upvotes, and 241 comments, like " 'By the way this is a threat' is a nice way to end it.")
Footage of at least some of the executives was clearly just spliced in front of still photos showing what offices look like. But besides the wooden delivery, what really struck me is how generic all the words were:
- "Working together face-to-face helps us create ideas, faster, and better."
- "We're able to collaborate, and help each other to be better leaders."
- "We're better when we're together, and we need to be our best — to crush our competition." [Footage of the word "competition" being erased from a whiteboard. And then, of someone crushing a Dr. Pepper can...]
Hmmm (Score:3)
It appears the video has been replaced. They who hotlink get that punishment sometime. Whar is the original video, EditorDavid?
Re: (Score:3)
i *guess* it's the same video and they just added an intro, as a mitigation.
the video is indeed cringey to the max, and i couldn't care less about the whole issue, but skipping i had a glimpse at the end and ... it's kind of nice? people are people!
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, I see. Well, if that is *mitigation* I wish them luck.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The only thing that will happen is that comments will read "video starts at 00:19".
Re: (Score:3)
You haven't seen the video that our chamber of commerce launched [youtube.com] when they pushed a 12 hour work day through. If you think this is cringe, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Sorry for that 12 hour version of the link... it's the only non-butchered or parodied version I could find. Of course the CoC took that embarrassing crap down long ago.
Re: (Score:2)
point taken! i mean, the 3d is actually cute, but ...
"Überstunde 11 und 12,
die werd’n mit Zuschlag zahlt
Bitte sag mir, ob’st wen kennst, dem das nicht g’fallt?"
that's not just cringey! that's just miserable. :D
(sorry habe mein deutsch etwas verlernt und das audio ist nicht das beste, had to dig up the lyrics)
Re: (Score:2)
Be glad you don't understand the lyrics. I'd offer to provide them, but I don't want to be responsible for the chiropractor bills the people will have to pay to de-cringe after they understand it.
Re: (Score:3)
"We're better when we're together, and we need to be our best â" to crush our competition."
"Bill, if I may add one thing: All those who dare oppose us will stand knee-deep in the blood of their children."
Re: Hmmm (Score:3)
You say they must be seeing massive productivity losses, but the problem with that argument is it's not necessarily true. The PHB who hasn't got a clue about anything useful may well be reporting massive productivity losses to people who know no better. The issue is that the PHB was a dead weight before and remote work and certainly is out of touch after it but isn't capable of comprehending that let alone reporting it upwards. So this is what the rest get instead.
Re: (Score:3)
from my view, the complainers tend to be people that are no longer needed to "run" the office space, and in fact were never needed.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if profits are up, the problem looming over the CEO's head is that he's responsible for having those office buildings standing there, and if they're empty, he'd have to justify having them. Now, office buildings are usually not rented on a daily base. Even if you don't own them outright, you have leases going that run for multiple years, and often even decades.
How do you justify that lease you just signed before Covid hit to the board? We're not talking pennies here either, office leases in prime locations cost millions. Per year, and in total. So even if they don't own their offices themselves, which would be an even worse disaster because you can't even sell those turkeys now without having to realize a HUGE, HUGE loss, try to explain to the board why you have a lease going for many millions for offices nobody uses. You need to justify that. And the easiest way is to stuff the people back in, because, look, Mr. Director guy, we need those offices I leased. Look, see the happy people working there?
And that's just the "justification of expense" part. There's of course also the personal ego part, and that one's big for most CEOs. Showing off his little ant farm to other execs and the board is something CEOs love to do. Never happened to you? It's probably the only time you get to see the CEO in person, other than when he's holding one super important, all-hands-on-deck presentation about how awesome he was the last year.
Let's be honest here, no CEO gives a fuck about you. And that's ok, that's not his job. But what he should give a fuck about is the bottom line of the company, because that IS his job. That's his reason to exist, his sole excuse to be there at all. And I wonder why the board entertains his ego trips and his justification bullshit when that means that the bottom line gets hurt. Because a number of studies show that productivity suffers in an open floor plan office while it actually is in some cases even better in a home office environment than what it is in a 4-people-a-room offices.
And the more important the ability to concentrate is, the more this turns out to be the case.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, technically people had work from home worked out centuries ago. It wasn't until the industrial revolution with steam powered looms that made home looming obsolete and more efficient to do it on the factory floor. The key reason for people to be in one place was originally that it was uneconomical to put the machines into their homes.
Also, I get to hear quite a bit about "communication". Usually from management types for whom yakking actually doubles as pretending to work. The majority of people who ac
It's funny and all (Score:2)
You know what would be nice? Ever want to tell your boss to go fuck themselves? What do you think happens if you tell your boss to go fuck themselves? And if you do it politely and with euphemisms?
What do you think happens if everybody in the company simultaneously tells the boss to go fuck themselves? I think you see where I'm going with this.
Re:It's funny and all (Score:4, Funny)
Elon Musk frowns at your labor unionist shenanigans.
Re: (Score:3)
And I frown at the muskrat, so I guess we're even.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Musk Derangement Syndrome.
How dare you insult the Deity of Mars and his plans for a CIS-gendered ethnostate.
Re: (Score:2)
The same way I insult every deity. I don't give a fuck what they say.
Deities are notoriously bad advisors and generally wrong. For reference, take any other ones.
Re:It's funny and all (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah I think you're kind of missing the point (Score:2)
But temporarily inconvenienced millionaires like yourself couldn't possibly understand the trials and tribulations of us poor working stiffs.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, he's not wrong... you can hire IT guys (even developers) for pennies. In India...
Funny thing about that is, even the bosses I've talked to dry-heave even thinking about that proposal.
Re:It's funny and all (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, an I can buy expired ground beef cheap as well, as long as I don't intend to eat it.
You know those bright enthusiastic people you meet by video when you're negotiating? They'll be off to the next project before the ink is even dry. You'll get the B-team. The project will start just as soon as the outsource provider finishes making the fake CVs for the B-team.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it seems I can be annoying enough that 2 people did apparently try to fire me without consulting their higher ups. Or those higher ups didn't know who he's trying to fire, either could have been the case.
Re:It's funny and all (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you worry, my current manager is a keeper. He knows what I need from him, he lets me do my job, he does his and we produce record success stories.
I have a decent manager and he has numbers that make him look like a pro. It's just so win-win.
To answer the question why I go for a salary below market: Because I don't give a fuck about money. I have money. I actually have more money than I'll need for the rest of my life. I don't have kids, and I am not interested in having a bunch of assholes kissing my butt when I'm 80 because they think they'll inherit the crap. So what the hell should I want more money for?
I work because it's fun. Because I get to tinker and toy with hardware and machines that I could never ever get my grubby fingers on if I wasn't the star security player of a large financial group. Think they'd let me toy with (sorry, "audit") a multi-million dollar safe system if I wasn't working for them?
In the long run, money stops to matter once you have enough to buy what you want. What matters then is having a good time while you're on this planet.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, excellent, you "won" at life. Congratulations!
I was very good at what I did but mostly did high stress startups. Some were fucking awful and some were great but mostly they died as startups tend to do. Staying at one of the good/fun places wasn't an option. I hit it and then hit it again so I've got tons of money, too, but I retired young so I do think about inflation, black swan events, and so on. But short of some catastrophic economic event (where having a job wouldn't help anyway) I should be g
Re: It's funny and all (Score:2)
Re:It's funny and all (Score:5, Insightful)
I've told many bosses throughout the years to go fuck themselves.
When you have a hard to find skill set and only charge about 60% of the usual wage, you can get away with a lot, I tell you. No later than when I went to HIS boss and told him that this asshole wants to fire me, someone got fired. And it wasn't me.
You know by definition you're the minority right? (Score:2)
Your boss knows that your skill is hard to find and they're taking steps to break your skill down into a smaller set of subskills that they can train people on to replace you. If they haven't already done that to you it's only because they were busy doing it to somebody else.
And he is. (Score:3)
The poster is replaceable - they are just operating in a bubble where it's untested. It's a fiction. Show me an example of anything other than a tiny company that was probably already doomed that went under because an "unreplaceable" tech guy left.
I worked for a large company, and I had a massive moat around my job. I was as indispensable as you can possibly be. And when that company announced a voluntary exit program with very favorable packages, I took it. And I got a couple of minor pings after I left, b
what about things like free parking? free passes f (Score:2)
what about things like free parking? free passes for trains? no I don't give a dam that is under zero get your ass to the office.
Re: (Score:2)
Pay me.
Yes, you can throw money at me then I'll come to the office. You know what an hour of my time costs, commute is two of them, pay for them.
Re:what about things like free parking? free passe (Score:5, Insightful)
Pay me.
Yes, you can throw money at me then I'll come to the office. You know what an hour of my time costs, commute is two of them, pay for them.
Everyone should include commute time in their calculations when evaluating job offers.
A job paying $50/hour with a 1 hour commute each way is effectively $50*40/50 = $40/hour.
So a 1 hour commute each way is costing you $10/hour.
But it's worse than that because it really should be paid at time and a half.
A job paying $36.5/hour with 10 hours of overtime comes out to 36.5*40 + 10*36.5*1.5 = $2007.5/50 = $40.15/hour.
So not counting the other benefits of work from home or the fuel costs, etc.. of actually driving to work,
you could take a job at $36.5/hour with no commute and make more per hour than someone making $50/hour.
Re: (Score:2)
Commuting is just a subset of the difference.
Quality of life, wake-up hours, comfort of one's own house, all the other little things - they need to be counted too.
Re: (Score:2)
Not to mention not having to deal with the yakking of various people around you. That alone is worth more than anyone is willing to pay.
Re: (Score:3)
I do. Well, technically, it's my living room, but I don't use the living room for living, so it's now basically my office.
Re: (Score:2)
The point is, I do actually care about people who are not me. What about them? Why should anyone suffer in cubicle or open floor hell? It's so completely unnecessary.
I don't like unnecessary pain.
And no, making middle managers suffer isn't unnecessary. They deserve that.
Re: (Score:3)
You have the right to propose it as part of your wage negotiations. They have the right to push the offer back across the table and say, "That is a lucid, intelligent, well thought out consideration. Overruled."
I've been a hiring manager for a good portion of my career. I can't say I ever saw anybody do anything like that, so it's a hypothetical. We almost always drew up an offer, and most times it was accepted as is (it was always fair, and the compensation was good). Sometimes we haggled on the base dolla
Re:what about things like free parking? free passe (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but considering that the "raise" I got with a 10% inflation wasn't even half that, I'd consider the current wage the one I would charge for WFH.
Cough up the rest.
Re: (Score:2)
It's called inflation. Everybody's pay has been cut. In fact, everybody has been working at a discount rate for some time. So much so that when they went to work from home back in 2020, it probably didn't quite make up the deficit.
Of course ... (Score:2)
You can't kid a kidder.
Re: (Score:2)
But "Internet brands" has got to be the most unimaginative name for a tech company.
The backpedaling is strong in this one (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't take them long to replace the video.
Yes, corporate assholes, we don't want your cubicle walls or even open floor hell. CEOs of the world, if you like it so much, sit in it. We don't mind.
Re:The backpedaling is strong in this one (Score:5, Informative)
They don't seem to have completely replaced it, rather just added 18 seconds of text to try to explain themselves. The same clip of the CEO saying that they're not negotiating is still there toward the end.
Re: (Score:2)
So they decided to prepend the cringe video with a "please don't say our beautiful video is cringy, we're just a corporation after all" message.
In other words, they added "pathetic" to the list of attributes they bear now.
Re: (Score:3)
Both cubicles and open floor plans are about cramming more people into a given area, not increasing productivity.
Everyone wants a personal office to isolate from everyone else's phone calls and constant interruptions. When was the last time you saw a manager with any authority at all in the middle of an open floor plan and using the 'common meeting area' for things requiring confidentiality? They all know the office isn't a pleasant place to work for anyone who needs to focus, but you're just a bit of shi
Re: (Score:2)
Last I checked the goal of a company wasn't to cram warm bodies into a place but to actually produce something. Did that change while I wasn't looking?
Re:The backpedaling is strong in this one (Score:5, Insightful)
The goals are not mutually exclusive from a management perspective - workers work, more workers do more work, workers need space, less space costs less.
They don't trust you to WFH, but they don't care to pay for optimal conditions at the office either.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Productivity of a worker in a job that requires thinking instead of manual labor is highly dependent on the person's ability to concentrate. We're not talking about assembly line work where you can turn off your brain for the 8 hours you're there to put item A into slot B and push a button. If managers cannot understand that, throw them away and hire some that do. They're bad for your bottom line.
Re: (Score:3)
That was one of the reasons productivity soared during the early days of the home office. Middle managers kept calling meetings, only now people could "go" there while at the same time continuing their work while the narcissist droned on.
Our CEO holds biweekly "status update" meetings which are incredibly popular and while they are not mandatory to attend, there's rarely anyone who doesn't. The reason for it is simple: You have an hour you can get shit done that you needn't tack onto any project because you
Re: (Score:2)
When your productivity equation looks like:
productivity = units_produced / (employees*employee_pay + office_space*price_per_area)
then cramming more employees into a smaller area is absolutely about increasing productivity. Not the employee's productivity, the employees' productivity. The location of the apostrophe makes all the difference.
Re: (Score:2)
The point is that you wouldn't sit in that cubicle farm but instead WFH.
Re: (Score:2)
I worked in a place where a cubicle near mine was a 'swing' cubicle used by visiting sales staff. Guess what? Visiting salespeople also tend to be on the phone a lot, talking in booming voices. My solution was to buy cheap drumsticks for me
You think that's weird? (Score:2)
the companyâ(TM)s public Vimeo page
THAT is weird.
Especially since it's an online marketing company, concerned with social media presence and similar such pointless shit: if I wanted to hire them, the vimeo bit would immediately turn me off. Vimeo screams "I don't want to be on Youtube but I haven't figured out PeerTube yet".
Re: (Score:2)
I guess they knew that this video will get smeared all over the place and they didn't want to soil their YouTube account with it.
Allow me to translate the "message" of the video (Score:5, Insightful)
At 1:41 of the (new) video, the CEO finally makes the statement. Allow me to translate CEO to human:
We're not asking or negotiating at this point, we're informing of how we need to work together going forward
I don't give a fuck what you want, it's my way or the highway.
It's again for the simple reason that great companies are built by great people working together and seeing each other eye to eye i tackling the big tasks
I'm stuck in the past and cannot adapt to new forms of work, and I refuse to try.
Thank you in advance for your help
Fuck you, I'm the boss.
Re:Allow me to translate the "message" of the vide (Score:5, Insightful)
> I don't give a fuck what you want, it's my way or the highway.
My response: I'm not negotiating either, and I didn't need your permission. Highway it is!
These companies will lose their best employees, who are secure in the knowledge that they can get a job at a more reasonable company will less assholic management. The ones who stay will only do so either because they know how weak their prospects are, or because they are close to retirement. So basically... good luck with that draconian policy, mgmt!
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody, so far, said anything about how the suits in that video behave and speak.
With one exception (but that's subjective), all of them come off as total assholes. The exception looks like a decently average asshole.
Re:Allow me to translate the "message" of the vide (Score:5, Informative)
In case you haven't noticed, a lot of the big tech companies are laying off staff right now. Because of that, the job market kinda sucks at the moment.
If you're threatening to quit over this, you might find yourself unemployed for a few months until you find another fully remote open position.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a fair point. All I was pointing out is that this equation is not one-sided. There is an equilibrium somewhere, but companies that respect their employees (and pay them well, too) will tend to attract more and better talent than those who shit on them.
Re:Allow me to translate the "message" of the vide (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny enough: They are not.
They are making their existing staff quit by making life miserable. Which in turn has a curious (at least it's curious if you're a CEO, every person with half a brain would have seen this coming): The ones that quit are actually the people who can easily find a new job. The ones that have a lot of experience and projects to show for. The ones that can and do easily convince other companies to sign them up. That's why "firing" doesn't mean diddly squat in this context, because there are still companies that will gladly accept those people.
What's not quitting is the duds. The ones that know they can NOT find a new job by snapping their fingers. These are the ones that have to grin and bear it when they're being forced back into the office.
I predict we'll see quite a few of these RTO companies struggle badly in the coming years. Which is all right by me, with studies then showing that companies that enforced RTO are failing while companies that allow WFH thrive. Not exactly because of RTO vs WFH, but simply because WFH is more attractive to employees and people with a skill set that is in high demand and short supply can pick and choose the company they want to work for.
Re: (Score:3)
The ones that quit are actually the people who can easily find a new job. The ones that have a lot of experience and projects to show for. The ones that can and do easily convince other companies to sign them up. That's why "firing" doesn't mean diddly squat in this context, because there are still companies that will gladly accept those people.
What's not quitting is the duds. The ones that know they can NOT find a new job by snapping their fingers
There's a third category you forgot: the curmudgeons — people who don't need to work, but stick around because they genuinely believe in the company and its mission. Those folks aren't going to bother looking for another job, because it isn't worth the effort, even though many of them are early-stockholder millionaires or whatever, and are still young enough that they could easily switch jobs if they wanted to do so.
Those folks tend to enjoy standing up for those who don't have the seniority or finan
Re: (Score:2)
The expiration of Trump's tax law that incentivized RnD (including software development) in combination with the high interest rates (and maybe other factors I am not thinking of) have pushed the pendulum in this direction. It has been here before and we have seen what happens. As employers rub their hands with glee about having the advantage over tech workers, tech workers start leaving the industry. And students stop getting degrees in it. And the resultant talent loss swings the pendulum right back i
Re: (Score:2)
Of course highway it is. Hey, I just translate, don't shoot the interpreter! :)
The arrogance in this video is just through the roof. Fuck that guy with a stolen dick.
Re: (Score:2)
And well translated it was. Any collateral damage was entirely unintended!
Re: (Score:2)
It's their company, they can set whatever policy they like.
I don't know why they even created the video unless they feel that the policy directive could not stand alone - that it needed some rationalization. My problem with the video is that it doesn't explain anything. It makes some assertions that seem dubious to me, gut feel at best.
I'd be interested to know if any of the board or their friends have a vested interest in the commercial property that they occupy for example, or if they have some evidence f
Re: (Score:2)
They are probably hemorrhaging talent and try to desperately make them stay.
This video sure as all hell won't help in that.
Re: Allow me to translate the "message" of the vid (Score:5, Interesting)
My response would be to simply show up at the office long enough to walk into the lobby, immediately dump all of my company issued hardware, key fobs, and any other company property on the floor, turn around, and walk out without even saying a word to anyone. Fortunately my current employer isnâ(TM)t run by a collection of fossils stuck in the past.
Notice how it is always these garbage companies that are run by dinosaurs and their army of worthless, bootlicker middle managements that are the most eager to force these idiotic, draconian return-to-office ideas on their employees?
Internet Brands does what, exactly? A shit company that owns an even shittier site hypochondriacs use to self diagnose, and a forgettably generic car buying site that is interchangeable with at least a hundred others just like it does not strike me as a great company run by great people.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd send that crap by mail. COD.
That goofball simply ain't worth a second of my valuable time. Or money.
Re:Allow me to translate the "message" of the vide (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to explain to the board why we need this expensive office space because I signed a ten year lease and spent a shitload on renovation, mostly of my corner office. Also, I like my corner office.
Re: (Score:2)
My only answer to this: Sucks to be you. You get a shitload of money for figuring that out, do your job.
Re: (Score:2)
That's what this video is. Figuring it out == ordering everyone to get their butts back at their desks while making silly excuses about random chats in the hallway. Can't say yet whether it's going to work, but it seems to be going depressingly well.
Personally, I think it's about time the fancy corporate high-rise offices making everyone commute downtown came back to bite them in the ass. Structuring our society around everyone rushing into a few square kilometres and back every day is expensive and dumb.
PS
Re: (Score:3)
It's not working. It's a PR disaster if I've ever seen one. What we see here is a CEO so detached from reality that he doesn't even notice how offensive he is.
The point isn't that he's offensive to his workers. Nobody gives half a fuck about that in the business world. But be honest, as a potential customer, would you want to work with a company that is run by a madman like this goofball? If you were looking for an employer and are in a position to choose it, would you choose this one?
This guy apparently do
Webmd... (Score:5, Funny)
I have a hunch (Score:2)
Could Be Worse (Score:2)
Irony? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Working together face-to-face helps us create ideas, faster, and better." ...
Some of their arguments seem like good ideas elsewhere, like when seeking medical advise or buying a car, which seems odd for companies like "WebMD and "CarsDirect" ... :-)
Unbelievable (Score:5, Insightful)
At the beginning the claim is returning to work will make things "faster and better" with proof to follow. The only 'proof' I saw was various manager types repeating the phrase. The politically correct ethnic music was actually the only decent thing until the 'dancing' at the end ruined it.
It's good that this is getting negative publicity, though I doubt it will affect things longer than its 15 minutes of infamy.
Re: (Score:3)
Manipulative and deceitful language, culturally appropriated music, and a bunch of doublespeak... sounds like a fantastic place to quit.
Internet companies demanding this is disqualifying (Score:5, Insightful)
If you tell people that the internet can't even do the stuff that it's practically made for, you have nothing to sell anyone. You are an internet company. Way to admit you are offering the inferior way.
Re: (Score:3)
If you ever thought that WebMD was a decent replacement for a doctor, you seriously need medical help.
Bob Brisco has a face for radio (Score:2)
Seriously Bob, a dweeb like you should never be seen in a video like that.
Your voice is cringe enough, but your face, OMG
Re: (Score:2)
I've done it. I think my face is OK, I definitely don't have a 'radio voice'.
Somewhere there is an editor with magic powers who made me 'adequate' for a corporate video. It couldn't possibly have been all the cameraman's doing.
Everything has it good sides (Score:5, Insightful)
My company did something similar (Score:3)
Last year our VP made a similar skit. As the kids say, it was cringe. I don't know if HR twats, in some conference in a dark corner of the world, all get together to form ideas of how to sell employees on the idea of RTO, but I have noticed a lot of these skits lately. It is 100% stupid.
In two years of being back to the office, no one has visited my cube. Partly because most of my team is spread across 15,000 miles in different offices. Partly because even the people sitting right next to me can use Slack and find it a more efficient way of working, as I do.
Re: (Score:2)
A quick survey suggests they gravitate towards the usual suspects like San Diego and Vegas, but with a decent amount of Chicago thrown in.
Why the doublespeak? (Score:5, Informative)
Why do these companies insist on this doublespeak blather to support RTO?
Just come out and say the honest part of the equation: you've invested in real estate or have a lease keeping you there.
Unless you've hired truly incompetent people who are not actually doing their jobs, and that is the reason why you need RTO, there's actually no evidence that RTO is beneficial. All the data points to remote work being more productive (and profitable) by a significant margin. If you aren't seeing that productivity, perhaps you should consider how you work, and what your technology enables: if you've got complicated data workflows that require in-office operations, then chances are you're behind by about 20 years and have very large systemic inefficiencies which can be improved for other efficiency gains.
Add to that the worker satisfaction gained by WFH.
If you want to lose those workers, fine - go ahead with enforcing RTO. Maybe that's what they want. That's what will happen. If people haven't RTO'd at this point, they're going to, in most likelihood, silent quit instead of RTO. There are so many people out of work right now simply because they won't RTO.
company execs are the worst (Score:3, Interesting)
These are the worst people on the planet. The believe the deserve to make hundreds to thousands times more than the average employee salary/pay. They believe, they are the new nobility, and have basically made it come true, because now, they make so much more than even top salaried employees that they look at everyone as less than themselves i.e. lower class citizens . Thanks to them, no one has retirement, or healthcare, or job stability. There are only a few reasons they want employees in office.
Of course, with work not being stable, its not worth moving for a job, so the commute is longer, then they require you to use your time, in the middle of the day e.g. required lunch hour. Personally, I figure working from home saves me 4 hours a day, of my time. Which is huge. Figure 4 weeks in a month that's 20 work days assuming only M-F (unlikely but just as an example), that's 80 hours a month. In 12 months that's 960 hours divide by 24 and you get 40 days a year. To H*LL with U BOB
I wonder what their real reasons are (Score:2)
Do they have a ton of real estate holdings or something?
Re: (Score:2)
Judging by the way the CEO acts, he needs the people in the office to show off his corner office and pretend they envy him.
The ego of that goofball needs its own office.
True story (Score:2)
Coincidentally, there was a significant snow storm on Friday. After I was at work for just 15 minutes, the power went out. When it returned, an electrical phase in the building was dead and the other phases flickering. I had no power at my desk, there was no
Re: (Score:3)
Why? That's exactly the time when I would not pack my shit and WFH. That's when I deliberately sit in the office and be 100% unproductive on the clock to showcase just how stupid the whole deal is.
If anyone complains, I'd tell them I could have worked from home. But I was ordered to come in. You wanna punish me now for following your ridiculous inane orders?
Re:White House Behind Back To Work (Score:5, Funny)
I read on an investment site, that the Biden White House
Wow, if you read it on the internet, it must be true!!
Why, the qualifications to open an "investment site" on the internet are so rigorous, you have to actually have an ISP to put one up!
Re: (Score:2)
I believe Biden has said as much publicly. Most city mayors are pitching a fit too.
I suspect corporations will humor him for the next year, but once he's re-elected the flood gates are going to break. Should he lose the election, nothing really matters much anyway.
Rules for reading the internet [Re:White House...] (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The google links you give are about the Biden administration pushing for "back to work" for federal workers.
Re: (Score:3)
“Because of the progress we’ve made fighting COVID, Americans can not only get back to work, but they can go to the office and safely fill our great downtown cities again,” Biden said during remarks from the White House that touched on February’s encouraging job numbers
And later:
The president touched on similar themes in his State of the Union address. “It’s time for America to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again with people,” he said. “People working from home can feel safe and begin to return to their offices.”
Biden's not talking about federal workers. What I take issue is with your regurgitating nonsense that if I just read something on some web site, it can't be true and dismissing someone's post without checking whether what he's saying could be true and/or have some merit to it. You just summarily dismissed what the original poster wrote just because he "read it on some site". It's because of views like yours that prospects of discussion just fade away before we even have a ch
Re: (Score:3)
City managers have a good reason to pitch a fit. Deserted downtowns don't pay much in taxes, but the infrastructure still needs to be maintained.
Because of this, I can well believe that Biden may have supported returning to the office, at least in front of a certain kind of crowd.
Re: (Score:3)
You know what? Web sites pander to you. They tell you whatever they think you want to hear.
Re: (Score:2)