JPMorgan Chase Disables Employee Comments After Return-to-Office Backlash (msn.com) 43
"JPMorgan Chase shut down comments on an internal webpage announcing the bank's return-to-office policy," reports the Wall Street Journal, "after dozens of them criticized the move and at least one suggested that affected employees should unionize, according to people familiar with the matter."
The bank's senior executives announced in an internal memo Friday that JPMorgan Chase would require all of its roughly 300,000 employees to work full time from the office starting in March, with only a limited number of exceptions. More than half of the bank's full-time workers, including senior managers and those with client-facing roles such as branch workers, have already been working full time from offices. The move primarily impacts back-office roles such as call-center workers who had still been able to work remotely two days a week...
Many employees shared concerns such as increased commuting costs, child-care challenges and the impact on work-life balance. One person suggested that they should consider unionizing to fight for a hybrid-work schedule, the people familiar with the matter said. Soon after, the bank disabled comments on the article...
The bank's executives said when announcing the move that affected employees would receive a 30-day notice before they are expected to return to the office full time. They also said there will be a limited number of teams that can work remotely or on a hybrid basis if their "work can be easily and clearly measured."
The bank's executives said yesterday a limited number of teams can still work remotely (full or part-time) — but only if their work "can be easily and clearly measured," according to the article. But they also announced how they'd implement the new policy.
Affected employees will receive a 30-day notice before being expected to return to the office full time.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AsylumWraith for sharing the news.
Many employees shared concerns such as increased commuting costs, child-care challenges and the impact on work-life balance. One person suggested that they should consider unionizing to fight for a hybrid-work schedule, the people familiar with the matter said. Soon after, the bank disabled comments on the article...
The bank's executives said when announcing the move that affected employees would receive a 30-day notice before they are expected to return to the office full time. They also said there will be a limited number of teams that can work remotely or on a hybrid basis if their "work can be easily and clearly measured."
The bank's executives said yesterday a limited number of teams can still work remotely (full or part-time) — but only if their work "can be easily and clearly measured," according to the article. But they also announced how they'd implement the new policy.
Affected employees will receive a 30-day notice before being expected to return to the office full time.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AsylumWraith for sharing the news.
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"Few top executives have been more vocal in making the case for working from the office than Jamie Dimon, the veteran CEO of JPMorgan, who – as early as 2021 – sought to restore pre-pandemic working habits. “And everyone is going to be happy with it,” he told a Wall Street Journal event that year. “And yes, the commute – you know, people don’t like commuting. But so what?” - https://www.theguardian.com/bu... [theguardian.com]
I guess... nothing.
They do pay your wage. JP Morgan h
Re:they pay your wage (Score:5, Insightful)
The power at the bargaining table is asymmetrical. As an individual... you don't eat if you don't accept what they offer. As a company... they move on to the next person until they find one who agrees. The execs are just fine.
A union is a way of evening up the power between the two sides so employees get a bigger piece of the pie.
And why shouldn't employees get as much as they can, just like the execs do? Companies are not going to be nicer to you because you fight to protect their advantage over you.
More... (Score:1)
Unions are seemingly the premier way to get an employer to honor their damn contract.
As enforcement is lackadaisical without a hefty war chest to advocate on your behalf, and government recourse is a joke anymore; unions are the most direct, I daresay libertarian means of contract enforcement.
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Butbutbut, unionizing is communism, it deprives you of your chance to become a billionaire and anyway unions are all mafia outfits. Don't believe me? Just go ask bezos and elona to tell you the long version.
Re:they pay your wage (Score:4, Informative)
I grew up with that attitude. Don't tell anybody what you make, it's a secret was another one.
You know why management doesn't want you discussing wages? Because it lets you figure out who is getting screwed the worst.
Deep down, we believe equal work deserves equal pay. Equal work should not deserve pay based on your ability to negotiate a raise. Your work product is either worth it or not. You being scared to lose your job doesn't mean the value of your work to a company is any less - it means they can turn the screws and treat you unfairly unless you have some means to protect yourself. That's a union.
I was in my 30s when I worked in my first union shop, and while they're not perfect, it's amazing how quickly you get used to knowing everyone's salary because it's in the contract you vote for. There's still room for performance bonuses and experience bonuses. Better employees can still make more - but good employees in vulnerable positions don't get hosed. When you go to the meetings and discuss what you want to see in the next contract, it tends to work out to something reasonable.
Just don't ask me to like picket lines; you put people on a picket line and at least half their brain shuts off.
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Just don't ask me to like picket lines; you put people on a picket line and at least half their brain shuts off.
Yeah, it is a known bug in many species.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
But sometimes you can't do without, even if you don't like it.
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Yeah, I have seen contracts with clauses that were supposed to be generally applied suddenly get very specific after the ink dries. And it does become a bit of a 'gentlemens agreement' when it comes to job descriptions, otherwise the system is too inflexible.
But it tends to work out better than non-union in the long run, because if management plays games on the current contract, they're going to have a much worse time in the next round of negotiations.
I have also seen owners just fold rather than deal with
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I've never worked in a union shop, but I didn't learn until my 30s (?) that lawyers ("associates") at mid and upper firms all make the same amount of money (at least within a metro area) for at least like the first ~7 years out of school (basically before they make partner or go in-house).
And even after that they'll change jobs for like 5% extra comp. They're almost as mercenary as enterprise software sales guys.
After a few decades in tech i'm feeling a little sheepish about the amount of times i haven't l
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Hippie communes probably came closest and you know what tends to happen with communes? The most powerful personality rules them while pretending that's not the case, and everything falls apart when outside funding dries up. I think there are a couple of modestly successful cases, but as a rule it's a bad, bad bet.
The truth is that humans in significant numbers do best (i.e., can create more complex societies with higher productivity and standards of living) when we specialize, and some of those specializa
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Actual "communism", as practiced in and exported by the Soviet Union, has never been about "the people". However, it along with Nazism scared the capitalist world enough to allow some real democracy at several points in history. Of course, there is the "traditional values conservatism" that wants to roll back that social change.
There's a reason this conservative movement goes along so well with modern prc and russia in the department of "values". They truly share them.
Re: they pay your wage (Score:1)
Because there's. O where for Morgan Stanley employees to find comparable work in their chosen industry?
This is just stupid - the company says return to the office and work there, like you for all those years before March, 2020 - what's so hard?
You don't wanna? OK, don't, you don't have to work for Morgan Stanley, and Morgan Stanley has no reason to cater to your whims.
If you can't figure out child care, commuting, dressing for work, etc, then maybe the world of High Finance may not be the right career choic
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It's not that it's THAT hard, it's that technology and processes have evolved to the point that doing that 5 or 6 days a week is no longer necessary in these industries.
The past 5 years have shown the strengths ( and weaknesses ) of remote and hybrid.
Right now full time RTO is kind of like an 80's manager demanding that business and accounting groups not use spreadsheets and do everything by hand because using spreadsheets makes you weak and we're a company who does arithmetic by hand (or desk calculator wi
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Leave (Score:4, Insightful)
You are not respected, they are even willing to sacrifice productivity and accept higher cost to be able to treat you badly.
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People have been working remotely for years now and without googling I’m going to guess the big banks are announcing record profits.
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Indeed. Some rather large banks here have simply sold part of their buildings and added to those profits. For most mental jobs, the "on site synergies" are a hallucination of incompetent C-levels, they are not real.
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Working conditions have everything to do with respect, and even more so when the changes done _decrease_ productivity. Seriously. Get rid of your slave-mindset and look at actual facts.
Disables Employee Comments (Score:2)
Like their employees won't find a way to move the thread over onto X, Facebook, a subreddit, etc. And anonymously as well. The smart managers will leave the in-house feedback system in place. And even learn from it to address widespread employee concerns.
Re: Disables Employee Comments (Score:1)
Who cares? They can talk all they want - finance professional will never unionize, period. It simply won't happen - the company is simply choosing to not facilitate the whining on corporate servers. You want to go and complain about how your 6-figure salary doesn't cover commuting and childcare costs on public social media, go for it - you only hurt yourself/your reputation.
Re: Disables Employee Comments (Score:2)
Only measure WFH? (Score:2)
Why would they only measure the performance of people working from home?
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Simple: Otherwise their blatant lies about "better productivity" in the office would become obvious. And they know they are lying.
Remote exec here with a remote team of 122 (Score:3)
"They also said there will be a limited number of teams that can work remotely or on a hybrid basis if their "work can be easily and clearly measured.""
This is actually a horrifying admission that JPM cannot measure the work of virtually all their employees.
OKRs aren't hard, people.
I run a remote team of 122. Work from the moon, I don't care. We pay $400k-$500k TC and one of our employees lives on the beach in Portugal with a house they bought for $40k.
But the flipside of OKR management not being political is that it's pitiless. Miss an OKR and you're fired.
I would be using this opportunity to try and poach JPM people, but I don't interview them anymore as none of them can pass our tech interviews.
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I have no idea about banking, but in engineering you normally cannot.
Re: Remote exec here with a remote team of 122 (Score:2)
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The problem is that getting competent technical managers is even harder than getting competent engineers. And that is already very hard.
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You really cannot. But you can sort-of classify people into "direly needed", "really needed", "meh", "easy to replace", "should be fired" and you need to do that with a strategic view and it needs to be done by other smart people.
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I don't think a global company can be successful without having remote teams that are managed effectively (or at least satisfactorily).
My company is data driven. Every objective has a KPI attached to it, so that we can quantify the results. A general philosophy of OKR starts at the highest level business objectives and goes down to the individual performance evaluations. Not surprising for a company doing metrics-driven decision making.
That said, I don't think we're pitiless (maybe it seems so from my descr
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I'm curious what field you're in.
In startups i've found OKRs to be pretty hit and miss. Like you can set an intention of what you're going to do, but whether it works out or not is determined more by circumstance than anyone's effort.
Like if a big contract shows up you change the roadmap to accommodate. Or you get to some part of the project and it takes 3 times as long. Or some key person leaves and now a whole branch of a project is basically delayed by 3 months. Or all sorts of things. And i don't s
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>This is actually a horrifying admission that JPM cannot measure the work of virtually all their employees.
What is truly odd about this... insane even... is that they can't measure the output so their solution is to be unable to measure it at the office instead of remotely.
I dunno about you, but if I really want to, I can goof off with my manager watching right over my shoulder, because they don't understand my work at a technical level. What they know is whether or not the client is happy, and the cli
Norma Rae (Score:2)
at least one suggested that affected employees should unionize
Right, go watch Norma Rae and then try to draw the parallels between her plight in the clothing industry with your in high-finance at Morgan Stanley. Perhaps take another moment watch the documentary on the Stella Dora bakery workers that struck for a year, then settled, only to see the company sold and the product line moved out of state.
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Unions seem to be working out great for professional athletes with 7-figure salaries. Why shouldn't bank clerks get in on the action?
Oh, and you forgot your bold emphasis point.
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Scaremonger a;ll you want, but it's simple: yyes, a union can, if they are morons, drive a company out of business. But that happens far less often than a non-unionized workforce gets taken advantage of by the company, and a company can easily keep a union out by simply treating peopel so well (including top-level pay) that they never want to unionize.
So don't bother whining about "unions bad", they are, on balance, a necessary cog in the machine of capitalism.
The bullshit free version of the announcement (Score:2)
Employees will now be required to make a mandatory expense impacting the environment by consuming fuel on commuting to maintain our property values. We appreciate our employees commitment to taking a salary hit so that the board is not subjected to lower investment yields from unrealized capital gains tax on our real estate assets.