#remotework

Multiple sources internally report odd behavior in product team directors, VPs and upper middle management. Product and support teams are being asked to thoroughly document process and tool usage. Directors and managers are MIA for large portions of the working day. Upper managers are now playing politics now to fight for headcount and relevance while deciding which teams and employees will suffer next week.

More rumours suggest VPs and Directors are being told to further drive AI adoption in all teams, not just product and support, and remove backfills from the west workforce while creating new roles in Bengaluru. Their plan is to reduce the American workforce permanently in favor of cheaper labor that can leverage AI.

Employees with a remote or hybrid category are being targeted. Employees co-located to direct and middle management will be protected. Remote and hybrid roles will be targeted. Product, sales and support teams in the Americas will take the largest hits. The rumoured target is appr. 4% reduction in force.

I’m curious if anyone here has successfully obtained workplace accommodations related to their neurodivergence, particularly around office seating arrangements or working remotely.

My concern is that our workplace is moving away from traditional cubicles with higher walls and toward more open seating arrangements. Some areas have bench-style desks with virtually no barriers, while others have shorter partitions. Either way, these environments are noticeably louder and have significantly more visual distractions.

For neurodivergent employees, particularly those who struggle with sensory processing, noise, visual stimulation, or maintaining focus, this type of environment can make it considerably more difficult to concentrate and be productive.

I’m wondering if anyone has successfully obtained accommodations such as:

• A workstation with higher partitions or more visual separation.
• A permanent work-from-home accommodation when the office environment creates significant barriers to productivity.

I’d especially appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone through the formal ADA accommodation process. What did you request, what documentation was required, and how receptive was your employer?

I’m not necessarily looking to avoid coming into the office. I’m looking for an environment where I can do my best work without unnecessary sensory distractions. I’d love to hear what has worked for others.

Anyone know anything about Plano and WFH this next week? Apparently purchase got a wfh notice?

All US staff back into the office in January, 3 or more days per week. Who cares that you were largely remote for 6 or more years, you have 60 days to change your entire way of life to pretend to get more work done at a temp desk.

Who cares if your entire team is in another state or country, you now need to sit in traffic and spend money to attend Teams calls from the office instead. An effective pay reduction for the entire US NG workforce. Great job!

Anyone else getting sick of being retired to come into the office, just to spend all day in Teams meetings, never taking to anyone face-to-face?

95% of my day is solo work, email/Teams messages, and Teams meetings, because there's always at least one person in some other location, so every meeting needs to be over Teams.

Why are we in the office if everyone is wearing headphones, only taking to each other online?

How is this improving productivity or culture?

When do you think they are going to start letting all the remote go?

All at once or in waves to avoid bad press?

I really think she handled that poorly and the way it was presented was short sighted. Why would you say something like that and then expect your remote or even hybrid workforce to even care about their jobs anymore.

Feels like Mortal Kombat after today's call and GK effectively telling us remote people we have no future.

We knew we had no future when they told us no more raise, no opportunity for promotion , etc.

But today, she just told us we will be all layoff.

And the reason is stupid, we do our job fine.

How is sending all the remote job to India making us a better Bank?

Why does she treat us like garbage?

After today's call, I hope people see what an awful person she is and how little she cares for customers and employees alike.

If anyone feels they have a future at this company after that all hands call, I would be surprised.

We are archaic. People don't actively choose to bank with us. Our lending practices are stingy, our products su-k, our customer service is bad, and the company is now full of raging angry employees. We have somewhere in the market of 30k remote employees that basically got told their work isn't good enough simply because of location. Employees are your BEST marketing and 35k+ really angry employees can cause thousands of account closures by word of mouth.

Advocate for everyone you know to sell their stocks, move their money, and de-invest from this company. Close all your accounts and go bank elsewhere. The only way we get change is to hurt her bad enough the board of directors is forced to take a deeper look at why they're losing business.

So when are layoffs coming for remote workers?! Im tierd of thinking about this for a while now. Someone spill the beans! Will everyone thats not near a hub be laid off soon? Like before the end of the year?

It was stated on today's All Company Gaslight that pools for raises and bonuses are expected to be larger this year and that that should benefit those at the lower grade levels especially.

It was also said that the number of remote roles no longer supports the needs of our customer base.

Subtext:

1) The largest population of remote workers are those at the lower grade levels. They should expect to be sent back to the office in 2027.

2) Percentage wise, increases for those earning less are going to be lower and therefore the company prefers to pay those than to pay those who are at higher levels with larger salaries.

3) Those at lower grade levels will receive higher raises and bonuses than usual as an attempt to keep them from quitting when RTO comes for them.

4) To help cover the cost of those higher raises and bonuses for employees at lower levels, those of us in higher levels with larger salaries should expect to receive little to nothing.

The higher salary doesn't seem as important to me as it used to. I'd rather have the ability to work remotely, arrange my day with some flexibility, and not feel that my job owns every waking hour. I know that could mean earning less, but I'm wondering whether people who've made that choice are happier with it?

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/6190323-remote-work-ceo-age-study/

Younger CEO's favor work outcomes over office presence. It maybe the fix we need.

I've seen people mention hybrid and/or remote exceptions for spouses in the military. I only found this being available in times of relocating. Is that all Fidelity offers flexibility with?

I recently applied internally to a position that was specific to Humana job sites but remote. Do we think this is a sign they’re planning to return to work?!

From waking up to make this commute to sit in an office on zoom calls to talk to my team thousands of miles away. This isn’t sustainable.

Do we really expect them to change the tech phase 2 exemptions from the past?

any word on if she supports return to office or remote?

Is it impossible now to work remotely for Fidelity? I’ve heard them deny in office exemptions for people with extreme medical conditions but approve others for doctor notes claiming “anxiety”.

Does every request hinge on a random HR person and how they woke up that day to decide your RTO fate?

Are they going remote?

Billing, sales, repair, accessibility, or other niche remote groups?

100s of remote no work all day remote , netflix for 6 years, 200 k package with 50k eoy bonus, senior software engineer. How to be vp?

My location, I'm yet to speak to anybody outside of my manager for longer than a few words. Still have plenty of online meetings, though. So the whole RTO experiment is pretty pointless. But we all already knew that.

Has anyone heard if anything would happen if you just don’t obliged with the RTO mandate?

I know way too many people on my floor who just stopped showing up or decided to have hybrid schedule themselves

Are they going to impact your bonuses/raises or something? Tell you to go back into the office? Is it manager discretion?

Some managers are scared of being punished so they make their team go in. While others don’t care as long as you get your work done

People getting colds viruses etc and deciding to wfh? Wasn’t that the same reason they locked us all down in the first place for three years a cold virus with a 99%+ survivability rate?
Seriously though, do they expect us to slog into work coughing and sneezing and contaminating the whole floor or will they be merciful and allow us to wfh?
I feel like I’d be skulking around if I say I don’t feel well enough to come in would they rather wfh or no productivity from me at all?
We’re getting thick into cold and flu season there’s been ZERO.guidance conveyed from the top down.
They never released the July survey
This is 🐂💩
This has turned into a very hostile work environment going from respect of employees and trusting us to do our work which we did with banner profitability to Ge----o type surveillance on our every move.
Where are all our reps that protect the worker?
Oh right they’re into the grift too with their own non profits benefiting off our indentured service too.
MA is a he-l hole and a 💩hole

For those currently working remotely who decline the VBO, when will they have to start coming into the office 5 days a week?

There’s no office in my area, so which offices would people like me be expected to go to?

Hi, I'm likely going to be forced out via a PIP in the coming weeks, and I was wondering where to look outside of IBM for a new job? I'm applying lots of places, but has anyone had success in a particular company?

I'm in the US, but any state would be fine for me, I don't mind relocating. What companies are treating their employees better? Remote work options? I have 4 years experience so far, so I'm having a hard time finding roles that fit my skillset and experience level. I hear that's enough to be a Senior software engineer most places, but most of my work is frontend so it's a lil difficult.

I'm also LGBTQ, which I don't want to make a bug fuss about, but that can be hard with employers, sometimes.

Any advice is welcome and appreciated! It's a tough market, but I got people who depend on me, so I really need to figure something out.

Hope everyone is doing okay and staying safe!

Debating if I should go to CTC or work from my primary location, don’t think the expected outcome will be any different. Are you going? And if so why (not considering RTO).

I thought the most important thing was IN-PERSON collaboration?? I guess it's important enough to eliminate WFH but not important enough to pay for a team to actually be in person in one place?

How am I supposed to inspire and build better lives and communities in these conditions?

Rumor has it Roger doesn't link WFH or remote workers. Push coming soon for 5 days a week 8 to 5 for all and to force remote workers back in office or leave.

Should be fun

When I first joined Fidelity my team/business unit were almost entirely in one building. We had a small India team but on the whole we were co-located. Over the years with technology and pandemic everything fractured and folks were more and more on little islands. Now, there are maybe 10 people out of the hundreds I work with that are in the same location.

I suspect that the long term goal of RTO is get back to a heavily co-located site strategy and they are trying to figure out how small the team can be to reap the benefits of co-location. I don’t think it will reach the “whole business unit” level, but I think we will see more and more location locks happening for job postings as the move for building capacity strategy to team co-location strategy.

In five years things will look very different.

What I was told from an LL4 who quit recently is ford is back to doing the “forced stacked ranking” they got in trouble for in the early 2000s. So even if everyone on your team met their deliverables, they’re picking a few to rate “1”. It’s easy to point to badge swipes or someone being a remote worker as a reason to rate them a 1, especially on a team when no one actually deserves a 1. Ford has gotten increasingly toxic as a workplace. Keep your resume up to date and never stop applying externally. 4 days required in office is draconian and a lot of the best talent has already left

Bumping from @at+1m3ksj36n for important info.

1000s planning pto work remote and december fun bonus and vacation,
No work ddat remote engineers group

John says we need to “stand behind our products and services” and use them ourselves if we expect others to switch to AT&T.

Here’s the problem, John. We literally implemented 5x RTO because apparently we don’t believe our own employees can work effectively from home, even though we sell the very services that make remote work possible.

How the he-l are we supposed to sell people on the benefits of AT&T when our own leadership doesn’t seem to believe in them enough to let its employees use that flexibility themselves?

Maybe we’d be more enthusiastic about our own products, more likely to use them, and more willing to recommend them to friends and family if we actually experienced the benefits firsthand instead of being forced into an office five days a week.

You want employees to stand behind AT&T? Start by giving us a reason to believe in what we’re selling. You can’t preach the benefits of connectivity and flexibility to customers while refusing to trust your own employees with it. Practice what you preach.

The past 2 years, I’ve been allowed to stay fully remote due to requesting reasonable accommodations via HR and my doctor completing the necessary paperwork on an annual basis for my disabilities. They were approved quickly and without issue.

My previous accommodation expired at the beginning of September. I was not notified it had expired until my manager let me know and then I opened a case with HR for renewal and a flexible work arrangement went in for me to continue working from home despite not needing one prior - the email from HR you receive before the review process had previously always stated we may continue working from home until a decision is made; which is no longer present in that email apparently.

My doctor (same one I’ve had every single year for this process) completed the forms as usual and faxed them in. My HR rep was impossible to get ahold of but finally confirmed receipt weeks later and said they’ve begun the review process. We are now nearing the end of October and I haven’t heard a word. I reached out to my HR rep 4 times and emailed them and eventually got a response saying they are still in the review process, there’s no updates at this time.

Key things of note:

• I saved all my previous accommodation approvals from HR and provided them
• I documented every exchange I’ve had with HR
• My job description has not changed
• my team is not and has not ever been colocated
• we were remote before 2020
• my disabilities have not changed
• my manager keeps having to put in flexible work arrangements every month due to the radio silence from HR

Reasonably, what should I do here? What recourse do I have? Why can’t I get an approval or denial yet?

Maura is ousted. Abby acquiescing for Maura and her massive budget being tax revenue forcing us to be cattle going to sla-ghter.
This FT RTO is a joke.
Productivity is going to go down people are late leaving early because we all have obligations with family children pets it was better wfh because we turned on our laptop right on time instead of sitting in traffic looking for parking getting gasoline trains trolley delays.
Maura needs to go we can’t afford this Abby needed to bring us in for tax revenue. Such a pig. Vote Minouge get us out of this he-l hole.

I'm under JZ then 2 H1B vp levels. Then Sr Director and Sr Mgmt offshore level. Sr Mgmt level and above for our team just does reporting on projects that they ask us workers to do for them to hand it to the next level. I was put on a RTO "bad" report for CA because I was out for vacation. That's not taken into consideration for being in office 4x's per week. My offshore leaders don't care. My India co-workers only come in 10 days per month to stay off the list. Job openings only show MN and WA need to be in office 4 days per wk. Is this so that Optum can claim that they are doing this for those state tx purposes when really it's due to country of origin, which is illegal? They are having US workers RTO in many states and not just MN and WA.

How is the HIS Division? It is always cameras on to watch you work and micromanagement or is it more it is fine as long as you get the job done? How are the working hours and meeting hours? Any pressures from the separation announcements

Looks like the remote work exceptions need to be justified again. Based on the timing; my guess is that it will impact comp and potentially add to the list of candidates for upcoming layoffs.

I've heard rumors going back a few years that employees will eventually be required to work in the same location as their manager. Is this still the plan?