Given how remote groups have been organized over the years, it seems completely pointless. What would one achieve by putting physically together people who work remotely anyway and whose individual tasks are more often than not interlinked with other groups working remotely? It sounds inefficient, costly for both employees and company, and unnecessary. Can anyone give me a single reason why it’s beneficial for anyone involved? I am sincerely asking.
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a Ford manager destroys the team with micromanagement, political games.... while the managers make the technical decisions (ready to grab all the glory, or dump the blame on their team if it fails....
Seriously which one of my teammates wrote this
After reading all this, I am never going to buy a Ford.
I don’t the photographer in our area is coming back to Ford full time. Her business is booming. It takes her a couple of hours a week to pull her data and the rest of the time she is busy processing photographs. People don’t seem to mind having to wait for a response from her and she never takes on new work. She is on the FNF plan.
What do you think the odds of getting her back into the office anytime soon?
WFH was the best retirement transition. I spent a couple hours in the morning replying to emails. Then worked on my bike or went to the gym, then logged 15 minutes at the end of the day to reply to whatever urgent stuff came in. My boss never noticed a change in my performance and I retired with a solid perf rating. Thank you COVID!
I work from home. When I do go into the office. I see a lot of retired people coming in to work. They are wearing dockers and talking about repairs they made on their decks over the weekend. They crave time chatting at the water cooler. It seems.
All the people pushing for on campus work are either in denial or they're completely ignoring the fact that the campus is chock full of people that aren't producing anything literally ever day. We all know it because we see it and hear it. It seems to be overlooked by many here that most employees are in the office 3 days a week now as it is. Someone who is supposed to be working from home but is actually doing otherwise isn't nearly as significant a problem as a management team that doesn't known what work needs to be done or how its getting done. Wasting time on inefficient activities like running all over a large campus to ask a simple question, or to get a coffee, or use the bathroom, or get lunch, or go to and from conference rooms is hardly productive. It may make you feel good, but its not productive. Just being in the office is literally a scam for many who literally use being in the office to fake productivity everyday. Again, merely being seen in the office as a qualifier for being a contributor is a bigger problem than people working remotely.
I sincerely hope that all Ford employees have to work out of their offices five days a week. There is no reason for this WFH stuff anymore. You should also be working at least ten hours a day.
@OP. For several years, Ford has not been "about work". There were always the "well connected" applicants (friends and families) that got the jobs without knowing sh!t, but in the last years that explode into too many of them. Then the C-suite created more "leadership" positions, which became little empires inside the company, and the political backstabbing are now comparable to the "Hunger Games".
So now we have a bloated management, which makes it very hard to achieve any decision, and many teams where only half the people can and do actual work. Plus we keep losing talent and experience by attrition and layoffs. The result is we are now the king of recalls.
If the company would be serious about quality, it would layoff half the white collars force (the half that doesn't work), 75% of the middle management, and 100% of the C-suite. Instead, we are playing "politics" at all levels, including the top. We are trying to curry favor in Washington, Farley says quality will be fixed (just buying time until his contract is up because nothing is really done), and the empire building LLs are making sure the layoffs lists don't contain the names of theirs cronies.
RTO is just another political maneuver, where Ford ingratiates local governments and management finally have a simple objective they can achieve. It is not related to "actual work".
Regarding RTO vs WFH, some positions require collaboration or training, and others require solitude, focus and thinking. The problem at Ford is that many people abuse WFH, which are the same that do nothing at the office, while collaboration is non existent in RTO.
Most "old" employees with knowledge are keeping it for themselves. The idea behind is the "job security" approach, or the "revenge" in case they are fired. Then we have too many Webex meetings, open areas and randomly seating at the Ford buildings to achieve anything remotely similar to "collaboration". There's no way to find someone, since they can be in any building, any floor, any desk.
So we have a WFH that does not work properly, an RTO that does not collaborate, and the main reason is management sc--wing up all they touch (like Midas, but instead of gold, all they touch becomes cr@p).
A regular manager stays away from the technical decisions, a good manager makes sure the team has all it needs to achieve good technical decisions, a great manager motivates the team to self improve and achieve the top, and a Ford manager destroys the team with micromanagement, political games and filling the spots with incompetent friends and family applicants, all while the managers make the technical decisions (ready to grab all the glory, or dump the blame on their team if it fails).
End of rant!
Unfortunately a few bad apples ruin it for the whole bunch. I hope they’re proud of themselves.
@iin Don't companies monitor goals and output? I am fortunate to still work from home. My company, in SE Michigan, told us they don't want us in the office. That saves me $300 in gas every month. All my work gets done every single day without manglement sitting over my shoulder micromanaging me. That's a good feeling that I am trusted to be autonomous at my job.
From reading this site, it sounds like a lot of employees are not doing their jobs. I don't know if they are or aren't. Manglement should be sitting down with their employees frequently and having discussions about meeting the established goals. Those that aren't should be given a PIP for improvement. If there is no improvement, they need get to be separated. You are either doing your job or not.
Individual, team and company goals can be met working from home or in the office. All that matters is that they are met. Where the job is done should not matter.
I’m retired too and it’s amazing how many of my former colleagues I see at Costco on a Friday when they are supposedly at work. They joke about it and the meet me in the afternoon for drinks at the local pub where they just sign in to WebEx to appear there. I’m kind of frustrated at them as a shareholder but more at Ford for not managing this.
It’s simple, with WFH, answers take to long because someone in the chain isn’t paying attention. When everyone is in the office, I could find them and get answers so I was unblocked. That’s the reason.
Well at least you would know where they are and if they actually came into work. Most of the people that I see who are supposed to be WFH are out with me traveling, shopping, at the gym, and I am retired.