My employer just laid off a huge amount of the IT department where I work a year or two ago. I survived it, but today they announced they’re going to require everyone to come back into the office. And coincidentally they’re opening a new office in India. (Their first office outside of north/central America. And they do no business/sales in India and have no plan to start. Pay no attention to the fact that the going rate for labor in India is a fraction of a fraction of what we’re paid in the U.S.)
It’s painfully obvious that they’re just trying to incentivize people to leave on terms that aren’t considered “termination” for purposes of… say… unemployment benefits payment and such.
So, now I’m in the market for a job. It’ll basically have to be full-time remote for reasons. And I super don’t relish the idea of becoming a vibe coder. Nor job hunting in the current market.
Stressful bullshit.
I wish return to office (for some, a first time in the office after years with a company!) could more easily be deemed constructive discharge.
I know there are people who never got the opportunity to work from home and will say to get over it. But people build their entire lives around working from home. Converting space in their home into a productive home office environment—and the expenditures to do so; establishing routines that align with working from home; selling their vehicle in lieu of riding a bicycle to all the conveniently located everyday places; getting a pet that has become accustomed to seeing you all hours of the day.
It’s so disruptive in so many ways when companies do this, and almost always with no reason for doing so except to fuck over employees.
Oh hey! You work with my step-son! I’ll just say… no one is gonna move to or back to that shithole city to work for a crappy delusional company that thinks they are number one in their business.
Yeah, I figured I might be giving away where I work a bit.
(Mr. Boss Man, if you see this, I’m not committed to leaving. 😬 )
They’ve definitely pissed a lot of their workforce off today. And I don’t think they care if lots of people leave. If anything, they hope so.
I’m not committed to leaving.
Offer to take a voluntary redundancy.
Your employer is writing the cheque for their own demise.
I’m not gonna out ya. I’ll just say that the person enacting this was most definitely brought in for this reason. I’m sorry you’re going through this… I have 30 years in software, I’m available to talk if you need to, or just want to explore options.
They will discover the hard way, like many have before, that while there are a lot of people in India and a lot of them are even smart, there are also a lot of incompetent people, just like anywhere else. The smart people of India have discovered that there’s a lot of competition for hiring them, and so they can command a good salary. While not quite as good as you could get in the U.S., it’s still a very good salary, and they will demand it. If you want incompetent people, well, that’s not a problem: you can get those cheap. Also because of languages and cultural differences, you need more \ better management to handle people in India. between those, it is very hard to save money in India. It certainly can be and has been done, but India is not nearly as cheap as they appear on the outside.
But line goes up right now
Just come into work every day, but wear really ugly sweaters.
And wait until they say something.
Then, do everything really really loudly.
HI FRANK!!! HOW ARE YOU DOING TODAY??? ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO FISH??? I HAVE A FISH IN MY FREEZER, SO IF YOU COME TO MY HOUSE AND ARE ALLERGIC TO FISH, DON’T TOUCH THE FISH IN MY FREEZER!!!
Uh, yeah, I’ll remember that…
GOOD! BECAUSE I ALSO HAVE STRAWBERRIES IN THE CRISPER, AND I…
Ok, ok, I’ll stay out of your fridge, at your house, that I’ve never been to, and have no reason to go to…
I LIKE COLD PILLOWS! A LOT OF PEOPLE THINK I’M WEIRD FOR SOAKING MY PILLOW IN COLD MILK BEFORE BED, BUT MY BONES NEED THE CALCIUM!!!
Uhhhh…what?
Aaaaaaaaaand, just repeat this behavior for a year or two. They will have no reason to fire you as long as you’re loud, annoying, and borderline stupid, but they’ll really want you gone.
I figure, if they’re going to take away the comforts of your home, then you should take away their comfort of you being at home.
You can also add in smelly to the mix. Just shit your pants in front of your boss. Tell him you have no time for toilets. Make sure you don’t wear underwear, so it plops right onto his office floor.
If you really want to mix it up, I’ve had varying levels of sucsess by adding crazy into the mix. Not like violent aggressive crazy. More like eating a brownie while standing on the ceiling and defying gravity kinds of crazy.
That’s a great thought, but poor targeting. This would drive away your fellow employees more than it would piss off the boss. It’s doing the boss’s job for them, making them quit instead of be fired.
Instead, be nice to everyone except the boss. Be careful never to be recorded. Look at them with utter hatred when no witnesses or cameras are around, and smiles at all other times. Send them fruit baskets where all the fruit has little injection marks in the skin, but nothing injected. Leave a Chucky doll outside their office door on the 13th of every month.
don’t forget to stomp when you walk. that way everyone knows you’re walking.
No, get shoes that fart with every step. Like a flatulent clown
Relevant username! I love your ideas, but I would hate to work with you. Also, the OP is in IT so there’s a good chance he knows people that are like this already. I sure knew a guy that would shit his pants and smeared it everywhere while trying to clean it and not be discovered. And he wasn’t even trying to be annoying!
they’ll really want you gone.
Is a valid reason to fire someone in the us
What part of IT work are you in?
On paper, Software Engineering. As in, writing software. Though, I’m a “tech lead”, so kindof sortof “in charge”, but (mercifully) not in a management sense. I don’t directly write code so much. More like direct other folks on my team, design/architect things, and assist others with questions and obstacles in the coding they’re doing. (Rather than being productive myself, more than anything I try to multiply others’ productivity by helping them get past obstacles.) I also fill a lot of the role of agile coach.
What tech stack?
This place, Java/Spring-Boot on Kubernetes plus Postgres, Redis, and some GCP. I also have front-end experience (though it’s from a while ago, and we all know how quickly the front-end landscape reinvents itself, and I’m definitely more on the “front-end coder” side than the UI/UX side). I also have experience with AWS (mostly Elastic Beanstalk and ECS), Python/Django, and have written a lot of side projects in Go.
