VMware cuts pay for employees who WFH...A reason I like Proxmox better as my hypervisor for my home lab

What if a staffer registered a P.O. Box in the expensive town as their registered address, the moved to CheapTown, USA?

[then I look at the title and wonder if the new WFH topic might be a better name, given the start and theme of the whole thread? It’s not derailed, it was always thus]

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Everyone should care about company culture - even if permanently WFH and never being in the same room as collegues. Company culture is so much more than dress-code, BYOD, bean-bags, sit/stand desks and free snacks/meals. Most companies have great slogans about the culture being honest, and supporting creativity yada, yada, yada… It could have all that and more, yet the true scratch-beneath-the-veneer culture could be terrible.

The extreme examples of this would be Enron and Theranos. More typical examples would be where a company may aspire to have great culture for all employees but somewhere in the middle-management layer things are going wrong and the senior managers are not picking up on it - or leaving it alone as targets are hit and their big bonuses aren’t at risk. With more people WFH my concern is this is more likely to happen as all communication becomes filtered via Teams (or whatever app) and senior management are not fully aware of what’s going on at the coal face.

I suggest everyone read about Westrum’s three cultures “A typology of organisational cultures - PDF” - table below is a summary:

I’ve worked in some organisations that aspire to be Generative but have failed to realise they have a couple of managers who better fit into Pathological (and they wonder why people are leaving). My experience of working in IT is that Bureaucratic cultures tend to evole and be tolerated - which is where the fun starts when they set up a new Digital team and hire an Agile coach who then tries to fight against it. IMO DevOps and Agile processes can only work properly when the culture is Generative and there is wide-spread trust in tools and co-workers :slight_smile:

As for forced salary cuts for home workers… it’s nothing to do with culture, it is purely money-saving and likely justifiable - provided everyone can experience it as win-win.

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:xbox_x:

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If you have a dedicated work space, maybe, but if the only work space is next to your distracting gaming pc thennnn…

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This would be and issue for me…just spinning slightly to big sceen andddddd…down goes productivity…lol Not really but it is there as a distraction not to mention our dog.

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It would be savings if they could unload the empty space inside the building or the entire building itself. Also, there may be existing rental agreements to consider and the company might be tied into a contract to retain the lease for a period of time. There are a lot of reasons why the company may need to recuperate some funds if the employees won’t be present in the facility. Plus it’s probably a smaller cost, but the company may also need to invest in some infrastructure to support greater remote working needs. Additionally, I imagine that commercial real estate and/or commercial rental in the area is probably not conducive to a sale right now with a mass exodus. Just some thoughts…

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@Whizdumb I agree. There is that side of things as well. I thought it would be interesting to see what people think of the subject. That longer view is god as well. Most my comments are purely hypothetical to see what people think. With our population I wanted to see what people thought. :grinning: Thanks for the idea.

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Believe me, this kind of topic has been discussed with my co-workers ad nauseam because the company I work for is contemplating some moves toward greater WFH policies. That in turn leaves the company with commercial real-estate investements and rentals that may be difficult to unload at this time. While the housing prices in the area of our office spaces are not as astronomically high as silicon valley, it still becomes a concern for the company’s bottom line.

That’s why I wished to chime in with the alternative perspective. Thank you for taking the time to consider everyone’s opinion and perspective on the matter.

On a side-note, it’s funny… I thought I was going to read a post about why someone was happy they went with Proxmox for their homelab virtual environment and got into a talk about commercial real estate and business practices… Ha. Go figure. LOL

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@BGL Thats a very interesting read. I love seeing peer articles.
As someone who might enter the industry in the near future this seems a very valid way to look at a company I think of working with. I’ve had military experience which I would classify as Bureaucratic but with some higher ups being Pathological. Generative seems a place I flourish, I only experienced this once in the military on deployment. It was a very unique experiance and stays with me.

I wonder if it would be rude to ask what kind of culture the company aspires to?

@Whizdumb Yeah probably a poor title choice, my head works in weird ways some days lol.

I should start a blog of some kind. I have the domain name just need to get better into linux and develop a webpage and set it up etc etc… or I can try to find out how to start one here. Its been a frustrating but rewarding experience as a novice learning both linux and proxmox.

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There is a legitimate argue that if a worker was unproductive to start off with then the work from home has made them even less productive.

I.E at my last job there were people who honestly should’ve been fired, they were absolutely mediocre at best, and the only thing keeping them in line was micro management.

Now, due to the circumstances of the employability process it was neigh impossible to get let go for under-performing. You would have to fuck up constantly. So a lot of these people just rode the line.

Now that the ‘threat’ on management monitoring them is removed they blatantly stopped caring altogether.

It’s a real shame.

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I’m not sure if it’s underproductivity across the board or just some people need dedicated spaces to do things. Like I can’t read at home, but I can read at a library. I will be more likely to do push-ups and situps at a gym as opposed to home. Different people respond to stimuli in different ways.

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I keep in contact with my old buddy who still works there and they did remove the WFH mandate and made it optional but those same people still refused to come into the office.

I am fairly certain they are just hot trash.

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@Dynamic_Gravity
Sorry to hear that. I’ve experienced some of that myself actually. With superiors in the service. Was very frustrating.

From what I have seen it exacerbated the the ends of the spectrum.

If you were good you became great and if you were terrible you became appalling.

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@reavessm
That’s a good point too.

@Whizdumb Title changed, hope its more clear lol

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Thank goodness there’s not a character limit on titles… sheesh

There is, but it’s stupid long, IIRC

EDIT:

image

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https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham's_Law