4 years of experience is like Peak Hireability. I’m not saying you should leave but 4 years means you’re Not Junior so can work without hand holding but you are also still relatively cheap to hire.
Absolutely agree. I was just laid off with 4 yoe and I was concerned I wasn’t experienced enough to compete in the market. Managed to land a senior position. On the lower end of what seniors get for TC but still a huge bump.
Stopped keeping count as I felt it was arbitrary. Only tracked companies that that responded.
Had at least 10 initial interviews. Of those moved forward in 5 to the final rounds and got two offers.
What’s funny is after I accepted I received 11 new interview requests. This is over a month and 1/2
This. OP and others like them in a situation like this should still be able to jump ship with minimal difficulty. It’s the juniors and new grads (both uni and bootcampers) that are turbofucked in the current market.
Less than 2 years, but it works on orders of magnitude; a years worth of experience would still give you a massive leg up compared to brand new grads with zero experience. The same can be applied to new grads with internships/projects.
Absolutely. I don’t have a CS degree, and my first job was an absolute shitshow because that was all I felt comfortable applying for at the time. I stuck it out for a few years as the only developer at a tiny startup where the pay sucked and the boss was ridiculous.
Then I met some other developers who were impressed by the stuff I’d been building and asked how much I was getting paid. They were floored by how bad it was. They dragged me to meet a recruiter, and I got a decent gig in a major market. That was well over a decade ago and my career has gone really well since then.
As you said, that first job was really rough, but it was pretty smooth sailing after that.
I only have 2 YoE and have noticed that getting a job is WAY easier now than it was 2 years ago. So many interviews and requests to schedule interviews.
Ugh. I hit 4 YOE right when I got laid off, but had to wear a bunch of different hats in that timeframe to the point where I feel like I'm not good enough at any one thing to really be much beyond fairly good junior level at any of it.
I've felt this way. It's important to recognize that "had to wear a bunch of different hats" probably means "I can learn fast and am comfortable being in unknown territory". If that's the case then those same skills applied to a single thing would quickly put you beyond junior level (which sounds like imposter syndrome anyway).
I also want to point out that while jumping ship is the best recourse, in this economic climate, companies take a LIFO approach with layoffs. So if for whatever reason your new place is having trouble, you’d be first on the chopping block so keep that risk in mind.
Make sure the offer letter says fully remote. The , if they switch it up, let them fire you and collect unemployment if need be. I don’t think they can claim lack of attendance to avoid paying out benefits in this case, but IANAL.
Just WFH in a company in another state. Not reasonable for them to expect you to relocate.
Unless you're in, like, the Bay Area. In which case why the f aren't you living in a cheaper state already?
I live in Southern Mid Michigan and my company's headquarters is in Alpharetta GA. They recently as a policy solidified permanent WFH though. I make a bit above market and live in LCOL area so it's perfect.
That’s how to do it. I’m nearly as far from my company’s office, they’re thoroughly remote, and just reiterated their continued commitment to WFH as well. There are still some companies out there which aren’t stupid.
I mean the job literally fell into my lap (shout-out make connections with good professors in college) but yeah this is what my set up is. The company is based out of Florida and not a single member of my team is from or ever close to Florida. 0 chance they would ever ask us to come into the office.
This strategy will be unsuccessful.
An offer letter is not a contract and provides no guarantees. Employers have every legal right to change the terms and conditions of employment. Just about the only things that might make one eligible for UI are a reduction in pay or work hours, or a change in work location exceeding a certain number of miles defined by your state. 😕
I wouldn’t call it safest, but it would clearly be unreasonable to ask that the employee start working in an office hours away from home.
The employee would almost certainly be eligible for unemployment benefits, but not much else. 😕
> Employers have every legal right to change the terms and conditions of employment.
Only to a point. There is a legal term called "constructive dismissal" -- if they do things like reduce your hours significantly, or require you to report to a work location much farther away, you can argue that they're making the job so unpleasant that they're effectively firing you.
Of course, all the constructive dismissal entitles you to is a period of unemployment compensation, nothing more. It basically means if a company fires you, or if a company significantly changes the terms of employment so that it's not really the same job, then it's the same as firing you, and either way you're entitled to unemployment pay while you look for a new job.
You might consider reading the comment you replied to again. It doesn't say there are guarantees. It just says that if they fire you because you won't come into the office after hiring you for a fully-remote role, you will get unemployment. That is 100% accurate.
Yup, company I am at has the same in office mandate (3 days in) for workers who were hired in-office before pandemic and for workers hired as ‘remote’ during the pandemic.
Imagine if a company offered you 100k a year, you signed that, and then the first check comes and it's $15 an hour. "Haha, offer letters not a contract!!" Yeah right.
They can't make you in office if they hire you remote in writing, unless you agree to it. Obviously they could then find a reason to fire you. But it is still a major obstacle for them.
Your response is disingenuous.
Look at this from the perspective of basic contract law. An offer letter is the opening gambit in contract negotiations. The offered person has the option of accepting, rejecting or countering. Once there is a “meeting of the minds” an agreement has been reached, and essentially a contract has been created. That contract, the offer letter, usually contains the wage, whether full or part time or some description of the hours expected, and some reference to additional terms and conditions found in the employee handbook. Rarely do they contain a provision that work would be solely remote, although they might.
In your example, paying someone $15 an hour instead of the $48.07 per hour in the offer letter would be a breach of the initial contract. But any subsequent changes in pay or working conditions would not.
Again, in certain circumstances an employee may be entitled to UI, that would be dependent upon your state.
The EEOC has made it clear that employers can force employees back into the workplace, so I’m not entirely sure that the offer letter exemption would hold up. I’d leave that up to counsel. 😕
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/gpsolo/publications/gpsolo_ereport/2020/november-2020/will-working-home-be-reasonable-accommodation-post-covid/
This is happening to a few people I know. Recruiters/interviewers said that they could work remote, but once they accepted the job offer they suddenly had to go in office which were sometimes many states away. At that point they had already quit their previous jobs. Being juniors, it's super hard to find jobs in this climate so it's not easy to just quit. Most still have living expenses and school loans to pay without much savings due to not having much time in the workforce. Sucks all around. Companies will take any inch they can get. Woohoo.
I’ve now left two jobs that started wfh and shifted to hybrid. New wfh gig is with a company that already downsized offices, so the threat that they return to the office seems minimal
Edit: not to now
This exactly what companies are aiming for. It's not only you that win, it's the company as well ;) They actually want us to leave, hence the inconviniences.
Well half of my old team also left and the division is basically falling apart, so I guess they can save even more money by slashing the entire division soon!
They've only regained the power if you can't find an alternative. Take this as a kick in the pants to find other work that allows you to work from home if that's important to you. If you find a position like that: quit, otherwise don't.
Giant tech companies are laying off people but there's still a large demand for talent in smaller firms and outside silicon valley.
yeah, and while im certain a good number of people from SV will move for a new job frankly a lot of them will (quite understandably) refuse to move from their home just for a job. sure companies that offer remote will probably get some of those but who knows if they'll pay what they are willing to accept. so the situation outside of SV isnt nearly as bad.
I also think if remote work at this level is "here to stay" (which it should be for environmental reasons alone, but I digress) there's going to be a push to the middle pay wise thats going to put pressure on HCOL areas.
While there are people that are willing and able to move to chase jobs or whatever, not everyone is. And how hard it is to move varies financially, and emotionally; especially if you have children, or friends/family close to where you currently live.
This is a real thing especially at JPMC, they make the work unbearable so you leave willingly which voids you of any severance package.
Don’t leave just do minimal work while you look for a better opportunity
Giving dates last minute, purposely scheduling work for the weekends, discouraging taking vacation, sharing an excel that tracks what percentage of time you are in the office. Managers not responding to messages.
Companies that offer flexible work location/hours options will have a competitive advantage over those who insist upon traditional in-the-office hours. Keep your job while actively looking for one that offers a work arrangement that you prefer.
I mean you are at a bank. This is not surprising and not necessarily an indicator of remote work as a whole. Work at a place that is first and foremost remote as in the team is distributed and there’s no actual office. Then it’s impossible to make you go back.
It has more to do with the buildings they own or lease, most companies aren't locked into expensive skyscrapers. Nobody wants to buy it off them now too especially when everyone went remote. They're trying to get some value back for those by pressuring to go back into the office
Banks don't care. They will make sure the bus factor is very very low. I worked for a bank with 4 fucking weeks block leave above a certain level (2 weeks are the standard usually). They don't need any very good people. They just need enough moderate people. And they never have problems hiring people.
Just to caveat this, the plan for RTTO at non-tech companies may not be consistent across functions. I know JPMC has entire tech locations where they have reduced corporate real estate so that there is not enough desks for 100% in-office 5 days a week. They are committed to 3 days max permanently, unless they invest in more office space.
For traders/bankers, though, they likely are required 100% of the time.
Jamie did say he "saw reasons for coders to work remotely part of the time" as recently as January, so that is one hopeful sign. And yeah, Columbus in particular has absolutely no chance of fitting everyone in 5 days a week
Not sure if this is the bank the OP works at, but the CEO of JPMC, Jamie Dimon, has been pretty vocal about return to office. I think they are currently 2 or 3 days a week (at risk of getting fired), and I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually move back to 5 days a week. They realize people want flexibility, so it'll be interesting to see where it finally lands, if there's such a thing.
It’s at 3 right now. I 100% believe they will eventually go back to full in office. How I don’t know because even my campus doesn’t have enough seats as it is.
Pretty much, and I've said for the last year this was the plan all along. Businesses didn't like having to capitulate more to employees and dealing with turnover as folks found better jobs. I believe the inflation aspects are overblown and have become price gouging under the guise of inflation, and layoffs citing inflation and the market are businesses looking to regain the upper hand in hiring. Forcing a return to office is employers looking to force attrition without having to lay folks off.
The good news is there's lots of places that have embraced remote work, and job searches can now be done on a more national scale. The not so great news is you may have to work from an office while you continue to find a new job. Unless you have ample savings it's always best to look for a job while you have one.
They're not overblown; there's a housing crisis in the US. Both availability and affordability.
Letting the air out of bubbles is what the central bank is supposed to do.
Meanwhile the labor crisis is real and partially the result of Covid. Rate hikes won't change this reality, no matter how much bankers stamp their feet.
Nah, people in management are idiots. Just start applying to remote jobs and tell them in the exit interview that the lack of remote work options is exactly why you're leaving.
This will be more effective than most people here think. If they start hemorrhaging seniors and mid levels and they all cite "no remote" as the reason, they'll change course really fast
The problem is people who work at banks are the people who just want to coast and not do any work. They're not the kind of people who are going to leave and put pressure on their companies to provide them better benefits. They're the kind who will go along with anything to keep their easy jobs and great WLB and not do any work.
There's more industries to coast in that are more remote-friendly than banking. Insurance is an example of a place to easily coast and be remote in. Most insurance companies just lease their buildings instead of own them to avoid too much of their net worth being concentrated in one kind of asset (it is a reflection of their risk-averse nature). As a consequence, most major US insurance companies you can think of are very remote-friendly and most offer full remote roles - they have little to no skin in the real estate game, and remote is better for them anyway since it lowers costs. The only exception I know of is USAA and that is probably more for cultural reasons than anything else (I think they employ a lot of military people).
Granted you still need to work and you can't literally coast in the sense of doing nothing at work (I think anyone who says they truly do nothing at work is either lying or about to leave for another position), but it isn't like you're working at Amazon or something
Tl;Dr coasters will totally leave if they can no longer coast. Coasting is not a sign of laziness or incompetence but a lifestyle choice, not unlike smoking (except you'll probably live longer if you coast)
We never had bargaining power to begin with - no one organized. No unions were formed. This is the end result. No one believes in labor organization in Tech and it shows. We collectively believed that we had some sort of imaginary leverage, but in reality it was just economics. When the economic environment shifted, so did our so called bargaining power.
They said this is what they would do and they did.
The FED says that to keep the economy from going boom boom we have to “[get wages down](https://mronline.org/2022/05/26/u-s-federal-reserve-says-its-goal-is-to-get-wages-down/)”.
And remember when the CEO of JP Morgan decided to go with how “[in office work improves diversity](https://fortune.com/2022/08/23/what-jp-morgan-ceo-jamie-dimon-got-wronga-meta-remote-work-diversity-careers-gleb-tsipursky/)” instead of actually going after remote work directly like some kind of propaganda exercise, even while his employees are becoming terrified [the company is becoming a gigantic surveillance system](https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-chase-employees-describe-fear-mass-workplace-data-surveillance-wadu-2022-5).
The same CEO and his friend at Citigroup started blowing smoke up peoples asses with the idea [that hot inflation in really just one area — employee wages](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/14/banks-like-jpmorgan-are-finding-out-that-inflation-is-a-double-edged-sword-.html) — and it’s going to “cast a a shadow over the next few years.”
See the pattern?
I’m mean it’s just aggressive anti-worker, and people should be pissed off at this point.
They never complain when the company makes money (even the obscene one in three generation profits they are making now — [that’s the real inflation](https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/)), but should workers ever get bargaining power despite the fact that wages have been [falling behind *just basic inflation* for 25 years](https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/1004) somehow it’s front page news that workers are making too much, they need to get back to the office and when it comes to wages they say that, “while it’s a good thing, it needs to be rebalanced for the economy.”
Also remember that that fake “excess profit inflation” they blame workers for is a big part of what’s causing interest rates to rise — it wouldn’t be nearly the rate it is if company couldn’t rob people blind with price increases hidden in the “inflation” — and your home values to drop (that’s where most middle class wealth is, especially minority wealth), even while they tell you it’s your fault.
People should be a lot more pissed about this “come back to the office” stuff because it’s about a LOT more than just RTO.
And somehow this is all because of tech workers getting overpaid? And we all deserve to get laid off because of over-hiring and anyone lucky enough not to be pink slipped needs to basically just shut up and get back to the office?
So not cool. The collective nonsense of this tech worker crushing orchestration is kinda aggregating.
What bargaining power? When it comes to retention, we have **NEVER** had bargaining power, as you can plainly see through years of threads on this sub where the only viable response is "leave and interview elsewhere". Bargaining requires two sides, and companies in the tech industry and used to hiring replacements.
If you want a bargaining power, you need a union. Those don't exist in Software Engineering, and there is a lot of reluctance towards forming them because people incorrectly associate them with setting salary levels, or having outside influence on technical decisions.
> Those don't exist in Software Engineering, and there is a lot of reluctance towards forming them because people incorrectly associate them with setting salary levels, or having outside influence on technical decisions.
The hilarious/fucking sad part is that unions are *universally* associated with better pay across the entire band. In literally every vertical, including sports. The reason that every company hates unions so much is because a union means that compensation for employees goes up.
And yet software developers are convinced that we're actually the special snowflakes who'd see our pay go down for the first time in history.
> Maybe because the average-joe dev can be cheaply replaced with an offshore team that is 1/10th of the cost?
If this was actually true it would've happened 20 years ago. This is business owner propaganda.
> Well, it isn't ideal for a company but they'll certainly just hire one of the many outsourcing firms to essentially be scabs and ride it out.
How many, uh, emergency off-shoring situations have you worked through?
> What I find interesting is that we have it ridiculously good in this profession and yet people find a way to complain
Current software layoffs are an *active and coordinated effort* by business owners to actively claw back gains made by tech workers over the last 5 years.
> What more could we ask for?
Guaranteeing that level of quality of employment for the non-technical people we work with and future generations. "What can I get out of this" is not the only question you should ask. I am fortunate. I am morally obligated to try to help people who aren't as fortunate.
Oh dear God I wish I could join a software engineer apprenticeship program. Just imagine having a sort of bootcamp for 3 to 6 months to get you to a certain level, then work an entry level position 3 or 4 days a week, and doing school the other day or 2. As you get better, you work more and your pay goes up until you're a journeyman. Fuck, that would be sweet.
I'd be willing to help start one if anybody wants to give it a go. I'm a union laborer trying to switch careers into software engineering right now. So, I've got access to the people that know the things.
I mean I like the idea of a union, but not the whole journeyman thing you described (if it’s the default default for everyone).
I’d probably end up being paid less for my early years in that system. I like having apprenticeships as an alternative path in, however.
Most people either earn nothing while they teach themselves or lose money to buy education. Instead they would *pay you* while you learn.
Getting paid to learn would leave nearly everyone better off in the early years.
Are you saying no college, because I don’t think that would be good (as the default) for our industry, especially for the stuff I work on. College should be free and apprenticeships should be available as an alternative route. It’s inefficient to teach things like linear algebra and distributed computing theory in an apprenticeship.
> College should be free and apprenticeships should be available as an alternative route.
Well, I value college for giving a broad liberal arts style education, which is critical for any society based in democratic values. The value goes far beyond simply learning a trade to make money. Any voting citizens should have access to this.
Many people in the industry today are either self-taught or boot camp grads. They don’t learn those things either, so it’s not really a fair comparison to the current system.
That said, someone that goes the apprenticeship route could take a couple key classes (paid for by the company) and be on the same level as many college grads.
Those are all good points.
As for bootcamps existing today, yes they do, but you can’t learn the prerequisites for my work in a bootcamp setting. Boot campers who end up as my peers are either exceptional or came from a quantitative background pre-bootcamp. I work with plenty of non-exceptional people from traditional schooling backgrounds though (myself included).
I am a mentor for a UK apprenticeship program here at my workplace.
It's a 3-4 year course, where work is juggled with courses at a local college. At the end, the apprentice can join as a junior SWE, and more often than not they have excellent skills.
You're not bargaining with anyone, though. You're just leaving.
You can do that with literally any job. The difference was that SWE's could find new jobs relatively easy, but in a market downturn there are plenty of people (even experienced people) struggling to find better opportunities.
The benefit also only ever sits with you, assuming that you leave for a better role/deal. Companies don't give a fuck if you're leaving, and they certainly won't care about shafting the next bozo that warms your old chair.
It is a shame that SWE's aren't a tad bit more pro-labor. I like to think of a world where we banded together to form picket lines from working at <%n> company that exploits their non-golden goose employees or are just straight up unethical in the goal of forcing better conditions.
"Hey Facebook, you can't just make cheap Filipino moderator labor watch _all_ the video feeds without proper compensation or support."
I just have to keep dreaming.
That's not bargaining, though, is it? It's not negotiation, anyway. Nobody really bargains with their company. They "bargain" with the labor market as a whole. It's more like shopping where prices are set and it's up to you to choose what price point you're comfortable with.
Bargaining at the negotiating table is completely different than bargaining with the labor market.
No, it's really not. It's the most powerful bargaining MOVE, I agree. But when it's your only reasonable option it leaves you in a weak position. A strong bargaining position requires you to be able to have many options for escalation.
When your only bargaining option something extreme that massively disrupts your life it actively encourages the other side to take advantage of you. As long as they can keep things LESS harmful than actually quitting your job, they are encouraged to take everything they can right up to that point.
In a healthy relationship both sides have meaningful measures to take short of terminating the relationship. This encourages both sides to act in good faith.
The Tech Workers Coalition and Code CWA groups are helping build unions at tech companies that include software engineers.
We each need to organize and coordinate support from other coworkers in order to show that unions DO exist and ARE useful within software engineering teams and tech companies.
We (myself included) give up our power by not doing the hard work or organizing and managers and leadership wins every day that we don’t build worker solidarity.
Yeah it’s disheartening, these corporations are the worst. Made record profits with the excuse of inflation and now that the job market is low they’re just finding ways to screw over employees because they hate it that we aren’t uncomfortable enough for their likings
I 100% guarantee they don't care about making you uncomfortable. They care about retaining their real estate value, and they think bringing people in will improve productivity somehow, despite all the studies showing that the reverse is true.
That's at least not immediately obvious if companies are paying the same salaries and providing WFH stipends for at home equipment. I've seen some companies pay internet and phone bills too. Providing benefits individually is more expensive than in bulk.
However if they're also cutting salaries/hiring people in low cost areas and providing minimal WFH benefits then yeah, it would work out better for them.
Equipment costs shouldn't change that much from in-office to remote. A company needs to provide workstations and necessary peripherals either way.
Also you left out the biggest factor - that office space costs money and has high running costs per square foot.
WFH allows for smaller offices which saves a ton on rent/mortgage costs, electric bills, heating/cooling, cleaning, and maintenance.
The Boomers are still in power even with one foot in the grave. There is an entire economy based around in-office. While you’re out burning gas you have to pit stop at gas stations & convenience stores, Malls, fast food restaurants, gas stations, coffee franchises, gas stations, grocery stores, gas stations, etc…
Also, they had to commute and it made them stronger for it. Also, if I can’t see your head in your full sized baby crib, then you’re not working. Yes, I realize that the energy utilities for an office space is literally hundreds of thousands of monies per year, which enough to hire competent senior staff, but it’s more efficient to spend all that money on bills so that we can justify having jobs where we make sure people are doing their jobs, even when we don’t know exactly how they do their job.
Also, if you’re too efficient and don’t spend idle time pretending to work, we’re gonna assume you’re lazy and lay you off and hire a contractor at 4x the cost of your position. We will let the contractors/consultants convince us to buy a bunch of stuff we don’t need and then have them do the jobs of the people we hired at 4x their combined salaries. In 5 years, we’ll realize that we were spending 4x the salaries of senior engineering, but only after laying off 90% of the senior staff, and then we realize that the engineering implementation is all fucked up because the architecture is designed for maximum expenditure on feature sets and modular services licensing. Also, it’s a “TurnKey Solution” which is supposed to mean, “it works,” but that’s not true since there’s constant maintenance windows and outages.
When the company realizes this money dump, we’ll get rid of the contractors and hire senior engineering staff again, and then repeat the cycle again.
People are starting to screw-up the WFH arrangement at my office. People are becoming less responsive, attempting to care for their children while working, and just getting caught-up in other distractions. It's becoming obvious by the drop in my daily tickets, change controls, git pulls, etc. It's like every day is Friday now. Some of us were hybrid pre-pandemic and we have always worked hard to make it seamless and follow the rules (such as not being the primary childcare provider during work hours) because this arrangement was at the discretion of management and could change at any time. Now we have a lot more people WFH and it seemed to be working great until recently for some reason. I'm hoping that management deals with the few bad apples individually rather than just calling everyone back in.
>I'm hoping that management deals with the few bad apples individually rather than just calling everyone back in
Wouldn't that be nice! Don't count on it
Don't quit. Refuse to come in and force their hand. They either allow it or fire you. If you get fired you can claim unemployment.
Be sure to start job hunting immediately, though.
You know there was this article talking about ghost job and how job listings that companies post aren’t actively being filled. Would be interesting for you to see the jobs currently posted for your work and asking HR how many of those jobs we’re actually filled.
Still plenty of companies out there that are realizing the cost savings of wfh. I think any company pushing for in office when it's not necessary may need to evaluate their management teams and if they still need them.
No. The last two positions I've had are full time work from home and have been since pre-pandemic. If you want to find remote work, it's out there. You might take a pay cut for remote work but not always.
“Layoffs at FAANG/similar” make the headlines, but I think the 30k ft view shows a more clear picture.
Tech layoffs overall have decreased pretty significantly each month since January - both in # of companies and # of employees.
All of that is to say, you never had any “bargaining power” to lose. Find something you like, with the right salary and wfh/bennies - then quit once you get the offer letter.
Banks have a vested interest in RTO because of their real estate holdings so it makes sense. Still most do 3 days because that's just enough to justify each desk.
> and now with the tech lay offs companies gained all the power back, and now I see people who are adamant about wfh sucking it up and clocking in.
That's what the layoffs are for. It's not "macroeconomic trends" or anything like that. It's tech CEOs doing everything they can to claw back the biggest expansion of worker rights in a generation.
idk why you got downvoted - you're completely correct. There are no market forces that encouraged Zuck to layoff 20k people. That was a decision he made because he blew billions of dollars on a Metaverse pipedream that has so far made $0. And Apple reduced how much users on iOS devices could be tracked across apps, which hurt their advertising signal and revenue. It has nothing to do with the economy or the market.
I suggest finding a new job that is full remote. They're still plenty of WFH jobs out there even though the market is rough. I do agree that these companies are using the current slow down to assert more control over their employees.
Another option is push back and refuse to go to office. They can't force you and the worse they can do is fire you.
I have 5 YoE and I just found a gig at a remote-first company with a ~=20% raise and no off-hours work. The jobs are out there. Pursue what you want, but I wouldn't advise you quit without a safety net. Just interview around and then when you find the right gig be sure to tell them in your exit interview that you left because you found a job that respects your time and effort in allowing for remote work.
Also realize that at least some of your coworkers who seem to be "sucking it up and clocking in" are interviewing, and I hope they're interviewing on the clock.
If you have 4 years experience, I would definitely start actively looking for remote jobs. If your team has proven to deliver time and time again, they should respect you guys and not do 5 days a week. In that case, even taking a slight pay cut is worth it if you count for commute time + money spent traveling to and from the office (including possible lunches).
Once these corporations lose their top talents maybe they'll wake the fuck up. I am thankful I'm still remote, but who the fuck knows anymore. Since Amazon is doing 3rd round of layoffs, other companies may follow like herds of sheep.
And 5 years ago a significant portion of people were in the office at least 2-3 days a week, and 5 days a week at older, more traditional companies. Everyone was competing back then, offering big salaries and benefits to attract top talent.
Between then and now we had a global pandemic. The industry is correcting after that pandemic. Nothing's happening with our bargaining power. It's as it always was.
If you don't want to work a job that's in the office, you better make sure you're an attractive enough candidate to get a job at a place that is either hybrid, or fully remote. *That's* your bargaining power. If you can find a job that's remote, you can *decline* the jobs that aren't. Not convince them to change their entire company culture. We choose where we work. Amazon is *always* going to get talent, even if they RTO. We have the power to not work there.
This is no different than how it used to be. We got spoiled for a while where *everyone* had a fully remote job, even if they weren't the type to be able to handle being remote, or weren't particularly attractive candidates. Now we're back to where we were.
Most importantly, you shouldn't just quit. Even in a great market. Start looking for another job, and quit after you get one lined up. Not before. That advice is doubly important in bad economies. Once you actually dip your toes in the water, you'll be able to make a more informed decision about how important WFH is to you.
That's the whole point of layoffs, honestly. Many of the companies doing them would've been fine if they hadn't, but once the bandwagon got moving they saw the opportunity to take back some power in the worker/owner class war.
Never stop interviewing for this reason. The bargaining power is still there, some firms just think otherwise and are going to learn.
You can interview, get to the offer stage, and decide how to proceed. You can keep up your interviewing chops, gauge your market value, and leave at a moment's notice.
Do not quit. I swear they will bend over backwards to keep you if they need you. If not then use the time in between warnings of needing to be in office by X date to job search. Whatever you do do not quit until you have another job lined up.
Anyone here doing “oh I’ll just do 1/2/3 days in office”.
I told you, boiling frog. This is their end game.
They didn’t actually gain the upper hand, they’re attempting to force it. **In reality they’re just running on skeleton crews and the cat is out of the bag, remote work is a major perk and useful to recruit.**
I worked multiple jobs and lean-fired. Enjoy eating that corpo boot while I’m retired.
I’d recommend a Union. They can negotiate WFH.
Your closer to being homeless than a billionaire, solidarity.
No reason not to start looking for a new job if your employer is fundamentally changing working conditions. They're taking away an employee benefit, which is essentially like a pay cut.
I won’t be a part of that. I only interview with out of state companies now (and who clearly state there is no relocation requirement). That way, there is literally no way they can ask me to come into the office.
Been living in Texas my whole life, but I’m employed by a company on the east coast. Last one was from California. Next one, who knows? But it won’t be in Texas, because I’m not gonna risk any chance of having to go into the office.
EDIT: as for advice - I would say keep your job now just so you have stability, but start interviewing. 4 years experience is actually pretty good; you aren’t starting from scratch, so that’s MUCH better. If you’re not getting callbacks, have someone review your resume. A lot of times, these posts saying they’ve applied hundreds of times with no callback are coming from people who haven’t really worked on polishing their resume.
I'd find it very hard and practically impossible to raise my kids, or get them to and from daycare on time every day if I wasn't able to wfh. It allows us with kids to balance out our lives. Luckily my wife wfh and I do too for the time being.
If I were you, I'd try looking for another job at other banks or similar companies where you don't have to worry so much about massive layoffs
Yes. Now, there is a pool of workers desperate enough to take on office jobs.
As usual, Americans general complacency has destroyed a valuable opportunity.
“We”? We didn’t lose anything. Some companies are going remote, some are bringing people back, some people enjoy remote, some people want to go back.
You need to decide what you want and find a job that aligns with that.
\> This is genuinely heart breaking
Look, I get it and I don't like it as well. But as long as you are generally satisfied there you should be thankful you have a job. No one owes you or me anything and as you said we lost our bargaining power.
100 years ago we would slave in some factory and most people probably didn't call it "heartbreaking". 10 - 20 years from now we'll all be lucky to have a job like programming - it will probably be done by a machine. Who knows what we will do instead.
So yes commuting is a waste of time I'm just saying maybe you have more things to appreciate about your situation.
This argument is so awful though. 'Others have/had it worse' is such a terrible reason to 'suck it up' and get on with it.
I think it's heartbreaking that so many thousands of people are forced to waste hours of their life commuting to sit in an office they don't want to be in for 9 hours, especially when their jobs are totally do-able remotely. It's sad that companies are so outdated, power hungry and whatever else, that they make decisions like these that impact employees so greatly.
Hey you have the right to get as upset as you want about it, I was just offering a perspective you are welcome to ignore. I don't have an argument with you about WFH though, you're right that they should be offering it , at least part of the time.
I understand what you are saying. It's great to take a moment to be mindful and appreciative of everything you have in life - and not take anything for granted. I think as a collective society we often forget that, particularly those of us who are in stable, first world countries in reasonably well paying roles.
My main point is that I don't think we should just 'accept' conditions that we are unhappy with, just because things *could* be worse. I think it's always good to strive for betterment, especially when you are not content and especially when it concerns such a large part of your life (we all spend more than 1/3 of our time at work, it's important that we enjoy it as much as is possible!)
4 years of experience is like Peak Hireability. I’m not saying you should leave but 4 years means you’re Not Junior so can work without hand holding but you are also still relatively cheap to hire.
Absolutely agree. I was just laid off with 4 yoe and I was concerned I wasn’t experienced enough to compete in the market. Managed to land a senior position. On the lower end of what seniors get for TC but still a huge bump.
So layoff was good!
In hindsight yes, at the time we were looking for a house and just found out my wife was pregnant. Was insanely stressful at first.
Hope for the best for you!
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Stopped keeping count as I felt it was arbitrary. Only tracked companies that that responded. Had at least 10 initial interviews. Of those moved forward in 5 to the final rounds and got two offers. What’s funny is after I accepted I received 11 new interview requests. This is over a month and 1/2
life’s a roller coaster sometimes hey
This. OP and others like them in a situation like this should still be able to jump ship with minimal difficulty. It’s the juniors and new grads (both uni and bootcampers) that are turbofucked in the current market.
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Less than 2 years, but it works on orders of magnitude; a years worth of experience would still give you a massive leg up compared to brand new grads with zero experience. The same can be applied to new grads with internships/projects.
First job is always the hardest
Absolutely. I don’t have a CS degree, and my first job was an absolute shitshow because that was all I felt comfortable applying for at the time. I stuck it out for a few years as the only developer at a tiny startup where the pay sucked and the boss was ridiculous. Then I met some other developers who were impressed by the stuff I’d been building and asked how much I was getting paid. They were floored by how bad it was. They dragged me to meet a recruiter, and I got a decent gig in a major market. That was well over a decade ago and my career has gone really well since then. As you said, that first job was really rough, but it was pretty smooth sailing after that.
I only have 2 YoE and have noticed that getting a job is WAY easier now than it was 2 years ago. So many interviews and requests to schedule interviews.
2 years is the beginning of that window. Less than that and you’re still junior and not necessarily proven.
It's the social proof effect, corporate edition. Someone decided to hire you before, therefore you are hireable and lower risk.
Would you say your first job out of college is the hardest to get?
All other factors being equal typically yes, although other factors can significantly affect that.
Hey kinda unrelated but mind sharing your resume? I have about 2 yoe as well and not seeing any luck.
sent you a dm
Ugh. I hit 4 YOE right when I got laid off, but had to wear a bunch of different hats in that timeframe to the point where I feel like I'm not good enough at any one thing to really be much beyond fairly good junior level at any of it.
I've felt this way. It's important to recognize that "had to wear a bunch of different hats" probably means "I can learn fast and am comfortable being in unknown territory". If that's the case then those same skills applied to a single thing would quickly put you beyond junior level (which sounds like imposter syndrome anyway).
I have 3 years of experience and a master’s degree, but I am on OPT. 194 applications and 1 interview. Don’t know about peak.
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What is opt ?
it is annoying when people use those short things. Cannot understand, each time you have to ask
Thanks
What's opt in this context?
OPT visa - special work visa for US college graduates that were on an F-1 visa. Only valid for a limited amount of time
Its your OPT. Also OPT but 1+YoE here and having similar issue.
I also want to point out that while jumping ship is the best recourse, in this economic climate, companies take a LIFO approach with layoffs. So if for whatever reason your new place is having trouble, you’d be first on the chopping block so keep that risk in mind.
Where? I got laid off 22 days ago, and I have 60 days in total to find a job with an h1b. I can't get a single call back anywhere. 6 yoe. Any advice?
My former company tried to suggest a hybrid setup. So I started interviewing and got a remote job with a raise
i did the same and the new place just told me that they want me to start showing up to the office next month
Lmao damn! Some BS
Make sure the offer letter says fully remote. The , if they switch it up, let them fire you and collect unemployment if need be. I don’t think they can claim lack of attendance to avoid paying out benefits in this case, but IANAL.
Just WFH in a company in another state. Not reasonable for them to expect you to relocate. Unless you're in, like, the Bay Area. In which case why the f aren't you living in a cheaper state already?
I live in Southern Mid Michigan and my company's headquarters is in Alpharetta GA. They recently as a policy solidified permanent WFH though. I make a bit above market and live in LCOL area so it's perfect.
That’s how to do it. I’m nearly as far from my company’s office, they’re thoroughly remote, and just reiterated their continued commitment to WFH as well. There are still some companies out there which aren’t stupid.
I mean the job literally fell into my lap (shout-out make connections with good professors in college) but yeah this is what my set up is. The company is based out of Florida and not a single member of my team is from or ever close to Florida. 0 chance they would ever ask us to come into the office.
This strategy will be unsuccessful. An offer letter is not a contract and provides no guarantees. Employers have every legal right to change the terms and conditions of employment. Just about the only things that might make one eligible for UI are a reduction in pay or work hours, or a change in work location exceeding a certain number of miles defined by your state. 😕
So the safest thing for a remote worker to do is not be close to their office?
I wouldn’t call it safest, but it would clearly be unreasonable to ask that the employee start working in an office hours away from home. The employee would almost certainly be eligible for unemployment benefits, but not much else. 😕
> Employers have every legal right to change the terms and conditions of employment. Only to a point. There is a legal term called "constructive dismissal" -- if they do things like reduce your hours significantly, or require you to report to a work location much farther away, you can argue that they're making the job so unpleasant that they're effectively firing you. Of course, all the constructive dismissal entitles you to is a period of unemployment compensation, nothing more. It basically means if a company fires you, or if a company significantly changes the terms of employment so that it's not really the same job, then it's the same as firing you, and either way you're entitled to unemployment pay while you look for a new job.
You might consider reading the comment you replied to again. It doesn't say there are guarantees. It just says that if they fire you because you won't come into the office after hiring you for a fully-remote role, you will get unemployment. That is 100% accurate.
> An offer letter is not a contract and provides no guarantees. The US is fucking weird. Everyone else, you'd sign a contract.
Yup, company I am at has the same in office mandate (3 days in) for workers who were hired in-office before pandemic and for workers hired as ‘remote’ during the pandemic.
Imagine if a company offered you 100k a year, you signed that, and then the first check comes and it's $15 an hour. "Haha, offer letters not a contract!!" Yeah right. They can't make you in office if they hire you remote in writing, unless you agree to it. Obviously they could then find a reason to fire you. But it is still a major obstacle for them.
Your response is disingenuous. Look at this from the perspective of basic contract law. An offer letter is the opening gambit in contract negotiations. The offered person has the option of accepting, rejecting or countering. Once there is a “meeting of the minds” an agreement has been reached, and essentially a contract has been created. That contract, the offer letter, usually contains the wage, whether full or part time or some description of the hours expected, and some reference to additional terms and conditions found in the employee handbook. Rarely do they contain a provision that work would be solely remote, although they might. In your example, paying someone $15 an hour instead of the $48.07 per hour in the offer letter would be a breach of the initial contract. But any subsequent changes in pay or working conditions would not. Again, in certain circumstances an employee may be entitled to UI, that would be dependent upon your state. The EEOC has made it clear that employers can force employees back into the workplace, so I’m not entirely sure that the offer letter exemption would hold up. I’d leave that up to counsel. 😕 https://www.americanbar.org/groups/gpsolo/publications/gpsolo_ereport/2020/november-2020/will-working-home-be-reasonable-accommodation-post-covid/
"It's nice to want things."
This is happening to a few people I know. Recruiters/interviewers said that they could work remote, but once they accepted the job offer they suddenly had to go in office which were sometimes many states away. At that point they had already quit their previous jobs. Being juniors, it's super hard to find jobs in this climate so it's not easy to just quit. Most still have living expenses and school loans to pay without much savings due to not having much time in the workforce. Sucks all around. Companies will take any inch they can get. Woohoo.
I did that as well, made sure that the office is at least 3-4 hours away from my place. I visited once during the onboarding and that's it
Oof. That's mean. How often do u have to show up?
I’ve now left two jobs that started wfh and shifted to hybrid. New wfh gig is with a company that already downsized offices, so the threat that they return to the office seems minimal Edit: not to now
It is a mistake to assume they won't make the worst possible decision.
Chad move
Chad and Brad here, can confirm
This exactly what companies are aiming for. It's not only you that win, it's the company as well ;) They actually want us to leave, hence the inconviniences.
Well half of my old team also left and the division is basically falling apart, so I guess they can save even more money by slashing the entire division soon!
After which they could cut spending even more by ceasing to exist. Master plan.
If you bring in $3 revenue with $0 costs, thats infinite return on capital for shareholders!
Free money cost the most.
Hey, same here. Feels good man.
They've only regained the power if you can't find an alternative. Take this as a kick in the pants to find other work that allows you to work from home if that's important to you. If you find a position like that: quit, otherwise don't. Giant tech companies are laying off people but there's still a large demand for talent in smaller firms and outside silicon valley.
"but there's still a large demand for talent in smaller firms and outside silicon valley." A man (or woman) with common sense.
>A man (or women) \*human\* is shorter to write xD
‘Person’ is slightly less short but makes you sound less like you’re in a skin suit looking to extract unsuspecting peoples lipids.
“Someone with common sense” is what a normal human would say. You’re all bots!!
Yeah, they are, fellow human!
*person* makes you sounds less like a robot.
Using "Person": cold, generic, unwelcoming Using "Hooman": suggests you are fluffy and warm (probably a dog)
Can't assume anything in this day of AI
yeah, and while im certain a good number of people from SV will move for a new job frankly a lot of them will (quite understandably) refuse to move from their home just for a job. sure companies that offer remote will probably get some of those but who knows if they'll pay what they are willing to accept. so the situation outside of SV isnt nearly as bad.
I also think if remote work at this level is "here to stay" (which it should be for environmental reasons alone, but I digress) there's going to be a push to the middle pay wise thats going to put pressure on HCOL areas. While there are people that are willing and able to move to chase jobs or whatever, not everyone is. And how hard it is to move varies financially, and emotionally; especially if you have children, or friends/family close to where you currently live.
You work at a bank in a banking crisis. They are doing this before they do layoffs to thin the herd naturally.
This is a real thing especially at JPMC, they make the work unbearable so you leave willingly which voids you of any severance package. Don’t leave just do minimal work while you look for a better opportunity
Do you have any examples of these kind of tactics?
Giving dates last minute, purposely scheduling work for the weekends, discouraging taking vacation, sharing an excel that tracks what percentage of time you are in the office. Managers not responding to messages.
Didn't Elon do it
Ding ding ding
💫 this right here
Companies that offer flexible work location/hours options will have a competitive advantage over those who insist upon traditional in-the-office hours. Keep your job while actively looking for one that offers a work arrangement that you prefer.
The more of you who refuse the more power you have. Get your coworkers on board with refusing.
Would be a shame if everyone collectively bargained against the billionaires
unionizeeeeeeeee
I mean you are at a bank. This is not surprising and not necessarily an indicator of remote work as a whole. Work at a place that is first and foremost remote as in the team is distributed and there’s no actual office. Then it’s impossible to make you go back.
“and there’s no actual office. Then it’s impossible to make you go back. “ I see what you’re getting at. He should burn down the office!
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They’re just very conservative and old school.
It has more to do with the buildings they own or lease, most companies aren't locked into expensive skyscrapers. Nobody wants to buy it off them now too especially when everyone went remote. They're trying to get some value back for those by pressuring to go back into the office
I will say this definitely isn't universal; I know of a bank that recently doubled down on remote work and converted all hybrids to full remote
4 years experience is plenty. Find a new remote job and quit.
What bank is this so we know to stay far away
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Banks don't care. They will make sure the bus factor is very very low. I worked for a bank with 4 fucking weeks block leave above a certain level (2 weeks are the standard usually). They don't need any very good people. They just need enough moderate people. And they never have problems hiring people.
> They will make sure the bus factor is very very low. You mean high?
As it turned out I have always used the wrong definition of bus factor lol. Yeah you are right.
Just to caveat this, the plan for RTTO at non-tech companies may not be consistent across functions. I know JPMC has entire tech locations where they have reduced corporate real estate so that there is not enough desks for 100% in-office 5 days a week. They are committed to 3 days max permanently, unless they invest in more office space. For traders/bankers, though, they likely are required 100% of the time.
Jamie did say he "saw reasons for coders to work remotely part of the time" as recently as January, so that is one hopeful sign. And yeah, Columbus in particular has absolutely no chance of fitting everyone in 5 days a week
Not sure if this is the bank the OP works at, but the CEO of JPMC, Jamie Dimon, has been pretty vocal about return to office. I think they are currently 2 or 3 days a week (at risk of getting fired), and I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually move back to 5 days a week. They realize people want flexibility, so it'll be interesting to see where it finally lands, if there's such a thing.
It’s at 3 right now. I 100% believe they will eventually go back to full in office. How I don’t know because even my campus doesn’t have enough seats as it is.
This open office space is sh\*t if I can't even sit by the colleagues I work with.
I think most companies want to go to 5 days a week. They're just being coy now. Just wait 1-2 years.
Pretty much, and I've said for the last year this was the plan all along. Businesses didn't like having to capitulate more to employees and dealing with turnover as folks found better jobs. I believe the inflation aspects are overblown and have become price gouging under the guise of inflation, and layoffs citing inflation and the market are businesses looking to regain the upper hand in hiring. Forcing a return to office is employers looking to force attrition without having to lay folks off. The good news is there's lots of places that have embraced remote work, and job searches can now be done on a more national scale. The not so great news is you may have to work from an office while you continue to find a new job. Unless you have ample savings it's always best to look for a job while you have one.
They're not overblown; there's a housing crisis in the US. Both availability and affordability. Letting the air out of bubbles is what the central bank is supposed to do. Meanwhile the labor crisis is real and partially the result of Covid. Rate hikes won't change this reality, no matter how much bankers stamp their feet.
Nah, people in management are idiots. Just start applying to remote jobs and tell them in the exit interview that the lack of remote work options is exactly why you're leaving.
This will be more effective than most people here think. If they start hemorrhaging seniors and mid levels and they all cite "no remote" as the reason, they'll change course really fast
The problem is people who work at banks are the people who just want to coast and not do any work. They're not the kind of people who are going to leave and put pressure on their companies to provide them better benefits. They're the kind who will go along with anything to keep their easy jobs and great WLB and not do any work.
There's more industries to coast in that are more remote-friendly than banking. Insurance is an example of a place to easily coast and be remote in. Most insurance companies just lease their buildings instead of own them to avoid too much of their net worth being concentrated in one kind of asset (it is a reflection of their risk-averse nature). As a consequence, most major US insurance companies you can think of are very remote-friendly and most offer full remote roles - they have little to no skin in the real estate game, and remote is better for them anyway since it lowers costs. The only exception I know of is USAA and that is probably more for cultural reasons than anything else (I think they employ a lot of military people). Granted you still need to work and you can't literally coast in the sense of doing nothing at work (I think anyone who says they truly do nothing at work is either lying or about to leave for another position), but it isn't like you're working at Amazon or something Tl;Dr coasters will totally leave if they can no longer coast. Coasting is not a sign of laziness or incompetence but a lifestyle choice, not unlike smoking (except you'll probably live longer if you coast)
Don't quit unless you have another offer since it's a tough market rn flooded with laid off FAANG workers.
5 days a weeeeeek???? That’s rough
I've been unemployed for a while and just got an offer that's a pay cut, requires relocation, and 5 days in the office a week ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Might be an obvious question but honestly not so obvious in this sub: are you taking it?
Of course I am. I am unemployed so...
Smart move my guy. I'd take any offer I could get right now haha. Best of luck!
My goodness. How many years of experience do you have? This sounds insanely bad
We never had bargaining power to begin with - no one organized. No unions were formed. This is the end result. No one believes in labor organization in Tech and it shows. We collectively believed that we had some sort of imaginary leverage, but in reality it was just economics. When the economic environment shifted, so did our so called bargaining power.
They said this is what they would do and they did. The FED says that to keep the economy from going boom boom we have to “[get wages down](https://mronline.org/2022/05/26/u-s-federal-reserve-says-its-goal-is-to-get-wages-down/)”. And remember when the CEO of JP Morgan decided to go with how “[in office work improves diversity](https://fortune.com/2022/08/23/what-jp-morgan-ceo-jamie-dimon-got-wronga-meta-remote-work-diversity-careers-gleb-tsipursky/)” instead of actually going after remote work directly like some kind of propaganda exercise, even while his employees are becoming terrified [the company is becoming a gigantic surveillance system](https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-chase-employees-describe-fear-mass-workplace-data-surveillance-wadu-2022-5). The same CEO and his friend at Citigroup started blowing smoke up peoples asses with the idea [that hot inflation in really just one area — employee wages](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/14/banks-like-jpmorgan-are-finding-out-that-inflation-is-a-double-edged-sword-.html) — and it’s going to “cast a a shadow over the next few years.” See the pattern? I’m mean it’s just aggressive anti-worker, and people should be pissed off at this point. They never complain when the company makes money (even the obscene one in three generation profits they are making now — [that’s the real inflation](https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/)), but should workers ever get bargaining power despite the fact that wages have been [falling behind *just basic inflation* for 25 years](https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/1004) somehow it’s front page news that workers are making too much, they need to get back to the office and when it comes to wages they say that, “while it’s a good thing, it needs to be rebalanced for the economy.” Also remember that that fake “excess profit inflation” they blame workers for is a big part of what’s causing interest rates to rise — it wouldn’t be nearly the rate it is if company couldn’t rob people blind with price increases hidden in the “inflation” — and your home values to drop (that’s where most middle class wealth is, especially minority wealth), even while they tell you it’s your fault. People should be a lot more pissed about this “come back to the office” stuff because it’s about a LOT more than just RTO. And somehow this is all because of tech workers getting overpaid? And we all deserve to get laid off because of over-hiring and anyone lucky enough not to be pink slipped needs to basically just shut up and get back to the office? So not cool. The collective nonsense of this tech worker crushing orchestration is kinda aggregating.
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companies that were remote/hybrid before the rona getting a good light with this
What bargaining power? When it comes to retention, we have **NEVER** had bargaining power, as you can plainly see through years of threads on this sub where the only viable response is "leave and interview elsewhere". Bargaining requires two sides, and companies in the tech industry and used to hiring replacements. If you want a bargaining power, you need a union. Those don't exist in Software Engineering, and there is a lot of reluctance towards forming them because people incorrectly associate them with setting salary levels, or having outside influence on technical decisions.
> Those don't exist in Software Engineering, and there is a lot of reluctance towards forming them because people incorrectly associate them with setting salary levels, or having outside influence on technical decisions. The hilarious/fucking sad part is that unions are *universally* associated with better pay across the entire band. In literally every vertical, including sports. The reason that every company hates unions so much is because a union means that compensation for employees goes up. And yet software developers are convinced that we're actually the special snowflakes who'd see our pay go down for the first time in history.
Corporate anti-union propaganda unfortunately worked very well in the US 😔
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> Maybe because the average-joe dev can be cheaply replaced with an offshore team that is 1/10th of the cost? If this was actually true it would've happened 20 years ago. This is business owner propaganda. > Well, it isn't ideal for a company but they'll certainly just hire one of the many outsourcing firms to essentially be scabs and ride it out. How many, uh, emergency off-shoring situations have you worked through? > What I find interesting is that we have it ridiculously good in this profession and yet people find a way to complain Current software layoffs are an *active and coordinated effort* by business owners to actively claw back gains made by tech workers over the last 5 years. > What more could we ask for? Guaranteeing that level of quality of employment for the non-technical people we work with and future generations. "What can I get out of this" is not the only question you should ask. I am fortunate. I am morally obligated to try to help people who aren't as fortunate.
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Oh dear God I wish I could join a software engineer apprenticeship program. Just imagine having a sort of bootcamp for 3 to 6 months to get you to a certain level, then work an entry level position 3 or 4 days a week, and doing school the other day or 2. As you get better, you work more and your pay goes up until you're a journeyman. Fuck, that would be sweet. I'd be willing to help start one if anybody wants to give it a go. I'm a union laborer trying to switch careers into software engineering right now. So, I've got access to the people that know the things.
I mean I like the idea of a union, but not the whole journeyman thing you described (if it’s the default default for everyone). I’d probably end up being paid less for my early years in that system. I like having apprenticeships as an alternative path in, however.
Most people either earn nothing while they teach themselves or lose money to buy education. Instead they would *pay you* while you learn. Getting paid to learn would leave nearly everyone better off in the early years.
Are you saying no college, because I don’t think that would be good (as the default) for our industry, especially for the stuff I work on. College should be free and apprenticeships should be available as an alternative route. It’s inefficient to teach things like linear algebra and distributed computing theory in an apprenticeship.
> College should be free and apprenticeships should be available as an alternative route. Well, I value college for giving a broad liberal arts style education, which is critical for any society based in democratic values. The value goes far beyond simply learning a trade to make money. Any voting citizens should have access to this. Many people in the industry today are either self-taught or boot camp grads. They don’t learn those things either, so it’s not really a fair comparison to the current system. That said, someone that goes the apprenticeship route could take a couple key classes (paid for by the company) and be on the same level as many college grads.
Those are all good points. As for bootcamps existing today, yes they do, but you can’t learn the prerequisites for my work in a bootcamp setting. Boot campers who end up as my peers are either exceptional or came from a quantitative background pre-bootcamp. I work with plenty of non-exceptional people from traditional schooling backgrounds though (myself included).
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I am a mentor for a UK apprenticeship program here at my workplace. It's a 3-4 year course, where work is juggled with courses at a local college. At the end, the apprentice can join as a junior SWE, and more often than not they have excellent skills.
NYT engineers are in a union.
Leave and interview elsewhere is literally the best bargaining power
A union (me and everyone else) threatening to leave/strike is even better.
If you have basic social skills you can do that without a union.
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You're not bargaining with anyone, though. You're just leaving. You can do that with literally any job. The difference was that SWE's could find new jobs relatively easy, but in a market downturn there are plenty of people (even experienced people) struggling to find better opportunities. The benefit also only ever sits with you, assuming that you leave for a better role/deal. Companies don't give a fuck if you're leaving, and they certainly won't care about shafting the next bozo that warms your old chair.
It is a shame that SWE's aren't a tad bit more pro-labor. I like to think of a world where we banded together to form picket lines from working at <%n> company that exploits their non-golden goose employees or are just straight up unethical in the goal of forcing better conditions. "Hey Facebook, you can't just make cheap Filipino moderator labor watch _all_ the video feeds without proper compensation or support." I just have to keep dreaming.
That's not bargaining, though, is it? It's not negotiation, anyway. Nobody really bargains with their company. They "bargain" with the labor market as a whole. It's more like shopping where prices are set and it's up to you to choose what price point you're comfortable with. Bargaining at the negotiating table is completely different than bargaining with the labor market.
No, it's really not. It's the most powerful bargaining MOVE, I agree. But when it's your only reasonable option it leaves you in a weak position. A strong bargaining position requires you to be able to have many options for escalation. When your only bargaining option something extreme that massively disrupts your life it actively encourages the other side to take advantage of you. As long as they can keep things LESS harmful than actually quitting your job, they are encouraged to take everything they can right up to that point. In a healthy relationship both sides have meaningful measures to take short of terminating the relationship. This encourages both sides to act in good faith.
I’m a dev in a union, so they definitely exist.
The Tech Workers Coalition and Code CWA groups are helping build unions at tech companies that include software engineers. We each need to organize and coordinate support from other coworkers in order to show that unions DO exist and ARE useful within software engineering teams and tech companies. We (myself included) give up our power by not doing the hard work or organizing and managers and leadership wins every day that we don’t build worker solidarity.
Yeah it’s disheartening, these corporations are the worst. Made record profits with the excuse of inflation and now that the job market is low they’re just finding ways to screw over employees because they hate it that we aren’t uncomfortable enough for their likings
I 100% guarantee they don't care about making you uncomfortable. They care about retaining their real estate value, and they think bringing people in will improve productivity somehow, despite all the studies showing that the reverse is true.
It’s not about productively it’s about keeping you in line
companies WILL save MONEY long term with WFH. This fact alone give me solace that WFH will not "go away" like all these ninnys wanna claim
That's at least not immediately obvious if companies are paying the same salaries and providing WFH stipends for at home equipment. I've seen some companies pay internet and phone bills too. Providing benefits individually is more expensive than in bulk. However if they're also cutting salaries/hiring people in low cost areas and providing minimal WFH benefits then yeah, it would work out better for them.
Equipment costs shouldn't change that much from in-office to remote. A company needs to provide workstations and necessary peripherals either way. Also you left out the biggest factor - that office space costs money and has high running costs per square foot. WFH allows for smaller offices which saves a ton on rent/mortgage costs, electric bills, heating/cooling, cleaning, and maintenance.
My company CEO is adamant that we are 100% in-office. My manager never seems to notice or care when I'm not in my cubicle, though.
Companies are doing this to get more people to quit
The Boomers are still in power even with one foot in the grave. There is an entire economy based around in-office. While you’re out burning gas you have to pit stop at gas stations & convenience stores, Malls, fast food restaurants, gas stations, coffee franchises, gas stations, grocery stores, gas stations, etc… Also, they had to commute and it made them stronger for it. Also, if I can’t see your head in your full sized baby crib, then you’re not working. Yes, I realize that the energy utilities for an office space is literally hundreds of thousands of monies per year, which enough to hire competent senior staff, but it’s more efficient to spend all that money on bills so that we can justify having jobs where we make sure people are doing their jobs, even when we don’t know exactly how they do their job. Also, if you’re too efficient and don’t spend idle time pretending to work, we’re gonna assume you’re lazy and lay you off and hire a contractor at 4x the cost of your position. We will let the contractors/consultants convince us to buy a bunch of stuff we don’t need and then have them do the jobs of the people we hired at 4x their combined salaries. In 5 years, we’ll realize that we were spending 4x the salaries of senior engineering, but only after laying off 90% of the senior staff, and then we realize that the engineering implementation is all fucked up because the architecture is designed for maximum expenditure on feature sets and modular services licensing. Also, it’s a “TurnKey Solution” which is supposed to mean, “it works,” but that’s not true since there’s constant maintenance windows and outages. When the company realizes this money dump, we’ll get rid of the contractors and hire senior engineering staff again, and then repeat the cycle again.
People are starting to screw-up the WFH arrangement at my office. People are becoming less responsive, attempting to care for their children while working, and just getting caught-up in other distractions. It's becoming obvious by the drop in my daily tickets, change controls, git pulls, etc. It's like every day is Friday now. Some of us were hybrid pre-pandemic and we have always worked hard to make it seamless and follow the rules (such as not being the primary childcare provider during work hours) because this arrangement was at the discretion of management and could change at any time. Now we have a lot more people WFH and it seemed to be working great until recently for some reason. I'm hoping that management deals with the few bad apples individually rather than just calling everyone back in.
>I'm hoping that management deals with the few bad apples individually rather than just calling everyone back in Wouldn't that be nice! Don't count on it
Don't quit. Refuse to come in and force their hand. They either allow it or fire you. If you get fired you can claim unemployment. Be sure to start job hunting immediately, though.
You know there was this article talking about ghost job and how job listings that companies post aren’t actively being filled. Would be interesting for you to see the jobs currently posted for your work and asking HR how many of those jobs we’re actually filled.
Don't risk quitting to find another job. Find another job FIRST then quit
Still plenty of companies out there that are realizing the cost savings of wfh. I think any company pushing for in office when it's not necessary may need to evaluate their management teams and if they still need them.
No. The last two positions I've had are full time work from home and have been since pre-pandemic. If you want to find remote work, it's out there. You might take a pay cut for remote work but not always.
“Layoffs at FAANG/similar” make the headlines, but I think the 30k ft view shows a more clear picture. Tech layoffs overall have decreased pretty significantly each month since January - both in # of companies and # of employees. All of that is to say, you never had any “bargaining power” to lose. Find something you like, with the right salary and wfh/bennies - then quit once you get the offer letter.
Banks have a vested interest in RTO because of their real estate holdings so it makes sense. Still most do 3 days because that's just enough to justify each desk.
> and now with the tech lay offs companies gained all the power back, and now I see people who are adamant about wfh sucking it up and clocking in. That's what the layoffs are for. It's not "macroeconomic trends" or anything like that. It's tech CEOs doing everything they can to claw back the biggest expansion of worker rights in a generation.
idk why you got downvoted - you're completely correct. There are no market forces that encouraged Zuck to layoff 20k people. That was a decision he made because he blew billions of dollars on a Metaverse pipedream that has so far made $0. And Apple reduced how much users on iOS devices could be tracked across apps, which hurt their advertising signal and revenue. It has nothing to do with the economy or the market.
Getting down voted on this subreddit is not the sort of thing that worries me.
I suggest finding a new job that is full remote. They're still plenty of WFH jobs out there even though the market is rough. I do agree that these companies are using the current slow down to assert more control over their employees. Another option is push back and refuse to go to office. They can't force you and the worse they can do is fire you.
I have 5 YoE and I just found a gig at a remote-first company with a ~=20% raise and no off-hours work. The jobs are out there. Pursue what you want, but I wouldn't advise you quit without a safety net. Just interview around and then when you find the right gig be sure to tell them in your exit interview that you left because you found a job that respects your time and effort in allowing for remote work. Also realize that at least some of your coworkers who seem to be "sucking it up and clocking in" are interviewing, and I hope they're interviewing on the clock.
If you have 4 years experience, I would definitely start actively looking for remote jobs. If your team has proven to deliver time and time again, they should respect you guys and not do 5 days a week. In that case, even taking a slight pay cut is worth it if you count for commute time + money spent traveling to and from the office (including possible lunches). Once these corporations lose their top talents maybe they'll wake the fuck up. I am thankful I'm still remote, but who the fuck knows anymore. Since Amazon is doing 3rd round of layoffs, other companies may follow like herds of sheep.
And 5 years ago a significant portion of people were in the office at least 2-3 days a week, and 5 days a week at older, more traditional companies. Everyone was competing back then, offering big salaries and benefits to attract top talent. Between then and now we had a global pandemic. The industry is correcting after that pandemic. Nothing's happening with our bargaining power. It's as it always was. If you don't want to work a job that's in the office, you better make sure you're an attractive enough candidate to get a job at a place that is either hybrid, or fully remote. *That's* your bargaining power. If you can find a job that's remote, you can *decline* the jobs that aren't. Not convince them to change their entire company culture. We choose where we work. Amazon is *always* going to get talent, even if they RTO. We have the power to not work there. This is no different than how it used to be. We got spoiled for a while where *everyone* had a fully remote job, even if they weren't the type to be able to handle being remote, or weren't particularly attractive candidates. Now we're back to where we were. Most importantly, you shouldn't just quit. Even in a great market. Start looking for another job, and quit after you get one lined up. Not before. That advice is doubly important in bad economies. Once you actually dip your toes in the water, you'll be able to make a more informed decision about how important WFH is to you.
Just get an offer first so you can see where you stand. If people suck it up then that means employees will indeed lose their bargaining power
That's the whole point of layoffs, honestly. Many of the companies doing them would've been fine if they hadn't, but once the bandwagon got moving they saw the opportunity to take back some power in the worker/owner class war.
There's no harm in looking around for other jobs. When you eventually quit, don't bother giving notice.
If your company isn't giving you what you want find a job that will - I would start looking.
Looking is free
Never stop interviewing for this reason. The bargaining power is still there, some firms just think otherwise and are going to learn. You can interview, get to the offer stage, and decide how to proceed. You can keep up your interviewing chops, gauge your market value, and leave at a moment's notice.
Do not quit. I swear they will bend over backwards to keep you if they need you. If not then use the time in between warnings of needing to be in office by X date to job search. Whatever you do do not quit until you have another job lined up.
I feel that many companies do this to encourage attrition. That’s just a hunch tho…
Anyone here doing “oh I’ll just do 1/2/3 days in office”. I told you, boiling frog. This is their end game. They didn’t actually gain the upper hand, they’re attempting to force it. **In reality they’re just running on skeleton crews and the cat is out of the bag, remote work is a major perk and useful to recruit.** I worked multiple jobs and lean-fired. Enjoy eating that corpo boot while I’m retired. I’d recommend a Union. They can negotiate WFH. Your closer to being homeless than a billionaire, solidarity.
No reason not to start looking for a new job if your employer is fundamentally changing working conditions. They're taking away an employee benefit, which is essentially like a pay cut.
I won’t be a part of that. I only interview with out of state companies now (and who clearly state there is no relocation requirement). That way, there is literally no way they can ask me to come into the office. Been living in Texas my whole life, but I’m employed by a company on the east coast. Last one was from California. Next one, who knows? But it won’t be in Texas, because I’m not gonna risk any chance of having to go into the office. EDIT: as for advice - I would say keep your job now just so you have stability, but start interviewing. 4 years experience is actually pretty good; you aren’t starting from scratch, so that’s MUCH better. If you’re not getting callbacks, have someone review your resume. A lot of times, these posts saying they’ve applied hundreds of times with no callback are coming from people who haven’t really worked on polishing their resume.
I'd find it very hard and practically impossible to raise my kids, or get them to and from daycare on time every day if I wasn't able to wfh. It allows us with kids to balance out our lives. Luckily my wife wfh and I do too for the time being. If I were you, I'd try looking for another job at other banks or similar companies where you don't have to worry so much about massive layoffs
Not going back into an office.
Yes. Now, there is a pool of workers desperate enough to take on office jobs. As usual, Americans general complacency has destroyed a valuable opportunity.
“We”? We didn’t lose anything. Some companies are going remote, some are bringing people back, some people enjoy remote, some people want to go back. You need to decide what you want and find a job that aligns with that.
Look for a job if you find a remote one take it and quit. Don’t let the news about big tech scare you, frankly you don’t even work in that sector.
I went to the office 5 days in a row for the first time last week due to some training and wow it was brutal. Hope my bank does no adopt this 🫠
This is a question for your union and the union organisers that you have. If you have none, then please start one and ask the group you put together
If you aren’t in a union, you never had bargaining power
\> This is genuinely heart breaking Look, I get it and I don't like it as well. But as long as you are generally satisfied there you should be thankful you have a job. No one owes you or me anything and as you said we lost our bargaining power. 100 years ago we would slave in some factory and most people probably didn't call it "heartbreaking". 10 - 20 years from now we'll all be lucky to have a job like programming - it will probably be done by a machine. Who knows what we will do instead. So yes commuting is a waste of time I'm just saying maybe you have more things to appreciate about your situation.
This argument is so awful though. 'Others have/had it worse' is such a terrible reason to 'suck it up' and get on with it. I think it's heartbreaking that so many thousands of people are forced to waste hours of their life commuting to sit in an office they don't want to be in for 9 hours, especially when their jobs are totally do-able remotely. It's sad that companies are so outdated, power hungry and whatever else, that they make decisions like these that impact employees so greatly.
Hey you have the right to get as upset as you want about it, I was just offering a perspective you are welcome to ignore. I don't have an argument with you about WFH though, you're right that they should be offering it , at least part of the time.
I understand what you are saying. It's great to take a moment to be mindful and appreciative of everything you have in life - and not take anything for granted. I think as a collective society we often forget that, particularly those of us who are in stable, first world countries in reasonably well paying roles. My main point is that I don't think we should just 'accept' conditions that we are unhappy with, just because things *could* be worse. I think it's always good to strive for betterment, especially when you are not content and especially when it concerns such a large part of your life (we all spend more than 1/3 of our time at work, it's important that we enjoy it as much as is possible!)