#policy

Doesn't fix the offshore problem, but this is a start! https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/25/2026-17324/fee-for-certain-h-1b-petitions

Doesn't fix the offshore problem, but this is a start!

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/25/2026-17324/fee-for-certain-h-1b-petitions

Why we keep blaming H1B when things do not work the way we want it to be. H1B is HERE to stay like it or Not! Corporations will always follow the money, any company who can do it cheaper will follow the money. It is too late for the golden age...Let's leave H1B alone and move forward. Worry about your Family, Loves ones and put food on the table for once!

In organizational psychology, cronyism is directly linked to "ingratiation"—the practice of employees using flattery or sycophancy to win favors from a boss rather than performing high-quality work.The Proof: Peer-reviewed regression analysis indicates a massive positive correlation (β = 0.553, p < 0.001) between organizational cronyism and toxic ingratiation strategies. When an anti-cronyism policy is instituted and paired with objective, merit-based metrics, subsequent employee tracking shows a sharp decrease in sycophancy and a measurable rise in overall objective productivity.

Can we buy PTOs middle of the year?

EVERNORTH
HEALTH SERVICES
pepsico
Total
Rewards
Express Scripts® Pharmacy Benefit Services
Weight-loss medication coverage is changing
We want to let you know about a change to your prescription dr-g benefits. Effective October 1, 2026, medications prescribed for weight loss will no longer be covered under the Pepsico Employee Health Care Program or the PepsiCo Retiree Health Care Program (together, the"PepsiCo Plans").
Why we're making this change
Prescription weight-loss medications have become one of the fastest-growing costs in the PepsiCo Plans. Removing coverage for prescription weight-loss dr-gs enables us to maintain a healthcare program that is sustainable and affordable for all PepsiCo employees, while continuing to provide a comprehensive, high-value benefits package. At the same time, many commonly used weight-loss medications now have cash-pay affordability pathways that were not available previously to individual patients.

I’ve been hearing rumors that they will be getting rid of unlimited PTO and going back to the traditional PTO system we had in the past. Is there any truth to this?

Is anyone’s office Management not enforcing RTO 5 days a week? My office, people come and go, no one ever works a full day, and bosses still let people work from home whenever they need to. Meanwhile I am in there everyday working a full day, full time schedule. WTF is going on with this company??? Total joke of a place. I heard some managers definitely not enforcing this new policy.

The new rule prevents new h1b to enter US. So the only best bet is holding existing H1b's.

I checked the Q2 2026 NAV, and for those of us impacted by the May RIF, it's not being applied to calculate share payouts at all. It looks like nothing is being paid out post Q1. If that's accurate, years of earned compensation is just... not being paid.

I want to call out something I think is genuinely unethical about how Fidelity is handling this. Over the past several years, instead of raising base compensation, Fidelity leaned on share awards as the reward for performance. Grants from 2-3 years back that were supposed to vest and pay out over time. I put in the work to earn those.

And here's the part that really gets me: there's a clause that says you have to be actively employed on Dec 31 of a given year for those shares to pay out. Fine, maybe that makes some sense if someone quits or is fired for cause. But when the company eliminates your role — not for performance, not for anything you did — and then uses that same clause to withhold pay for work you already did years ago, that's not a "policy," that's a loophole to avoid paying people what they earned.

Fidelity talks a lot about ethics. It's in their marketing, their values statements, all of it. But quietly using a technicality to avoid paying out shares that employees earned through actual performance, right after eliminating their jobs through no fault of their own, is the opposite of that. You can't claim to value your people's hard work and then strip the payout the moment it's inconvenient for you.

Fidelity needs to actually listen and do the right thing here. Pay people what they earned through years of hard work, instead of swiping it away on a technicality the moment it's convenient.

Curious what others think. Is anyone else pushing back on this, or looking into next steps?

Our HR at 294 when she closed with us Sunday clocked everyone out on her own. We were waiting on her. Then we had bag checks. Isn’t this illegal ?

President Donald Trump's administration on Monday released a proposed regulation to codify an unprecedented fee of more than $100,000 on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers that has been blocked by the courts.

The fee, first temporarily imposed by Trump last year, dramatically raises the cost of visas that are heavily relied on in the tech, education and research sectors.

A federal judge in June ‌ruled that the fee was illegal and blocked the Trump administration from collecting it.

A Boston-based appeals court is reviewing that ​decision while a different court considers whether a judge properly rejected a challenge to the fee by a major business group.

Trump's temporary fee increase expires in September, one year after it was issued.

The proposed rule by the Department ⁠of Homeland Security, posted in the Federal Register on Monday, would make a fee of $103,265 permanent.

It could be finalized by the end ​of the year.

Heard chatters about Q enforcing minimum hours per day (like Amazon) spent in office in the near future. No more coffee badging. Anyone could confirm if this is a rumor?

Does anyone know how to get a copy of our most recent severance policy? I have an idea of what it was back in 2024 but dont know if it has changed recently.

Did Macy’s recently change their policy about having personal belongings at the registers? In the store I work we can’t have our clear bags at the registers. The bags have to be put in a locker.

We Must Act Now
Statement on AI’s Transformation of the Economy

AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years.
This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards.

Economists, policymakers and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI and to build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society.

Signatories

Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford University

Ajay Agrawal, University of Toronto

Anton Korinek, University of Virginia and Anthropic

Tom Cunningham, METR

Michael Spence, New York University*

Daron Acemoglu, MIT*

Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge

Chad Jones, Stanford University

David Autor, MIT

Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University*

Niall Ferguson, Stanford University

Jason Furman, Harvard University

Simon Johnson, MIT*

Christopher A. Pissarides, London School of Economics*

Paul Milgrom, Stanford University*

George Akerlof, Georgetown University and University of California, Berkeley*

Philippe Aghion, INSEAD*

Dan Hendrycks, Center for AI Safety

Eric Schmidt, Former CEO of Google

Peter Howitt, Brown University*

Oliver D. Hart, Harvard University*

Bengt Holmstrom, MIT*

Alvin Roth, Stanford University*

Michael Kremer, University of Chicago*

Roger B. Myerson, University of Chicago*

Paul Krugman, Graduate Center of the City University of New York*

Ben Bernanke, Brookings Institution*

Robert J. Shiller, Yale University*

Pascual Restrepo, Yale University

Jaan Tallinn, University of Cambridge

Daniel Susskind, Gresham College

Yoshua Bengio, Université de Montréal, LawZero and Mila

Gillian Hadfield, Johns Hopkins University

Raffaella Sadun, Harvard Business School

Tyler Cowen, George Mason University

Reid Hoffman, Greylock

Wojciech Zaremba, OpenAI Foundation

David J. Deming, Harvard University

Jack Clark, Anthropic

Ronnie Chatterji, OpenAI

Dean Ball, OpenAI

Jeff Dean, Google

Joshua Gans, University of Toronto

Abhishek Nagaraj, University of California, Berkeley

Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University

Peter McCrory, Anthropic

Alex Imas, University of Chicago

Stephanie Bell, Partnership on AI

Rebecca Finlay, Partnership on AI

Gina Raimondo, RAISE US

Yann LeCun, Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs

John McHale, University of Galway

Oskar Nordström Skans, Uppsala University

Ebehi Iyoha, Harvard Business School

Kevin Bryan, University of Toronto

Judy Chevalier, Yale University

Shannon Liu, University of Toronto

Shai Bernstein, Harvard Business School

Alexander Oettl, Emory University

Benjamin Jones, Northwestern University

Scott Stern, MIT

Hong Luo, University of Toronto

Amir Sariri, Purdue University

John List, University of Chicago

Rebecca Henderson, Harvard Business School

Ben Weidmann, University College London

Kristina McElheran, University of Toronto

Basil Halperin, University of Virginia

Christian Catalini, MIT

Rembrand Koning, Harvard Business School

Lee Lockwood, University of Virginia

Daniel Trefler, University of Toronto

Annie Liang, Northwestern University

Anders Humlum, University of Chicago

Jonathan Colmer, University of Virginia

Maria del Rio-Chanona, University College London

Janice Stein, University of Toronto

David Yanagizawa-Drott, University of Zurich

Frank Neffke, Complexity Science Hub

Eva Vivalt, University of Toronto

Doh-Shin Jeon, Toulouse School of Economics

Adam Posen, Peterson Institute for International Economics

Jakub Growiec, SGH Warsaw School of Economics

David Hémous, University of Zurich

Elliott Ash, ETH Zurich

Klaus Prettner, Vienna University of Economics and Business

Donghyun Suh, Bank of Korea

Benjamin Moll, London School of Economics

Philipp Schmidt-Dengler, University of Vienna

Olivier Blanchard, Peterson Institute for International Economics

Emilio Calvano, LUISS University of Rome

John Van Reenen, London School of Economics

Maryam Farboodi, Cornell University

Sholto Douglas, Anthropic

John Schulman, Thinking Machines

Martin Beraja, University of California, Berkeley

John Fernald, INSEAD

Boaz Barak, Harvard University and OpenAI

Arnaud Costinot, MIT

Noam Brown, OpenAI

Anna Salomons, Tilburg University and Utrecht University

Olivier Jeanne, Johns Hopkins University

Neil Thompson, MIT

Simone Daniotti, Utrecht University

Jerry Yang, AME Cloud Ventures

Leonardo Gambacorta, Centre for Economic Policy Research

Daniel Kokotajlo, AI Futures Project

Michiel Bakker, MIT and Google DeepMind

Manuel Trajtenberg, Tel Aviv University

Giacomo Calzolari, European University Institute

Jeff Wilke, Re:Build Manufacturing

Jacques Crémer, Toulouse School of Economics

Danny Yagan, University of California, Berkeley

Beatrice Weder di Mauro, Centre for Economic Policy Research

Max Tegmark, MIT

Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures

Benjamin Shiller, Brandeis University

Oren Etzioni, University of Washington

Martin Ford

Oded Galor, Brown University

Sarah Friar, OpenAI

Marc L. Busch, Georgetown University

Walid Hejazi, University of Toronto

Dilip Soman, University of Toronto

John Danaher, University of Galway

Thomas Astebro, HEC Paris

Alex Tabarrok, George Mason University

Alberto Galasso, University of Toronto

Alfonso Gambardella, Bocconi University

Reza Satchu, Harvard Business School

Alex Whalley, University of Calgary

Tom Davidson, Forethought Center for AI Strategy

Laurina Zhang, Boston University

Andrew Scott, University of Oxford

Jean-Etienne de Bettignies, Queen's University

Sam Manning, GovAI

Joel Blit, University of Waterloo

Sampsa Samila, IESE Business School

Roshni Raveendhran, University of Virginia

Liz Lyons, University of California, San Diego

Ramana Nanda, Imperial College London

Marianne Bertrand, University of Chicago

Arnaldo Camuffo, Bocconi University

Maxim Massenkoff, Anthropic

Petra Moser, New York University

Shivaji Sondhi, University of Oxford and Princeton University

Danny Buerkli, Windfall Trust

Carles Boix, Princeton University

Anna Yelizarova, Windfall Trust

Ken Ono, Axiom Math and University of Virginia

Isaiah Andrews, MIT

Anders Sandberg, University of Oxford

Martin Chorzempa, Peterson Institute for International Economics

Gita Gopinath, Harvard University

Zoë Hitzig, Anthropic

Lawrence Katz, Harvard University

Nathan Wilmers, Anthropic

Sebastian Becker, HEC Paris

Markus K. Brunnermeier, Princeton University

Sebastian Mallaby, Council on Foreign Relations

Adrian Brown, Windfall Trust

Sonia Sennik, Creative Destruction Lab

Ioana Marinescu, University of Pennsylvania

Nicholas Bloom, Stanford University

Johannes Hermle, Anthropic

Ashesh Rambachan, MIT

Brian Jabarian, Carnegie Mellon University

Lukas Althoff, Stanford University

Soumitra Shukla, Harvard Business School

Andrey Fradkin, Boston University

Andrew Koh, Columbia University

Prasanna Tambe, University of Pennsylvania

Cheryl Wu, Yale University

Albert Wenger, Union Square Ventures

Gigi Danziger, Eutopia

Chris Tonetti, Stanford University

Justin Bullock, Americans for Responsible Innovation

Bryan Seegmiller, Northwestern University

Betsey Stevenson, University of Michigan

Stefanie Stantcheva, Harvard University

Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan

Eva Lyubich, Anthropic

Chrishan Thuraisingham

Szymon Sacher, Anthropic

Thomas Houlden, Columbia University

Ben Golub, Northwestern University

Carlos J. Serrano, HEC Paris

Heski Bar-Isaac, University of Toronto

William Strange, University of Toronto

Jen Baggs, University of Victoria

Victor Aguirregabiria, University of Toronto

Melissa Lynne Dell, Harvard University

Jasmine Sun

Rob Reich, Stanford University

James Landay, Stanford University

Anousheh Ansari, XPRIZE Foundation

Fiona Chen, Harvard University

Michael Nayak, XPRIZE Foundation

George Williamson, The Alan Turing Institute

Michael Chui, McKinsey

Gabriel Unger, Stanford University

Katya Klinova

Parker Whitfill, METR

Arvind Karunakaran, Stanford University

Georgios Petropoulos, University of Southern California Marshall School of Business

José Ramón Enríquez, Stanford University

Christos Makridis, Arizona State University

Luca Vendraminelli, Stanford University

Alvin Wang Graylin, Stanford University

Sophia Kazinnik, Stanford University

Christina Langer, Stanford University

Riitta Katila, Stanford University

Lynn Wu, University of Pennsylvania

Matt Beane, University of California, Santa Barbara

David Nguyen, Stanford University

Avinash Collis, Carnegie Mellon University

Pamela Mishkin, Stanford University

Andy Haupt, Stanford University

Neale Mahoney, Stanford University

Robb Willer, Stanford University

Sinan Aral, MIT

Thomas W. Malone, MIT

Wajeeha Ahmad, Stanford University

Diyi Yang, Stanford University

Mary MacLennan

Wang Jin, Chapman University

Arjun Ramani, MIT

Glen Weyl, Microsoft Research

J. Frank Li, University of British Columbia

Jeremy Howard, fast.ai

Matt Gentzkow, Stanford University

Bharat Chandar, Stanford University

Jiaxin Pei, Stanford University

Sarah Bana, Chapman University

Ramiz Razzak

Molly Kinder, Breakwater Initiative

Arvind Narayanan, Princeton University

Laura Tyson, University of California, Berkeley

Tristan Harris, Center for Humane Technology

Christie Ko, Stanford University

Susan Young, Stanford University

• Nobel laureate

Big development in the H1B scam. Every Software Engineer position at Capital One contains this text:

At this time, Capital One will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization, or offer any immigration related support for this position (i.e. H1B, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, F-1 CPT, J-1, TN, E-2, E-3, L-1 and O-1, or any EADs or other forms of work authorization that require immigration support from an employer).

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/bank-of-america-ends-back-to-back-remote-days-for-hybrid-staff/ss-AA2a63P6?ocid=msedgntp&pc=ACTS&cvid=6a7f22320f7f47b794912555dfdf4ad7&ei=26

The revised hybrid work policy, including the ban on consecutive remote days and the three-day in-office requirement, will be implemented across all Bank of America offices in the United States. The bank has not disclosed the number of employees who will be affected by this change.

Forged Fiber is hiring for remote positions. AT&T’s own careers site currently shows remote and virtual openings.

So apparently remote work is good enough for some parts of the company, but the rest of us need to be in the office five days a week.

Same company. Same technology. Same Teams calls. Same internet. Yet two completely different sets of rules.

I guess they finally figured out that telling candidates they have to report to an office five days a week isn’t exactly a great way to attract talent. But somehow the employees already here are still being told that five-day RTO is essential.

If a job can be done remotely when you’re trying to hire someone, why can’t it be done remotely after you’ve hired them?

This is exactly why people don’t buy the BS argument that 5x RTO is about productivity. It’s a policy choice.

And apparently even AT&T knows when it needs to make a different choice to get the talent it wants. This place is really a joke.

At what point do we employees just stop playing along with this ridiculous RTO policy?

Seriously, what happens if we collectively decide that enough is enough and stop treating 5x RTO like it’s some sacred commandment?

They can’t fire everybody. And if they tried, they’d have an even bigger problem on their hands - like a massive talent and productivity disaster worse than we are already seeing.

The irony of this whole thing is “leadership” has created a policy so unpopular that the only thing keeping it functioning may be the assumption that everyone has to comply individually.

Maybe it’s time to start asking what happens when employees realize they have leverage too.

Five-day RTO isn’t inevitable. It’s a BS policy no others in the industry follow. A policy we didn’t even follow ourselves for decades before Covid, and policies can be changed. Maybe that’s what it takes.

Does anyone have manager-level insight into the new WPE policy? My manager gave a presentation that was clearly built with Copilot based on what they learned in manager training, and the rules seem pretty aggressive. For example, even if your kid, a dependent, or a pet is sick, you’re still required to come into the office — no exceptions carved out for that. On top of the inflexibility, we’re expected to absorb whatever extra costs come with that (childcare, pet care, etc.) on pay that’s already not great.

When we tried to ask clarifying questions, my skip-level shut it down, saying that asking questions suggests you’re trying to get around the policy rather than follow it.

I’m not looking to fight this — I want to understand it well enough to actually comply, without getting flagged as difficult just for asking how it works. Has anyone found a way to get real answers without triggering that reaction?

What happened to the Campus dress code policy, i've been wearing complete Nike attire since i joined. I rarely see women employees wearing Nike attire. Especially in tech side ladies wear sandals and their like dresses, feel bad for mens! Some FTEs even wearing big lettered competitive brands attire!

Seems like employees received an email where they can no longer work 2 consecutive days WFH and need to be in the office for a 'full day'.... will TIAA be next? Anyone here have any insights or heard anything?

Whom do I have to email to get an RTO extension for another 6 months? My manager and AVP said it’s not possible. Did anyone have any luck getting it extended? I really need it due to personal issues and other things that I can’t put a name to.

When researchers examined return-to-office mandates across S&P 500 companies, they found no significant improvement in financial performance or firm value, but a clear fall in employee satisfaction — making the policy’s measurable human cost easier to find than its promised economic benefit

https://siliconcanals.com/t-return-office-mandates-firm-performance-employee-satisfaction/

New US immigration policies are creating significant challenges for Indian professionals. USCIS guidance now allows for petition rejections without prior requests for evidence. Additionally, a proposed rule aims to eliminate the 60-day grace period for H-1B visa holders after job loss. These changes could lead to more immediate departures for affected workers. Experts are observing increased interest in alternative long-term visa options.

United States

https://www.latestly.com/us/h-1b-visa-holders-face-tougher-us-immigration-rules-amid-policy-shifts-report-7551741.html/amp

Get special dispensation to work from Hawaii.

Don't get me wrong, if I could surf, pick pineapples, and eat breadfruit on my lunch break I'd be all over that sh-t.

But RTO either applies to everyone or it applies to no one.

New federal borrowing caps are creating significant funding gaps for students pursuing higher education. An expert warns that soaring tuition costs combined with these new loan limits will force many students to seek private loans. This situation is particularly challenging for graduate students who previously relied on the Federal Direct Grad Plus Program. Experts advise students to carefully compare lenders and repayment plans to avoid financial pitfalls. The article suggests that the core issue is tuition costs, not student debt itself.

Eatontown, New Jersey

https://nj1015.com/student-loans-repayment-tips/

How does Schwab handle an employee who wishes to take their sabbatical, then retire? Does the employee have to return to work after the sabbatical for a certain period of time? Or can the employee simply retire after getting paid for the sabbatical? Thanks!

Once again, left 1/2 day, might even telecommute tomorrow, didn't update MOOSE, but my boss won't know, because they aren't here. I won't get in trouble but still getting paid. People get mad, but it's just because they are jealous that I am one of the boss's favorites

Virtuals run this company and create the rules. All others get yourself to Dallas HQ.

The July total possible working days appear to be overstated. With Independence Day observed on 07/03/26, the total should be 22 working days; however, it is currently posted as 23. This discrepancy suggests that U.S. Bank may no longer be observing the country’s Independence Day.

What is HR’s current RTO status? Has there been anything official communicated?

If you are laid off during medical leave (receiving STD benefits but no longer in the 12 week FMLA protection period), does the 60 day notice period start the day they call you or the day you return from leave?

Just received my notice to return into the office.

I’ve been cautious and coming in 3 days a week ever since the dashboard tracking was implemented. I have observed others are not here 3 days a week.

How? I can’t imagine this many folks have flexible work agreements?

President Trump is ending Medicare D subsidies at the end of the year. What happens then? It’ll push the largest Medicare D population to Medicare Advantage - the national product.

Now it's a daily grind of bad managers and worse policies. What happened to us?

I've heard everything from 3 weeks per year down to 2 weeks total. Where's the actual official info available?

Any spreading of rumors or claims of critical infrastructure damaged or being taken offline, is a violation of Saudi Aramco policy and Kingdom Law.