Thread regarding Open Text Corp. layoffs

Let's preach employee engagement in one breath and then pull this sh!t on us!
All I can say is that I expect to make better use of the unlimited sick days now, when they could have just been WFH days.

@13h Yes, and we're in a post covid world with new rules. It has been overwhelmingly demonstrated that most office work can be done remotely. There is no reason for me to sit in an office to have Teams meetings with people sitting 5 metres from me.
They want me for 8hrs/day? That's all you get; they want to waste some of that time on my commute is fine by me.

@w4 , I agree with you but I never got paid for travelling time before 2020 and WFH came about. Used to travel 4 hours per day with a book for my first job.

@xb That's their prerogative. It's also not something that's unique to opentext. Been rejected from many jobs because they felt I didn't have reliable transportation for the hours they offered.

My point is, my workday is 8 hours; they want me in an office. Well, the commute is also part of those 8 hours.

@w4 I take the bus too :( on a good day it is 1hour each way. And once the Canadian winters hit - it’s a nightmare! I don’t stretch my day if the commute has been brutal.

What a shitbox this place is. Ayatollah Ayman at it again focusing on the small stuff. I dipped on day two of SKO...just nothin there...im outta there..and if they are going to play this RTO game, make sure you watch those field vps that haven't been in an office in months...perfect example of that bloke SVP taking his third holiday in Greece this year..now he's got some sham job sales enablement bs in France and UK...sounds like a wa-ker...Hurry up open joke you better start impressing customers or that place is gone

@w4 That sounds great - until they start denying applicants based on location. It's unfortunately not protected. They can reduce the 30ish miles at any time.

"Yes we want you in the office. Buuut we now want that to be 5 mi/10km away. After that you're on your own."

Alternative ending:

The Phillipine Supercommuters making absolute bank.

@v3 ah yes
Just as pointless as your comment that adds no value to this disaster Openjoke

@e0 There's only one solution. That is, you don't work for free. They want you in an office. My day starts when my commute starts. My commute is part of my workday period. My round trip is 2 hours; well, that's 2 hours they're paying me to be on a bus

@tc ah yes
The 2 sides of the internet:

Actual counter argument immediately followed by calling them re--rded. Lmao.

@kk does your family know you’re re--rded?

@kk Paradoxical WFH/RTO is weird for us.

Does that mean because I'm not a dev/engineer I'm in office? My team does your keys and we have no control over software issues, or bad keygens being released to us. We're stuck waiting on the Release and Product Management teams for a fix. And despite being told I hit our team-specific metric I'm still stuck. Opentext will not use RTO as a carrot - there's too much culture parading and we can't be bothered to explicity define what you need to 'deserve' it. I don't think my team even sorted out meets vs exceeds expectations on ours. What a convenient way to give everyone a 3 or 2.

If y'all can make the products better and the tech stronger, then you're gonna have the right to talk about WFH conditions. The problem is we can't. I'm gonna puke when I look at the product design. And there are also a bunch of IT guys with old - school thinking.

So either accept it or get yourself as awesome as Google L10!

@ed exactly! Maybe we could get some of our travel approved so that we can 'collaborate' with some of the distributed teams :)
will they still support face-to-face collaboration?

@ed Of course it's a lie.
But as has been said in other threads, there's no leaving until securing something else.

@ec I
If collaboration only happens face to face, they having knowingly created an environment where, according to their own standards, has no ability to succeed. If collaboration only happens face to face, no more team meetings at all. No more distributed teams. Each office would need to be a stand alone, self contained business with all business needs met within the single location. No more company kickoff meetings with a virtual broadcast or recording. No more AI trainings held by remote teams. No more meetings with HR, IT on the phone. None of it if you really believe that you must be face to face to effectively collaborate.

I mean... Unless they are lying and don't even believe their own reasoning.

Remember, too, that 50km/30mi radius can mean even longer commutes.
I am going to relocate to be outside of 100km/60mi before the next radius is announced.

The CEO does not care an iota about any studies showing that remote work is good for many things; his response to questions about it was clear, he feels that collaboration only happens in a face-to-face environment. And you won't see him raising salaries for people who are forced to incur the higher cost-of-living effect of using their cars more or taking transit. And the hit on morale--one thing I thrive on is walking away from my desk at the end of the work day and the moment I leave the room, I am home from work.

With the amount of time and focus they are spending on this, are we somehow monetizing RTO 5 days a week? Is this something that customers are requesting or do we have customers that are benefiting from RTO directly and paying us to RTO? Because they are putting more attention and care into it than most other aspects of the employee experience. No one gives a sh-t enough to make sure we have access to the tools we need to perform job duties and functions, promotions, face to face time with our teammates outside our offices, salary raises or countless other things.

How many more studies about the positive benefits of hybrid or WFH arrangements do they need before they understand where the toxic work environment is coming from? Hint - not the people that are working remotely or hybrid. A 31 or less mile commute in some office locations requires employees to spend up to 4-5 hours a day commuting, round trip. That's how long it can take to ride public transit or even battle through traffic in some areas where we have offices. And to what benefit? Could someone please provide a concrete benefit to this outside of low cost layoffs? If you can't come up with any concrete benefits to the employees is there any wonder this is a non stop battle causing stress, distraction and generally lower employee satisfaction and a bunch of chronically stressed and sleep deprived employees. Sounds like a great plan for success

@dk They are definitely using cameras at some locations like Alpharetta GA.

@b9 I wonder if they'll start monitoring VPN usage to see where you log in from. Only to micromanage and crack down on the people who come in, stay for a meeting, and then leave by lunch.

I'm assuming they'll use the 5x day return as an excuse to lay off the non-compliant people. On my floor by 1-2 pm, it's a ghost town

@bv take it easy columbo 😂😂

My office has C level suite and I will be recording their comings and goings in a very factual way. use it in case they decide to misuse this to dire someone

@aq you’re right - the dashboard currently just shows what days of the week you’re in not the timing.

@at Of course it is, the man is a micro-manager; he doesn't know any other way to do it. I swear, if I ever meet him I'm going to say "soccer."

IT reports - where employees are logged in. This is a very special project for Ayman.

There will be badging in and out. Sorry.

@a3 this.

My office actually does comply.

Most of them:
Show up late
Leave early, if not by lunch.

After 5 it's me and one other dude.

To my limited knowledge the dashboard only covers days, not hours. It would take HR and IT arbitrarily picking a ratio to go much further via IP tracking.

I honestly don't care and I'd just prefer we all get the flexibility. Childless tax ig lol. Yall do yall, we benefit from not filing out 1 by 1 into traffic.

There are senior managers in my team who are assigned to an office and barely show up! Coffee badging is definitely happening amongst the others. RTO 5x could be enforced but don’t think anyone cares as no one’s staying past lunch in our office anyway. People come and go as they please.