Principal Financial-Remote work
- Thread starter pfgemployee
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Principal didn’t exactly move their call centers to Manila. They acquired a company that already had staff there. Also acquired other call centers across the states in the same acquisition. All of their call center staff that existed prior to that acquisition are domestic.
Another reason for the push back to the office may have also been their campus renovations. Principal spent several millions of dollars renovating the campus right before Covid and now the complex is sitting unused. Doesn’t really factor into the productivity argument, but may have been a motivator.
My son graduated last May from ISU and he had 1/2 semester of all online and 1 semester of half online. My junior daughter has had 2 online classes while at ISU. Were most states all online for the last two school years?
A kid on my team went to Tennessee and I think went 1.5 years online and another went to Florida international and I think she was similar. A different one was all online for 2 years but I'm not sure if it was by choice or covid or both. I guess my overarching point was more that remote learning and work is something they're familiar with.
I have 10 guys that work for me, when they work at home they are jerking off, going to Cabo, golfing, getting drunk or sleeping. It was fine for awhile, but now it’s just a day or days off. It’s total ********.
I think you're misunderstanding my point - I'm not saying that the workplace is the only place that you can develop social skills or that we should view the workplace as like.. the best or primary source of community or anything like that. What I'm saying is that in a world where traditional ways of finding community - local involvement, religious involvement, etc are all on the decline, the workplace is the only place left that has any semblance of community for adults in America. It's not ideal, and I agree that you should not look to your employer as a source of good. The best workplaces care about you and respect you as a person, but at the end of the day they have to place the needs of the business over any one employee's personal needs.
I'm also not really talking about social skills in the sense of the ability to make friends, or to interact with people you know in social situations. Work really should not be the place you learn that stuff. I'm talking about social skills in the sense of getting things done with other people while working towards a common goal despite not sharing a personal connection at least at first. That is the core concept that makes every society work and it is something you can learn at work. It's also something you can learn at school, military service, etc. But it's very different from the ability to make or keep friends with likeminded people who are in your social group.
I'm just imagining the world if we go to a long term full remote environment. If you're a kid growing up in that world, how do you meet people outside your family, if your family isn't involved in say a church or some other community organization? Maybe if school is still in person, you meet someone at school? When and how do you ever meet anyone with differing views or life experience as an adult? For most people, the natural tendency is to avoid people who aren't like themselves. What does the world look like? Everyone gets everything delivered to their house? Maybe retail stays "in person"? During the worst of the pandemic, we all needed to stay home but that was temporary - imagine if that had gone on for 20 years. There are measurable negative effects on society from 1-2 years of many things being fully remote. I'm imagining a world where most people sit at home, talk to their family and maybe a few friends they know in person, and spend their time online in echo chambers talking about how everyone else in the world is terrible.
My ideal working situation is most people are hybrid (all employees in office on the same specific days each week) with flexibility to go full remote for say a few weeks or month at a time a time or two a year to allow a working vacation, etc. Some people can go full remote based on their personality/life situation/job needs, and some people are full in person based on the needs of the job.
The whole WFH thing and discussion on productivity has shed a light on how weird the whole concept of salaried employment is. Like if one person is extremely good at their job and can do what is expected of them in 10 hours, yet another person takes 40 to do it, why does the person who does it in 10 need to stay in the office for 30 more hours that week to sit on social media or talk to Steve who has to swing by with his coffee cup and chit chat 3x a day? Are we heading towards contract based employment? I can see how that would be beneficial and also suck at the same time.
And then added to that Manila staff. 2021 they had zero presence outside of the U.S. They've always been considered a premium service that's worth it because of customer service. Wells Fargo...ugh
I don’t view pay as time, I view it as responsibility. I have a responsibility to make sure I am getting all my tasks done, and I’m being compensated for that. Whether it takes me 2 hours or 12 hours a day to complete shouldn’t matter. The problem is that companies feel cheated when someone improves a process so that it takes less time to complete and then takes it easy the rest of the day. But the same company wouldn’t have a problem if it took a different person all day to complete the same task.
I have no idea why people are sitting at their desks killing time, or stretching out work, when they have Things wrapped up. When I finished and had things wrapped up, I left on my jobs or found something else to do. Sitting there wasting time is the worst way to be at work and basically wasting your life away. If they will fire you for doing your work and leaving an hour or two before others, you will find another job that won’t fire you.
I hear people say things like this every now and again. Honestly what it makes me wonder the most is are there actually jobs like this in the world? As a salaried employee are you truly regularly done with everything you need to do in 10 hours a week? There is enough work at my job that I could stay busy 80 hours a week if I wanted to. I generally work 40-45 unless there is a deadline coming up, so I'm not crazy haha. I've never been in a position (at least since finishing my training and getting a full work load) where I could honestly sit down at my desk and think "Yep, there is literally nothing for me to do."
If you're someone like this (or anyone in this thread), what type of job do you work?
They have a crap ton of office space they paid for, and dammit, they're going to use it.
The hosts on my favorite personal finance podcast think that the main driver behind unlimited PTO is the fact that the company no longer has to pay people that quit for accumulated vacation days.
"Oh, you didn't use much PTO? Well too bad. cya!"
That, and they know people will probably under-utilize it.
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Try having to call tier 1 tech support in India, brutal. I have them open/close the ticket and then I go into the system saying its still not resolved to get someone State side to get it fixed. Complete waste of time but at least Im getting paid.
