Alli Peck and Rico discuss Dell's policy blocking raises, promotions, and transfers for fully remote workers. Michael Dell claimed remote workers are less productive in 2022. They debate whether the policy is fair and ask Dell employees to weigh in.
Chapters
Welcome back to the Ally from Corporate Podcast. In this episode, we are talking about Dell telling all remote employees they are now not eligible for raises, promotions, or lateral changes within the company. Let's talk about it. What's up, party people? I'm your host, Allie, and this is the Ally from Corporate Podcast. Y' all know my husband, Rico. Say hi, Rico.
It's been a while since I've been on. We had all these amazing guests and I've added all of them and they are amazing and a lot more competent in the career space than I am.
But I love having you on the podcast because you are like a soundboard that I can bounce ideas off of. You have great inputs, great ideas. You're more of like a visionary. I'm more of an executor. We're a good team. I think we have great conversations. But you know what we're talking about today?
Tell me.
So we got an interesting question from a follower. And by the way, if anybody's listening to this and you have a career question, if you have a job search question, if you have a toxic boss question, send me a message. On literally any platform, Instagram would be best. But a follower messaged me something pretty interesting, which is going to be the topic of today's conversation, which is the crap they're trying to pull at Dell. Have you heard about this with the remote, the remote threat they're giving their.
Employees that they won't get a promotion. Heard, read something. But I'm not 100% sure what that entails.
So Dell just announced the company. Dell, you know, that makes all the computers and stuff. They just announced that any remote employees are now not eligible for raises, promotions or internal transfers within the company. Basically, it's a dead end for you.
That's crazy.
That's crazy, right?
I can see. I think it's crazy from the company to do that because performance should not be based on location. Right? You can still be high performing doing stuff even though you're at home because you're not, as they say, the office chit chatter. You know, the in the hallway walks can also be distracting because they're like, you got to come to the office and you know, bounce ideas off of. But if you're really needed work those, you know, those conversations in the hallway aren't going to do you any good because you should be working. But what.
Go ahead. Sorry to interrupt. Keep going.
On the other hand, it's really difficult when you try to have these conversations and you can't because you need to schedule Meetings.
Yeah, and that's just one aspect of remote work. There's also the side of companies needs to pay for, you know, corporate buildings, pay rent. So do you know what the Dell CEO said in 2022 about remote work? I want to read you this quote. So Michael Dell said, if you are counting on forced hours spent in a traditional office to create collaboration and provide a feeling of belonging within your organization, you're doing it wrong. At Dell, we found no meaningful differences for team members working remotely or office based even before the pandemic forced everyone home. So even he's saying that remote work doesn't have anything to do with productivity. You want to know what I think? So I've been thinking a lot about this and I love remote work for me, but I think if we had a child with no childcare, it would be way more tough. Or if you and I lived with our parents, it would be really tough. Or if we lived in a house that we did not like, it would be very tough. So there's a lot of different reasons why remote work might not work for everybody, but it works for me. I hope it works for you, Rico. But these people at Dell, if you really want a remote job, what Dell is telling you is that's going to be a dead end for you. You do not have a future at Dell. Sure, you could stay in that role forever and ever, but if I had to guess, they are probably going to try and eliminate those positions in the future or make them obsolete or, you know, eliminate that part of the workforce. Because if you can get everybody in a category who's working remote, who's already being told they have no dead end, the people who are staying there, how ambitious of professionals do you think those people are going to be?
You know, thinking about it is it can go both ways. It could go ways where people just don't want to climb the corporate ladder. In general, I'm seeing that, that people don't want to climb the corporate ladder. So that wouldn't really matter. I think there's generally a trend of, hey, I'm pretty good where I'm at. Most remote jobs are non. How do I phrase this? Are non career. You know, they're like non career launchers. You know, like if you truly want to succeed in your career, I 100% believe you need to be in the office because you need a network in person. You need to show up, you need to perform, you need to be lending a hand and you need to go above and beyond to gain new skills. Network and Move up. And if you want to do. If you want to do that for two years and then go to a new company, you don't necessarily need to do that, but when you want to do it in your organization, you need to, you know, show up and perform and do all that.
Yeah, you bring up an interesting point. I think people who want to work remote, at least all the people who have told me they want a remote job, it's because they want to focus or prioritize on something else in their life besides their career. I have never really met an ambitious career professional who's like, I just want a remote job. Usually ambitious professionals want to be in the office. They want to be networking. Showing is more powerful than telling. So when you are in the office, not just on a zoom call, you're in 3D, not 2D. I think it matters for your career. And Dell is basically putting the nail in a coffin saying that this is a. It's a career ender at Dell. If you want to work remote, what do you think about the people who want to work remote for Dell at a high U.S. salary when Dell could just hire people at half the price in a different country remote, then you.
Got to really show your value.
Yeah.
Yeah. I wonder if you're doing data entry work, your job might go, you know.
If you're going to do AI, could do that.
Yeah. If you're going to do some feature Adele, you know, that can be, you know, obsolete with automation, but there's new jobs now just because of AI, you know, so it's going to be interesting. We're living in super interesting times. And yeah, I mean, hard to say what's going to come of it, but I think there's going to be a fine line. I think hybrid work is kind of the way to go.
I agree, because I don't think people need to be in the office every day. Like, it's nice to have a day where you can, like, do a doctor's appointment in the middle of the day if you need to. Or like, hey, like, I need to pick up my kid. I need to be on the phone in the car for this zoom meeting. Like, I get why hybrid is great. I think hybrid is great remote work. So remote work is great. It can be great too, because instead of having to only recruit people 50 miles away from the office, then you're opening yourself up to the whole world. So remote is great because you can source talent from anywhere, but you're never going to see that person in the office. How much of an impact or a leader. Could they really be, you know, when.
You look at it like that, that's where you got to be showing your value and you need to know in your skills and depending on what level. So let's say for your instance as program manager in medical devices, be really hard to outsource that to India because you have such a finite skill that somebody from India would already be in the United States with that skill. Or they could contract it and they still be here in the US because it's so finite, you know, it's so fine tuned and that is hard to outsource because you're so well versed. Right. But for just like you know, like a video editor that can be outsourced to anywhere, you know, you don't need to be living in the United States to video edit. But on the other hand, you know, other countries have great tools too that they cannot outsource because they have, you know, they have embargo barriers, you know, customs, they have proprietary knowledge that they don't want to outsource.
They might have visa obstacles they have to overcome if they want to work somewhere else.
Yeah. So I feel like top talent is always going to go to where top money is, you know.
Yeah. And what Dell is saying is that if you are remote, we're not going to pay you top dollar. They're already basically telling you you are not a top candidate, you are not an A player top talent. So we're going to pay you. We're basically putting a ceiling above you.
But see, but, but that's a general statement. I think managers then have the opportunities and show the value. And it's funny that you say that because I remember an article of Salesforce said everybody's indefinite remote. Then everybody needs to come back besides C suite and above because it doesn't fit their lifestyle. They're, they're in remote indefinite. So I feel like there's like three levels of it. There's the beginner level between here and like manager, you know, contributors, individual contributors. You're nobody. You're replaceable in months if you haven't been there for 10, 15 years in general. Right. Then there's like mid level executives that are like harder to replace. It takes them longer to find it. Then there's like C suite and above that know all the contacts and know everything about the company and those are even more harder to replace. That's why some of these have such huge salaries because it's going to take them a very long time to find these people.
Right, yeah. So I would not call people who are individual contributors nobodies, but I think that they have less decision making power in the organization and they come with a smaller price tag and maybe they have less influence on the culture than a manager or a senior leader would. But remote.
I feel like there's levels to the game. I feel like there's levels to the game. So when I worked at smaller companies, when you were a technician, you were really, really replaceable but you were the ones that doing the day to day business. So there was, you were actually the frontline workers doing the job, but you were the ones that were easiest replaceable in the eyes of the executives. Right. Because it's easier to find somebody that's going to do your job for 100,000 fresh out of college. Because every year, every semester there's people that graduate that would take that job. But it's hard to find that C Suite executive that knows supply chain, that knows Agile, that knows software, that, that knows medical devices, that has an MBA from, I don't know, Harvard, mit, mit and has a minor in marketing, that knows and has all these connections. I feel like C Suite executives, most of them are very like precision people that know something really, really well.
Yeah, true. I doubt those people are going to be the ones working remote at Dell.
No, I think, I actually think they do would work remote from Dell. I think C Suite and I think executives can do everything remote. I don't think that because they're all over the globe. They're all over the globe. Dell is the most mobile company.
But why would somebody who's in a senior leadership position at Dell be fully remote if they were told you can never have a raise or a promotion?
I think rules do not apply to director and above.
Wrong. Dell said it's all employees.
Yeah, yeah. Just what the CEO of Salesforce said. Oh, it doesn't apply to me or my team or C Suite, something like it. Those people write their own rules.
That would be absolutely ridonkulous if Dell put out an article saying this. Except it didn't apply to some people.
Oh, I bet you that it doesn't. I bet you doesn't.
Okay, if anybody listening or watching this works at Dell, can you please let us know? Does this rule apply to everybody? I think it applies to everybody.
Nah, nah.
Oh, they'd be like shooting themselves in the foot if they said this applies to all you, you people down there but not the people at the top. That'd be ridiculous.
I think that's how most companies roll.
You are so pessimistic.
No, I think that's how. If I'd run Dell, that's what I would do. If I ran Dell, that's what I would do. You know, that's what I would do.
Oh, man. Thank God you're not in charge.
Because it's. Because why would I, Why would I, Why would I not? Why would I give my colleagues, you know, why would I make my colleagues life harder? These direct, you know, like when you're the CEO, you have the C suite, right?
Yeah.
And these are the people that basically govern the business, right?
Yeah.
They're the decision makers. They're trying during your org, they're trying to make stuff and they're the ones that will help you succeed with your goals. Right. So if Dell has a vision, they're the ones that can implement it. So why would you want to, why, why would you want to put a log between their feet? Right. Because they're so autonomous, they can do whatever they want, right?
No, I completely disagree with you. I think Dell would get canceled so hard if they made this only apply to people at the bottom.
They might, they might say, okay, they might apply it to the whole company but not enforce it. They might apply it to the whole company.
Wouldn't you notice if a director just wasn't at work anymore and then suddenly they got promoted? You'd be like, hey, that person's been remote. But you remote, you promoted them.
Who says that he's not traveling the world and going to other locations? So who says they're not, they're not checking up on the Michigan plan. Today and tomorrow they're going to be in Washington doing that and then they're going to be at home for a week and a half and then they travel for work. So I don't.
Maybe I just, I don't know. I would bet that it's whole company wide. Are you looking it up?
No.
What are you doing?
So Dell owns five private jets. So if you're C suite and you're driving, you're flying a private jet around, you seriously think that they're going to enforce the work from home policy?
I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Please, if anybody works at Dell, we need to know. We're dying to know. If you're on YouTube, please leave us a comment. If you're on Spotify, please DM me on Instagram. Like I need to know, am I right or is Rico right? I bet I'm right. We should make a bet. If somebody tells me that. That I'm wrong. What should I have to do?
I don't know.
But yeah, okay, comment that too, if you're listening. Oh my gosh. Well, this has been a hot topic debate now I'm dying to know. I'll probably ask Perplexity after this. Maybe they'll know. But thank you for being a guest on my podcast. As always, you're so fun to talk to because you have all these different Persona. You have, like, all these different perspectives. So if you like this episode, if you want us to comment on more news articles, this was sent to me by a follower on Instagram. Send it over in DMs. I'm happy to do an episode about it. And thanks for listening. We will catch you next time.
See ya.
More from Alli
Change Your Career Without Leaving Your Job: Podcast Episode with Darcy Eikenberg
