Thread regarding Dell Inc. layoffs

I cab confirm its being tracked. Every 2 weeks a report gets generated and managers have to explain every missed day.

It’s probably been mentioned here. But it’s still tracked. If you look at your profile in workday, and click on site visits, then you can see the number of days your badge was used to visit a facility.

As to how much execs are smashing managers now-a-days - that’s unknown.

@kk our technology at it's best.

Probably harder to tell who is in office vs home since our laptops automatically connect to the VPN even when we are in tbe office. You can disconnect, but it will automatically reconnect in an hour. Really frustrating too since I often need to download/upload large files and the VPN slows it down to 100 mbps on a good day. I get near gigabit speeds on a good day when disconnected from the VPN.

@k9 Just to add on to this comment, if VP's, managers, C level execs had access to these logs that are apprently "stored on mass storage devices" or whatever, then they wouldn't have come to me to investigate a person.

I was contacted by a SVP, VP, and SR. Director last year asking for a certain users VPN logs. If they had access to this, why would they come to me? It's because they don't!

I gave them the info and that person ended up getting fired lol. THe dude had a total VPN login time of like 24 hours over the course of like 3 months.

@h0 Yeah, I'm very aware of that... I never said I was the SOLE person who manages the VPN's lol. I said I manage them.
And no, you are very wrong. Those logs are not being "sent" to any mass storage device. And no, only 1 team has access to those logs and it's Cyber. I'd probably know this because I kinda setup the VPN's... I configured everything on them, where logs are sent to, when logs are overwritten, etc etc etc... And they are NOT being sent to some "mass storage" that any team can go access lmfao.

The ONLY place logs get sent is to Splunk; and only certain types of logs. In general, the logs are stored on the VPN device which also acts as a log collector. They have 6 disks that are 12 TB each, so that's 48TB of storage which once logs get to a certain age, are written over. But that is for actual logs. Not VPN user activity lol.

VPN user activity - when someone connects, disconnects, etc... - those "logs" are kept on the firewall itself as they get written over often enough.

So my point is that the ONLY people who can actually see who is connected to the VPN, when they connected, for how long, and when they disconnect is... those who have access to the actual VPN/firewall!!!

If anybody - such as VP's or C levels - want to see someone's VPN activity, they'd literally have to go to us for that information.

@h0 you forgot the part where the data is ba----dized and misinterpreted before the dashboard is created.

@ex

Why would you be reviewing the logs? The logs are sent to a mass storage system and other teams create dashboards using data from those logs…

Also… One person doesn’t manage the “VPNs” at Dell.

@ap Trust me on this one... They aint tracking nobody via VPN lol. If anybody would know, it'd be me. I'M the one who manages those VPN's and not once have ever been asked to look at anybody's VPN logs in over 2.5 years.

@ap This is true however, as the official standards say something to the affect of; they do not care how long you stay onsite as they believe in "flexibility." Meaning, if you want to work onsite for 10 minutes, you can. If you want to work onsite for 8 hours, you can. Obviously this is dependent on your manager as well but, the guidelines are quite clear.

As someone who has full access to the VPN's... It's not quite as cut and dry as you think it is in regards to monitoring. We can see who connects to VPN at what time and, can see who disconnects from the VPN at xyz time. We can see what public IP you are connecting from/as but, that's about it.

Pretend you go into the office, sit down, connect your system up to the dock, then login to your VPN. You'll get an internal IP address that is part of the VPN IP address pool. A xx.xx.xx address or xx.xx.x-x address. So now, you have proof you are connected to the VPN as well as having a "public IP" which would be a Dell IP since you either connected via wire or their dogcrap WiFi.
OK so, now it's lunch time and you decide to go to Chilis. You take your computer with you and reconnect via Chilis wifi. You will get disconnected from the VPN as soon as you leave the wifi radius and, will then get a new public IP from the Chili's WiFi. Because you are now connected from a new location, when you login to the VPN, you'll likely get a brand new IP address as well.

Now, you go back to office reconnect, and then 2 minutes later are having issues with connections. So, you then go setup shop in the cafeteria. You connect to wifi and VPN but, it's not working well there either! So at this point you say fk it and decide to go home but, remembered you have a meeting you need to be in. So you connect to your phones hotspot, reconnect to the VPN and attend that meeting on your drive home.

Then you get home, hook your stuff back up and reconnect to the VPN.

In that single theoritical day, you disconnected/reconnected to the VPN FOUR times. Do you realize how much of a mess it would be to accurately track who is on VPN AT a dell office? VP's/C levels/directors/managers don't actually have access to the VPN's, btw.

To break it down in simple terms... and as a very real example...

User: logs into VPN at 8:07am - public IP is a Dell IP
User: disconnects at 11am
User: reconnects to VPN at 11:23am - public IP is non- Dell (chilis)
User: reconnects to VPN at 1:03pm - Dell public IP
User: disconnects from VPN at 1:10pm (connection issues)
User: Reconnects to VPN at 1:15pm (Dell public IP again)
User: Disconnects from VPN at 1:20pm - Public IP unkown (phone hotspot perhaps)
User: reconnects to VPN at 2PM - public IP is Spectrum (likely at home now on their own internet)

My point here is that, it's basically impossible to track who is at a Dell office and for how long. Technically, not impossible but it's a FAR more work to have cyber spend much of their time deciphering who was where, at what time, and what fkng public IP they have when connected to the VPN lol...

Trust me on this one, the last thing SRO VP's care about is prioritizing who was where, at what time, and how long they were connected...

Fun story though: Years ago, I was contacted by an SVP, VP, and a Sr. Director asking me to give them logs of a certain person's VPN connectivity. I immidiately told my manager because of their titles and was told "give em what you can." So, I went and pulled their VPN logs and it was pathetic. Over a MONTHs time period, I think he was connected to the VPN for roughly 20 hours lol. I put it all into a spreadsheet with the every day he connected, when he disconnected, if he even connected at all, etc... and sent that to them.

I told my best friend about this who also worked at Dell and he said "wait, WTF?? I work with this dude lol!" The guy ended up being fired. I still feel somewhat bad about this because I unkowngly got someone fired..

I'm OP.

I was curious if it was STILL being enforced as I wouldn't know. Having your badge swipes tracked does not mean it's being "enforced." The only reason we can see our swipes in workday now is because of the RTO but, badge swipes have ALWAYS been monitored.

I think how often you ACTUALLY need to be onsite is 100% dependent on your orgs VP wants because it's really not up to the managers discretion. Managers take their orders from directors, who take orders from VP's. Or something like that... and if your manager says they don't care if you go in or not but, your orgs VP does care? Guess who's opinion matters?

My direct manager AND director dgaf if we go in or not and wouldn't make anybody go in if it were up to them. HOWEVER, unfortunately that's now how it works. My orgs VP/C level dude wants us to go in a perctentage of the time - what that is, is unkown - but if I had to guess, you are safe going in 3x / week.

I can't speak for any org other than my own but, I'm 99% positive my org is looking for a 30% badge swipe per quarter. WHEN you do it is irrelevant.

A quarter is 3 months right? So that's roughly 90 days. Which is roughly 7.8 weeks per quarter.
So, of those 8 weeks per quarter, as long as you badge in 27-30 times per quarter, you will be totally fine. (which is 30% of the time, btw.) So if you choose to go in 5 days/week for the first like 2-3 weeks or something (10-15 days), then trickle in here and there the rest of the quarter, you'll be fine as long as you hit that 27 badge swipe number. (30%)

I were to go in 5 days/week for 4 weeks straight, hit 20 badge swipes, then go in 2x/week for the rest of the quarter.

But again, it varies from org to org so don't use my orgs requirements for whatever org YOU are in. I am only assuming my org is wanting 30% because our VP's and C levels have been very outspoken and against the RTO; and my director told us that all they care about/look for are badge swipes which he said with a "wink wink." aka coffee badge if you want to.

@ap they are NOT tracking VPN or campus network logins. It was the same software and is expensive. It was ki-led by the modernization initiative. They can still go manually track you if they are trying to build a case but, there is no reporting attached to logins either through VPN or campus login.

@av this is not a rumor. They for sure eliminated the software that was tracking logins to the campus network as the licensing was very costly. They are ki-ling all unnecessary software with the modernization initiative and that software they felt was unnecessary. They of course can pull badge-ins anytime but they are leaving policing time in office to management. If you have a sh---y manager, you may have a problem. If you have a cool manager and segment leadership, then they are probably just wanting to see a minimum effort.

@e4 horsesh-t

@d9 This is blatantly false. Just that I know of, internal IT and ISG support employees have been put on PIPs (aka we're gathering reasins to fire you ) because of low badge in numbers.

RTO has never been enforced.

Does anybody care anymore? About anything? I feel like we're just stuck in a matrix waiting to be replaced by india.

@cs The problem with that is upper management can't find their as--s with two hands let alone identify who is actually valuable vs who is just manipulating the system to make themselves look good. They've already layed off most of our best and brightest in ISG. Another high value person just left today mid shift because oracle offered him another 0 on his paycheck for doing basically the same work as Dell.

No valuable employees will be fired for refusing RTO.

However, it will be used against you if they were planning to fire you anyway.

I only work at Dell everyday so if that suddenly stops then it's on them. I'll keep doing my own thing until they try to get rid of me.

They are still tracking. The cutoff for the “danger zone” is unclear though. It seems to be up to your VP. So far, nobody in my org has suffered any ramifications for lack of attendance, but there are occasional requests from lower managers to get the numbers up.

I know for a fact that in my org they are currently reviewing the low attendance folks (0-1 days of attendance) as the offenders, I assume that once those are off the table, they might start looking at the rest, who knows...they might need an excuse for more WFRs.

@a2 here is a follow up question. What is the threshold for adequate on site attendance? Is it three days a week, four days a week, or are they actually looking for five days a week?

Rumor has it a while ago that the teaching software was expensive and after 1 year they didn’t renew. Or they were just too cheap even if it wasn’t expensive. Either way it’s easy to find out. Look in workday. If the numbers appear accurate they’re tracking badge in days still.

It's being tracked, but only by badge swipes. If you get to the office at the right time of the morning there's practically a parade of folks in their pj's scanning their badges, turning around and going home.

You can see site visits in workday now if they are tracking vpn and onsite connectivity is another question the vpn connectivity has become easier perhaps to facilitate tracking.

@a2 Well I'm on an HR approved medical exemption so that doesn't affect me for the time being... But when that is up, I'll be going in 3x-4 days a week.

They are 100% tracking. There are exception reports that go up to your L3… you can assume your name is showing up on a list and if your leader can’t vouch for why, you very well may be leaving yourself in a poor position. Some people are okay with that risk.