Do people who are advocating for RTO not have families? Or do you simply don't like them all that much? I can't figure out any other reason why you would prefer to lose a minimum of an hour - or two and more for some of us - commuting each day rather than having that time at home with your loved ones. Or even if you live alone, have that time for more rest or your hobbies, whatever they might be. I don't get some of you, truly.
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People at Citrix are more productive working from home than when we were in the office. The company literally had to force company wide PTO weeks because employees were working crazy long hours and working while on PTO. Yes, you heard me, we had to mandate company wide PTO weeks so that everyone globally was on PTO at the same time because otherwise our employees were working non-stop including while on PTO. Trust for Citrix employees is not the issue, our employees have stuck in there through year after year of roller coaster craziness. Our culture is what has kept people at Citrix and working hard like always despite everything going on...and we had remote people prior, during and after the pandemic. The new ELT doesn't have the money to pay severance packages for everyone they plan to fire so the RTO mandate is the best way to get people to leave on their own.
Agreed - "IT'S TO GET PEOPLE TO QUIT". - This is very true. Most of our industry is 100% remote work force and hello, remote work is WHAT WE SELL. Read all the articles out there from top companies about remote work = green impact, cost reduction of real-estate, employee retention, immense remote work force growth percentages for the next 5 years, work/life balance, benefits to smaller/rural communities, etc etc. The RTO mandate by the ELT is 100% to get people to leave voluntarily so layoff numbers won't be as high and payout to those leaving won't be as expensive as severance costs. All other theories are coming from people who do not understand the modern reality of remote work. Don't drink the cool-aid Grandpa, it's almost 2023, remote work is, has been and will continue to be the new norm. This RTO mandate from the ELT is purely based on not wanting to pay severance packages because they need to lose thousands of people before Q1 either by employee choice or pink slips. Employee choice is far less expensive than severance pay.
Quit your moaning TK knows everyone is best off in the office. He's flying back and forth between sites all the time, he'd probably sleep under his desk if he needed to, even if its just to make sure what time everyone leaves and gets in every day.
He's a happily married guy with 4 kids, and if they are cool with how little time he's there with them, then you should be feeling lucky to have so much of his time. If it were the reverse I'd probably be a lot less happy.
My problem with RTO is because of the very real challenges of commuting to an office in Silicon Valley. Before the pandemic there were days that it would take 2 hours each way to drive around 40 miles to the office. That coupled with the fact that the Santa Clara office is closest to some of the most expensive residential real estate in the country makes a commute necessary, incredibly long, and absolutely unproductive. There's very little work you can do sitting in bumper to bumper traffic other than the occasional call. Offices in other locations like Raleigh may not have the same cost of living and traffic challenges so RTO policies there may make more practical sense. I anticipate that after a while some more flexibility will be allowed or encouraged, but this hard-a-s stance about butts in seats 5 days a week, 9 - 5 is more about breaking everyone's will than it is about some kind of data-driven policy to increase "productivity" or "innovation."
“Unhappy” != “Unproductive” &&
“Unhappy” != “Untrustworthy”
Its funny when TK says that he doesn’t know how he could do his job remotely. Clearly resigned to and old world skill set and laziness. Not a great guy to have at the helm. It’s a knowledge economy, it’s not “who you know” and “networking” anymore. “what you know” will get you there 90% of the time in this hyper optimized job market. Especially software engineering.
Interesting. It's a sure thing that many of the Citrix workforces are disengaged from their work, and who would blame them?
Krause knows that putting lipstick on this two-headed legacy software pig isn't going to improve employee engagement. So, expect the micromanagement and RTO mandate to stand for the foreseeable future. No person is trusted, most are assumed to be unhappy
CEOs of companies that, for whatever reason, question the active engagement of their employee base lack the Trust required to adopt flexible working models.
Some will point to the Gallup study findings, which continue to validate that "quiet quitting" is not a new phenomenon. Lots of people are stuck in jobs that they don't like anymore. CEOs in the U.S. and globally don't want to acknowledge that contrary to what they often say, many of their employees are clearly not "our greatest asset". A large percentage of employees and middle managers are indifferent at best, and some are very passive-aggressive.
Here's the latest insight https://www.gallup.com/workplace/391922/employee-engagement-slump-continues.aspx
Just today, Meta has announced they will be consolidating their offices because their employees have essentially refused aggressive RTO demands from the C suite. Good software engineers are not easy to find, and have more power and control than CEOs would like to admit.
The reality is this. All these companies, not just Citrix, are doing aggressive RTO's for a multitude of reasons. The first and foremost is cost. All of these companies have hefty real estate bills and with all these places sitting empty, they are quite literally throwing money away.
The second is political. We all know these CEO's are in someone's pocket or they are in some politicians pocket. Staying as a 100% remote workforce is crushing the economy. By not supporting small businesses i.e. restaurants, coffee shops etc... We are putting an enormous strain on the economy. So politicians are enticing CEO's to be super aggressive about RTO because your money keeps other small businesses afloat and hence, alleviates stress on the economy.
Third, and in my mind the most important reason for this ELT is time management. Antiquated thinking tells them that when you have downtime, if you are in the office, you will do more work. They also think that your direct managers will be managing you better, keeping better track of how you spend your time, blocking time off, cracking the whip during crunch time etc... This was America in the 50's. Their mindset is stuck there and they cannot see a future of remote work for their companies, regardless of the fact that business is making products that are conducive to a remote work force.
Finally, none of the above really matters at the end of the day. We are not in charge. TK is. Whatever he says goes, like it or not. Agree with him or not, he is the boss.
You can call him names, get angry and throw a fit on the layoff.com but if you think any of the ELT are actually reading this or caring if they are, you are sorely mistaken.
Your future is in your hands, not his. You can choose to abide by the mandate or not, but not will require finding work elsewhere.
No amount of "FU-K TK!!!" or "Citrix is dead!!!" posts here is going to change what this company is becoming.
Personally, I am choosing to stick around and see where we land. Call me "unemployable" or "worthless" all you want. But it is more of a morbid fascination to see if they can pull this company out of the mud.
The pandemic was not a temporary interruption. People discovered that it's very possible to work from home and be productive. With some exceptions, there is no reason to be in an office five days a week. My complaint is that TK is lying through his teeth. RTO isn't because it's more productive or 'good for us' - IT'S TO GET PEOPLE TO QUIT. Period. But Mister Full Transparency can't say that.
A lot of people prefer to work in the office, for a variety of reasons. It's not their fault that there's an RTO mandate for non-remote workers, but if you were full-time in the office before COVID, it's pretty much not a UN human rights violation to have you working back in the office full-time after COVID. At least in the US, its not like you're punching a timecard. People come and go as they please for the most part, and plenty of people worked from home some of the time.
I get the sense that a lot of the main complaints on here are from people who are either new to the industry or have been at Citrix a very long time. Acquisitions, mergers, even company collapses are very common in the IT vendor space. I've just never seen the level of complaints about it as I have with the Citrix crew. Either get your resume and Linked-In profile and everything up to date and ready to roll for a job search, or dig in and do the best job you can at Citrix.