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Cake day: August 23rd, 2023

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  • despite all our previous statements to the contrary and verifiable statistics counter to this narrative

    This was by far the most frustrating part of the RTO push at my old company. The unofficial motto I was always told was “Show me the data”, as it was basically impossible to push for any sort of decision without solid data to back it up, even if everyone in the group thought it was a good idea.

    When RTO was announced and the big all people town hall was held, multiple group heads stood up and asked the execs why they were doing this, and what data they had to back it up. Literally, and I quote from one of the execs, “Well, we don’t really have any, but we feel that people will be more productive, will be sharing more ideas and innovating when in the office.”

    Yes, the executive at a multi-billion dollar automotive company literally said with a straight face to thousands of engineers who’d been working almost entirely from home for the past 3 years “This decision is based on feels, not reality”. Even better was since there was already an initial non-mandatory RTO push, some absolute chads even interrupted them to pull up hard data showing they had been tracking productivity since the RTO push, and their group members were significantly less productive on days they were in-office. Not only that, but they also showed there literally wasn’t the office space to fit everyone. The exec just hand waved it away and said “I’m sure we have plenty of desks for everyone”.

    It’s absolutely infuriating seeing these people getting paid millions, if not billions, to suck so hard at basically everything.



  • If you think that prevents this, you’re wrong. My company did the same thing, and when they announced RTO, people pointed out that they only had enough capacity for maybe 80% of the employees to fit. Management’s response? “I’ve seen empty desks in (other unrelated building on the other side of campus), I’m sure we’ll make it work”.

    Don’t think that something silly like “physical space” or “maximum occupancy limits” will get in the way of a stupid decision.














  • Except they promised it was going to be the NBT in trucking and that companies would be stupid to buy anything else, and it was supposed to be in mass production 5 years ago. In actuality they delivered a couple dozen prototypes to a single company (at least as far as I’m aware) that is using them solely for greenwashing their delivery fleet. Even then, they’ve been absolutely unreliable heaps that probably have cost Frito-Lay far more headache than the slight PR bump they got from them. Oh, and don’t forget that any truck driver will tell you they have an absolutely useless cabin that was clearly designed by someone who had never even been in a truck cab before, and was designed solely for the techbro demographic to gush about, in between its 0-60 time and unrealistic range.

    Meanwhile, I see Rivian-made Amazon delivery vans literally every single day, and have legitimately seen more companies operating Nikola semi trucks (the ‘scam’ company that supposedly only could roll a truck down a hill) than the Tesla Semi. And that’s just startups, not counting the actual Mercedes and Volvo Class 8 trucks that are already on the road. It amazes me how people seem to act like Tesla has delivered on literally any promises they’ve ever made, when in actuality it’s just an incredible feat of goalpost moving.