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‘Don’t Mess With Us’: WebMD Parent Company Demands Return to Office in Bizarre Video::“I’ve seen better acting by hostages in direct to DVD movies,” one anonymous worker wrote about the video.
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Lol I used to work for a company that has been bought and renamed several times and now is under the WebMD umbrella. They were trying that “remote work is bad” be a decade ago, and it’s funny that now they are part of a larger company that still isn’t with the times.
My wife is a business analyst and software tester (not for WebMD) and still gets awards and bonuses for excellence, even while she’s worked at home during Covid.
This guy needs to explain to me why she should be forced back into the office to improve her performance.
Because he means business! Don’t forget who thinks they’re in charge here.
They ALL are on green screen. There isn’t anyone int his video present “in person”!
And poorly executed at that … Each exec kept moving to completely different background scenes each time they showed up, one they botched so badly they made it look like he was standing in the counter… It’s like they didn’t even care enough to try
And that was the weirdest “happy dance” the “employees” were doing at the end
Totally this. There’s not a single person there who isn’t an SVP or an EVP. And I’m speaking as someone with an official title of EVP; unless you get the team to say “it’s awesome to be back in” on a video, this just comes across as so “because we say so”.
Our team is already distributed across 8 time zones and 5 countries; why do we need to be in the office to sit in the same calls across our regions?
There are some jobs that are much better done in person and then there are jobs that aren’t. For most roles, some tasks in that role is better in person, for some tasks it doesn’t make a difference and for some tasks it’s specifically better to be remote.
A video like this needs to explain WHY - and with more than just “we are better together!”; ok, but why?
Tech company executives who ignore data need to be held accountable for their actions by their employees. People need to stand up and stop being sheep.
Eventually they will be held accountable by their shareholders. Companies that renew expensive (and now unnecessary) office leases will have a worse bottom line than those that embrace work from home.
Exactly. It’s time to stand up while we can.
We can’t let these fucks take over the entire reality with their own “version” which is complete bullshit.
This is is some Black Mirror shit.
Not really. This is typical boomer behavior. They’re old stupid brains can’t wrap their heads around the idea that offices are outdated unneeded concepts in the new digital age. They actually think remote work is somehow losing money for them because workers aren’t getting dressed up and commuting to the office. That somehow by not coming to the office workers are being lazy and not working hard enough for them. And their dumb boomer brains refuse to acknowledge the mountain of evidence that shows that remote workers are actually tremendously more productive than in-office workers
This is typical boomer behavior.
“Boomer”? I don’t know if any of the people in that video was old enough to be a boomer. Heck, most of the execs were definitely under 50.
I don’t think ageism is the answer to the problem. here.
There’s ample evidence this is “stupid corporate culture” shit.
The people in the video are either actors or peons, the person who made the policy is the boomer and he is definitely old enough.
Like the CTO and Senior Directors and stuff?
Add in a nice side of paranoia over how much of their 401k is tied to office real estate in some way.
All of their tech job openings are in India or Vietnam. I’d have assumed a major US health data handler would be developing onshore!
This has real Dunder Mifflin Local Ad vibes.
It’s great how all the executives recorded their videos not in the actual office.
I’m so sick and god damned tired of corporations and governments making sweeping decisions with no evidence base to back them up. I work in a field where there is no option for remote work, but I think it’s pretty clear at this point that most non-service industries can be just as effective via remote options. All of this is just about control and it’s so stupid.
They don’t care. It’s about control and real estate.
More about real estate than anything else, to be honest. You have far more control over remote work than in the office. I know how many minutes each member of my team spends on any and all websites, can log keyboards, to the point I don’t recommend to anyone working remotely to access bank accounts on their work computers.
I don’t see how working from home changes anything. If you can do that kind of logging on their work computers at home, you can do it at the office too. Besides (in the EU at least) you have to inform employees about the extent of the monitoring beforehand. Can’t imagine how they expect to attract competent employees that way though.
You’d be surprised how much people actually just don’t care how their work computers are monitored nowadays. We disclose everything, even showed our monitoring tool to employees, and they just don’t care. I guess people know by now that personal stuff should be handled on personal devices, such as phones, tablets and computers. And the things they use their work computers for, they don’t care if we’re looking at it or not,
Funny enough, we never used those tools working in the office, even though they would work. But the fact that people are inside a controlled environment makes companies more lenient about IT security, funny enough. Having a badge seems to make computer monitoring tools redundant (even though they aren’t, of course).
But again, I do think this “back to work” movement has more to do with financial losses in real estate than real team work or control over the team. To some degree, banks, insurers and funds own us all.
Even when we were in office, I never logged into anything or browsed for anything personal on my work device. I also never connected my phone to company WiFi on principle. We have tiny pocket computers. No reason to jeopardize my job going on then reddit, now lemmy on the company device.
I slightly disagree on one aspect. I have read several studies (relatively short term, but still) about how WFH and Remote Work employees are measurably and significantly more effective and productive than their in-office counterparts. Evidence actually supports remote work.
Yeah, so the decision is actually counter to the evidence.
Yup. WFH/Remote increases productivity. Any CEO who limits their companies productivity should be relieved of their job. In office is and should be a thing of the past for most day to day operations.
The companies were even praising the benefits of WFH earlier in the pandemic, boasting about record productivity, and those same people and companies are now saying they need to bring people back without acknowledging their prior statements. It’s perfectly bizarre.
They want closer collaboration, there are ways to do that remotely, and do it well. I think MMOs have proven that people can collaborate effectively for long periods with people they’ve never met, don’t know what they look like, what their voice sounds like, or even their name.
Why does the same company that owns WebMD also own Lawyers.com and a car website?
Because the devil is dead and god thinks it’s funny
Capitalism, mostly.
"Internet Brands did not respond to a request for comment, except to say that people were busy with meetings. "
Well there’s your problem… Probably having meetings about how they need more meetings.
Have a read/watch of this other asshole CEO going on an unhinged rant about return to office earlier last year.
Interesting. I hadn’t seen that. Dude looked like he was on some kind of upper but the supercut didn’t do him any favors.
I’m honestly more stunned that this is an internet company. They didn’t think this was a bad idea to post to Vimeo?
Are they in front of green screens? Did he not even bother to come into the office to record this?
They were probably concerned that all their employees seem to be getting cancer.
