Dell

The paychecks don't bounce.

Morale is so low, employees are more openly discussing unionization.

Dell has reached the point in the corporate lifecycle where every expense that makes the job tolerable will be cut until the only people left are those that can't leave.

It's always a bad sign when 'concerns about productivity' lead to time tracking that destroys productivity, just so clueless, out-of-touch cake-eaters can have a single tableau report that sorts staff into a single metric that tells them whom to fire.

Which is doubly hilarious because leadership is the source of the lost productivity by overworking people they deny the right tools to. Rest and pay are tools. Mortgages can't be paid with a voucher for crisis counseling, which is doubly funny as the crises usually stem from work failing to meet our needs for downtime and affording existence.

They push us to make tools to increase automation, take ownership of them, pay us nothing for them, and then use the increase in productivity to lay people off instead of overworking people less.

With Covid, Dell spent years bragging about how being remote made us even more profitable and productive. In lockstep with every other tech corpo, they said return to office or be fired. No raises for the commute, having to buy cars, or the increase in inflation.

The executives said competitors aren't raising pay, so we won't either. This coming from people claiming to be leaders in doing the right thing – it's all gaslighting nonsense.

The COO of Dell just this year made $25M. In one year, he made more than my entire team will make in the sum of their lives combined.

With a $2 dividend, the half a million shares he owns pays $250,000 every quarter, well more than twice the full year's wage of most principal engineers, automatically for just being paid the stock.

The best manager I have ever had was laid off so they could put 25-30 engineers under every manager, a ratio that basically ensures the manager can't manage to any real level that matters.

I have been working at Dell for over 10 years and have gained many skills, certifications, and promotions, but when I adjust for inflation, I made now what I made when I started.

Front lines are run ragged. They're constantly told they have to train and upskill, but they're also yelled at if they're not on the phone 24/7.

Executive management is solely concerned with patting themselves on the back for the illusion of doing anything more than cutting headcount to give themselves bigger raises after handing tens of millions to consultants to tell them to do what they already planned to, and then tell workers there just isn't money for cost-of-living increases.

Every year Dell has internal surveys, and the last was basically a 100-point swing from kind of approving to uniform disapproval.

We rush out half-baked solutions no one documents, understands, or trains us on, and then make techs learn on the fly on buggy customer systems deployed by people that don't seem to reference the same guides.

The executives couldn't care less about the employees. They pay as little as possible, tone-deaf and clueless executives. Everything they say sounds like self-congratulatory nonsense.

When my manager was laid off (one of the few with 100% approval), his boss got on the phone to basically say, "No one cares about your career, you're on your own. Make waves and you're gone. Shut up, keep your head down, and work."

If you're management at Dell, it's 50/50 you're taking care of your direct reports. If you're executive management at Dell, you're gaslighting everyone under you that you earned millions upon millions, while the people actually doing the work fall farther behind.

Michael Dell should learn some American history about past tax rates and how happy, well-paid workers make happy customers.