“this is a company for grown ups.”
That’s too bad. I was thinking of getting their phone when I needed a new one, I guess I’ll just add them to my mental list of companies to avoid.
Nothing is requiring employees to be in the office five days a week
Submitted 2 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/21/24225169/nothing-employees-office-work-mandate-five-days
Comments
jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
anon_8675309@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m a grown up. I’ve been remote for a decade. I’m pretty successful too.
Telorand@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Right? Imagine thinking that working in a cubicle is something to aspire to as a “grown up.” Fuck that. I’ll continue working from home, like an adult, thanks.
Sidyctism2@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
goddamn i read parts of the article trying to figure out which company… Im not a marketing guy, but nobody can tell me that “nothing” is marketable brand.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Allow me to introduce you to their main competitor, elon musk.
Oh, I don’t mean competitor in the business market. I mean their main competitor for worlds least marketable brand identity.
He took twitter, which had it’s own global brand awareness, and blundered it so bad that every media company refers to it as “X (formerly twitter)” because they know that if they had just put X, nobody would know what the hell they were talking about.
And his other company is literally named “The Boring Company”. Where I assume they make disease, and murderous robots that are somehow racist.
BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Clearly it’s not a company for grown ups because you think they’re all children that won’t play together unless you cram them into a classroom and tell them, “Make nice.”
candybrie@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Right? Grown ups can be trusted to get their work done without someone watching them all the time. It’s small children who need constant supervision.
LEVI@feddit.org 2 months ago
I guess I’ll just add them to my mental list of companies to avoid.
😆 mental ?! I already have my list in my browser bookmarks
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Part of it is literally named teenage engineering! The division working on the earbuds.
Arthur@literature.cafe 2 months ago
Teenage Engineering is a hardware design firm that Nothing contracts with for hardware design. They aren’t a division of Nothing and they don’t work on just earbuds.
itchick2014@midwest.social 2 months ago
Teenage engineering partnered with Nothing. That isn’t the same thing.
scarabic@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It baffles me because in many of the quotes they are clearly trying to be understanding and respectful toward those who disagree with this, but then they come out and call them children
Ironically, that’s a really childish thing to do.
Boxscape@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
“this is a company for grown ups.”
When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. – C.S. Lewis
jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
If only most CEO’s knew how to read. smh
Teknikal@eviltoast.org 2 months ago
Don’t I have one and it’s the only Android device I’ve owned that crashes and reboots almost daily. I can’t recall any other device ever doing it actually.
This company’s all about the next gimmick and couldn’t care less about actually making decent phones.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
"Remote work is not compatible with a high ambition level plus high speed,” Pei said in the email, telling employees who are worried about flexibility that “this is a company for grown ups.”
Sounds like he actually means it’s a company for exploitable young people and socopathic assholes. Grown-ups don’t want work to commandeer their whole lives.
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 2 months ago
“This company is for grown ups. Now sit over there where I can check on you constantly and do what I tell you like a child that can’t be trusted alone.”
zondo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The actual sentence, according to a Verge website comment, was: “This is a company for grown ups, so if you need to be out of office to deal with some issues, we trust you to make the right decision.” If true, this doesn’t reflect well on Verge journalism.
niemcycle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Guarantee this is a ploy to chase off the ‘less committed’ employees (read: less desperate), while not having to announce mass layoffs.
jj4211@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The real problem is that Nothing brings… nothing to the table. Oh look, another startup making another Android phone in a sea of companies making Android phones, with yet another skin.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
What do you mean? Their phone has lights on the back.
eee@lemm.ee 2 months ago
This just means they’re a struggling company who needs to cut headcount and want to do it without paying severance
Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
In addition, this tactic will result in the best employees leaving first, because they’ll get employed somewhere else.
HK65@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
Cue the pivot to some ridiculous buzz tech like AI in the near future, then being acquired and promptly abandoned by some big corp.
roguetrick@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Considering this company was founded as a remote work company from the beginning, you’re absolutely right.
CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
It’s such bullshit too because drastically changing someone’s working conditions is clearly a constructive dismissal and should lead to severance payments.
mercano@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The way this usually works out is you loose all the good employees and you’re left with the dregs who were unable to find another remote position in time.
essteeyou@lemmy.world 2 months ago
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
And Nothing is going to fire you if you don’t find a creative way to meet their bullshit attendance metrics.
I love being treated like a gradeschooler. Really boosts my morale, especially with nearly two fucking decades of experience and being on the wrong side of 35.
Stop bothering me and let me do my fucking job, for christ’s sake.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is an interesting approach from the CEO, in that it demonstrates why unions are mandatory.
twei@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
I’ve just right now noticed that they are talking about the company…
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I’d meet those rules out of spite, and do a really crappy job while there. They’d essentially be forced to fire me, and I’d consider suing for wrongful termination in not providing a suitable work environment for me to do my job (evidence is my productivity before and after being forced back to the office).
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
uhhhh…
anyone else totally misinterpret the lede to mean “there’s no reason to go to work at an office” lol?
sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Yep. Pretty sure the editor knew what they were doing 🙂
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
It’s like god damn Odysseus and Polyphemus up in here.
monotremata@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Definite “Friday was the name of his horse!” energy here.
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
nice, yet another company to avoid
moon@lemmy.cafe 2 months ago
As a customer, why do you care if the employees are wfh or not lol
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Because you vote with your money.
As long as those businesses keep receiving money, they will continue these malpractices and damage the market.
kamen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I wanna see them pay for office hours AND commute hours. In a big city you easily have 1+ hour a day irrevocably lost to commuting.
esc27@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Companies don’t even have to pay people for the time spent going through their own required security checks… …wikipedia.org/…/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_In…
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 2 months ago
So glad I live in California. A faulty security gate once prevented me from leaving my job on time. Which pushed me past 12 hours on shift, which automatically meant I was earning twice my hourly wage while I waited. Plus it required a mandatory additional meal break, which I couldn’t take. Since I couldn’t take it, I was automatically given an additional full hour’s wage, as required by state law.
kamen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Wow. Now I don’t want to go to the US even harder than before.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If I’m reading that right, the decision was reversed by the 9th circuit.
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Scumbags all.
WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Open plan offices fucken suck.
Noise, constant distractions, and that one arsehole who never covers their mouth when they sneeze, sending a wave of infectious germs rolling out across the office floor.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
God I remember how the flu used to just rip through the office come wintertime… Since switching to remote work, I think I’ve taken 1 sick day this year.
BillMurray@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m in an open floor plan with cubicles. There is one asshole who has an office, he insists on having loud conversations, with his door open, on mother fucking speakerphone through his tinny laptop speakers. I’ve resorted to a white noise playlist on Spotify. He’s a client, so not cool telling him to fuck off.
NebGilum@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“this is a company for adults” says the CEO of a company who slaps “Glyph” lights on knockoff iPhones and calls it innovative. I hate when I see Carl Pei’s smug face pop up every few months. Hey Carl - put a fucking charger in the box. OnePlus is thriving without you.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 months ago
I won’t buy anything that isn’t stock Android. Sick of never being able to find anything.
dan@upvote.au 2 months ago
No devices have “stock Android”. Even the Pixel is a customized version of Android.
RubyRhod@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Not sure what you’re saying… ru referencing Nothing OS, or Oxygen… or…?
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
I have a hypothesis that anyone who is required to be on site without having to do a hands-on thing (e.g. physical maintenance or repair) is actually a garden hermit, that is, hired to perform as an extra for the pleasure of viewing upper management.
I also have a hypothesis that a lot of company budget and material goes towards handling and pacifying upper management (e.g. the way a binky pacifies an infant) since they are accustomed to being coddled and not accustomed to actually managing.
To be fair, I’ve only been able to observe the relationships between clerical class and management class in a handful of companies, including a small one-store CD-Rom reseller and Bechtel Corporation circa 1990, but my observations have been consistent between them.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I have a hypothesis that anyone who is required to be on site without having to do a hands-on thing (e.g. physical maintenance or repair) is actually a garden hermit, that is, hired to perform as an extra for the pleasure of viewing upper management.
They’re Type 1 Bullshit Jobs, aka “Flunkies”
Flunky jobs primarily exist to make someone else look or feel important. Throughout recorded history, rich and powerful people would surround themselves with servants, clients, sycophants, and minions of one sort or another.
GaMEChld@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This sounds about right to me.
Sensitivezombie@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Excuse for layoff. What I hear from the article is a CEO, who himself is not a grown up, crying me, me, me, my company, my profit, selfish behavior without any concern for his employees who have largely contributed to his startup success.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Humans have a “me” problem in general. The secret is not to create conditions for it to manifest itself.
Anti-monopoly laws, unions, distribution of power, openness, readiness to break nonsense laws, stubbornness in defending important laws, understanding of common sense both in following and in breaking the law, and the same that applies to laws applies to any moral principles.
You know, consciousness of good and evil, wisdom of all the enormous amount of good literature available for anyone able to read in English and other most spoken languages.
Just being human and understanding that no device of human making can “solve” human nature.
I’d say Tolkien and Lewis on the fantasy side, Heinlein and Asimov and Simak on the sci-fi side, and Lem in between them. Some Jules Verne and Sabatini would be good too. I have a reflex to Russian classics due to having been force-fed them in childhood, but there are things worth learning. And Lucian of Samosata.
Carpe diem, memento mori, astra inclinant sed non obligant. OK, I think my head needs a reboot.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
When it comes to addressing the “me” problem, Buddha has to be on the list of people with advice worth checking out. It may run deep, but modern capitalism encourages and nurtures the worst of it. A lot of the issues we see aren’t due to any unchangeable human nature, but capitalists will try to persuade us they are.
todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 2 months ago
This headline is true in multiple ways.
circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
We had a tremendous office culture in the 1950s. Since then, we have had numerous – very numerous – improvements and innovations in the telecom space, in the office assistant space (think personal digital assistant, or rather all the ubiquitous tools that do what those used to do), and other general improvements which empower significantly enhanced productivity.
To say people still need to be in the office is to say there have been no improvements. The fact is, we can be at home and be more productive than in an office. Anyone who tells you otherwise has ulterior motives.
Company is too invested in real estate? Sounds like an issue that the C-suite caused and that they alone should fix. Middle management needs to feel useful? Maybe they should find a career that actually has a need for their micromanagement instead of forcing other people into an obsolete box to appear useful. Show me a company against remote work, and I’ll show you a company with outdated goals, more outdated methods, and leadership which should be replaced en masse with people from 2024.
Agent641@lemmy.world 2 months ago
WFH is not a new concept, nor restricted to office work. Priya Satia’s book Empire of Guns reports that 2/3rds of Birmingham blacksmiths in the 1700s worked from home, and were more productive for it.
circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
Nothing I said contradicts that. But it is the case that there are a wide variety of technologies which make WFH even easier than it may have been before.
If people did it before, they should keep doing it. But now, even more people should be able to WFH.
roguetrick@lemmy.world 2 months ago
So this is a company whose foundation was work from home and thus has that as it’s background culture? Yeah this is just an excuse for layoffs without paying.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Every other company:
“Hey, we’re hiring…”
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
If they are a company for grown ups why is he acting all controlling like an insecure little child instead of trusting in his employees like a brave adult?
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is a litmus test for who actually reads the article
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 2 months ago
So Carl Pei sounds like a real douchebag
RangerJosie@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Just corporate real estate.
That’s literally it. The whole reason.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
r/titlegore the fault of the original article
billwashere@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The grown ups comment makes the CEO sound like a condescending prick. Yeah I’d be looking for another job after that.
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
This is called a silent layoff
noxy@yiffit.net 2 months ago
That headline could use some clarification.
At first I thought it was gonna be an opinion piece supporting fully remote work.
Turns out it’s abouy a company named “Nothing”.
veeesix@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
“This is a company for grown-ups”.
Says man who makes phones that sparkle and a fidget spinner earbud case.
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 2 months ago
There’s nothing requiring people to work 5 days a week, or 40 hours, or 52 weeks a year. If we worked together we could have way better conditions.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sounds like a great reason to unionize.
exanime@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Remind me to check in 6 months, we’ll see headlines that “Nothing’s” valuation is going to be doing honours to its name
kantor@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Ngl, that’s a genius headline
Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yeah I was expecting this to be a thought piece in general about companies requiring them be back in office.
return2ozma@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I did a double take when I first read it. Then I realized it was, Nothing, the phone company.
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I did not even realize until reading this comment that Nothing was even a company.