1y ago

Grindr loses nearly half its staff to strict return-to-work rule

www.latimes.com Grindr loses nearly half its staff to strict return-to-work rule

Grindr has lost about 45% of its staff as it enforces a strict return-to-office policy that was introduced after a majority of employees announced a plan to unionize.

Grindr has lost about 45% of its staff as it enforces a strict return-to-office policy that was introduced after a majority of employees announced a plan to unionize.

About 80 of the 178 employees at the LGBTQ+ dating app company resigned after the company in August mandated that workers return to work in person two days a week at assigned “hub” offices or be fired, the Communications Workers of America said in a statement Wednesday.

love seeing companies going full mask off now --- not even trying to sell the 'collaborative environment' bile, it's purely punitive

News @lemmy.world

Grindr loses nearly half its staff to strict return-to-work rule

www.latimes.com /business/story/2023-09-07/grindr-loses-nearly-half-its-staff-to-strict-return-to-work-rule

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Technology @lemmy.world

Grindr loses nearly half its staff to strict return-to-work rule

www.latimes.com /business/story/2023-09-07/grindr-loses-nearly-half-its-staff-to-strict-return-to-work-rule

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81 comments

That's a weird way of saying "grindr found a way to lay off half its staff without having to pay severance"
- This should honestly be the top comment, most companies appear to be using RTO as a means of doing mass layoffs without the negative PR hit.
  
  Exactly right - this is a thinly veiled excuse for a planned large scale workforce reduction sidestepping some of the normal repercussions.
  What I find most interesting here is that WFH is essentially a benefit (a big one) at this point, and they just eliminated a huge benefit. That usually has the effect of causing some of your greatest talent to walk - and leaving behind those people who either don't care about the benefit (there may be some, but I think this number is small) or don't immediately have the hireability to resign and go for greener pastures.
  The tradeoff for grindr is that it'll make them temporarily look better on paper, but the loss of talent will probably hurt them in the long run. If there's one thing that seems to be true of modern capitalism, it's that companies are more than willing to fuck their futures over some perceived short term gains.
  Grindr isn't the only company doing this. I'll be interested to see how this works out for all the employers using this same tactic.
  
  RTO itself isn't negative PR?
  
  Strange that they think this isn't a negative PR hit, then.
- I don't think that's entirely the case though. With layoffs you remove the positions that the company no longer needs, or can't sustain. With this strategy they're just randomly losing half the staff. You wouldn't lay off your chief software architect, or the only guy who knows how your database works, or the account manager who will take all of your vendors with them when they leave. This will cause enormous hardship for the company if the wrong people left.
  I suppose they could have done a bunch of mandatory surveys first, asking employees how they felt about a return to the office and carefully monitoring the responses from key personnel, even preemptively mandating documentation or hand-off of responsibilities. That's incredibly nefarious though if that's what they did. That might even border on illegal.
  
  You're taking them at their word that all hands are required back. It is zero effort for them to carve out exceptions for key staff -- or literally any group or individual they want to please -- while still bleating about 'come back to the office or be fired' to the press and everyone else. Corporate heads talking out of both sides of their mouth is the norm, not the exception.
  
  Ah the Thanos snap approach to firing.
  
  I can't agree at all. We do attrition based staff reduction all the time. Years upon years of it. Is it smart and planned? No. Do we survive anyway? Sure.
  They're not losing clients over this so they'll be fine if they're less efficient for a while.
  
  Agreed with this, if it's an attrition play it's an incredibly incompetent one. I'd argue there's reason to believe you'd lose the senior employees that you'd want to keep.
  
  If an important position is paid enough, they won't leave just because of this return to office
- I'm not sure about anyone who was hired before WFH, but generally, a substantial change to job duties or location is considered constructive dismissal. ie, it's legally the same as being fired without cause. That might be eligible for severance and definitely for unemployment.
  
  For most roles, severance is not a guarantee and only given as part of layoffs because companies that don't are crucified.
  I.e. getting fired/quitting will not trigger some severance clause for nearly all employees, even constructive dismissal.
- This really needs to be some level of labor issue. If an office decided to move across the country and you didn't move with it, would that be you quitting? You applied for the job that was on your side of the country, not the one across the country. To me, the employer's terms changed, which means they need to handle the difference.

Serves them right. When your product is completely virtual/ digital, there's no real reason to be in the office other than "cOLlAboRAtioN"
- This was intentional. Tech companies force people back to the office in order to cull employees. IBM is infamous for getting 20+ year employees to quit in order to deny retirement benefits. Grindr is using a time tested method.
  
  IBM also designed the machines and cataloging system used by the Nazis to number Jews in concentration camps. Fun fact As in, like, specifically designed it for the Nazis.

I'm sure they'll find plenty of top tier new engineers who will take a position at Grindr instead of literally any other job that offers full time WFH support 🙄
Wonder which executive got annoyed that they went into the office, they noticed no one else was suffering in-office with them and this is the outcome.
- Hypothetically, if I was called in to an empty office during a pandemic while the top brass worked from the comfort of home, I would absolutely work quietly and diligently from my designated space, and I would absolutely not load up on beans before hand and at every urge of my bowels, wander into those empty corner offices and fumigate every chair, book, keyboard, mousepad and drawer individually and repeatedly.
- Wonder which executive got annoyed that they went into the office, they noticed no one else was suffering in-office with them and this is the outcome.
  The one that gets the bonus.

good.
Companies that mandate a return to the office should pay a big price.
- not good, this is what grindr's owners wanted; let grindr run on autopilot to squeeze out as much $$$ as possible.
  it'll eventually mean that grindr will fail; but short term profits are always more important to investors.
  
  Considering new software engineers make tinder/grindr clones in a day for their portfolios, it wouldn't be a loss. Someone could make a competing app and put Grindr out of its greedy misery.

They didn't lose their staff they constructively laid them off. They drastically changed the terms of their employment. Grindr must pay them unemployment benefits.
- Even still, that's nothing, compared to severance or paying their salaries. Especially if they felt they needed to layoff folks anyway.

One company I worked at (in Germany) did a survey asking employees for their preference during the pandemic, 78% wanted a hybrid model with less than half of their time spent in the office, citing many legitimate reasons such as childcare. The management interpretation of this openly reported survey was an "overwhelming desire to return to the pre-pandemic office culture"..in a company full of data scientists, and analysts, it didn't land so well.
- If only they had qualified people to interpret the data...

Return to office is a grift. Tech workers need to unionize.
- They were doing so at Grindr. That's allegedly the catalyst for this happening. The unionize movement has less momentum when you terminate half of your staff.
- They needed to many years ago

I wouldn't resign. Let them fire me and take the severance
- I'd imagine you aren't getting severance for this. Unemployment, maybe, since you could say your employer moved the job location too far away.
  
  I’d imagine you aren’t getting severance for this.
  It really depends on what's in their employment contracts...and I will bet that it makes a huge difference whether they accepted their positions as an advertised full-time remote position or not.
  Even employers who don't make a habit of offering severance can be convinced to offer it when negotiating the compensation package. I have a pretty standard requirement in all my employment contracts that I am willing to give an equal amount of notice of departure as the company is willing to provide contractual severance. Example: if the company offers zero severance, then I have it written into my employment contract that the amount of notice I'm expected to give before resigning is zero days. If the company wants and expects 2-weeks notice, then I require my employment contract to mandate 2-weeks severance...and then I tell them that I'm happy with anything from zero days to a month and that they are free to choose the amount. This has always resulted in me getting 2-weeks or more of contractual severance even when other employees don't have that provision.
  
  Depends on the company. My shitty company is doing forced RTO, in a horrible way, but about the only thing they are doing right is giving standard severance packages for anyone who doesn't want to comply.
  
  In my country, it is required by law to give any fired employee a fixed amount of monthly salaries, depending on how long the employee was at the company. For example, 3 months if you were 5 years, 6 months if you were 10 years and 1 extra month for every next year after that

Not up for the grind, am i rite?

You could say the company came to a grinding halt
- With gay abandon no less.
- take my upvote and go

cut payroll without paying unemployment with this simple trick

It wasn’t because of return to work. Workers were attempting to unionize.

They didn't "lose" their staff— they "discarded" their staff.

Some of this is intentional by design. Shedding head count through willing attrition.

mask off
I see what you did here

Isn't this like a week old now?

Here's one company where physical presence is kind of required

Surprised to see no one making the default joke about how "half of their staff is still 3 inches." Guess people here actually care about the method that the people were laid off.

81 comments