‘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.
I’m so tired of businesses claiming that the only way for a company to be successful is if everyone is in person for the dear dear meetings. We all know exactly what this is about. 1. It’s more dofficult to micromanage employees when a manger can’t constantly observe them, and 2. All the giant real estate investments companies have made is now coming due and they cant fill up their buildings fast enough to get those tax breaks. Why the hell else are they “tracking” people in the office. Meanwhile senior leadership can come and go whenever they see fit. It’s control. Plain and simple.
WebMD is owned by Internet Brands, which is owned by KKR, an investment group with $64 billion in real estate assets. This has fuck all to do with productivity or middle management.
Fuckin kkr. The ones who got Toys R Us to go bankrupt just to make a buck. They also purchased the company i worked for then sold it to another company which resulted in big layoffs some years back. They can eat shit and die.
I miss Toys R Us
Well, good news—Macy’s has brought them back.
We still have them in Canada!
There are company’s where their whole business strategy is to get their employees on the board of a struggling company with the plan to enact policies that seem like they will help but just dig the hole deeper. Until they can start selling off assets, move to bankruptcy, then sail away with golden parachutes to do it all again.
All the giant real estate investments companies have made is now coming due and they cant fill up their buildings fast enough to get those tax breaks
What are these tax breaks for filling up buildings?
They don’t exist. This made up tale about commercial real estate driving RTO policies has been around since early 2021 when things started opening back up on larger scales. It’s a fiction that just won’t die.
Because it’s not fiction. City leaders and even Congress, at the behest of lobbyists, have clearly urged RTO as a cure to real estate woes.
US Real Estate Firms Urge Federal Government To Bring Workers Back to the Office
Can you back that up with any evidence whatsoever?
Evidence, that something doesn’t exist?
Here: …
You can also use this evidence freely to prove, that you didn’t receive the package that you ordered.
It’s really just “we need people so that our real estate investments don’t tank”, I’m rooting for their shit to tank, fuck the rich.
My company had a badge in/badge out procedure, badge out was new after covid. No one actually badged out. They have since installed security guards at all exits and they will chase you out the door if you forget to badge out.
What’ll they do, tackle you and drag you back inside?
This seems like a horrible reaction to me, which sounds about corp
You have it backwards. Completely.
- I have no intentions of bringing my work home, work is a job, it has no place in my home impacting my family.
- I will not lose a part of my home to my jobs business. Its not their property, it is my home.i would rather the office be a bedroom so my children dont have to share a room.
- We evolved without video conferencing, it is natural and easier to meet with someone in person to convey emotion and understand people we meet with. It is too easy to dismiss someone over a screen, empathy is too easily lost. It is also harder to be ignored in person.
- I can see when my ataff are struggling off meeting or when talking to others and help them. This is a bit micro-managey however I value the insight especially for staff that struggle to communicate.
The only thing I loath about working in another building is: the commute and distractions. The commute is expensive and a huge waste of time. I try and minimise the time waste with audio books but its forced waste of money. The distractions can be minimised with headphones.
I’d say it depends on the job and the person. If it’s the sort of job that can be done remotely, and the office culture is such that people are constantly getting interrupted by people ‘just passing by’ and ‘oh one more quick question’, and/or dragged into hours-long meetings that could easily have been a quick email thread, then it’s not a stretch at all to see that WFH has improved their productivity.
The realestate claim is just plain backwards. It does depend on the person, but making the claim that people in general are happy to donate part of their home to their employer and impact their families with work from home is just wrong. Emails instead of meetings should be common sense for status meetings and has no impact on the choice to work from home. Meetings that have agendas should be in person, especially if its on sensitive topics. All reasons I have listed above.
Some people sure do benefit working from home. I liked no commute, it saved a lot of money and wasted time but it made home worse.
We work to live. Work should have no place in our home.
What I was describing was something many people who are happy to work from home have said about their jobs. Others cite their terrible commute as the reason they love not having to go into the office.
If you don’t want to give up a part of your home to your job that’s totally fine. But don’t go around saying that everyone should do things your way. Many people are quite happy working from home, and cite having more time for their family and hobbies, and never having to deal with annoying meetings or commutes.
You can see many examples in the comments on this very post, as well as the sheer number of people quitting when their jobs tried to force them back into the office.
It’s time for a boycott WebMD campaign. Let’s see how well they handle THAT 👹
Doing my part. I literally never visit that toxic site.
Let the corporate whips crack! Let the slaves fall back in line! We want profits!
Because you’re awesome, important to us, we care about your well being. We are a big family after all!
Being in the office ≠ more profit
It in fact takes away from the workers profit.
It doesen’t matter that much, corporate ghouls have justified their existance!
This is a feature, not a bug
I remember WebMD was one of the most chaotic places I worked at. It was 2000-2001 and there was a president Marv Rich and a CEO Marty Wygod. They were both building duplicate ERP systems that basically did the same thing. One day, my boss Al was in a meeting, and they told him that he needed us to move the data center to the East Coast. The most valuable part was a bunch of big EMC Symmetrix arrays with all their data. He was freaking out because he got into an argument about loading all of them into one airplane, and he didn’t want to do it. He was telling them that if the airplane goes down, all of WebMD would be gone, and it needed to be loaded onto two airplanes. I don’t know why, but for some reason, that story always reminded me of my time at WebMD.
The one time I moved a data center, we did it in two trucks for this very reason. Of course, it wouldn’t have been the whole organization lost, we had more than one data center. But yeah - the two planes part of this story makes complete sense to me.
Yeah, I feel like the part about developing two different systems to apparently do the same thing, was much stupider.
The planes were protection against an incredibly slim chance considering how incredibly safe air travel is (dramatically more likely to lose them in a truck accident on the way to or from the airport than on the plane), while the two different systems were guaranteed to be a massive waste of resources and time
Marty Wygod
Or, as they called him down the pub, Wygod Y.
Nah, pretty sure they just called him Wangrod
Are they in front of green screens? Did he not even bother to come into the office to record this?
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.
They run a semi-reputable health website which people use for mostly static information that rarely changes. How many new ideas do they really need?
How does creating a web page take so many people?
Creating the website is more or less a solved problem, but they have to keep coming up with new ways to exploit the website’s visitors for profit. The demand for infinite growth is never satiated.
This has real Dunder Mifflin Local Ad vibes.
Dude in his boxers is late for the no-pants subway ride, which only people who work in person participate in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Pants_Subway_Ride
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
The No Pants Subway Ride (or No Trousers on the Tube Ride in the UK) is an annual event where people ride rapid transit or subway while they are not wearing pants. Beginning in New York in 2002, the event spread to as many as sixty cities as of 2013.That’s just a normal Tuesday in NYC
Seriously… This is just far past a breaking point for even reasonable people… We need to organize and remind these people of the size of both sides of this conversation. What the fuck…
It’s great how all the executives recorded their videos not in the actual office.
I love response to the backlash. It’s basically “Sorry our video was cringy and tonedeaf. We have removed the cringe.”
And with a shrug emoji, like they’re trying to see how insulting they can be
Did they change the video? I was at least impressed that they acknowledged the interest in the video but didn’t realise they might also have made changes.
They did, and I quote:
As to comments/criticisms on the tone/style, Yeah, corporate videos are corporate videos!” the company then said, adding a shrug emoji.
I saw the original and the changed one. The only thing that it seems they’ve changed is to add the precursor message, acknowledging the palaver. The rest of the video looked the same.
Ok. Fair point. I guess I should say, they addressed their cringe. But I still thought it seemed like they were feigning concerned but actually doubling down.
Completely. Super cringe.
Jesus. What fucking lunatics. That video never needed to exist. Just be like every other corp and send an email. At least that news story would have blended in with all the other RTO trash.
Now I’ll just forever remember that webMDs parent company is operated by unhinged boomers.
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.
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.
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.
I watched the video and I didn’t hear any real facts or reasoning, it’s just a hype video. Rinse and repeat statements from your favorite gigantic corporations.
Because they don’t need real facts or reasoning. ARE YOU QUESTIONING MANAGEMENT?!?!
Having been in the corporate world for 14 years, they’re all awful, they’re all dysfunctional. I just got written up for saying “It’s demoralizing for people when the company has a hiring and pay freeze.” I’m allowed to say it, just not in public … They’re all awful.
They’re also making these videos while execs are working remotely.
Its ridiculous.
Web MD. The website. The website designed to make visitors feel a false sense of expertise about their health so that they don’t leave home to see a doctor about illness, is threatening their workers to leave their homes, to unnecessarily return to work, during a wave of life threatening and easily transmitable illness, that they will have to bring home.
