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by rconti 1870 days ago
I work in tech, and my company has bent over backwards to help us. Dozens of extra days off I'm having a hard time even using, an extra 4 days off a year (one per quarter) where the whole company is off, constantly reminding us ourselves and our families come first, and encouraging others to be understanding that our coworkers might be working unusual schedules as they juggle remote-learning kids, childcare, elder care, and other life priorities during such a difficult period.

It's not everywhere, and maybe it's not even the norm, but surely other companies are supportive of their employees as well.

2 comments

Wow, yeah, our company started emphatically asking us to take our days off piecemeal because we all went heads down in work and our days off became a financial liability. We spent the last year with benefits cut and idea that worry that we'd be having layoffs after the first round of furloughed employees weren't rehired.

So some different realities for sure.

To be fair, there's a very real difference between companies that are thriving or at least doing as well as ever during the pandemic, and those that are seriously hurting. I don't blame the latter for tightening purse strings, but one would hope they're at least not assholes about it.
You would hope. My employer froze raises and retirement contributions when they expected things were about to get tight. At the time we pointed to the billion+ dollar strategic fund and asked why they couldn’t dip into that, and we were told that money was untouchable because of the strategy.

Now a year later, things have worked out better than they expected and there is a huge surplus due to the freeze o. Wages and stopping contributions to retirement funds. Instead of giving some of that money back to us, want to guess where it’s going? That’s right, the strategic fund.

My manager has been very active to push sick says when needed, maybe partially as it's hard to gauge how functional someone is when you can't see them at their desk. They've always been awesome but it has shown through this past year.