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Featured Replies

3 minutes ago, immamac said:

Hartzel is so good at his job. 

Abbott to Hartzell: are you a branch of a 75 foot oak? Because you’re crushing it 

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  • Thermos H. Christ
    Thermos H. Christ

  • This is a lot simpler than you are all making it. It has everything to do with personal integrity and nothing to do with anything else.  Hartzell cannot be trusted anymore with situations like th

  • hornmpa96
    hornmpa96

    Still looks better than the statute of Jefferson Davis.

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3 hours ago, UnivTex34 said:

The amount of staff has ballooned on college campuses in the last 3 decades to mind blowing amounts. It's one of the biggest reason that the cost of higher education is out pacing inflation at such a rate. 

It's pretty well documented that this is a myth.

6 minutes ago, immamac said:

I just wonder what's going to happen if Ted Cruz loses this year. Like what would be possible if that happened. 

I wouldn’t waste the brainpower wondering about that.

11 hours ago, immamac said:

I just wonder what's going to happen if Ted Cruz loses this year. Like what would be possible if that happened. 

Imagine all the people, sharing all the world, you-hoo-oo.

I just wonder what's going to happen if Ted Cruz loses this year. Like what would be possible if that happened. 

Planes would need to be looking out for pigs in the sky, for a start.
Quote

It’s past time to get back to work.

The implication being that work wasn't getting done, which is ludicrous.

48 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

Abbott’s puppet doing his job ….

 

It’s cute that Abbott got himself a lap dog.

I guess it's too easy being woke while working from home in your sweatpants.

Just now, royiv said:

It’s cute that Abbott got himself a lap dog.

He has a very persistent lap.

Using Abbott’s logic, he needs to be butts in seats (to be fair, his butt is always in a seat) in the governor’s office instead of going to photo ops at the border or out of state.

The rightwing nuts view WFH as a holdover from the pandemic which they don't believe was real. But WFH is it's own thing now, and people fucking love it.

Abbott has every intention on changing UT. He wants Liberty U with better academics. 

Getting rid of the liberal rank and file is a part of his plan (imo) 

There are a lot of things to hate Abbott or Hartzell for but requiring faculty and staff to return to work on campus isn't one of them to me. Tough shit you won't be able to work from home anymore...

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12 minutes ago, BurntOrange&White said:

There are a lot of things to hate Abbott or Hartzell for but requiring faculty and staff to return to work on campus isn't one of them to me. Tough shit you won't be able to work from home anymore...

Okay, boomer.

1 hour ago, BurntOrange&White said:

There are a lot of things to hate Abbott or Hartzell for but requiring faculty and staff to return to work on campus isn't one of them to me. Tough shit you won't be able to work from home anymore...

This is probably a difficult concept for you to wrap your head around, but certain people and certain jobs benefit from not having to commute.

3 hours ago, HenryJames said:

The rightwing nuts view WFH as a holdover from the pandemic which they don't believe was real. But WFH is it's own thing now, and people fucking love it.

I've been working from home since 2002.  It's not new, GQP is dumb. 

21 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

This is probably a difficult concept for you to wrap your head around, but certain people and certain jobs benefit from not having to commute.

I don’t really care. 

1 minute ago, BurntOrange&White said:

I don’t really care. 

That's the mark of an outstanding manager, one who prioritizes theory over results.  Get less old.

4 minutes ago, BurntOrange&White said:

I don’t really care. 

There’s a surprising number of Surly posters who say they don’t care, but take the time to post anyway.

15 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

There’s a surprising number of Surly posters who say they don’t care, but take the time to post anyway.

Our board activity would go down 50% if people who claim not to care about something just didn’t post about it 

34 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

There’s a surprising number of Surly posters who say they don’t care, but take the time to post anyway.

 

18 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Our board activity would go down 50% if people who claim not to care about something just didn’t post about it 

reminds me of the scarecrow calling out people without brains. if you don't care, why are you here? jfc

My wife's team, despite being completely clerical/administrative and never needing to interact with students or faculty, is likely to be forced back 5 days a week.  So stupid.  She is going to leave, they can take their 2% raises and shove it up their ass.

1 hour ago, BurntOrange&White said:

I don’t really care. 

It’s time for your nap, grandpa. 

26 minutes ago, gurt said:

My wife's team, despite being completely clerical/administrative and never needing to interact with students or faculty, is likely to be forced back 5 days a week.  So stupid.  She is going to leave, they can take their 2% raises and shove it up their ass.

Good. I hope this backfires horribly on these idiots.

Even before Covid nobody on our corporate team worked at the office.  I mean we have over 100 nonclinical employees and there's less than 5 in an office daily.  I don't get why people need to be in an office for the vast majority of jobs.  I guess we're fairly young and dynamic and are lucky to have a culture, without needing to cram people in cubicles together.  I appreciate companies that force work at office because we've been able to pick off really talented people for much less...

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One of my favorite things is when people who post non-stop during a workday on this message board hop onto threads to assertively claim that they know the best way to maximize workplace efficiency. 

43 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Even before Covid nobody on our corporate team worked at the office.  I mean we have over 100 nonclinical employees and there's less than 5 in an office daily.  I don't get why people need to be in an office for the vast majority of jobs.  I guess we're fairly young and dynamic and are lucky to have a culture, without needing to cram people in cubicles together.  I appreciate companies that force work at office because we've been able to pick off really talented people for much less...

Y'all hiring remote RNs by any chance??

52 minutes ago, safe sex said:

Y'all hiring remote RNs by any chance??

We do RPM/chronic care mgt so we do have some remote RN’s.  Don’t need any more yet but should soon.  

24 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

3) the gains of WFH (e.g. working longer hours, evenings, etc.) are probably off set equally by the losses (going to the cleaners and Home Depot at 11am or going to a baseball practice at 3p).

The demand of assessing worthiness should be put on managers who assess performance of those who report to them.  End of story.

3 hours ago, gurt said:

My wife's team, despite being completely clerical/administrative and never needing to interact with students or faculty, is likely to be forced back 5 days a week.  So stupid.  She is going to leave, they can take their 2% raises and shove it up their ass.

Honestly, clerical and admin staff are the hardest to effectively manage and use via WFH.  Creatives, people with defined long-term projects measured by milestones, IT, number crunchers….sure, they can crank out stuff at home.  But the fact is you need the clerical and admin staff to be available to take stuff that just comes up, shift quickly when needed, and just in general be “admin.” Of course, clerical and admin is a big range and I don’t know the team specifics. 

It’s easy to say “just ask managers to plan better” but the fact is that piling up more emails, Zoom calls, check-ins, etc means that you’re shifting work from lower per hour to higher per hour and that is rarely a good value proposition.

1 hour ago, BeardIP said:

the gains of WFH (e.g. working longer hours, evenings, etc.) are probably off set equally by the losses (going to the cleaners and Home Depot at 11am or going to a baseball practice at 3p).

Don’t forget all the masturbation.

3 minutes ago, South Austin said:

Don’t forget all the masturbation.

No net difference. What’s stopping anyone from cranking one out at their cubicle?

Who needs masturbation when you can plow the secretary with the big jugs on the conference room table?  amirite?  

8 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

Abbott has every intention on changing UT. He wants Liberty U with better academics. 

Getting rid of the liberal rank and file is a part of his plan (imo) 

This is 1000% where my head is. I'm staff, and will have my WFH cut because of this (if I can't find a job by August 19th). The other kick in the nuts is that at the same Staff Council meeting they discussed this months ago, they also noted that the University's merit pool is also being de-funded. CSU's will have to fund it themselves (easy, right?).

I have no doubt that whatever budget man Hartzell hired was brought in to make corporate-style cuts to services and staff. Thus, this policy. It's completely in line with what the corporate overlords want, which is what Greg wants, which is JH's directive. Which usually means being an absolute piece of shit to staff and making it clear that they aren't welcome. They'll leave a percentage of the jobs unfilled, those that they do fill will be less-skilled and paid less. So do I stay in my student-facing role with a bled-out team that will be overworked and understaffed with the next person who quits (hopefully me first)? Or head to greener pastures. God fucking forbid I hang on to the sliver of hope that I could make a career out of trying to help college students figure out their lives. 

I just got my 10-year staff service award sent to me last month too. Invited to the President's award ceremony for light snacks and a speech from the man himself. Kiss my ass. He was already on my shit list for being Abbott's lackey. No way in hell I was showing up to hear him spill platitudes out the side of his mouth where Greg's dick isn't. 

1 hour ago, BeardIP said:

 

3) the gains of WFH (e.g. working longer hours, evenings, etc.) are probably off set equally by the losses (going to the cleaners and Home Depot at 11am or going to a baseball practice at 3p).

Until you lose good talent over draconian policy

Like most things, the right answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. I think a hybrid schedule like 2 days in the office that may slide a bit depending on specific roles is the right solution.

10 hours ago, TexEx15 said:

Like most things, the right answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. I think a hybrid schedule like 2 days in the office that may slide a bit depending on specific roles is the right solution.

Agree with this, and with generous flex for when things come up and there’s projects and tasks that can be dug into and attacked from home.

10 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Agree with this, and with generous flex for when things come up and there’s projects and tasks that can be dug into and attacked from home.

Yep. I go out of my way to meet my staff’s needs when it comes to flexibility. Family and life always come first. I’ve also found that when you treat folks that way, when shit does hit the fan and you need that little extra out of them they are happy to do it knowing you have and will have their back. 

lol the old downsize via "voluntary attrition" move

13 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Honestly, clerical and admin staff are the hardest to effectively manage and use via WFH.  Creatives, people with defined long-term projects measured by milestones, IT, number crunchers….sure, they can crank out stuff at home.  But the fact is you need the clerical and admin staff to be available to take stuff that just comes up, shift quickly when needed, and just in general be “admin.” Of course, clerical and admin is a big range and I don’t know the team specifics. 

It’s easy to say “just ask managers to plan better” but the fact is that piling up more emails, Zoom calls, check-ins, etc means that you’re shifting work from lower per hour to higher per hour and that is rarely a good value proposition.

I guess I follow you, but their job is to pull items out of a queue and work on them alone, with a Teams slack channel to ask any questions that might come up.  About as ideal as a WFH job could be.  Yet, because they are in the provost office, they have to fall in line with what the president wants.  

And regarding flexibility, there is none at UT.  Butts in seat 8-5.  If you have nothing to do and it is 430 and would like to get a jumpstart on beating traffic?  Tough, you're sitting there clock watching.

13 hours ago, TexEx15 said:

Like most things, the right answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. I think a hybrid schedule like 2 days in the office that may slide a bit depending on specific roles is the right solution.

I think the "one size fits all" mentality is lazy.  It's up to management to assess the performance of direct reports and implement the practices that will best optimize results.  While some jobs require full-time on-site attendance, many don't.  Technology has changed the game in many ways.

Some people who in theory could work from home don't want to do that.  They want to be in the office.  Great.  Many others (like me) perform better working from home.  Not the same, better.  I report directly to our CEO, and when Covid forced us to require many of us to work from home, my quality of work and work output noticeably improved.  Part of it was the lack of wasted commute time.  Part of it was psychological -- the way my brain works, if I drive to the office, put in a day's work, and drive home, I'm done.  If I work from home, I not only work more hours M-F, I am much more inclined to put in significant hours on the weekend.  I'm not hamstrung by office hours, and I'm happy to work more.

Some people aren't like that.  Accommodate them accordingly, and do the same for people like me.

Edited by jimmyjazz

My office has 180 cubes for 550 employees. Depending on your role, you go in 0-2 days per week.  There are like 20 people that go in 5 days a week by choice. As a consulting firm, I think our bean counters like the extra profit margin less office space creates. 

 

12 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

My office has 180 cubes for 550 employees. Depending on your role, you go in 0-2 days per week.  There are like 20 people that go in 5 days a week by choice. As a consulting firm, I think our bean counters like the extra profit margin less office space creates. 

It's a thing for sure, and it's not hard to understand.  Real estate is a lot more expensive than a VPN connection.

3 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

It's a thing for sure, and it's not hard to understand.  Real estate is a lot more expensive than a VPN connection.

This isn't about efficiency, it's about culture warring 

I’m actually surprised UT had a WFH option for Staff (and I had no idea UT was doing this). It’s not really a thing in higher ed. 

The only state I know of that gives the option for WFH for staff and administrators is Maryland (and I think Massachusett) and even that is iffy by campus. 

What interesting is data has shown that as long as students have access in some way to the student services they need (advising, FA, TRiO, etc.) when they need then, they don’t care if the person is on campus or online. They just want the help.

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