Bonus Episode: How'd That Petition Work?

"When a boom cycle ends, it can be tough to accept reality. People want the band to play forever. Realtors who tried to convince us that home prices would only go up and we were not in a housing bubble are looking for work outside of the industry. Some of the people in HR trying to hype you up about the job market will find themselves in the same boat as we go further into this mess. You can try to fight The Fed and ignore the broader economy if you want to, but I sure wouldn't recommend it. And on that note, apparently you are supposed to believe that a petition or an angry Slack channel will somehow be enough to stave off RTO forever. Sorry, I don't buy it!"
-"IMO, a petition will not stop what's coming" https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/02/23/imo-a-petition-will-not-stop-whats-coming/  published on February 23, 2023.

"In a leaked message, Amazon's HR chief flatly rejected an internal petition against the new return-to-office policy signed by roughly 30,000 employees"
-https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-hr-boss-rejects-employee-remote-work-petition-2023-3

NO DUH!

Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:15

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host, Sara Causey. Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I will be taking a victory lap. I wish I wasn't. I'd rather be recording this episode to say I went against the grain and I was wrong. All of the hot air and hopium people they were right and I was wrong. Unfortunately, that's not where we're at. And even though I've seen some Johnny Come Latelys who really don't seem to have any job market expertise, per se, they're jumping on the bandwagon to Oh, oops, maybe maybe RTO is happening. Maybe hybrid and fully on-site is the wave of the future. Uh-oh. I have warned you and warned you and warned you for months. I knew RTO was not going to go away. I knew that these companies were not going to universally bulldoze their corporate real estate, and the hot air and hopium crowd sold you in my opinion, a big fat false bill of goods. I'm standing here in the manner of Kojak sucking on a lollipop saying who loves ya baby? I would rather tell you an uncomfortable truth than to give you a pack of fluffy lies. I would rather that you rough out an RTO survival plan and then hopefully you don't need it. I would rather that you rough out a job loss survival plan and then not need it. But I think the worst thing you could possibly do is bury your head in the sand and listen to the hot air hopium unicorns, fairy dust, leprechauns BS influencer crowd. Those people are not going to bail you out. They're not coming to save you or to help help you out if their prognostications and their wishful thinking turns out to be wrong. So I'm going to cue him up. I'm not going to give you a bunch of false humility and nonsense. I'm going to be real with you. Sara was right yet again. I wish that weren't the case. But here we are. Back on February 23rd - so over a month ago, I warned you. In my opinion, a petition will not stop what's coming. And I likened it to that episode of Family Guy where Peter Griffin is in a comically oversized bow tie. Lois is taking dictation for him. And he's like Lois take a letter, dear life cereal where do you get off? Who do you think you are? To me, it was the same thing. We're going to write a petition, we're going to get on an angry Slack channel and that is somehow going to reverse the tide on RTO. Really. And in that blog post, I wrote, when a boom cycle ends, it can be tough to accept reality, people want the band to play forever. Realtors who tried to convince us that home prices would only go up and we were not in a housing bubble or looking for work outside of the industry. Some of the people in HR trying to hype you up about the job market will find themselves in the same boat as we go further into this mess. You can try to fight the Fed and ignore the broader economy if you want to, but I sure wouldn't recommend it. And on that note, apparently you're supposed to believe that a petition or an angry Slack channel will somehow be enough to stave off RTO forever. Sorry, I don't buy it. And I was right. Some news that came out a couple of days ago over on the insider we find in a leaked message Amazon's HR chief flatly rejected an internal petition against the new RTO policy signed by roughly 30,000 employees. I told you so! Who gives a rip about a petition or an angry Slack channel. If you get too worked up, they'll replace you with a robot or some AI program. Or they'll find a desperate scab who crossed the picket line. I mean, what what did you think was gonna happen? Amazon's top HR executive formally rejected an internal petition signed by roughly 30,000 employees over the company's new return to office policy. Beth Galetti Amazon's SVP of people experience and technology shared the message obtained by Insider on Wednesday with the organizing group behind the petition. Galetti wrote that the petition was shared with CEO Andy Jassy's leadership team last week, and that the company still intends to move forward with its RTO plan, which requires most corporate employees to come into the office three times a week starting in May. A petition is not going to be enough, an angry Slack channel is not going to be enough. I'm so sorry. If you listened to the wrong people, I have sympathy for that. And as I said, in the blog post, people want the band to play on forever. They want those investments to pay off forever, they want the stock market to be robust, they want the job market to be robust. Nobody wants to think about another 08 09 nightmare. I just don't see any way around it. You know, when you have investment firms and bankers and fat cats, warning their clients privately, hey, we're getting ready to go into a tailspin. Things are not looking good. The banks are about to stop lending, things are coming to a standstill, the economic engines are about to shut off. You need to be prepared for this time and time again, we keep hearing this analogy of two to three years. To to you've got two to three years of being in a crap storm, and you need to prepare for that. And in my opinion, if you ignore that information, you're doing so at your own risk. If you have not taken the time to rough out an RTO survival plan, if you're still head in the clouds that will my company would never Are you sure? I mean like for sure for sure for sure? Now, I'm not saying every company is going to fall into that category. Because some companies truly are built around a remote forever policy. They don't have a corporate office, there's no place for all of these people to randomly gather together, it just doesn't exist. Maybe you are in a position where you will be remote forever. If you freelance if you own and operate your own business or you work for one of those companies that is remote forever. And there's not a corporate office to go to per se, you might be fine. But if you're not in that position, which I would hazard a guess that a lot of you listening are not in that position. Have you thought about your game plan of going back? What if you decide that I'll just go look for another job, I'll just go find one of those work from home forever jobs. They're dwindling down. It is harder and harder to find a full time web to work from home forever opportunity. It is I'm sorry if that upsets you. But I'm telling you the truth. I'm in the job market every freaking day, as I have been for over a decade now. And I'm telling you the truth as I see it. I'm not trying to judge up your ego. I'm trying to tell you the truth. It may not be feasible, then when you think about how many people are about to be unemployed. I mean, the Fed's not been shy and saying they want to crash the job market. We very well could be headed into a 1970s era of stagflation nightmare. If they go back to quantitative easing. Inflation is prevalent, they continue to print up fiat currency like it's nothing, you pretty much know inflation is going to go through the roof. Then on top of that, you have high unemployment 1970s era stagflation. Hello, hi, how are you? We're back again. You may not have the choice of being able to just go find another job. If you haven't clued in yet, the great resignation for white collar knowledge work is over and it has been for a while. This hippity hopping and acting crazy all across the job market like YOLO and FOMO and who cares. I'll ghost this recruiter, I'll ghost this company. None of it matters anyway, eff them. Okay. You can play that game if you want to. I wouldn't. But you can if that's what you choose to do, but you're gonna have to live with the consequences. I like how Dr. Phil tends to say you're free to choose your actions, but you're not free from the consequences of those actions. I really feel like this is the time to get strategic. And it is past time to get strategic about who you're listening to. And why. If you are still on board with the hot air and hopium crowd and you take your cues from remote work thought leaders who are telling you that RTO is impossible. Good luck because I think you're gonna need it. Stay safe, stay sane, and I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time.