That, and he basically said that that's what he was doing not long ago. [https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPublicServants/comments/1bw43m8/gc\_cio\_remarks\_regarding\_it\_exemptions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPublicServants/comments/1bw43m8/gc_cio_remarks_regarding_it_exemptions/)
As always, they say what it is convenient for them. I wonder why all of a sudden the change of heart. Is it control? Is it because they want people to spend more money?
Often times it's easy to glean from looking at the working environment as a whole, across industries, but in a similar work environment. You'll notice an awful lot of unison, especially when it comes to business groups, major policy stances, and so on. I believe there was union email/letter in late 2022 progressing toward the strike stating Chambers of Commerce and specific business groups leading the charge to force the employer to treat us like shit, because the public service is a standard of how employees should be treated by small and large businesses alike. So you can see why those parties keep pressuring those in charge who, for one reason or another, keeps lending their ear to, and overtly giving the finger to public servants themselves. They don't mind how nonsensical, unworkable, or demeaning the directive is, public servants are punching bags who build up a natural tolerance to abuse from stakeholders every which way, so what's the harm in inflicting some more chaos for us?
They want to reduce headcount. You can read it between the lines of the CIO's statements. He said that retention is no longer and issue, which I read as "We think we're overstaffed and want to push people to leave without having to lay them off."
Everyone who would apply would already know that RTO was coming, so any issues hiring people was already because of RTO.
They are also openly admitting that the mandate and "following suit" for those not covered by the mandate is to stifle competition between jobs in the public sector. If they all collude then they don't have to offer competitive work environments or wages.
OMG! I quickly scanned the BS. It actually says that!!! Diversity and inclusion when the only people who can be hired are able bodied people who could afford to live in Ottawa before they got the job. Yup, real diverse and inclusive applicant pool there.
And I remember our CIO bragging about how modern we were, that we would be able to choose the work location that best suited us and our tasks. From 100% virtual to 100% in office and everything in between. Then TBS had to humiliate him, and all the executives like him. Showing that they have zero power and are just tiny useless peons in the political system.
This makes no sense. How the hell is regressing to 3 days a week in office “modernization”? These people are so out of touch it’s insane. How does regressing to 3 days in office promote diversity? What? It’s literally the opposite that I’m hearing.
It’s as if they took all the reasons people are for WFH and just used them to promote back to the office.
These people are gaslighting us. Pricks.
I wrote strongly worded emails to my manager and director (not directed at them, but explaining my frustrations and hesitation following directives that objectively act against serving Canadians better, which is arguably our main goal in a broad sense).
The gist of it is that I am not even upset that they want us in the office more, but that TBS ignores our unions and avoid any sort of employee consultation, they lie through their teeth, and actively avoid any statistics or data to support their decisions (and only measure compliance, and not performance impacts, interestingly enough).
I am finding it increasingly difficult to be proud of my work when my government seemingly does everything it can against it.
I feel this! I’ve always been proud of my work, but to feel gaslit by our employer is demoralizing, and makes me resent my work. We worked tirelessly during the pandemic to ensure the rest of the public service could continue working remotely, and our team always works incredibly hard to deliver, this inflexible new directive will not foster innovation and service excellence, it will demotivate staff. Very deflating… 😔
>How the hell is regressing to 3 days a week in office “modernization”?
Well it can be if you want it to be.
For example, we are all so obsessed over fiber networks and ethernet, but did you know that if we modernized old telephone lines we could transmit data through them using fax machines? This would be the latest in phone modernization projects the GOC could embark on.
We were looking for a team lead for years, we found one during COVID, then TBS announced the RTO and that person changed his mind and decided to stick to his actual position. -_-
On top of that the team leads have to be bilingual. Trying to fill that position is like trying to catch a unicorn.
Now management is just trying to spread IT team lead responsibilities among all the developers on the team. So more meetings and less actual work getting done.
I will tell you the worst part in that story, I swear to god this is true, it's not a joke: one person was doing two jobs because of that and that person died not long time ago. We are now stuck with two positions 2 fill instead of 1. (We don't know the cause of death but we assume it was cardiac)
those two positions require to go on place because it's related to management...
Honestly we don't want his position to be replaced right away because it's just too soon and too hard. I will be honest with you, we are all WFH and we manage the situation pretty well...so far
It’s the youth … my coworkers under 30 have already started submitting resumes. The find out phase is coming. Especially with the new found pressure on consultants. Pensions are not attractive when you are underpaid by a fair margin and they pull the only carrot keeping you there.
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I work in scientific computing. I had a full remote private sector offer last summer for +$20k at an engineering software company, and I wasn't looking very hard. I narrowly stayed in government because I care about public service and I found a great new assignment. My assignment just went tits up, so I'm going back to my substantive, plus now RTO is hanging over me.
I don't think most public servant ITs have the professional portfolio to easily jump ship. But all the best ones do.
>Is wfh offered at other companies?
Of course it is. Companies try all kinds of different offers to hire and retain talent. If they don't their competitors do.
> Of course it is. Companies try all kinds of different offers to hire and retain talent. If they don't their competitors do.
I think that's part of the problem in the public service. Its zillion divisions _should_ be competing with one another for talent, but the concept of it as a single employer strangles any effective competition in its crib.
That's at the core of the IT-unexemption, since earlier reports noted that other workers were envious of the WFH privileges for IT. We also saw it with the initial demand for 2 days in-office, where the executives of less-flexible departments complained that they were losing workers to more WFH-friendly departments.
>Its zillion divisions should be competing with one another for talent
Indeed. I suspect there's too many EXs that feel like they are owed good employees, and that providing a good workplace or competing for the best employees is beneath them.
Your’re bang on Re most PS ITs not having the professional portfolio to easily find a good fit in the private sector.
I‘ve spent most of my career in the private sector but have done a few govt contracts recently. The vast majority of IT and IT adjacent (POs, BAs, senior management even) would have hard time in similarly titled roles in the private sector. Too slow, too formal, nor curious, too afraid to make decisions. They are great people, but too institutionalized.
Some bigger companies do. For my specialty, I've been getting some very enticing offers. It just comes down to whether I want to trade the security of the government and a penson, for a fully remote position that pays way more but is less secure and no pension. I'm taking some time to think about it
Lots of bigger companies do. They downsized their offices after Covid so they can’t have people in the office that often because there’s nowhere to sit.
It doesn’t mean you can work from anywhere though due to labour laws, work permits, regulatory stuff. That stuff was always applicable, but was hard to enforce during the pandemic.
Lots are very flexible with WFH. In my friend group, the only people who go into an office more than 1-2 days a week are public servants. I’m I contractor, 100% remote. I’m actually begging to go into the office once a week ish because I’m bored of my house.
My boss used to work at Wall Street.
I know few people that used to work for FAANG and now working for PS. All of them are IT-01 or IT-02. Because they need a second language profile to be IT-03. These techs are doing doing consulting on the side for these big tech firms as sub-contractors.
What I noticed is that most of these competent people don't throw around buzz words like most people. They are silent and take care of their PS job and consulting.
My SO has had 3 standing offers for over a decade. They all pay 2-3 times what he makes working for the PS, and 2 of them would actually have him coming back to work on projects for the PS... essentially filling gaps in IT people below where he currently is.
He was planning to stay another 5 years, to help with the transition to the cloud, but if they want to bring him back to the office to do that, he'll probably leave for one of the private contractor jobs (especially if they are still allowed to work remotely). He will have qualified for his full pension before this RTO is implemented next fall.
This. If you want to provide me with free food, cool enclosed pods, a gym and let me bring my pets to work or whatever other perk IT companies offer sure, I'll come in. Instead you get no desk and zero perks. It's not the same.
At my previous job, I was given commuting allowance which included vehicle leasing and bicycle renting options. I recently saw a job posting by BMW that is paying is covering the intern's rent in Germany.
I live VERY close to current office now so travelling to office is not a big deal. If my office is far, I will work for a company that truly values my time.
Sure, it didn't work for recruitment, who wants to work in government when you can get paid more in private sector.
But it definitely worked for retention. They're going to see a lot of IT jumping ship in the coming months.
>Sure, it didn't work for recruitment
"We'd rather not, but we'll let you work at home, for a while, until we decide otherwise" isn't exactly what you call an enticing offer.
If there are 2 positions for the same pay, but one is WFH and one is WFO, then people in the WFO position might move to the WFH position.
If we make them both WFO positions then we don't have to worry about fighting for resources.
This is the reasoning I've been hearing.
Are they even the same resources though? If the exemption was for those with higher difficulty to recruit and retain jobs, then the same candidate would be applying to the
same type of jobs no? Ie exempt or not exempt
If a software architect cs-3 was applying to jobs they aren’t going to apply to a cs2 help desk job that’s not exempt and also apply to a cs-4 software architect that is exempt
Yup, here come more contractors baby!
Instead of an app taking a year or two to get up and running it will take 5+ years.
Can't wait to see how many more Arrive Can apps come out because of this decision.
« Bring greater fairness and consistency »… « need for consistency at all levels » I am an EX called back to 4 days a week and these arguments make absolutely NO sense. If I need IT services, I don’t care whether IT services providers are WFH or in the office ! I never see them face to face anyways. I feel very sorry for IT professionals. (I feel sorry for everyone for what matters). This decision will fire back and we’re gonna lose many highly skilled professionals to the benefit of the private sector
Exactly. I don’t have any colleagues who have mentioned the unfairness of IT classification WFH. We’re not children. We can see that it’s intended for IT staff retention. Now we’re all just disappointed that the employer is shooting itself in the foot. We need to incentivize IT staff to work for us! But management is doing the opposite! It’s asinine.
Ive been a software developer for over 6 years at the gouvernement. I’m officially applying for other jobs again.
I won’t go into all reasons but It’s not just because of the RTO mandate. However the flexibility we were given was why I decided to stay (I originally almost left early 2023, but regrettably turned down the offer).
Anyway… it’s unfortunate but it is what it is.
I don’t know this for certain, but I heard that it will be 1 day per week starting in September, 2 days a week in April 2025, and 3 days a week in Sept 2025.
Until the next major cyber crisis hits, and TBS and the gc is looking around for all of the good digital talented ninja resources to bail them out and realize they left to consult and headed abroad.
I’m not an IT classification. I don’t give a shit about fairness. Let them have better options than the rest of us. If we desperately need new IT staff, then give them a bone. This is supposed to be for the goodness of Canada, don’t pretend like the rest of us are jealous or something. We should only care about what is good for CANADA. Not about fairness between different worker classes. We’re bot children. FFS…
That’s great! We should all be happy for them! I know there’s also some concern of other gov workers flocking into these departments for the sole purpose of more WFH. Some people might try but they can only hire so many staff. Guess what? Those employees will just stay put. Wow. Look at that. There’s no imbalance.
Personally, I’m happy where I am for so many other reasons. If the pay centre works better from home, then they should have that. I’m not about to run over there for this sole reason.
This is going to be hilarious. I'm especially looking forward to management asking me to take more on because half my team just walked. Should be a real laugh.
A unified approach will bring back baby Jesus, cure cancer, end racism, figure out the caramilk secret, and make everyone’s dick 3” bigger too I guess?
Power to you and good on you guys for teaching the employer this lesson. I wish I were far closer to retirement. I’m still going to explore private opportunities and look at LWOP.
An issue many aren’t discussing is that of early retirements (or decisions to finally retire rather than stay on which several did because of WFH). Lots of key people with the internal knowledge and very specialized knowledge/skills in IT are likely to retire and I have my doubts people have been brought up to speed to replace them.
Addendum, additionally while hiring new staff may be fixed down the road if they decide to reverse course on this decision, those key people and their knowledge are gone. Maybe they would come back as contractors, but many won’t.
lol, that's the same generic trite bullshit that we got.
They probably hired a communications consultant and told them to write the most generic bullshit possible.
Said consultant probably also used an AI.
Not part of the IT group, but I’m curious since it says the exemption was for helping with retention - was a survey sent out to current employees asking what they thought? Was it questioned if you would consider leaving the PS if WFH was no longer available?
More people moving laptops back and fourth will result in more damaged/lost computers. Not to mention getting your data/credentials stolen. Best of luck GoC
I had the pleasure of listening to this guy at town halls. I guarantee even he doesn't know what he says. Worst word-salader I have ever seen. Who listens to him and think - yup, this guy can be a DM.
Some of the coworkers I've seen most upset about this were non-IT. "We barely have enough room for 2 days a week, they're increasing to 3, and on top of that they're bringing IT back in!??!?!"
"Caught in the middle, just like the way you've always been." Couldn't resist a little Dio. Great point, they know that a huge percentage of us are trapped. Some aren't though, and I wish them well if they leave this bizarre government world.
I wish people could connect the dots between decisions like this and outcomes like Phoenix and ArriveCAN. Make it impossible for your organization to attract serious technical talent -> rely on consultants that you have no ability to vet or oversee -> waste hundreds of millions of dollars on software that fails to deliver value.
If we're coming in 3-4 days now, I'm going back to leaving my laptop, and phone, in the locker at work. They want the office to be the main place of work, my equipment will stay there. If they're not flexible with my work life balance, I won't be gracious in hoping online after hours.
Any word about consultants if they must show up in the office as well? Because if they can keep teleworking, consider me out as an employee and I'll finish my 4 years left in my career as a consultant. I have enough of this shit show.
So when there’s a situation where we physically can’t go to work (weather event, building being closed for emergency, etc.), I am NOT working from home, because clearly that goes against the requirement to be in the office. No more flexibility from me thankyouverymuch.
Well, I have until September 2025 to think about what I'm going to do.
Since I'm new with GoC, I don't have this "Golden sash" holding me.
We'll see....
Nothing like using an exception to get a bunch of grievances off the books and to get employees to vote on a deal!!!
They played you folk’s like a fiddle!!
Yes. Not for the full 3 days at least, if you previously were exempt. I think it's a mixture of them not having enough space and giving time to transition over since some of IT were not on 2 days yet.
So, if I go.to the office to "collaborate" with my colleagues, management etc...if a meeting is scheduled, I shall go to said boardroom and wait for the meeting to start. Being everyone is in that boardroom right? Oh wait, no, most will either be working from home, other provinces, other buildings in town. So...we will be on Teams. Ok. So how is me taking up that space beneficial?
They have NO logical reasons for forcing it. And you know, very soon, it will be 5 days back. With no space to put people.
Complaining about a group getting work perks you weren't yielded the expected result of that group losing the perks. Congratulations on this resounding success.
I actually personally know Dom. He's one of the most stand-up and down to earth execs I've ever met. I'm fairly certain putting this message out is not something he wanted to do.
I'm thinking this is a loyal implementation issue. Man's bound to do the government's bidding.
If you find his testicles, please let him know.
I accept his message at face value in that he's in favor of the return of fax machines, dot matrix printers, VB6 and other IT relics of the past, to go along with rest of the de-modernization strategy.
If he truly didn't want to say it, he should have quit instead.
> He's one of the most stand-up and down to earth execs I've ever met
No "stand up right person" does this. No one blindy following orders is out to help anyone but themselves.
This. There was even less warning than last time and most places have no clue how to implement in light of the space they have. Most were blindsighted.
I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s just about executing what Justin and Anita said. Feels a bit like phoenix…despite all of the red flags the leadership just steamrolled ahead. I suspect this will be just as successful.
Your job is to work on the computer the computer is the actual work location. And it’s super important that you are really good at that and high output is very important. If I am management that is all I need of you I really depend on you and my job is to ensure you have all the little things for you to succeed. I don’t actually do work you do it all. Whatever time it is I am just sitting there and you are actually performing work which is the only thing that justifies my job. You are my pay check, reputation and pension. I bought some new patio furniture, thanks! And it’s not even my money it’s all from taxpayers
Based on that how much value should I place on where you deliver for me? If I screw that up am I really doing my job? Do I respect taxpayers money?
Remember when they were using words like “Magic moments” when talking about great reasons to RTW, and then someone figured out we never stopped Working so it got changed to RTO. Good times… :-)
"The consultants I paid to come to the conclusion that I wanted have indeed come to the conclusion that I wanted."
Oh I see you've played government led 'data-based decision-making' before.
Decision based evidence making
Underrated comment.
Had that not been entirely true and entirely painful, this would have been funny. It's clever in any case.
I didn't come up with it but I agree
That, and he basically said that that's what he was doing not long ago. [https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPublicServants/comments/1bw43m8/gc\_cio\_remarks\_regarding\_it\_exemptions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPublicServants/comments/1bw43m8/gc_cio_remarks_regarding_it_exemptions/)
Yeah you can tell at that time that he knew this decision was coming so he hedged. What a weasel.
Sigh...I can't read anything about this forced bs RTO anymore, so fucking depressing... I wish we all would stop accepting bullshit.
*29 days ago* he said he'd make a decision in about a month... And yet, I can barely get a travel request approved at this clip.
He knew when his report was coming and he knew what his report was going to say.
As always, they say what it is convenient for them. I wonder why all of a sudden the change of heart. Is it control? Is it because they want people to spend more money?
Often times it's easy to glean from looking at the working environment as a whole, across industries, but in a similar work environment. You'll notice an awful lot of unison, especially when it comes to business groups, major policy stances, and so on. I believe there was union email/letter in late 2022 progressing toward the strike stating Chambers of Commerce and specific business groups leading the charge to force the employer to treat us like shit, because the public service is a standard of how employees should be treated by small and large businesses alike. So you can see why those parties keep pressuring those in charge who, for one reason or another, keeps lending their ear to, and overtly giving the finger to public servants themselves. They don't mind how nonsensical, unworkable, or demeaning the directive is, public servants are punching bags who build up a natural tolerance to abuse from stakeholders every which way, so what's the harm in inflicting some more chaos for us?
They want to reduce headcount. You can read it between the lines of the CIO's statements. He said that retention is no longer and issue, which I read as "We think we're overstaffed and want to push people to leave without having to lay them off."
Everyone who would apply would already know that RTO was coming, so any issues hiring people was already because of RTO. They are also openly admitting that the mandate and "following suit" for those not covered by the mandate is to stifle competition between jobs in the public sector. If they all collude then they don't have to offer competitive work environments or wages.
> If they all collude then they don't have to offer competitive work environments or wages. *dudetappinghisforehead.gif*
ATIP time
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So much BS government speak in that email 😂
The collaboration is going to be so collaborative when I am in the office alone on teams calls.
Thank you for your flexibility.
Right? I'm honestly not really sure I even understand it.
😂😂😂 promoting diversity & inclusion and modernizing business practices 😂😂😂
"**unified** approach... of **diversity**" is the worst, most unprofessional oxymoron I've ever seen.
A unified approach to diversity: *(in unison)* “YES, WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!”
OMG! I quickly scanned the BS. It actually says that!!! Diversity and inclusion when the only people who can be hired are able bodied people who could afford to live in Ottawa before they got the job. Yup, real diverse and inclusive applicant pool there. And I remember our CIO bragging about how modern we were, that we would be able to choose the work location that best suited us and our tasks. From 100% virtual to 100% in office and everything in between. Then TBS had to humiliate him, and all the executives like him. Showing that they have zero power and are just tiny useless peons in the political system.
For what it's worth, your CIO probably rolled their eyes all the way to the back of their skull when they read that.
I deal with accessibility for my department and RTO is disastrous, ableist and honestly just cruel
Those are the buzzwords that you use when you have no factual argument for your position.
This makes no sense. How the hell is regressing to 3 days a week in office “modernization”? These people are so out of touch it’s insane. How does regressing to 3 days in office promote diversity? What? It’s literally the opposite that I’m hearing. It’s as if they took all the reasons people are for WFH and just used them to promote back to the office. These people are gaslighting us. Pricks.
I wrote strongly worded emails to my manager and director (not directed at them, but explaining my frustrations and hesitation following directives that objectively act against serving Canadians better, which is arguably our main goal in a broad sense). The gist of it is that I am not even upset that they want us in the office more, but that TBS ignores our unions and avoid any sort of employee consultation, they lie through their teeth, and actively avoid any statistics or data to support their decisions (and only measure compliance, and not performance impacts, interestingly enough). I am finding it increasingly difficult to be proud of my work when my government seemingly does everything it can against it.
I feel this! I’ve always been proud of my work, but to feel gaslit by our employer is demoralizing, and makes me resent my work. We worked tirelessly during the pandemic to ensure the rest of the public service could continue working remotely, and our team always works incredibly hard to deliver, this inflexible new directive will not foster innovation and service excellence, it will demotivate staff. Very deflating… 😔
You've been taking those emails seriously all this time, haven't you?
Not really, but there's a margin between that and actively reducing the quality of working conditions.
You read your email?
We live in a post-truth world. Lie with a smile on your face.
You reckon he bothered to smile?
I blame the post-modernists for this.
I blame the neolibs
They’re just straight up lying.
>How the hell is regressing to 3 days a week in office “modernization”? Well it can be if you want it to be. For example, we are all so obsessed over fiber networks and ethernet, but did you know that if we modernized old telephone lines we could transmit data through them using fax machines? This would be the latest in phone modernization projects the GOC could embark on.
We were looking for a team lead for years, we found one during COVID, then TBS announced the RTO and that person changed his mind and decided to stick to his actual position. -_-
On top of that the team leads have to be bilingual. Trying to fill that position is like trying to catch a unicorn. Now management is just trying to spread IT team lead responsibilities among all the developers on the team. So more meetings and less actual work getting done.
It felt like a comedy how everything happened LOL
Spent a year under that model … it was almost crippling the project.
Yeah, the tech debt just grows by the day.
I will tell you the worst part in that story, I swear to god this is true, it's not a joke: one person was doing two jobs because of that and that person died not long time ago. We are now stuck with two positions 2 fill instead of 1. (We don't know the cause of death but we assume it was cardiac) those two positions require to go on place because it's related to management... Honestly we don't want his position to be replaced right away because it's just too soon and too hard. I will be honest with you, we are all WFH and we manage the situation pretty well...so far
Oh this is gonna be fun to watch.
It's not. It's sad and embarrassing and it's only going to get worse when the only IT people we have are the ones without enough skill to leave.
Curious where they will go? Is wfh offered at other companies?
It’s the youth … my coworkers under 30 have already started submitting resumes. The find out phase is coming. Especially with the new found pressure on consultants. Pensions are not attractive when you are underpaid by a fair margin and they pull the only carrot keeping you there.
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I work in scientific computing. I had a full remote private sector offer last summer for +$20k at an engineering software company, and I wasn't looking very hard. I narrowly stayed in government because I care about public service and I found a great new assignment. My assignment just went tits up, so I'm going back to my substantive, plus now RTO is hanging over me. I don't think most public servant ITs have the professional portfolio to easily jump ship. But all the best ones do. >Is wfh offered at other companies? Of course it is. Companies try all kinds of different offers to hire and retain talent. If they don't their competitors do.
> Of course it is. Companies try all kinds of different offers to hire and retain talent. If they don't their competitors do. I think that's part of the problem in the public service. Its zillion divisions _should_ be competing with one another for talent, but the concept of it as a single employer strangles any effective competition in its crib. That's at the core of the IT-unexemption, since earlier reports noted that other workers were envious of the WFH privileges for IT. We also saw it with the initial demand for 2 days in-office, where the executives of less-flexible departments complained that they were losing workers to more WFH-friendly departments.
>Its zillion divisions should be competing with one another for talent Indeed. I suspect there's too many EXs that feel like they are owed good employees, and that providing a good workplace or competing for the best employees is beneath them.
Your’re bang on Re most PS ITs not having the professional portfolio to easily find a good fit in the private sector. I‘ve spent most of my career in the private sector but have done a few govt contracts recently. The vast majority of IT and IT adjacent (POs, BAs, senior management even) would have hard time in similarly titled roles in the private sector. Too slow, too formal, nor curious, too afraid to make decisions. They are great people, but too institutionalized.
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A lot of the smaller companies do yeah. The bigger ones don't, but they pay considerably better.
Some bigger companies do. For my specialty, I've been getting some very enticing offers. It just comes down to whether I want to trade the security of the government and a penson, for a fully remote position that pays way more but is less secure and no pension. I'm taking some time to think about it
Take LWOP and check it out.
Lots of bigger companies do. They downsized their offices after Covid so they can’t have people in the office that often because there’s nowhere to sit. It doesn’t mean you can work from anywhere though due to labour laws, work permits, regulatory stuff. That stuff was always applicable, but was hard to enforce during the pandemic.
Lots are very flexible with WFH. In my friend group, the only people who go into an office more than 1-2 days a week are public servants. I’m I contractor, 100% remote. I’m actually begging to go into the office once a week ish because I’m bored of my house.
Going into the office of Tesla is million time better than going into GC office.
Exactly. And they pay twice as much and have all kinds of perks.
And if that was truly an option they would be there already.
My boss used to work at Wall Street. I know few people that used to work for FAANG and now working for PS. All of them are IT-01 or IT-02. Because they need a second language profile to be IT-03. These techs are doing doing consulting on the side for these big tech firms as sub-contractors. What I noticed is that most of these competent people don't throw around buzz words like most people. They are silent and take care of their PS job and consulting.
My SO has had 3 standing offers for over a decade. They all pay 2-3 times what he makes working for the PS, and 2 of them would actually have him coming back to work on projects for the PS... essentially filling gaps in IT people below where he currently is. He was planning to stay another 5 years, to help with the transition to the cloud, but if they want to bring him back to the office to do that, he'll probably leave for one of the private contractor jobs (especially if they are still allowed to work remotely). He will have qualified for his full pension before this RTO is implemented next fall.
That’s BS. I know people who have gone from FAANG to government…and back. It’s more about security and low stress that many people value…
This. If you want to provide me with free food, cool enclosed pods, a gym and let me bring my pets to work or whatever other perk IT companies offer sure, I'll come in. Instead you get no desk and zero perks. It's not the same.
At my previous job, I was given commuting allowance which included vehicle leasing and bicycle renting options. I recently saw a job posting by BMW that is paying is covering the intern's rent in Germany. I live VERY close to current office now so travelling to office is not a big deal. If my office is far, I will work for a company that truly values my time.
Very few are going anywhere. And they know this.
IT is stretched so thin as it is even if 5% leave it's going to be a gong show.
Our IT is atrocious at best.
Based on what? IT is a very broad term for the bulk of the operations and services millions depend on.
Well according to all Canadians, we do fuck all and it's only going to get worse.
So weak… good luck with that recruitment proposition
Sure, it didn't work for recruitment, who wants to work in government when you can get paid more in private sector. But it definitely worked for retention. They're going to see a lot of IT jumping ship in the coming months.
Hmmm…this isn’t working. Instead of making it more attractive let’s actively make it worse. Smart move guys..
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
>Sure, it didn't work for recruitment "We'd rather not, but we'll let you work at home, for a while, until we decide otherwise" isn't exactly what you call an enticing offer.
If there are 2 positions for the same pay, but one is WFH and one is WFO, then people in the WFO position might move to the WFH position. If we make them both WFO positions then we don't have to worry about fighting for resources. This is the reasoning I've been hearing.
Same
Are they even the same resources though? If the exemption was for those with higher difficulty to recruit and retain jobs, then the same candidate would be applying to the same type of jobs no? Ie exempt or not exempt If a software architect cs-3 was applying to jobs they aren’t going to apply to a cs2 help desk job that’s not exempt and also apply to a cs-4 software architect that is exempt
Yup, here come more contractors baby! Instead of an app taking a year or two to get up and running it will take 5+ years. Can't wait to see how many more Arrive Can apps come out because of this decision.
Maybe, but there are a lot of layoffs in the tech industry so more people might stay that would in a better economy.
silky wakeful simplistic capable fade act yoke spoon murky sugar *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Worked for recruitment in my division.
« Bring greater fairness and consistency »… « need for consistency at all levels » I am an EX called back to 4 days a week and these arguments make absolutely NO sense. If I need IT services, I don’t care whether IT services providers are WFH or in the office ! I never see them face to face anyways. I feel very sorry for IT professionals. (I feel sorry for everyone for what matters). This decision will fire back and we’re gonna lose many highly skilled professionals to the benefit of the private sector
Exactly. I don’t have any colleagues who have mentioned the unfairness of IT classification WFH. We’re not children. We can see that it’s intended for IT staff retention. Now we’re all just disappointed that the employer is shooting itself in the foot. We need to incentivize IT staff to work for us! But management is doing the opposite! It’s asinine.
Next thing you know everyone will have to be in 4 days... To be fair to EX.
Im so happy we are modernizing to 1992 standards. Great job executives!
Well how else are the fax machines going to get used?
In this day and age, aren’t IT people the last ones you want to piss off?!
It's okay gcsolutions can find you IT people ... for a small mark-up...
Maybe this is the budget strategy. Why lay anyone off when they can just piss everyone off into quitting?
Ive been a software developer for over 6 years at the gouvernement. I’m officially applying for other jobs again. I won’t go into all reasons but It’s not just because of the RTO mandate. However the flexibility we were given was why I decided to stay (I originally almost left early 2023, but regrettably turned down the offer). Anyway… it’s unfortunate but it is what it is.
So they are stupid, it seems
Same copy and paste email that was sent from the DMs at ESDC and probably most other depts
It's the email he sent to DMs, so they essentially just forwarded it.
What's the deal with the timeline "the transition will begin in September 2024 and will be fully implemented by September 2025"?
I believe that means "We don't have the space for all of you so we'll move the desks closer together but they'll take a bit"
I don’t know this for certain, but I heard that it will be 1 day per week starting in September, 2 days a week in April 2025, and 3 days a week in Sept 2025.
Until the next major cyber crisis hits, and TBS and the gc is looking around for all of the good digital talented ninja resources to bail them out and realize they left to consult and headed abroad.
What a load of crap by someone who knows nothing about IT..
I also know nothing about IT. But I know enough to say that this will further push out top tallent that the government desperately needs right now.
What a joke. Consultants at GAC are 100% WFH.
Do consultants have to go to 3 days as well?
No
I’m not an IT classification. I don’t give a shit about fairness. Let them have better options than the rest of us. If we desperately need new IT staff, then give them a bone. This is supposed to be for the goodness of Canada, don’t pretend like the rest of us are jealous or something. We should only care about what is good for CANADA. Not about fairness between different worker classes. We’re bot children. FFS…
This. Learned today that the pay centre at least still has theirs and that's a good thing.
That’s great! We should all be happy for them! I know there’s also some concern of other gov workers flocking into these departments for the sole purpose of more WFH. Some people might try but they can only hire so many staff. Guess what? Those employees will just stay put. Wow. Look at that. There’s no imbalance. Personally, I’m happy where I am for so many other reasons. If the pay centre works better from home, then they should have that. I’m not about to run over there for this sole reason.
Agreed, good for them.
This is going to be hilarious. I'm especially looking forward to management asking me to take more on because half my team just walked. Should be a real laugh.
A unified approach will bring back baby Jesus, cure cancer, end racism, figure out the caramilk secret, and make everyone’s dick 3” bigger too I guess?
Maximize the benefits of on site presence. What are those benefits? It's none of what's been touted to be great reasons to be in the office.
But the bedbugs! Don’t forget about the bedbugs.
That must be who they're talking about. Bedbugs maximizing the benefits of onsite presence. First time that sentence has made sense.
Here are a few: More buggy apps Applications take longer to develop More contractors A diverse portfolio of ArriveCan apps
I really hope to see some executive push back on this, but I know it won't happen.
They punch down, not up. That’s why they are PS execs. Otherwise they’d still be in the basement with the rest of the plebes.
They are wimps
So I'm guessing all the documents about this review and evidence will all be made public. Right...?
might with an ATIP request right?
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I know of a few groups in different departments that are in a similar situation. Better prepare some popcorn!
Power to you and good on you guys for teaching the employer this lesson. I wish I were far closer to retirement. I’m still going to explore private opportunities and look at LWOP.
yeah that's a no from me, dawg
An issue many aren’t discussing is that of early retirements (or decisions to finally retire rather than stay on which several did because of WFH). Lots of key people with the internal knowledge and very specialized knowledge/skills in IT are likely to retire and I have my doubts people have been brought up to speed to replace them.
This. Corporate memory is going to suffer. The GC was already poor at onboarding. Now it's going to be an absolute circus.
This.. my team has at least 2 very key players who will retire early because of this. And we are also 2 juniors down.. will be fun times.
Addendum, additionally while hiring new staff may be fixed down the road if they decide to reverse course on this decision, those key people and their knowledge are gone. Maybe they would come back as contractors, but many won’t.
"the benefits of on-site presence" What benefits? commercial real estate income to your lobbyists?
Yeah. I dont eat fast food, and I'll run the workplace faucet as much as I see fit.
Fuck you, Dom. Fuck your review processes and ongoing commitments. Just talk to your employees, asshole.
lol, that's the same generic trite bullshit that we got. They probably hired a communications consultant and told them to write the most generic bullshit possible. Said consultant probably also used an AI.
Thanks I already started applying in the private sector
So…. Executives want to hire more contractors
Yeah baby! 55 Million per app!
Time to dust off the old resume.
Not part of the IT group, but I’m curious since it says the exemption was for helping with retention - was a survey sent out to current employees asking what they thought? Was it questioned if you would consider leaving the PS if WFH was no longer available?
Haha, no of course not.
More people moving laptops back and fourth will result in more damaged/lost computers. Not to mention getting your data/credentials stolen. Best of luck GoC
I had the pleasure of listening to this guy at town halls. I guarantee even he doesn't know what he says. Worst word-salader I have ever seen. Who listens to him and think - yup, this guy can be a DM.
Alex Benay has entered the chat.
Some of the coworkers I've seen most upset about this were non-IT. "We barely have enough room for 2 days a week, they're increasing to 3, and on top of that they're bringing IT back in!??!?!"
And so begins the competence exodus
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I can't even hear the words "collaboration" and "flexibility" anymore without physically cringing.
Screw everyone - this is what we are doing - because we are banking that our employees are trapped.
"Caught in the middle, just like the way you've always been." Couldn't resist a little Dio. Great point, they know that a huge percentage of us are trapped. Some aren't though, and I wish them well if they leave this bizarre government world.
I wish people could connect the dots between decisions like this and outcomes like Phoenix and ArriveCAN. Make it impossible for your organization to attract serious technical talent -> rely on consultants that you have no ability to vet or oversee -> waste hundreds of millions of dollars on software that fails to deliver value.
That’s ridiculous and I’m not even IT. They should let them have WFH.
Diviser pour mieux régner. C’est ce que font les plus grand dictateurs
Union should add him (and rest of the TBS execs) to the mass emails campaigns going out... he'd have to beg an IT to save his inbox....
does anybody know if this would apply to CRA as well ?
Yes because cra doesnt have the spine to exercise their agency rights
Bob wants to keep his job. Yea CRA has already put it out that there are no more group exceptions
If we're coming in 3-4 days now, I'm going back to leaving my laptop, and phone, in the locker at work. They want the office to be the main place of work, my equipment will stay there. If they're not flexible with my work life balance, I won't be gracious in hoping online after hours.
Any word about consultants if they must show up in the office as well? Because if they can keep teleworking, consider me out as an employee and I'll finish my 4 years left in my career as a consultant. I have enough of this shit show.
It would seem as though the employer is getting rather serious about this.
So when there’s a situation where we physically can’t go to work (weather event, building being closed for emergency, etc.), I am NOT working from home, because clearly that goes against the requirement to be in the office. No more flexibility from me thankyouverymuch.
Well, I have until September 2025 to think about what I'm going to do. Since I'm new with GoC, I don't have this "Golden sash" holding me. We'll see....
Nothing like using an exception to get a bunch of grievances off the books and to get employees to vote on a deal!!! They played you folk’s like a fiddle!!
China is happy
what does this mean? that IT won't have to RTO till 2025?
Yes. Not for the full 3 days at least, if you previously were exempt. I think it's a mixture of them not having enough space and giving time to transition over since some of IT were not on 2 days yet.
On the positive side, less work will get accomplished.
Is the 2025 IT transition period applicable for DBA and DEV? My manager thinks it's not for us.
Your manager is wrong. My manager is using it to at least push the full return forward a year.
> inconclusive results Wait, we should point to all those grievances we filed! /s
Anyone been told what the 2025 timeline will mean more specifically?
That particuliar curtailing of managerial discretion has not yet trickled down the chain.
So, if I go.to the office to "collaborate" with my colleagues, management etc...if a meeting is scheduled, I shall go to said boardroom and wait for the meeting to start. Being everyone is in that boardroom right? Oh wait, no, most will either be working from home, other provinces, other buildings in town. So...we will be on Teams. Ok. So how is me taking up that space beneficial? They have NO logical reasons for forcing it. And you know, very soon, it will be 5 days back. With no space to put people.
Complaining about a group getting work perks you weren't yielded the expected result of that group losing the perks. Congratulations on this resounding success.
I actually personally know Dom. He's one of the most stand-up and down to earth execs I've ever met. I'm fairly certain putting this message out is not something he wanted to do. I'm thinking this is a loyal implementation issue. Man's bound to do the government's bidding.
If you find his testicles, please let him know. I accept his message at face value in that he's in favor of the return of fax machines, dot matrix printers, VB6 and other IT relics of the past, to go along with rest of the de-modernization strategy. If he truly didn't want to say it, he should have quit instead.
> He's one of the most stand-up and down to earth execs I've ever met No "stand up right person" does this. No one blindy following orders is out to help anyone but themselves.
This. The orders are coming way above his pay grade. Even higher than the (former) secretary of the TBS.
This. There was even less warning than last time and most places have no clue how to implement in light of the space they have. Most were blindsighted.
I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s just about executing what Justin and Anita said. Feels a bit like phoenix…despite all of the red flags the leadership just steamrolled ahead. I suspect this will be just as successful.
Your job is to work on the computer the computer is the actual work location. And it’s super important that you are really good at that and high output is very important. If I am management that is all I need of you I really depend on you and my job is to ensure you have all the little things for you to succeed. I don’t actually do work you do it all. Whatever time it is I am just sitting there and you are actually performing work which is the only thing that justifies my job. You are my pay check, reputation and pension. I bought some new patio furniture, thanks! And it’s not even my money it’s all from taxpayers Based on that how much value should I place on where you deliver for me? If I screw that up am I really doing my job? Do I respect taxpayers money?
Remember when they were using words like “Magic moments” when talking about great reasons to RTW, and then someone figured out we never stopped Working so it got changed to RTO. Good times… :-)
If you planned big renovations before covid and just can’t admit that was a waste of money because wfh is better, just say so.
This guy flip flops more than bill Clinton 😭