Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

There’s nothing wrong with collaboration and it’s proven to be effective and there is more than one way to do it. My issue is the company assuming ALL need to collaborate as part of their job and that’s where they are erroring. Rather than allow the heads of each group make the decision on if their work requires collaboration, they’re just lumping all in and taking the decision away from those who know their work best. So it’s not done because they think we all “need” to collaborate. It’s likely a combination of a few things. Surplus without having to pay out as much if most refuse to relocate, the need to drastically reduce headcount due to the financial pressure of the rising interest rate on the largest company dept, pressures from their local, state and federal government “partners” who do have a say, whether we like it or not. It’s def not completely for “needs of the business” ONLY.

"Collaboration is necessary bring experts together to ensure success."

Define "together."

In software work, collaboration is not people sitting in a conference room talking about things. The best collabs I've been part of in the last few decades involved a group of experts each looking at code, log messages, documents, etc. relating to a particular issue and contributing to a group conversation of that issue which can be taking place any way and anywhere - and over the phone is as good as any other venue. The group gets the AHA moment because of each person looking at something independently and processing it in their head and then keying off someone else's comments to go farther. It literally CANNOT be done all sitting in a CR. The so called collaboration tools like screen sharing are a joke. People mostly use them for demos or whatever, not to do work or solve problems.

Our so called leaders simply refuse to accept that they have no idea how they got where they are and that they fundamentally do not understand how we do our work.

Sure college kids need mentoring and that's better in person. But that's already handled - by the people who already go to the office. They don't need mentoring from 20 people. That doesn't work. 2 or 3 is plenty. Think back to the start of your career. You did not work with everyone in your dept. Most of them were too busy to waste time on you.

It's not collaboration and it's pointless.

We didn't migrate to the current way of doing things because we wanted to stay home. We did it because it's more efficient and faster. Anyone who disagrees with that didn't waste thousands of hours sitting in CRs accomplishing nothing back in the 80s and 90s.

Collaborating means training those who don’t know how to do most jobs to do your job. Then they can get rid of your stanky ash.

Collaboration in my department means several guys on a conference call looking up females on Webphone we work with who we never met because they spread across the country and judging their looks. Seeing how cute they are.

Please don't denigrate higher education. Everyone has to start somewhere, even college graduates.

I wish I were reading sarcasm into this post. But unfortunately it sounds ignorantly serious.

For many of us, our work is not siloed. We have inter-dependencies with other teams and departments. Collaboration is necessary bring experts together to ensure success.

Seasoned, skilled, competent people recognize when collaboration is productive. Any who doesn't either has no idea what they are doing or works in a silo and can be easily outsourced - either are good candidates for surplus.

Collaboration is a fancy word for wasting time and resources at an office and being far less productive.

Ask ATT to the rescue

I ready to collaborate with some nice clams I’ve seen since RTO.

The Collaboration in my department is talking about things that are happening without ever doing anything.