Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office

&quot;In the video, Clarke levies some big accusations at his staff. Among them: that 30 remote employees had entirely stopped logging on in a “quiet quitting” coup. He expressed suspicions that some of Clearlink’s developers had been holding down positions at other companies without Clearlink’s knowledge. He told content writers they should be using AI to increase output “30-50 times our normal production.”<p>This sounds like the CEO just read a bunch of tech&#x2F;life blog articles and assumes that all of these trends are happening at his company too. Not a great sign when your boss believes everything he reads.<p>Feel bad for employees who feel like they they need to continue working there and can&#x27;t risk quitting.

Seriously, are any of you &quot;increasing output&quot; with AI?<p>I get like 10 good lines of code a day from Copilot. I don&#x27;t even try ChatGPT anymore, as its only useful if you&#x27;re writing boilerplate. Everything thats actually hard about my job requires the full context of the rest of the codebase, within repo and without, and architectural knowledge of the problems we&#x27;re trying to solve.<p>I read another post here yesterday that said &quot;90% of my skillset just became useless&quot; in regards to AI. I don&#x27;t understand how? Do people spend 90% of their time writing blank HTML templates or empty react components?<p>Maybe people are just extrapolating. &quot;90% of my skillset <i>will become</i> useless soon&quot;. I don&#x27;t know.

I was wondering what kind of business this company was in because the guy sounded so serious and they run blog and review spammy type websites that act as sales funnels for personal finance, high speed internet and moving companies. Like I am not going above and beyond in personal sacrifice for that.

This title doesn&#x27;t do it justice- I hope his rant about how working moms aren&#x27;t fair to the company gets him sued.

Won&#x27;t comment directly on the strange rant.<p>But it highlights the reality that something has seriously changed since the pandemic. I have multiple employees that insist on staying home due to their dogs. The amount of discussion around employees&#x27; dogs is on another level now, partially due to the anxiety these dogs have when their owners go into the office.<p>It&#x27;s all very different than prepandemic, I for one never heard &quot;i need to work from home to stay with my dog&quot; as something people used to say

&gt; “I challenge any of you to outwork me, but you won’t,”<p>If people had as much equity and comp as he has in the company, maybe they would - he made that tradeoff to make this company his life, and he probably has a wife&#x2F;family&#x2F;paid helpers to take care of everything for him. His employees clearly have other priorities other than to work for a company that doesn&#x27;t care for them and never will.

This is despicable, but titling &quot;Tech CEO&quot; for a digital marketing company is a stretch. FWIW, no one(very few?) actually in tech company would make fun of working mom&#x27;s or applaud someone for selling their dog.

This guy seems really unhinged, and i HATE when people with more skin in the game and potential upside act like they&#x27;re somehow more virtuous for working harder

I watched some of that video and the guy seems burnt out.<p>He was in the same sentence saying one thing and then the complete opposite. He also seemed far too emotional about things to be a CEO. People questioning his education is because his degree is in Geography. He could have a reasoned response to that for example that he&#x27;s a business man and the reason he is CEO is because of his business experience not his education but he totally whiffed and just started getting upset about the personal attacks.<p>Some of his points were salient and others where unhinged rambling nonsense. He&#x27;s a serious danger to the company and the exec board have a fuditary responsibility to stop him doing anything reckless (like this).<p>If the board was sensible they would get rid of this guy, he&#x27;s a major liability.

&gt; “I challenge any one of you to outwork me, but you won’t,” he told his staff<p>Wonder if this challenge comes with a big reward -- say his TC for a year?

I work at a tech company that purports to build the metaverse. Initially they allowed people to go remote. Now they are walking back on it and asking people that don&#x27;t want to return to take a package. A quite sad story of someone who has a few months old baby at home. They moved to a different city since their manager approved it. Now they have to be back in the Bay Area 3 days a week (in the middle of the week) since their remote application got denied. Literally forcing a parent to be away from their baby (or be jobless).

I bet this guys ‘work’ consists of non-stop meetings and nothing else. Anecdotally, in offices I’ve worked at, the people there are constantly yakking, in pointless meetings, discussing nonsense… all day. This is about 80% of the people in the office. The hardest workers I know are the ones that come in a day or two a week but are mostly at home without the distractions of the office.

Good for that CEO showing everyone who is boss! Like a toddler. I hope customers consider this attitude and sentiment before writing checks to this organization. I wish the employee quit though. Not like crappy digital marketing companies aren’t a dime a dozen. Greta chance to escape a toxic leadership environment.

Had to shorten the title, since it wouldn&#x27;t fit.<p>Full Title: Tech CEO Applauds an Employee Selling Off Their Pet Dog to Accommodate Return-to-Office Push

That’s the problem. I was working somewhere they signed a seven year lease before the pandemic. The push for RTO was from the board and the CEO because they want ROI on their lease. This sounds eerily familiar to that workplace I was at.

You can sell dogs? Even with desirable breeds, I assumed their value was basically nil after they were a puppy, unless you sold for breeding. Is there a large used pet market?

&gt; On April 3, Clarke notified employees via email that anyone living within 50 miles of his company’s Draper, Utah headquarters would need to start showing up at the Clearlink office four days a week beginning April 17.<p>I’d love to know more. How many people were affected, did they protest or resign, how long was the company remote, what about people unwilling to return to the office, etc.

In everything you do in life, ask yourself: “Is this good for the company?”

&gt; “I challenge any one of you to outwork me, but you won’t,”<p>Maybe he has to work so much because he&#x27;s incredibly inefficient.

I&#x27;d rather unload trucks at Walmart than work for this asshole. Of course then we&#x27;d hear him whine &quot;nobody wants to work&quot;, and the iron is he&#x27;s right once you complete the thought &quot;nobody wants to work <i>for an asshole like you.</i>&quot;

Someone should show this complete stain how much his average worker is working per dollar compared to him, and then take away his toys and put him in time out.

To work at a provincial digital marketing agency no less - CEO clearly thinks he is gods gift to something, just not his employees.

&gt; He told content writers they should be using AI to increase output “30-50 times our normal production.”<p>Take it easy on the Kool-Aid.

How to identify if you have a toxic boss.

Some of his employees may as well accept the challenge, quit his firm and take 3 WFH jobs at once, aha!

They say the CEO role is a top contender for the most psychopaths. This makes me believe it more.

Well, strictly speaking, it&#x27;s more responsible than neglecting the dog. So in that sense, I applaud it too. But it was basically forced on the employee, unfortunately.