Beyond Layoff

White collar employees around the world are suddenly coming to realize that the 'new normal' of continually working from home introduces new stressors. Many are finding ways to cope with it while some are succumbing to the pressures. We have all heard funny background noises in web-meetings, but here are a few incidents that go beyond the ‘new normal’ of interrupted video conferences. California official resigns after throwing cat, drinking beer during Zoom meeting During a meeting of the Vallejo, California planning commission, an official lost his cool. The Video of that conference, which was made public, shows Planning commissioner Chris Platzer announcing, “I’d like to introduce my cat,” after it made some noise in the background. He then picks up his pet, shows it to the camera, and tosses it off screen. Commissioner Chris Platzer resigned on Saturday due to his behavior during a Zoom conference on April 20. The Vallejo Times-Herald reported that Platzer could also

India’s largest IT employer, Tata Consultancy Services ( TCS ) plans to to significantly reduce the amount of time its employees spend in office in the next five years. By 2025, TCS will ask a vast majority of 75% of its nearly half-million  employees globally (including 350,000 in India) to work from home. Before lockdown, 20 percent of TCS workforce worked from home, now due to the lockdown the company moved 90 percent of the teams to work from home through its Secure Borderless Work Spaces (SBWS) operating model. The new model called 25/25 will require far less office space than occupied today. "We don't believe that we need more than 25% of our workforce at our facilities in order to be 100% productive," says TCS's chief operating officer NG Subramaniam. "We have come out stronger and our model is more proven than ever before," CEO and MD Rajesh Gopinathan told employees in a letter. As per Gopinathan, SBWS had seen 35,000 meetings, 406,000 calls, a

This week, the US Labor Department reported an extraordinary rise in unemployment claims. The individuals seeking unemployment support March 15-April 4 surged to 16.8 million. According to  Politico , “the number of jobs lost in a mere three weeks now exceeds the 15 million that it took 18 months for the Great Recession to bulldoze from 2007 to 2009.” Tech jobs have been lost all over the country, and across a variety of sectors. And, one obvious area that has recently been hard hit is the startup community in the Bay Area and elsewhere. Layoff Tracker has done a super job of tracking the layoffs that have troubled both well-known and established companies like  Yelp ,  Groupon  and  Zenefits , and dozens of new businesses that were just starting up or had recently received angel funding. Layoff Tracker  has been a key go to site for anyone in recruiting, freelancing or HR tech. In a recent article in  Crunchbase , Mary Ann Azevedo tells how entrepreneur Roger Lee, co-founder of