Dreams on the Bitface

they're going to tighten up on the dress code
Apparently this is a common theme across businesses in the city at the moment. Fingers crossed it doesn't spread into Telecoms too much.

they're going to tighten up on timekeeping
Hmm. Not necessarily compatible with good coders. Working at Globespan Virata a couple of years ago, there were a whole bunch of extremely competent coders whose core hours were Midday to 8pm. They were thriving in their self-determined working day, and the company benefited from it.

to me a step-change sounds like quite a small thing
It could be my signal processing background, but the meaning of "step change" to me is 'discrete' as opposed to 'continuous' - rather than providing information about the actual scale of the change. Note that I'm not in any sense implying that your management are using it that way. My own experience tallies with yours in that company spin doctors all clearly have Very Large Strides.

Some ranting nutter with a blog talking about the modern business world
I've racked my brain for ages, but sadly to no avail. I just can't get this song reference.