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submitted 9 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

IBM to Managers: Move Near an Office or Leave Company::International Business Machines Corp. delivered a companywide ultimatum to managers who are still working remotely: move near an office or leave the company.

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[-] oakey66@lemmy.world 103 points 9 months ago

Just determined to lose talent.

[-] GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 23 points 9 months ago

That's the intent - it's a layoff in disguise, with a discount on the severance package.

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 points 9 months ago

But not the talent they want to shed!

Look up "Dead Sea Effect"

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[-] sleepmode@lemmy.world 80 points 9 months ago

They asked nicely. Then they abruptly started threatening termination. Keep in mind this is after they had to close a few offices when the regular employee RTO mandate resulted in a large amount of attrition.

So now there are people with 120+ mile round trip commutes because they live within the cutoff distance. Nearly all meetings are video calls anyway due to team members being scattered all over the world. When folks asked leadership why in a company-wide meeting months ago they basically said to suck it up.

This has morale pretty low, when it was already terrible even for folks that prefer in-person and live close. Some quit after the announcement. The brain drain is already causing an impact because there’s so much tribal knowledge and teams are silo’d as hell.

Never seen a company so out of touch or be so openly hostile to their workers. It’s just wild.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 36 points 9 months ago

Never seen a company so out of touch or be so openly hostile to their workers. It’s just wild.

Everything you described in this comment happened at my org as well.

[-] gsfraley@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago

Ditto, I practically could've wrote that comment myself

[-] roofuskit@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago

I bet the board is heavily invested in commercial real estate.

[-] Blankmann@lemmy.world 80 points 9 months ago
[-] Municipal0379@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago
[-] qprimed@lemmy.ml 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

we did it, ~~reddit~~ lemmy!

[-] GladiusB@lemmy.world 18 points 9 months ago
[-] lud@lemm.ee 16 points 9 months ago

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻)

[-] aksdb@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

I'll report you to HR for throwing tables.

[-] lud@lemm.ee 16 points 9 months ago

┬──┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)

[-] qprimed@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago
[-] MummifiedClient5000@feddit.dk 15 points 9 months ago

I like that no-nonsense attitude. You're hired!

[-] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago
[-] MummifiedClient5000@feddit.dk 8 points 9 months ago

Enough of that. You're fired!

[-] WashedOver@lemmy.ca 64 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Sure seems like a great way to avoid severance in those places it's required.

Amazing how the companies that "care about employees" don't care so much these days...

[-] FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works 48 points 9 months ago

Not sure when anyone ever thought IBM cared about employees, except maybe 40-50 years ago. They have been steadily fucking people over. I wouldn't shed a single tear if that company went out of business.

[-] Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world 44 points 9 months ago

Step 1: Enforce RTO mandates Step 2: Fire remote employees Step 3: Replace the fired folks with remote job positions, paying 10%-15% less.

[-] Im_old@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago

Or not even hire replacements, so they cut workforce AND don't have to pay severance packages. Costs are reduced, earning are higher, shareholder are happy. Yes, it's a relatively short term plan, but that's what analysts and investors care about, short term returns.

[-] Yewb@lemmy.world 41 points 9 months ago

What does IBM even do anymore?

[-] sleepmode@lemmy.world 20 points 9 months ago

They buy competitors with a good product and put their name on it.

[-] richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

And then they don't know what to do with the product for decades. E. g.: Notes.

[-] havocpants@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago

Hang on, they said good products

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[-] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 19 points 9 months ago

Makes bank on it's name from 60 years ago. That's about it. Genuinely.

[-] yggdar@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago

They are very busy charging an arm and a leg for crappy software with shit support.

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 16 points 9 months ago

They're furiously milking redhat to death, for starters.

[-] Plopp@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

To be fair, being milked to death doesn't seem that bad. I've seen those videos.

[-] nUbee@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

Patent trolling.

[-] datendefekt@lemmy.ml 10 points 9 months ago

They're still a big name in mainframes and are also a cloud hyperscaler, and they offer software development and consulting. They do a lot of research in AI and quantum computing, and even blockchain a few years ago. But altogether just a shadow of what they once were. I used to work there when Lenovo took over ThinkPad production and the hard drive business was phasing out. I couldn't imagine being there now.

[-] Dlayknee@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

cloud hyperscaler

I know you're technically right, but their "cloud" is the weirdest offering I have ever seen

[-] lud@lemm.ee 8 points 9 months ago

A lot of stuff but mostly software these days.

[-] ThePrivacyPolicy@lemmy.ca 39 points 9 months ago

When other companies in my city have tried this move it must means more really, really good talent hits the market to start filling open roles at my employer!

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[-] Snapz@lemmy.world 38 points 9 months ago

IBM amplified the death and destruction of the holocaust by assisting the nazis with a more efficient process to find Jewish people.

The Nazis made extensive use of Hollerith punch card and alphabetical accounting equipment and IBM's majority-owned German subsidiary, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH (Dehomag), supplied this equipment from the early 1930s. This equipment was critical to Nazi efforts to categorize citizens of both Germany and other nations that fell under Nazi control through ongoing censuses. This census data was used to facilitate the round-up of Jews and other targeted groups, and to catalog their movements through the machinery of the Holocaust, including internment in the concentration camps. Nazi concentration camps operated a Hollerith department called Hollerith Abteilung, which had IBM machines, including calculating and sorting machines.

The guy that ran the company through this period was named Watson - their AI offering today is named after him... the guy that greenlit the nazi stuff - This world is a fucking joke.

[-] wikibot@lemmy.world 14 points 9 months ago

Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:

IBM Watson is a computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language. It was developed in IBM's DeepQA project by a research team led by principal investigator David Ferrucci. Watson was named after IBM's founder and first CEO, industrialist Thomas J. Watson. The computer system was initially developed to answer questions on the quiz show Jeopardy!

^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^

[-] Algaroth@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'll take "Die Judefrage" for 500.

[-] erwan@lemmy.ml 28 points 9 months ago

So they have to move to an office, any office?

Meaning they can no longer be remote but don't have to be in the same office as the people they manage?

That makes a lot of sense.

[-] EnderMB@lemmy.world 32 points 9 months ago

This is similar to what most tech companies have aligned on. I work 200 miles from my co-workers, my manager is 100 miles away, and while I'm supposed to be 100 miles away our tracking software doesn't care if I badge in 2 miles away at my local office.

If you're a multinational company, you'll be on video calls regardless of what you do, so it's fucking stupid that they enforce these rules.

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[-] FrankTheHealer@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

Cool, are they going to pay more, so people can move closer to the urban area where these offices presumably are? No? Then fuck.

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[-] doctorcrimson@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

"Why are we spending so much on data security and oversight?"

"What...? What the fuck are you asking...? Those are integral for our work."

"Can we reduce the need for added security measures by putting a physical layer in place? Like in the old days."

"No? Especially not while everybody works from home, ha ha ha... ha..."

"..."

"..."

[-] nave@lemmy.ca 10 points 9 months ago

Funnily enough I used to live very close to the office in the picture.

[-] GladiusB@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

But did you work there?

[-] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 9 points 9 months ago

Such a low effort way to reduce payroll. It actually made me laugh. The position of "People Manager" has to come in to work, but I didn't see a mention of the managed. So the people manager can be at home, working remotely with their team, or they can be on site...working remotely with their team? I wonder how many years it's going to take for corporate American to realize times have changed. Or for some organized crackdown from the other side.

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[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 7 points 9 months ago

Have fun with the labor shortage, you're not dealing with a bootlicker generation, you're dealing with the no-notice quit generation

[-] ExfilBravo@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

IBM fucking around. Let's see if they find out.

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[-] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 9 months ago

Why aren't tech workers unionizing when this shit happens?

[-] Blueoaky@mander.xyz 9 points 9 months ago

There is no culture of unions in IT. But there should!

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this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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