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IBM, Remote-Work Pioneer, is Calling Thousands Of Employees Back To the Office (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Less than a year into her tenure as IBM's chief marketing officer, Michelle Peluso prepared to make an announcement that she knew would excite some of her 5,500 new employees, but also, inevitably, inspire resignation notices from others. In a video message, Peluso explained the "only one recipe I know for success." Its ingredients included great people, the right tools, a mission, analysis of results, and one more thing: "really creative and inspiring locations." IBM had decided to "co-locate" the US marketing department, about 2,600 people, which meant that all teams would now work together, "shoulder to shoulder," from one of six different locations -- Atlanta, Raleigh, Austin, Boston, San Francisco, and New York. Employees who worked primarily from home would be required to commute, and employees who worked remotely or from an office that was not on the list (or an office that was on the list, but different than the one to which their teams had been assigned) would be required to either move or look for another job. Similar announcements had already been made in other departments, and more would be made in the future. At IBM, which has embraced remote work for decades, a relatively large proportion of employees work outside of central hubs. (By 2009, when remote work was still, for most, a novelty, 40% of IBM's 386,000 global employees already worked at home). [...] "When you're playing phone tag with someone is quite different than when you're sitting next to someone and can pop up behind them and ask them a question," Peluso says. Not all IBM employees see it that way.
Maybe they just figured out how to get rid of a bunch of employees without having to pay severances or unemployment.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Every reorganization, every revamp, every change means that some people will not like it. And those that don't like it have two options: Grin and bear it, or hand in a resignation note.
Question for 100 points: Will good people, who are sought and have zero problem finding a new job, be in the first or in the latter group? And where will people who know that they have no chance of ever being hired again because they're lazy, dumb or both be?
And now ponder what group you'll retain with your constant, idiot changes!
For fuck's sake, when you take over a company, you needn't piss all over it to mark it as yours! It ain't a tree and you're not a dumb dog.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's notable that some of the largest reversals of remote work in recent memory have been spearheaded by women.
The irony is delicious.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Didn't Yahoo! do something similar shortly before tanking? It seems pretty short-sighted to make oneself less competitive at attracting technical workers in the U.S. at a time when many are predicting increased competition for U.S. technical workers.
Well, Marissa Meyer did it - and, in the end, she got tens of millions of dollars.
#DeleteChrome
From TFS:
Having worked for IBM back in the 1980's (in Boca Raton, FL), I can provide a datapoint: IBM labs (the MITRE Kanji printer labs, specifically) were incredibly uncomfortable, required long, annoying walks from the parking lot and between locations and buildings, and were run in an extremely uncreative manner. To describe the environment, I'd go with "windowless, cold, and cavelike." Truly a shitty place to work. Whereas working at home... okay, now that is a creative, inspiring location. Because like pretty much anyone who puts a home together, I designed it specifically to be that way to my specific interests and inclinations.
Now... it's been a long time, and perhaps if they re-hired me, they'd amaze me with a comfortable office with a view, a nearby, well-stocked cafeteria, an in-office hutch for my dog, and a secretary to handle the reams of make-work reports. Or perhaps there are no more reports (cough... cough... sorry, can't even write that with a straight face.) I find this, or any reasonable equivalency to it... unlikely. But perhaps they are actually in a position to do this now.
But then again, my experience there was so bad, I'd never respond to an IBM recruiter again, even if I was in the market for a job, which I am not.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well, Marissa Meyer did it - and, in the end, she got tens of millions of dollars.
...and Yahoo! Went! Down! The! Shitter! Faster! ;)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I know of no better way to piss off the best talent than to say, you have to move to our preferred location to keep your job because, well no particularly great add, just because.....Probably IBM wants to lay off people but this will backfire. The best who don't want to move will simply say, "Bye" and get offer from a variety of companies, even IBM competitors (who are most likely to hire them in a heartbeat on whatever terms they want within reason, including telecommute). The benefits of working together in office over telecommute are less and less with improving video phones, chats and cheaper availability of cell phones, unless there are specific company secrets you don't want in cyberspace perhaps. The end result will be the best of IBM's staff being "Exceptions" or the best leaving, and the most insecure moving, only to be let go later because they were the bottom of the crop anyway. This will be a no win in a series of non-winning actions.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
"First they came for the marketing parasites, but I did not speak out for I was not a marketing parasite..."
That's so cool! The marketing people are usually the last ones to get fired when a company is in a death spiral.
*sigh* Will MBA schools please start teaching all the C-level wanna be's that while treating all your employees the same is the easy route to follow it is rarely the best route. Sacrificing known productivity increases from remote work for some mystical hoped for innovations seems to be a bad bet. I can actually see it making sense for the highly creative individuals doing marketing campaigns, but I can't see it being of much use to those whose job is to track and squash code bugs.
Here's a theory that should fit most Slashdotter's world view:
The real driver is that the bosses are missing the adulation of the crowds and the face to face sucking up denied them by remote work.
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
IBM bought the International Space Station?!
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
They did the same thing at the last company I worked for, made all the remote workers start reporting to the nearest office. The company only had a couple of offices in the US, so many of the sales and marketing people worked remotely. The net effect was that all of the good sales and marketing people who had long standing relationships with our customers left the company, taking their knowledge and customer relationships with them, a number ended up working for our competition. Rather than improve efficiency, this policy alienated our customers, got rid of our best sales performers, and hastened the demise of the company.
The implications are that either (a) IBM can't properly technologically provide for remote work or (b) IBM is unable to manage remote workers properly. Neither bodes well for their business.
That is all.
Even better - get all the company-issued stuff back onsite so it's easier to confiscate when the axes fall.
Fiserv was (and likely still is) notorious for this during their periodic purges (they do it about once every two years, where x% of each department has to go, regardless of growth). It starts as a demand that all remote-workers come into the office... you knew what was coming next. Within a week or two they start canning all the victims, and everyone is back under the thumb to boot.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This is great news. The explosion of talent into new venues should make for a resurgence in creativity. All the people that will now look for work in their own location or better yet, start up their own business should revitalize things. As for IBM, they need to slim down anyway.
What does it say that a tech company like IBM can't effectively use technology to get their teams to collaborate?
Well, Marissa Meyer did it - and, in the end, she got tens of millions of dollars.
...and Yahoo! Went! Down! The! Shitter! Faster! ;)
Yahoo's stock price ~doubled under her tenure. She may have destroyed any engineering left there, but the business did well.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yahoo's stock price slightly more than doubled.
Tech stocks in general doubled under her tenure. She did marginally above average in the eyes of investors while alienating users gutting future growth opportunities.
The stock price paints a different picture to the health of the business.
It rose because of the AlleyBlabla stock it owned since before her reign. Epic fail at virtue signalling.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have a friend who is celebrating his 21st year at Intel. He has considered leaving a few times, but just couldn't because they take such good care of him. He gets stock options that come out to about 1/3 of my salary, he makes very good money, usually gets double-digit raises and bonuses that are about 1/4 to 1/3 my salary.
Every seven years, he gets a paid 3-month sabbatical, in addition to vacation. This year will be his 3rd one. He had to move once for the company, and when he did they pretty much covered every expense.
Quite honestly, I have known a couple of other people who have worked there, and none of them complained about it.
What I was told about Intel was that they take care of their employees, and during hard times (like during the economic downturn) they take better care of them. It's how they keep good people. I always respected them for that. I can't say as much for any software or financial company that I have worked for in the last 24 years.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I have to say that the decline started a long time ago. This is simply another symptom of a dying culture; it's a death throe. There is no technology issue that forces this change; there is no business, or cultural, or teamworking imperative. It's an attempt at controlling something that looks a lot like leakage. The view from the top, as IBM implodes must seem like someone is shoplifting all of the spare hours, taking all of the passion for the product line, the productivity and creativity away and they must get control back! What they have failed to realise is it's just the force of entropy; they've been shot through by Time's arrow. The only solutions are to re-invent or die.
. I don't recall Louis V Gerstner worrying about remote working. I *do* remember him going crazy about having hundreds of Vice Presidents, none of whom could give him an elevator pitch on any subject of their choosing without having someone prepare a slide deck for them.