31–40 of 45 posts
IBM: move near an office and come in three days a week, or tender your resignation and forfeit all of your Chuck E Cheese tickets!!
A buddy works at IBM and told me one of the “perks” is you can earn “Blue Points” that you can spend in some wacky internal marketplace. He got me a DVD of Carrot Top’s magnum opus “Chairman of the Board” IBM: move near an office and come in three days a week, or tender your resignation and forfeit all of your Chuck E Cheese tickets!!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's hugely expensive to do this and that money would be better spent on more important things. Unless the company is compensating folks for living closer to offices, they are likely just transferring those costs to the employees’ cost of living when forcing folks to live in higher cost of living areas.
> Unless the company is compensating folks for living closer to offices, they are likely just transferring those costs to the employees’ cost of living when forcing folks to live in higher cost of living areas. Cost of living has historically been factored when determining salary, right? I don't live in a high cost of living environment (I live in Malmo, Sweden; pretty cheap by Swedish standards overall) and I won't…
That aside, the situation you describe emphasizes my point. If the company is paying more for folks to live near the office, then the costs of travel for remote workers can and should be less than the additional compensation would be.
Retired IBM manager here. This has nothing to do with working together. This is another attempt by IBM to get rid of the older workers (again). Most teams are scattered across the world, and in the US they are all over the place. It's just another "Resource Action" targeted at older workers disguised as some kind of great idea to be more productive.
When it happened at my job 20+ years ago this was the exact pattern - good news for me is that I was 23 and wanted to move (new city matched my lifestyle much better). Only 1 person in my org who was in their 40s (based on my guess) out of 20 moved. He was single with no kids. All of my same-aged friends did move as well. At least then the paid severance if you didn't take the offer.
Controversial opinion time: I was chomping at the bit for remote before COVID. Hell, I still chomp at the bit for remote work. It's genuinely better in almost every way for me; I get that people have kids and it gets annoying to work from home for those people or that people want to be social: I am not those people, I am sorry. I have ADHD and I am not able to actually sit and focus in the office, especially these to…
What is it about in person that makes people think more communication gets done? I swear it's the opposite in basically every experience I've had. When we work in ways that are better for remote things go more smoothly because we're actually communicating. Nearly every time I see people get together, less is accomplished. I attribute a lot of it to the slowdown of communication due to the inefficiency of in-person me…
I would agree that communication in open office environments actually goes down.
But genuinely there is a major difference in the sheer volume and quality of information when we come together.
Is there anything left of IBM after a couple of decades of hollowing-out by MBAs and financialization, isn't it just shell by now?
Controversial opinion time: I was chomping at the bit for remote before COVID. Hell, I still chomp at the bit for remote work. It's genuinely better in almost every way for me; I get that people have kids and it gets annoying to work from home for those people or that people want to be social: I am not those people, I am sorry. I have ADHD and I am not able to actually sit and focus in the office, especially these to…
My employer does the same. I have to travel a long way and for me it's even longer recovery. However, we go to a nice place each time and actually I think the week is very constructive for forming relationships and you get experiences that you don't get going to the office 9-5.
And I don't actually care about productivity except tangentially: I want my employer to do well so they continue to pay me. If going to a fancy hotel every 6 months is part of what they see as efficient business then I'm not going to complain. And they are doing very well so it's either positive or neutral.
Is there anything left of IBM after a couple of decades of hollowing-out by MBAs and financialization, isn't it just shell by now?
The money priting machine that pays the salaries of people working on Linux kernel, GNOME, Java, Red-Hat Linux and GCC, as an example.
I don't follow anymore but I'm sure you're right there's still a ton of revenue from the old businesses and their locked-in customers. Probably like a white dwarf, it'll keep burning almost forever, cooling slowly.
IBM is doing everything they can to push people out without any responsibility on their end