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IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

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Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#4
The general reasoning given by a lot of these companies is that WFH did not work.

Same companies were telling is how well it worked and they had the numbers to back it up.

I think they are looking for scapegoats for some cost cutting. Officially force people back and hopefully some will quit. In practice, many will continue to operate as before.

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#5

Sounds like IBM is going to have a bad year. I should probably dump that stock.

They're pretty cozy with Uncle Sam, take that for what you will...

There are a lot more competing options to run the "census" systems this time around though.

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#7
IBM will use any excuse to justify firing people over 50 years old. So "DEI purge" is just an excuse, nothing more.

Everyone I know there knows this was coming after Nov 2024. IBM just wants to hide the number and age of the people being fired.

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#8

The general reasoning given by a lot of these companies is that WFH did not work. Same companies were telling is how well it worked and they had the numbers to back it up. I think they are looking for scapegoats for some cost cutting. Officially force people back and hopefully some will quit. In practice, many will continue to operate as before.

Of course they are. It makes no sense for sales roles to be in an office for “collaboration”.

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#9

The general reasoning given by a lot of these companies is that WFH did not work. Same companies were telling is how well it worked and they had the numbers to back it up. I think they are looking for scapegoats for some cost cutting. Officially force people back and hopefully some will quit. In practice, many will continue to operate as before.

I work for a company that made a big deal about how well it worked. The CEO and chief people officer both made a lot of public statements about it, during and just after covid. They did this claiming they had the numbers to back it up and said numbers but they basically made them up. It was PR and they were using it to aid recruiting into what was and is a company that young people avoided. What numbers they did have were mostly inertia and a side effect of lockdowns (people had little else to do); new projects and new teams floundered very visibly.

Internally, it was very clear that it did not work. The numbers were massaged to back up the executive leaders, but everyone was pretty clear what was going on, and even the exec leaders, in leader-only meetings, did eventually admit that it was "more nuanced" initially to "does not work" internally. The company has since moved away sharply from remote employees. It's still not full-on RTO, but it's edging toward it.

I'm not saying this is everyone, but I think people should really take the 2020-2023 rise in remote and the narrative around it with a grain of salt. Most of the companies that championed it have reverted, and they aren't doing that because bosses are control freaks.

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