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

theregister.com

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

#51

Post by SalmonSnarker »

fazeirony wrote: post #34
mullingitover wrote: post #6

IBM of course has a long and uh, colorful history when it comes to complying with government programs violently opposed to diversity. Must’ve invoked a lot of nostalgia for them seeing Musk’s inauguration speech.

let's be more direct and truthful - ibm directly aided the third reich in their despicable actions. full stop.

in kindness to the previous poster, they are being as direct and truthful as one can be on a platform that has tilted hard to the right in the past 5 years and where discussion of the alluded-to-salute is flagged [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42774621

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

#52

Post by daheza »

alephnerd wrote: post #37

> On Tuesday, Big Blue shared new rules on where it expects its US sales staff to work: At least three days a week at a client, a flagship office, or a sales hub. > And the mainframe giant last week told all US Cloud employees, sales or otherwise, to return to the office at least three days per week at designated "strategic" locations. Yep. It's a de facto layoff. Smart of them to add the DEI statement - as we can se…

My company did the same thing - come to the office 3x per week.

We came in to the office to find monitors that were old pre-covid. No office supplies (tissues, mouse pads, batteries, keyboards) Expired food and beverages from pre-covid No desks for my teammembers

The work environment was also much worse than before. Now you get to overhear the executives bragging about their new cars, the golfing trips they are taking while trying to focus on your work. You have folks taking calls from there desk without even using a headset.

My team productivity has gone down the drain. The business pre-covid was 90% US engineers and during covid we offshored most of everything to india. Now how am I supposed to get my team to have calls with india at early morning and evenings when we are forced to spend an hour just driving to the office.

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

#53

Post by eastbound »

easterncalculus wrote: post #26
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #21

I am curious if anyone can find the text for "IBM's Policy Letter #4" written by IBM's chairman in 1953, which is referenced in this article. I did some searching but all the links I found to the full text were broken. I ask because I think it shows what a Rorschach test the arguments over DEI have become. I at least found one quote from the Policy Letter #4 which stated "It is the policy of this organization to hire…

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

#55

Post by croes »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #21

I am curious if anyone can find the text for "IBM's Policy Letter #4" written by IBM's chairman in 1953, which is referenced in this article. I did some searching but all the links I found to the full text were broken. I ask because I think it shows what a Rorschach test the arguments over DEI have become. I at least found one quote from the Policy Letter #4 which stated "It is the policy of this organization to hire…

Merit seems to be highly subjective given that the people in current US administration are all hired based on merit.

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

#56

Post by op00to »

croes wrote: post #55
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #21

I am curious if anyone can find the text for "IBM's Policy Letter #4" written by IBM's chairman in 1953, which is referenced in this article. I did some searching but all the links I found to the full text were broken. I ask because I think it shows what a Rorschach test the arguments over DEI have become. I at least found one quote from the Policy Letter #4 which stated "It is the policy of this organization to hire…

Merit seems to be highly subjective given that the people in current US administration are all hired based on merit.

The merit they evaluate for is loyalty to the leader, not academic merit, or some other measure.

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

#58

Post by Filligree »

easterncalculus wrote: post #26
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #21

I am curious if anyone can find the text for "IBM's Policy Letter #4" written by IBM's chairman in 1953, which is referenced in this article. I did some searching but all the links I found to the full text were broken. I ask because I think it shows what a Rorschach test the arguments over DEI have become. I at least found one quote from the Policy Letter #4 which stated "It is the policy of this organization to hire…

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They’re not wrong. The tension is that on average, dark-skinned folk have lower merit — because of racism in the past that limited their educational opportunities, and also because it’s hard for a child to lever themselves into a higher socioeconomic group than their parents.

Among a number of other reasons. Equity vs. equal opportunities; I’m sympathetic to the latter, but what do you do when the opportunities were unequal in the past, and that causes inequitable results in the present?

One might, for instance, attempt to make up for it with targeted education. It’s a pity that the US educational system is such a disaster.

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

#59

Post by dghlsakjg »

rdtsc wrote: post #30
bufferoverflow wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that would be constructive dismissal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal

> The burden of proof in constructive dismissal cases lies with the employee. The only practical way is if somehow an executive breaks ranks and exposes some list or email or private conversation where he they were planning this. A harder way is some coordinating action from employees. All get together to figure out the patterns.

It depends on the state, but you don’t have to prove intent, you have to prove that the conditions of your job changed enough that it is an unreasonable burden.

If they transfer you to a location that requires an additional hour of commuting, you just have to prove that the commute takes an extra hour.

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