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

theregister.com

81–90 of 504 posts

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

#81
post #55

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.

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

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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…

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

#83
Getting rid of DEI is par for the course with the trump administration.

How else would they handle the database and personnel backend of the current fascist's database requirements?

Jewish Holocaust victims' tattoos were IBM database primary IDs. and given ongoing federal/government contracting, thus is yet another opportunity to be at ground zero for another genocide.

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

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. https://web.archive.org/web/20110409171021/http://www-03.ibm... It has both the original typewritten scan and a searchable-text version right underneath.

That's a pretty solid letter given the 1953 date! Consider it predates MLK's and Rosa Park's most famous activism. Not bad.

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

#85
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Except the US government has been canceling contracts left and right.

Doing things and then undoing things, I care not to waste time on predictions. Corruption is as corruption does.

Spend a little cash, have a dinner, get favor. Or something. They want to save downtown... because downtown made a bet.

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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…

[flagged]

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

#87
Of all the RTO orders, part of this at least makes sense. If you're in sales, it's beneficial to be close to your clients.

But if you're working on cloud, hard to see how working at the office is any more productive than from home.

also, this is significant:

> The employee shuffling has been accompanied by rolling layoffs in the US, but hiring in India – there are at least 10x as many open IBM jobs in India as there are in any other IBM location, according to the corporation's career listings. And earlier this week, IBM said it "is setting up a new software lab in Lucknow," India.

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

#88
post #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.

Their previous excuse was "AI is so awesome, we've automated away the jobs"

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

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s striking how corporate complicity in systematic oppression can be sanitized over time until egregious patterns only resurface as political talking points.

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

#90

Awful. I hope Red Hat is escaping the tightening gauntlet on this misdeed.

Red Hat is involved with a lawsuit alleging that they used illegal criteria to discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, and sex in hiring and layoffs. Until that is settled one way or the other, Red Hat is a potential liability to its parent company. The most likely path is status quo so if doesn't look like IBM is punishing nor rewarding Red Hat for the situation.
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