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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

#101

Post by nosefrog »

tempest_ wrote: post #11
foobiekr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This often just feels like bad management. They go remote, but don't change a lot of other things or attempt to mitigate the downsides (there are downsides, everything is a trade off) and then claim its a failure when they need a stealth layoff. Also IBM has a long history of "Resource Actions" so this type of thing is not all unexpected from them.

At Google, they found that engineers L5 and above got more work done with RTO, and engineers at L4 and below got significantly less work done. WFH is great but it doesn't work for fresh engineers (who are often the most gung-ho about it as well).

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

#102

Post by femiagbabiaka »

zer8k wrote: post #86
Filligree wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

> White children who don’t have daddy big bucks backing them (e.g. 90+ percent of them) are left out of important programs, less likely to be chosen for university admission and job placement, etc.

None of this is true, which really problematizes your entire manifesto: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-racial-wealth-gap-fin...

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

#103

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

colechristensen wrote: post #57
eastbound wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Are you being serious?

I think they are: the sociological definition of a minority is a member of a class which is socially disadvantaged (sociologists talk about women as minorities for this reason) and a sociological "-ism" (racism, sexism) is policy or decisions which disadvantage the socially disadvantaged.

Presuming that position, it's understandable that they further believe that not favoring the disadvantaged is continuing the status quo, which is a disadvantage to the already-disadvantaged, hence the sociological "-ism".

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

#104

Post by femiagbabiaka »

Angostura wrote: post #92
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's misleading: > IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge Because the rest of the items in the headline are labor related, the implication is that "DEI" is getting fired, whatever that means. People in this comment section who did not read TFA are commenting on "DEI" firings, even though there's nothing in TFA about that. It's a little worse than clickbait IMO.

> related, the implication is that "DEI" is getting fired, No. the implication is that DEI policies are being watered down or removed

I accept your interpretation and disagree.

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

#106

Post by cynicalpeace »

jmward01 wrote: post #100

The anit-DEI stuff is predicated on an idea that there is a clear known 'best fit' for a position and it shouldn't take into account X, whatever X is. The problem is always this, nobody actually knows what a best fit really is. Nature shows us that one trait leads to longer term survival, diversity. When you think you know the traits that pick most suitable and exclude other traits then you are getting rid of the cha…

[flagged]

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

#107

Post by mathattack »

IBM is long past innovation, and is in the license audit and share buyback business.

Age bias lawsuit: https://www.cohenmilstein.com/fired-ibm-workers-wrap-up-age-...

IBM audit: https://itaa.com/insights/ibm-audits-lessons-learnt-cimino-i...

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

#108

Post by DFHippie »

op00to wrote: post #56
croes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but this isn't what they'll say if you ask them.

Hiring based on the worst prejudice or nepotism is still merit based in this sense. Meritocracy is supposed to be about varieties of merit which you aren't ashamed to admit are relevant.

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

#109

Post by mullingitover »

zer8k wrote: post #86
Filligree wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

> White children who don’t have daddy big bucks backing them (e.g. 90+ percent of them) are left out of important programs, less likely to be chosen for university admission and job placement, etc.

There's a lot of anti-DEI folks who are furious at what they believe DEI is.

First generation college students, veterans, disabled people, including white ones, benefit from DEI programs. Our Vice President benefitted from Yale's Yellow Ribbon program as a veteran! He's a DEI admit!

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

#110

Post by Etheryte »

jmward01 wrote: post #100

The anit-DEI stuff is predicated on an idea that there is a clear known 'best fit' for a position and it shouldn't take into account X, whatever X is. The problem is always this, nobody actually knows what a best fit really is. Nature shows us that one trait leads to longer term survival, diversity. When you think you know the traits that pick most suitable and exclude other traits then you are getting rid of the cha…

To play the devil's advocate, how do we know this carries over to business? If this was the case, it should have a track record at this point, since DEI has been a topic for a long time. Looking at comparable companies where one did do DEI and the other didn't, did one or the other have a statistically significant edge over the other? I have no idea, but I'm far from convinced purely from a reasoning stand point.
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