Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 118 posts

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#101

Post by T-hawk »

anticodon wrote: post #79
coredog64 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my previous employer, we were evaluating solutions from IBM, TIBCO, and Oracle. The IBM solution was cheaper and met our needs. In the end, our VP nixed them with the statement of "I don't really want to support IBM software." The feeling was unanimous across the team.

Yes, IBM still sells IBM/Rational ClearCase which has impressive cost (about $5000 per license) and has about 5% features of Git, also absolutely bozotic UI. What surprises me, some companies still use it in 2017 and still pay $5000 to buy a product that is inferior in every respect to Mercurial, Git, Subversion.

There exist many companies where one's perceived status as a manager derives from how much budget you command rather than on how effectively you choose tools or deliver solutions.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#102

Post by pinaceae »

paulddraper wrote: post #86
pinaceae wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the Big 4 win contracts based on necessary certifications. once it is a 100mil+ project, all kinds of certs come into play, small shops simply can't produce the paperwork. of course, there is no correlation between certs and actually being able to deliver anything, but that does not matter. no CIO will risk their career by not giving big stuff to a non-Big4 contract. file under herd mentality, etc.

What certs are we talking about? SSL certs? PE certs? Cisco certs?

ha, no.

ITIL, ISO 20000, etc etc etc.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#103

Post by justin66 »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #98

/IBM employee rant begin To me, the fact that IBM has for years encouraged remote work, been affirmatively OK with people moving hundreds, even thousands of miles from their nearest co-location center to then yanking this policy and forcing employees to decide whether to move in a short amount of time makes this, in my mind, a thinly-veiled downsizing effort. Imagine; for years, your department in is NY state, but yo…

> then all the sudden - you have a month to decide to relocate to NY state

Is that actually happening to you? pm90 below indicated that IBM wasn't doing this.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#104

Post by bigmattystyles »

justin66 wrote: post #103
bigmattystyles wrote: post #98

/IBM employee rant begin To me, the fact that IBM has for years encouraged remote work, been affirmatively OK with people moving hundreds, even thousands of miles from their nearest co-location center to then yanking this policy and forcing employees to decide whether to move in a short amount of time makes this, in my mind, a thinly-veiled downsizing effort. Imagine; for years, your department in is NY state, but yo…

> then all the sudden - you have a month to decide to relocate to NY state Is that actually happening to you? pm90 below indicated that IBM wasn't doing this.

Not me personally, definitely to others I work with - there's been hints of no enforcement until later this year but nothing official.

Edit: And as PM90 said, it does seem to be only some departments. PM90 said the article creates FUD, but I think you could argue IBM is doing that to its employees with this.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#105

Post by jdbernard »

GoToRO wrote: post #20
padobson wrote: post #14

A theory among some employees is that IBM is using co-location as a downsizing effort. I hope it's not an accurate theory. Downsizing this way means your most self-motivated, productive employees are likely to leave long before those who drive to the office because they feel they have no other choice. Like Best Buy and Yahoo at the points at which they decided to co-locate, IBM is a business that needs to do somethin…

I am not sure it is all bad. So the best leave which is bad, but you don't have to pay their wages anymore which is good (and if you don't make enough money it's the only option). The not-that-good stay, but you force them to be in the office, which is bad. But being in the office will turn these not-that-good into gets-the-job-done (I've seen 4-5 developers hunch over a trivial problem but, in the end, they solved i…

Yeah, but one of the reasons that the article puts forward to justify the move is to increase "innovation." Surely the hit to innovation from losing your best easily out-sizes any gain from co-locating.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#106

Post by Pokepokalypse »

spcelzrd wrote: post #44
padobson wrote: post #14

A theory among some employees is that IBM is using co-location as a downsizing effort. I hope it's not an accurate theory. Downsizing this way means your most self-motivated, productive employees are likely to leave long before those who drive to the office because they feel they have no other choice. Like Best Buy and Yahoo at the points at which they decided to co-locate, IBM is a business that needs to do somethin…

It's the best way to get a large amount of your workforce to leave voluntarily. No workforce reduction paperwork. No severance packages. Yahoo did it. Nokia did it. In fact, the companies who pull this trick are almost all shrinking and past their prime. But don't worry, IBM has tens of thousands of strap hangers who've been surviving layoffs for decades. The bottom line will get brighter. The future of the company w…

This is one way real-estate prices are being driven through the roof in big cities -> Where these company HQ's are located.

Workers know. Workers who have worked at remote offices know that the best career-advancing projects happen at HQ where you can schmooze with the executive staff. They know that when the company hits a bad quarter, that the layoffs will disproportionately hit the remote office. They know that the best co-workers will be recruited, and offered little bonuses to relocate to HQ, and they're stuck working at the remote office.

It just blows my mind that in the Internet Age: we're still stuck in this 1890's model of "must work at HQ". Even among the very leaders of the information age: IBM, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and etc.

The whole point of the Internet and networked computing was "It does not matter WHERE you are." Unfortunately, to the businespeople who run these corporations, it very much DOES matter. If you're not in their office, they don't control you.

So we're all forced to move to these areas where the big corporations have invested in their corporate headquarters. It's the most secure way to work. And you end up paying either through commute-time, or outrageously inflated real-estate prices.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#107

Post by Pokepokalypse »

briandear wrote: post #59
devopsproject wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the results there speak for themselves 151% stock increase? Nearly double market cap?

I can't even name a single Yahoo product I ever used beyond circa 2000 search. I don't even know what that company does anymore. Google owns half the internet, Apple makes stuff you can buy in stores.. Yahoo? The company that can't even secure email passwords? Hurray for Melissa!

I still have my email address from them since 1996. Still use it. People still consider me "aged" because of that.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#108

Post by gwbas1c »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #8

Marissa Mayer did the same thing shortly after getting to Yahoo. I think the results there speak for themselves. There's never a case where a move like this will boost morale or attract/keep top talent. IMO moves like this are all about showing dominance and being a "person of action." It's corporate politics showmanship at the expense of results.

Remember, though, Marissa's move came because a very large number of Yahoo remote employees weren't working. I went through something similar at Intel about 10 years ago when "telecommuting" became a code word for not really doing any work.

I don't think IBM is in the same situation, though. Telecommuting works or fails based on a company's culture, work ethic, and employee accountability.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#109

Post by jps359 »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #98

/IBM employee rant begin To me, the fact that IBM has for years encouraged remote work, been affirmatively OK with people moving hundreds, even thousands of miles from their nearest co-location center to then yanking this policy and forcing employees to decide whether to move in a short amount of time makes this, in my mind, a thinly-veiled downsizing effort. Imagine; for years, your department in is NY state, but yo…

Yep... I know people who were affected in the same way you described -- encouraged to work remotely, so they bought houses in other states years ago, and then told 3 months in advance that they would need to return to the office. Of the people I know, one chose retirement, a few chose to leave, one chose to relocate, one was allowed to stay remote.

Re: IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

#110

Post by andrei_says_ »

organsnyder wrote: post #69
markbnj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article though? They are offering 90 days to make the decision, and a month's severance (miserly, imo, but they're offering it). As mentioned in the piece this wouldn't be a very manageable or predictable way to reduce headcount. It's much more likely the motives are exactly what the company said the motives are: they feel like they will be more effective working together. I would likely be one of th…

A month's severance is a lot cheaper than paying for unemployment benefits.

Does a months severance pay eliminate the need to pay for 6+ months of unemployment?
Post reply on HN