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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

#111

Post by harimau777 »

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]

The problem with your argument is that's not actually what advocates of DEI actually believe.

Economic inequality is part of DEI so there's no reason why people without "daddy big bucks" backing them would be left out.

In fact, most advocates of DEI want UNIVERSAL social welfare programs. The only reason that the advocate for more targeted programs is because otherwise conservatives start screaming about socialism.

The reason you are likely to get downvoted is because you are substituting personal attacks and rhetoric ("coddling", "hysteria", etc.) for actually engaging with the issues.

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

#112

Post by mathgradthrow »

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…

You are conflating two different ideas of diversity. An ecosystem of businesses is, for instance, more diverse if it contains some companies with racially and sexually diverse workforces and some companies without these properties. This is strategic diversity.

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

#113

Post by BeetleB »

foobiekr wrote: post #9
givemeethekeys wrote: post #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.

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…

> Internally, it was very clear that it did not work

If it was clear, they shouldn't have trouble showing the data. Otherwise it's a case of "The data shows X, but my gut clearly shows Y"

I can certainly believe it didn't work for some companies/roles. But the burden is on the company to demonstrate it.

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

#114

Post by lexicality »

repiret wrote: post #96
MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #29

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.

Veering off topic, but this letter is in a variable width font. Were there typewriters that could do that? Was this so widely distributed that it was typeset on a printing press? The letterhead and body text aren’t aligned, so if it did go through a press it took two passes. The signature is also in ink, so that’s either a third pass for color, or an actual signature, and the letter doesn’t have the notation to indic…

IBM made a lot of very fancy typewriters so while I don't know what they had in 1953, one would assume that the president of the company would have access to the fanciest model they offered

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

#115

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

throwaway382736 wrote: post #69
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…

I've observed the people who are very anti-DEI will change their talking points when they are competing with Asians and Indians. Suddenly they start espousing DEI principles and emphasize how it's important to find a more "well rounded" individual.

I’ve seen people who say that, but what’s much more common in my experience is people who note that thinking seriously about Asians and Indians in tech isn’t very compatible with “DEI” as commonly construed. To me it seems clear that IBM promoting a dark-skinned immigrant to CEO proves their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion; I know this position is controversial but for the life of me I can’t understand why.

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

#116

Post by daxelrod »

MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #78
zanfr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

after covid is an illusion, there is no such thing as "after" for an ongoing pandemic.... and the company you work for seems rather incompetent

> after covid is an illusion, there is no such thing as "after" for an ongoing pandemic.... The US death rate from Covid in Q4 2023 (so, pre-Trump II) is roughly the same as the US death rate from influenza. 14.9 or 16.8 deaths per 100,000 for Covid (first number is 12 months ending with Q4 2023, second number is the three month rolling window), 13.5 or 15.1 deaths per 100,000 for influenza. "After covid" is a perfec…

I don’t understand how that conclusion follows from that comparison. We also wouldn’t describe the current day as “after the flu”. Both are endemic.

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

#117

Post by js2 »

repiret wrote: post #96
MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #29

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.

Veering off topic, but this letter is in a variable width font. Were there typewriters that could do that? Was this so widely distributed that it was typeset on a printing press? The letterhead and body text aren’t aligned, so if it did go through a press it took two passes. The signature is also in ink, so that’s either a third pass for color, or an actual signature, and the letter doesn’t have the notation to indic…

Looks like it was written on an IBM Executive Model A:

https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/178vjlf/sample...

There were variable-width font typewriters starting in 1930:

https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/3ltlgn/have_va...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vari-Typer

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

#118

Post by trebligdivad »

repiret wrote: post #96
MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #29

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.

Veering off topic, but this letter is in a variable width font. Were there typewriters that could do that? Was this so widely distributed that it was typeset on a printing press? The letterhead and body text aren’t aligned, so if it did go through a press it took two passes. The signature is also in ink, so that’s either a third pass for color, or an actual signature, and the letter doesn’t have the notation to indic…

Well of course IBM made typewriters! It looks like the 'IBM Executive' landed in 1944 with the ability to do proportional spacing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Electric#Executive

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

#119

Post by kube-system »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #25
rdtsc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would just say you’re reassigned to the Alaska office. You’re expected to work there 3 days a week starting October or something. See, they didn’t fire them! They just resigned under their own accord. /s

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

Which is exactly why they lead with the "closer to the customer" bullshit. The federal government is starting to do the exact same thing (with the exact same rationale) right now.

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

#120

Post by dastbe »

nosefrog wrote: post #101
tempest_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Did you mean L5 and above got more work done with WFH? Since the next sentence implies that it was the fresh engineers who were most impacted by WFH.
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