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IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

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Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#21

Post by misja111 »

krzyk wrote: post #10

First they took free tea and coffee in the office ( http://www.rediff.com/money/2009/apr/15bcrisis-no-more-free-... ) now they are taking away WFH. There are fewer and fewer incentives to work for IBM.

TIL that some people chose to work at IBM because of the free tea and coffee

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#22

Post by jbfr »

codingdave wrote: post #12

IBM is calling its marketing teams back into the offices. Not all remote workers. The marketing teams. At least as far as I, and the people I know who work at IBM, have heard.

Disclosure: I work for IBM on a team impacted by these changes.

As far as I know multiple business units within IBM, including Cloud, Watson, and Watson IoT have gone through relocation requests for Design and Engineering roles.

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#23

Post by ballenf »

krzyk wrote: post #10

First they took free tea and coffee in the office ( http://www.rediff.com/money/2009/apr/15bcrisis-no-more-free-... ) now they are taking away WFH. There are fewer and fewer incentives to work for IBM.

At least as of 1990, at one large IBM location in the US there were regular vending stations for coffee and tea. Was Don't know when they started giving away coffee, but it was tried for some years and then stopped apparently. Like remote working.

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#24

Post by jhall1468 »

misja111 wrote: post #21
krzyk wrote: post #10

First they took free tea and coffee in the office ( http://www.rediff.com/money/2009/apr/15bcrisis-no-more-free-... ) now they are taking away WFH. There are fewer and fewer incentives to work for IBM.

TIL that some people chose to work at IBM because of the free tea and coffee

That's not what he said. The point was, IBM is taking away every fringe benefit, making them less competitive. Amazon is notorious for its frugality, but at the very least it offers free damn coffee.

This is an argument of all things being equal. If IBM and Microsoft offer me the same package for the same job, but Microsoft offers me free coffee, I'll probably take the coffee.

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#25

Post by vorpalhex »

misja111 wrote: post #21
krzyk wrote: post #10

First they took free tea and coffee in the office ( http://www.rediff.com/money/2009/apr/15bcrisis-no-more-free-... ) now they are taking away WFH. There are fewer and fewer incentives to work for IBM.

TIL that some people chose to work at IBM because of the free tea and coffee

Despite the fact that I usually bring my coffee from home, or go to a local shop, the fact that a company offers free coffee/snacks/etc matters from a perspective.

If a company is going to nickel and dime you, charge you $0.25 for a coffee or force you to provide your own... they probably are going to be cheap in other places as well. If they aren't willing to give you coffee or seltzer, they are hardly going to give you good hardware or software - which is something that does affect me.

That being said, that only goes so far. I don't really care about free lunches, or if a company has some game console. I mostly just don't want to work for a company that is going to nickel and dime me because it means they're cheapskates.

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#26

Post by hackunomatter »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #19
fensterblick wrote: post #15

With IBM, one can't help but feel this is a tactic to force layoffs without having to actually do a layoff. I believe they tried similar tactics in their Global Business Services division in the mid-2000s.

Of course it's a layoff. It's the same thing yahoo did. When business are doing well they don't force their employees into impossible situations.

Yahoo's policy affected about 180 people. That's about 1.5% of the company. Of those 180, about 60 were allowed to WFH. "Firing" 120 people in such a convoluted way is stupid. But the Internet continues to believe in stupider things, so who am I to ask.

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#29

Post by throwanem »

misja111 wrote: post #21
krzyk wrote: post #10

First they took free tea and coffee in the office ( http://www.rediff.com/money/2009/apr/15bcrisis-no-more-free-... ) now they are taking away WFH. There are fewer and fewer incentives to work for IBM.

TIL that some people chose to work at IBM because of the free tea and coffee

I won't (quite) outright refuse to work somewhere because they don't offer free coffee. But it's not a good sign they're somewhere I want to work, if they can't or won't manage table stakes.

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#30

Post by zachmax »

eesaitcho wrote: post #28
zachmax wrote: post #17

I believe this is only for marketing teams

It happened to all tech folks in my group (IBM Analytics) about a year ago. I was remote, but got axed by an RA (layoff) before it took effect.

Sorry to hear about that mate :/ Hope you're in a good situation now!
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