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

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

#231

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Timon3 wrote: post #223
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, it's not. It's presented as an argument that measuring objective metrics doesn't mean you're measuring merit. The goal is to measure merit. Objective metrics are the nearest thing we have to achieving that goal. If there is a better metric, you use that instead. But if the best metric we have isn't perfect, that's no argument for doing something even worse. > The library most likely doesn't have the same specia…

> The goal is to measure merit. Objective metrics are the nearest thing we have to achieving that goal. If there is a better metric, you use that instead. But if the best metric we have isn't perfect, that's no argument for doing something even worse. You may notice that I didn't argue against objective metrics at all? All I've said is that objective metrics don't mean you're directly measuring merit. It's important…

> You may notice that I didn't argue against objective metrics at all? All I've said is that objective metrics don't mean you're directly measuring merit. It's important to keep this in mind, for example by ensuring equal access to specialized training materials.

But then who are you arguing against? Is there someone strongly opposed to providing equal access to training materials, e.g. by making them available in school libraries?

> DEI doesn't necessarily mean race quotas - it's telling that you think it does.

That's how it's most commonly implemented in practice whether de jure or de facto and that's its opponents' primary objection to it.

> But the kids don't necessarily live in higher density areas!

In general the poor kids live in higher density areas and the affluent kids live in the suburbs.

> You seem to effectively be arguing that meritocracy is either impossible, or should not be the goal.

Actual perfect meritocracy is impossible because actual perfect anything is impossible. But meritocracy is the goal and what you want is to get closer to it. Which providing better study materials in school libraries can do, but that isn't what anybody is complaining about when they're complaining about DEI.

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

#232

Post by rayiner »

archagon wrote: post #210
rayiner wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I view DEI and ethnic identity as a personal threat to my mixed kids. Followed closely by the fact that i’m from a third world country, and I know that promoting ethnic identity invariably corrodes and destroys a society. It wrecks every facet of society and governance. Every issue becomes overtaken by ethnic scorekeeping and jockeying. Democracy itself disappears, replaced with ethnic machine politics.

Maybe the emphasis on racial identity in society will prove harmful in the long run. But it's plain to see that the anti-DEI push from the Trump administration is little more than a return to white, male supremacy. For example: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/07/park-service... If I had to choose between the two, white supremacy is not what I would pick. And if it sticks around, it's going to be much mor…

The anti-DEI push is not about “white supremacy,” but rather what some disparagingly call “multiracial whiteness.” It’s basically a return to the 1990s, when we retained a distinctly Anglo-flavored dominant American culture, but anyone could assimilate into that culture.

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

#233

Post by rbetts »

freedomben wrote: post #158
rbetts wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh huh. > U.S. State Department hire Darren Beattie wrote on X: "Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men." https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-darren-beattie-state...

Yes, to be clear I'm not suggesting they have pure motives, nor am I suggesting they don't deserve the criticism. You are reading into my statement things that aren't there. What I'm saying is that's irrelevant to the claim they are making. It is an ad hominem, which is a formal logical fallacy and has been for a very long time (going back well over 2,000 years)[1]. It didn't used to be controversial to say that ad h…

The claim we are arguing is "anti-DEI stuff is predicated on the idea that civil rights are bad and that white (straight dude) rule is good.". You said this claim is an ad hominem fallacy. I quoted someone in the administration who is literally saying "competent white must be in charge," an exact example of what the claim is stating.

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

#234

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #29
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 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.

Thank you, I appreciate the find.

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

#235

Post by rdtsc »

freejazz wrote: post #62
rdtsc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The burden of proof in constructive dismissal cases lies with the employee. The only practical way is if somehow an executive breaks ranks and exposes some list or email or private conversation where he they were planning this. A harder way is some coordinating action from employees. All get together to figure out the patterns.

Juries are allowed to infer intent. They do not need an explicit statement admitting it. To be honest, I find it very weird that you quoted that part and had the response you did as if you knew what you were talking about. By your logic, intent would essentially be impossible to prove in just about any circumstance. Obviously, that's not true. In reality, there's tons of caselaw about when intent can be inferred by a…

> To be honest, I find it very weird that you quoted that part and had the response you did as if you knew what you were talking about.

Well honesty is always key, I find.

> Obviously, that's not true. In reality, there's tons of caselaw about when intent can be inferred by a jury for any claim requiring intent.

By one juror or two, and if the defense lawyers are dummies and fail to do their job. Corporations like IBM have lawyers on retainer and they are not that incompetent.

It will be hard to infer intent if the defense can present some evidence of “increased efficiency”, “working together” and “consolidating”. Without a smoking gun piece of evidence proving the contrary it would be an uphill battle, especially for one individual plaintiff.

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

#236

Post by Timon3 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #231
Timon3 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The goal is to measure merit. Objective metrics are the nearest thing we have to achieving that goal. If there is a better metric, you use that instead. But if the best metric we have isn't perfect, that's no argument for doing something even worse. You may notice that I didn't argue against objective metrics at all? All I've said is that objective metrics don't mean you're directly measuring merit. It's important…

> You may notice that I didn't argue against objective metrics at all? All I've said is that objective metrics don't mean you're directly measuring merit. It's important to keep this in mind, for example by ensuring equal access to specialized training materials. But then who are you arguing against? Is there someone strongly opposed to providing equal access to training materials, e.g. by making them available in sc…

> But then who are you arguing against? Is there someone strongly opposed to providing equal access to training materials, e.g. by making them available in school libraries?

The materials aren't available. Why do you think that is?

> In general the poor kids live in higher density areas and the affluent kids live in the suburbs.

Ah, and that means we can ignore poor kids who don't fall into this pattern, as well as poor kids who live too far away from libraries?

> Actual perfect meritocracy is impossible because actual perfect anything is impossible. But meritocracy is the goal and what you want is to get closer to it. Which providing better study materials in school libraries can do, but that isn't what anybody is complaining about when they're complaining about DEI.

You're ignoring that this is only part of the equation, as the tutoring etc. is also missing. There must be special programs for the disadvantaged to level the playing field here, but that's what anti-DEI advocates also complain about!

Actual meritocracy isn't the goal when you argue that the disadvantaged should be fine with far worse resources and opportunities, as you've done in this thread. You've repeatedly argued that it's fine if they have far higher time investments and far worse materials, as long as they theoretically could achieve similar things as the rich. That's simply not meritocracy.

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

#237

Post by rdtsc »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #59
rdtsc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The burden of proof in constructive dismissal cases lies with the employee. The only practical way is if somehow an executive breaks ranks and exposes some list or email or private conversation where he they were planning this. A harder way is some coordinating action from employees. All get together to figure out the patterns.

It depends on the state, but you don’t have to prove intent, you have to prove that the conditions of your job changed enough that it is an unreasonable burden. If they transfer you to a location that requires an additional hour of commuting, you just have to prove that the commute takes an extra hour.

> If they transfer you to a location that requires an additional hour of commuting, you just have to prove that the commute takes an extra hour.

Oh that’s easy to prove. But then what? Does your employment contract prohibit commutes.

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

#238

Post by Finnucane »

freedomben wrote: post #158
rbetts wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh huh. > U.S. State Department hire Darren Beattie wrote on X: "Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men." https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-darren-beattie-state...

Yes, to be clear I'm not suggesting they have pure motives, nor am I suggesting they don't deserve the criticism. You are reading into my statement things that aren't there. What I'm saying is that's irrelevant to the claim they are making. It is an ad hominem, which is a formal logical fallacy and has been for a very long time (going back well over 2,000 years)[1]. It didn't used to be controversial to say that ad h…

it’s okay to attack a person’s motives when those motives are just racist as fuck. The arguments put forth by the ‘anti-DEI’ crowd are what is known logically as ‘bullshit.’

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

#239

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

croes wrote: post #55
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…

Merit seems to be highly subjective given that the people in current US administration are all hired based on merit.

I'd just say that I find it very frustrating that the argument for "one side" is how insane "the other side" is, because then that pretends that reasonable solutions (and not what I would call "compromises") don't exist, because you're only looking at the extremes.

Yes, I think it's nuts to replace "DEI hires" with DUI hires and pretend that is "merit based", and I think the US has become a pretty full-blown kakistocracy (my new favorite word) right now.

But while I agree with the purported goals of DEI, I often saw it go "off the rails" in practice, and lead to a cottage industry of pseudoscience-based "DEI consultants". I'll show my hand: when it comes to DEI, I absolutely get behind the "I" part of it - everyone should feel welcome and included at work. When it comes to the "D" part, while I support outreach to cast as wide a net as possible when it comes to things like hiring, too often I saw this devolve into soft quotas and semi-performative hand wringing when some job distribution didn't exactly match the wider population distribution. The "E" part I think was frankly insane and just "equality of outcome" over "equality of opportunity" with window dressing - and yes, I've heard how backers framed the equity part, but in practice I always saw it looking for excuses as to why people who got ahead were privileged and why people who didn't were marginalized, regardless of the individual's actual circumstances.

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

#240

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Timon3 wrote: post #236
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may notice that I didn't argue against objective metrics at all? All I've said is that objective metrics don't mean you're directly measuring merit. It's important to keep this in mind, for example by ensuring equal access to specialized training materials. But then who are you arguing against? Is there someone strongly opposed to providing equal access to training materials, e.g. by making them available in sc…

> But then who are you arguing against? Is there someone strongly opposed to providing equal access to training materials, e.g. by making them available in school libraries? The materials aren't available. Why do you think that is? > In general the poor kids live in higher density areas and the affluent kids live in the suburbs. Ah, and that means we can ignore poor kids who don't fall into this pattern, as well as p…

> The materials aren't available. Why do you think that is?

To begin with, they often are. A lot of school libraries actually have test prep materials available. They don't all have them because libraries are locally administered and each locality gets to make its own choices, but if that's the case in your locality then you can direct your complaints to the town council rather than the federal government.

> Ah, and that means we can ignore poor kids who don't fall into this pattern, as well as poor kids who live too far away from libraries?

This is the thing where perfect is impossible. If you live in an urban area, having a library within walking distance is feasible because there are enough people there to justify it. If you live in a rural area, it isn't. What do you propose to do about it?

> You're ignoring that this is only part of the equation, as the tutoring etc. is also missing. There must be special programs for the disadvantaged to level the playing field here, but that's what anti-DEI advocates also complain about!

Rich people will pay for things that aren't scalable. If your parents make $20M/year, they can spend $1M/year on their kid. If you spent $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US, the cost would be $74 Trillion, which exceeds the US GDP. And there is a threshold past which additional spending has diminishing returns. Again, the goal is to get as close to measuring merit as feasible; "closer than now" is possible but perfection isn't.

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