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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

#271

Post by foobiekr »

BeetleB wrote: post #113
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…

> 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.

The company was publicly lying that it did because execs thought it would help us recruit younger people.

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

#272

Post by givemeethekeys »

BurningFrog wrote: post #249
fazeirony wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but over time it became clear it didn't. are profits spiralling downward? are these businesses, overall, making less profit? because of remote workers? or is it closer to the truth to say that no amount of profit - or asserting authority over workers - is ever enough and since companies are in a position of power to squeeze blood from a stone, they will?

If that how advantageous you think running a company is, you should definitely start one!

There's a complication to starting a company. The execs answer to the board and investors. Since so many companies are unprofitable for so long, it is very difficult to start a company today without either being rich or being beholden.

I'm going to guess that most people who start companies are beholden. The investors need people to RTO for some important reasons - real estate values, economies built on supporting workers, and of course - some amount of lifestyle differentiation (a luxury of having fuck you money is being able to spend more time with friends and loved ones than the peasant class).

WFH is a one of the most disruptive cultural shifts ever - pushback was only expected.

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

#273

Post by Hobadee »

I really don't mind RTO. As a mostly-remote worker right now, I would actually prefer a few office days each week; being right next to colleagues and able to spitball news, ideas, and other work (and non-work) stuff is great for my knowledge, abilities, and morale. With that being said, It's also nice to be able to get uninterrupted heads-down time, or just work at my own pace at home some times.

I think 3 days in-office and 2 days WFH is the sweet spot, at least for me.

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

#274

Post by jdgoesmarching »

rayiner wrote: post #183
skizm wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "anit-DEI stuff" is the same as the DEI stuff from before this administration: performative. Originally DEI was because the people demanded it of companies, now the anti-DEI version is because the administration will make your life hell if you don't fall in line. Personally I fully agree that building a diverse workforce is more profitable in the long run than ignoring diversity (unless your company will die in t…

Do you think people who have different skin colors do their jobs differently? Can you articulate how you think your white workers do their jobs differently than say your hispanic workers?

Everyone does their jobs differently due to innumerable variables, including life experience and cultural background.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish here? Your bad faith anti-DEI rants are basically half this thread.

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

#275

Post by foobiekr »

tempest_ wrote: post #139
missedthecue wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah I feel like blaming management is like blaming teachers when students got bad scores during remote-schooling. You can give them all the resources they need to succeed, but if they'd rather go to the dog park in the middle of the day, there's not much that can be done. Meanwhile, it's worth noting that some students excelled at remote schooling. But most are reading at a level 3 grades behind.

The metaphor breaks down a bit when you consider that teachers don't generally get to pick their students while organizations get to choose their employees. Failing to choose the right employees is a failure of management.

Unfortunately many of the employees _most interested_ in remote work are such because they want to do things other than work.

Not all. I work with some remotes who are awesome. But the 24 year olds who want to work remotely from Thailand aren't getting their shit done.

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

#276

Post by bigfatkitten »

MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #134
repiret wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Veering off topic, but this letter is in a variable width font. Were there typewriters that could do that? Yes, and in fact one of the most popular was from IBM itself [1], released in 1944. > The letterhead and body text aren’t aligned, so if it did go through a press it took two passes. It was pretty standard practice to have pre-printed letterhead, hence the cachet of something being issued on "company letterhea…

> It was pretty standard practice to have pre-printed letterhead, hence the cachet of something being issued on "company letterhead". Take a sheet of company letterhead, pop it in the ol' Executive, and type-type-type.

This was indeed standard until colour laser printers became cheap (and physically printing letters became less common), well into the 2000s.

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

#277

Post by bigfatkitten »

ghaff wrote: post #155
MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Veering off topic, but this letter is in a variable width font. Were there typewriters that could do that? Yes, and in fact one of the most popular was from IBM itself [1], released in 1944. > The letterhead and body text aren’t aligned, so if it did go through a press it took two passes. It was pretty standard practice to have pre-printed letterhead, hence the cachet of something being issued on "company letterhea…

Of course it was typed by a secretary. At a computer company I worked at starting in the mid 1980s it was not unheard of for some execs to have their admins print out emails for them and type in the handwritten responses. This was an internal-only system. No external email.

I know many old lawyers who still can’t type. They have admin staff (and junior solicitors) to draft correspondence for them.

They also charge enough for their services, as senior partners of big firms for it to make no sense for them to do their own typing.

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

#278

Post by kelseyfrog »

leereeves wrote: post #269
kelseyfrog wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would an opportunity pipeline for white people look like? How would we detect one if it were to exist?

Why ask me? It was chneu who claimed it existed. Edit: Yes, I made a bold assertion, based on the view from the working class and the many intelligent white people I know who were held back by not being wealthy or well-connected. For those outside the elite pipeline, it's an advantage not to be white. If there's a pipeline I don't know about, I'd like to hear it. Point it out so more people can join the pipeline to s…

You claimed it didn't exist[1]. Presumably you had some criteria, found no evidence and then made a conclusion. What was your criteria?

1. A substantially different claim than "We have no evidence for its existence" or "We don't know that it exists".

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

#279

Post by foobiekr »

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…

Scott Alexander has a good summary of what went wrong with the former mindset (fill the job with the qualified candidate becomes mimic the population at large or else): https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-...

The problem with DEI is that it did, in fact, turn into a policy of racial quotas, only the quota-ness was denied even though the threat of legal action was omnipresent.

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

#280

Post by jiscariot »

pjc50 wrote: post #123
Etheryte wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The current example is Target vs Costco. (Because of a black pastor-led boycott of Target for dropping their DEI policy)

Target basically decided to stop "over-delivering" on DEI. e.g. stuff like $2 billion to black-owned businesses, increase black workforce by 20%, etc. Even with the rollbacks, they are probably doing on average more DEI for the sector, than a Costco, Amazon.

They definitely messed up the messaging, though, in that they positioned themselves to be somehow boycotted by both left and right.

Costco is 20x the business as Target for numerous reasons, I kind of doubt any of it has to do with DEI.

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