IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by s1artibartfast » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 11:16 PM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #304

s1artibartfast wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to education, I'm not attached to SAT scores. Pick any non racial metric of merit, and I'm OK with it. Income is fine, not a protected clause. Random is fine too. Just don't promote or penalize people based on race. With respect to jobs, if you agree the most qualified person should get it, we are similarly aligned. If you agree with all that, we are good, not matter what it is called. I just call it non…

I'm not sure this is terribly relevant given where the conversation has gone, but in your example, college admissions, race was essentially used as a tie breaker between equally qualified candidates. I suspect that's how it ended up being used in a lot of places (aside from deliberate outreaches to encourage applications, etc). Beyond that though, I'm not sure not getting into harvard is exactly a "grave injustice".…

I have argued elsewhere that Harvard has no obligation to accept anyone. However, the civil Rights act does prevent discrimination based on race if they do.

The supreme Court case on the admissions topic showed extremely clearly that race was not just a tiebreaker.

Imo, the far more egregious use is public universities.

Similarly, if I run an organization, I can choose to serve 10 or 10,000. I just can't hang out a sign saying "no blacks/whites allowed".

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

#332

Post by scarface_74 » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 11:17 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #300

nelblu wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same companies were telling is how well it worked and they had the numbers to back it up. I took a new job in 2022, at that time everyone was still working from home. My boss, who was a VP at that time, said isn't this amazing? We save on fuel, time, spend more time at home etc. Productivity has been amazing and all. Two years later in early 2024 when they started pushing RTO, same guy repeats the standard bullshit…

Why is it not possible both are/were true? At the time, WFH was new for most organizations - and yes it feels pretty great. Over time, however, fractures in the team, collaborations, efficiency start to show and people change their mind. Certain tasks can be best done in solitude at home. Others... require collaboration. Collaboration that's scheduled in meetings or the dreaded video call are not the same as spontane…

What you call “popping your head in someone’s cube”, I call “distraction from doing deep work”.

I’ve seen studies where it takes on average over 20 minutes to recover from an interruption.

My job is to be heavily collaborative with clients and coworkers in consulting. I’m more efficient with a screen share and a shared Lucid chart than I ever was on a whiteboard.

I want an organized meeting on my calendar to discuss things where everyone is prepared to discuss issues collaboratively instead of random interruptions.

No I’m not an anti-social introvert. I am the first person to talk to clients after sales, I have no problem hopping on a plane to talk to customers, business dinners, working with a leading implementation teams, etc - all remotely.

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

#333

Post by derf_ » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 11:19 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #170

harimau777 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue that I have is that I've almost never seen an anti-DEI advocate actually engage with the issues. Even if I ultimately disagreed with them, I could respect someone who was willing to look at the problems the US is having with inequality and present a reasoned argument for alternatives to DEI. However, what I usually see is people either ignoring the issues people are facing, ignoring the arguments put forth…

I don't like DEI and am willing to engage. The US has a huge disparity of outcomes along racial lines. This is a legacy of slavery as well as social and governmental discrimination following slavery. [Racial biases persist today, but are much better today than the past, and we should focus on elimination of those biases, not adding new ones.] These factors result in real disparity in capabilities and merit today. Thi…

> I think our laws and institutions should strive to be race blind and treat people equally, as individuals...

One of the things I was told in my mandatory DEI training was that male job applicants will frequently apply for jobs even when they satisfy less than half of the required qualifications, but female job applicants rarely do. Additionally, language in the job description that hints at a stereotypical 'tech bro' culture can also be off-putting to female candidates. So just by being aware of these issues and paying attention to them when crafting your job posting, you can get a more representative distribution of applicants. You then evaluate those applicants on their actual merits.

But if you are scaring off half the population before they even get to the interview, you are greatly reducing the chances of hiring the best candidate, and certainly not treating the individuals equally.

That is just for gender, but I am certain you can find similar things for race.

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

#334

Post by rayiner » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 11:26 PM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #327

rayiner wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m trying to establish what people think “diversity” means. The foundational premise of the civil rights movement is that race is a superficial characteristic and people are the same. Accepting that as true, the concept of “diversity” makes sense only as a confirmation about the absence of irrational racial discrimination. But OP suggested that diversity itself was a good thing, which makes no sense because racial d…

> All else being equal, it’s not possible for a “racially diverse” team to function differently than a racially homogenous one. And if all horses are perfectly spherical, they'd be awfully hard to ride. The plain fact is that people are discriminated, for and against, based solely on their appearance. It happens today and it sure happened 100 years ago.

> The plain fact is that people are discriminated, for and against, based solely on their appearance. It happens today and it sure happened 100 years ago.

What does that have to do with how someone does their job?

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

#335

Post by rayiner » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 11:28 PM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #330

rayiner wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the motte. But the bailey is anti-white discrimination through the application of different standards to different races: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-chart-illustrates-graphic...

So the chart says: > Acceptance rates for students with slightly higher and slightly lower than average GPAs and test scores are displayed in the other columns. In other words, the table above displays acceptance rates by race/ethnicity for students applying to US medical schools with average academic credentials, and just slightly above and slightly below average academic credentials. So, uh, what? The argument is t…

> The argument is that it's now awful and horrible that average black students are accepted more frequently than average white students? Who cares.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 cares.

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

#336

Post by ruraljuror » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 11:30 PM UTC

nunez wrote: post #193

nelblu wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same companies were telling is how well it worked and they had the numbers to back it up. I took a new job in 2022, at that time everyone was still working from home. My boss, who was a VP at that time, said isn't this amazing? We save on fuel, time, spend more time at home etc. Productivity has been amazing and all. Two years later in early 2024 when they started pushing RTO, same guy repeats the standard bullshit…

It's likely that both can be true: he meant what he said in 2022 but _had_ to mean what he said in 2024.

Also that somebody could change their mind after two years of experience.

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

#337

Post by s1artibartfast » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 11:32 PM UTC

__egb__ wrote: post #293

s1artibartfast wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we don't agree what DEI is. I'm against different criteria for people based on race. This is most apparent in school admissions and affirmative action. I think it is a clear violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to have dual standards based on race. Also, I don't appreciate you blatant racism putting all white people into a single stereotype, not do I think it is accurate

> I'm against different criteria for people based on race. Take away affirmative action and any explicit race-based admissions and hiring programs and we’re still left with different criteria based on race. For example, it’s been shown that resumes with names perceived as “Black” get less attention than those with names perceived as “white”[1][2]. In another of your comments you acknowledged that such discrimination…

I would 100% support blind screening and application where possible. Also educating recruiters and diversifying pipelines. My job had the latter, and I supported it.

What I don't approve of was my annual bonus depending hitting on targets for % minority hires. That shouldn't be on my mind when I'm interviewing candidates.

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

#338

Post by onetimeusename » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 11:36 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #320

onetimeusename wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Holy baloney, that is some top grade insane rambling. (Seriously, "Hitler-centric"? Are we just throwing darts at the scary word board now?) The administration pays lip service to getting rid of DEI, but then tries to erase genuine American heroes like Harriet Tubman while hiring completely unqualified candidates like Pete Hegseth, glorifying genocidal maniacs like Andrew Jackson, and restoring racist Confederate mon…

[flagged]

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

#339

Post by disambiguation » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 11:36 PM UTC

jensensbutton wrote: post #289

disambiguation wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All social injustice stems from the first law of economics: there isn't enough to go around. DEI will come and go, but so long as we lack the wealth to meet everyones needs (and wants), there will always be inequity. The real question is, does anyone have an idea of what a fair world looks like in the mean time? Why do people disagree on what that fair world looks like? Is it a fools errand to try and make the world…

I think this is a perfect example of gp's comment.

GPs comment is a perfect example of GPs comment. The burden of proof is on the person trying to make a point. They gave no arguments or evidence in their favor. I lay out a point that shows they have no ground to stand on.

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

#340

Post by scarface_74 » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 11:37 PM UTC

alabastervlog wrote: post #128

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.

About a year ago I moved to a new, largish company and, for the first time in my career, got to see how a company can be bad at remote work. It's by being bad at work, period, but in ways that can be partially mitigated by being in-person. Poor documentation of processes, lots of know-the-right-person involved in getting anything done or figured out, using Teams (its design is remarkably awful for organizing and comm…

And being in an office doesn’t help if no one on your team is in the same office. If you work in a large company that has multiple offices, you are still going to have the sane problem because eventually the person you need is not going to be in your office.

Even the small companies I’ve worked at (100-700 people) had multiple offices where you had to coordinate time to meet with the people you needed.

I’ve also worked remotely for the second largest employer in the US. Amazon has internal “interest” channels for each service team (the team responsible for an AWS service). Anyone could ask a question and usually one of the developers of the service would help.