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

#351

Post by andrekandre » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:05 AM UTC

osigurdson wrote: post #20

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 think it is largely just rationalizing what is fashionable. WFH was fashionable for a while. Now WFO + AI replacement is cool.

its almost as if they are not totally rational actors and instead operating on vibes...

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

#352

Post by vharuck » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:05 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #251

relaxing wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This version of equity based on race is using race as a proxy for outcomes in life Because racism is ongoing and negatively impacts people of color, it makes sense to focus where harm is being done. There is a leftist school of thought that agrees with you (focus on class instead of race). But I personally don’t believe that a focus purely on outcomes would be applied equitably while racism still exists. > we're so…

> Nothing keeps us for helping boys in some sectors and women in others In theory, perhaps, but in practice nothing is being done to help boys. In fact, DEI programs in universities continue to favor young women even as they approach 60% of students. We're all familiar with Girls Who Code, Women in STEM, and similar organizations. Where are equivalent organizations for young men? Would it even be possible to start su…

Here's a story I was listening to today about a program at an all-boys school trying to address the growing prevalence of loneliness, depression, and bad behavior in school.

https://www.haverford.org/the-big-room-blog/blog-post/~board...

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

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Post by arccy » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:16 AM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #332

Alupis wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

1 person's deep work might mean an entire department is stuck twiddling their thumbs because they're blocked and can't reach the person absorbed in "deep work".

wfh can be great for individual productivity, but it can also seriously hamper team productivity.

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

#354

Post by Alupis » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:17 AM UTC

EasyMark wrote: post #350

Alupis wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profits don't have to spiral for something to become clear it's not working. Maybe it's as simple as "this used to take us 3 weeks but now it's taking 5"... or "we're shipping features but they have a lot more holes than before". Collaboration is pretty hard remotely when you have to schedule discussions and everything else is asynchronous. Certain tasks lend themselves greatly to WFH, but not all of them.

the bottom line profit is your primary guideline if you are succeeding. Profits have been great for most companies for quite a while now. WFH works in most cases. The current push to end it, is simply a fad amongst CEOs because it's popular, not because it is proven or has merit. If you are in a construction crew, obviously you can't work from home. If you work in an office and mostly on your own "stuff" you can work…

A company's profits can remain high even while operating very inefficiently.

You seem to have strong opinions on WFH. Find a job that agrees and allows this. If your current employer requires RTO, well.. they're paying you to be in the office so show up and stop the conspiracy theories.

It's objectively vastly more expensive to operate an office building or buildings. No organization is going to decide to incur the significant expenses and liabilities associated with operating facilities with people in them if they don't need to. Very little logic supports your claims, especially regarding the "CEO" and "fad" points you are attempting to make.

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

#355

Post by scarface_74 » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:21 AM UTC

nunez wrote: post #204

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.

I think it goes beyond bad management. These are my disadvantages of working remotely. I say all of these things as an advocate for hybrid work arrangements and co-working spaces/satellite offices: 1) Some people work better in an office. Offices are literally designed for working anyhow. 2) Some people didn't, and/or still don't, have optimal conditions in their house to work remotely. I've seen tons of people on ca…

> I've seen tons of people on camera (another thing some management likes to "encourage" by mandate) who are working out of bedrooms, closets, or other makeshift rooms in their house. This is just _asking_ for a constant barrage of distractions.

At home, there have never been more than three other people in my house, when I’m “at work” with my door closed, they knew not to bother me. At work in an office there are constant distractions.

As far as “tech sales”. I’ve lead my share of complex cloud tech projects from discovery, customer acceptance to leading the delivery - all remotely. Yes sometimes I had to travel to the client’s site. But I haven’t needed to be in the office with the people on my team (who were sometimes in another country).

My coworkers are just that my coworkers. At work, “I’m taking a step back to look at things from the thousand foot few”, “taking things to the parking lot”, and “adding on to what Becky said”. I’m a completely different person at home. At the end of the day, my “friends” at work are not interested in keeping their jobs. I go to work to make money - not friends.

I’ve worked for two companies remotely since 2020 - Amazon and now a much smaller company. They both had excellent onboarding procedures. While AWS wasn’t “remote first”, my department (Professional Services) was as is my current company. Both had “onboarding buddies” and Amazon had a list of people you should set up 1x1’s with an instructions for the relevant internal systems you should use.

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

#356

Post by leereeves » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:23 AM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #306

leereeves wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the opportunity pipeline that already exists for white people There is no opportunity pipeline for white people. There is an opportunity pipeline for a small number of well connected, wealthy people who can get their kids into elite prep schools starting from kindergarten. It's not open to working class white people. Edit: that doesn't mean no working class white person can succeed. Just that the prep school, elite…

"Small number" is doing a lot of work. Just as an example: https://heller.brandeis.edu/news/items/releases/2023/impact-... Quite a few "white people" got a start at accumulating property this way that was denied to "black people". Is it directly tied to going to college? No. Does it help? Probably.

As others have said, that is now an economic advantage. There are other economic advantages. Why not level the economic playing field for everyone?

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

#357

Post by scarface_74 » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:36 AM UTC

arccy wrote: post #353

scarface_74 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

1 person's deep work might mean an entire department is stuck twiddling their thumbs because they're blocked and can't reach the person absorbed in "deep work". wfh can be great for individual productivity, but it can also seriously hamper team productivity.

I have been in some type of team lead/architect position for almost 10 years now. 4+ years at product companies and 5+ in consulting companies. At any given time, I might have needed a decision to be made by my CxO, the client or another team.

On the other hand I might be preparing for a meeting, in a meeting, on a plane, at a customer’s site etc. On the opposite end, there is always a list of things I need to get done. I put that item as “blocked” and move on to my next item. If it is a downstream dependency as a developer, I mock it out and keep going.

If you are dependent on one person to answer a question, what happens when they go on vacation or if they are otherwise unavailable? I make it a point to not be a single point of failure.

Also, I keep my calendar up to date, including time I need to do “deep work”, when I’m traveling for business, of course meetings automatically show up. Anyone is free to put a meeting on my calendar if they need to interact with me synchronously.

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

#358

Post by scotomafascia » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:39 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #251

relaxing wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This version of equity based on race is using race as a proxy for outcomes in life Because racism is ongoing and negatively impacts people of color, it makes sense to focus where harm is being done. There is a leftist school of thought that agrees with you (focus on class instead of race). But I personally don’t believe that a focus purely on outcomes would be applied equitably while racism still exists. > we're so…

> Nothing keeps us for helping boys in some sectors and women in others In theory, perhaps, but in practice nothing is being done to help boys. In fact, DEI programs in universities continue to favor young women even as they approach 60% of students. We're all familiar with Girls Who Code, Women in STEM, and similar organizations. Where are equivalent organizations for young men? Would it even be possible to start su…

Where are the equivalent for young men? Literally all of the other hackathons ever. Girls who Code arose because of toxic men chasing girls and women out of those spaces. Women worked tirelessly for decades to make these spaces happen. Men just want to whine about it because to actually address the issue is too “woke”. I’m sorry you created your prison, but don’t look to us to bail you out while you’re punching us down for not helping.

It reminds me of the white supremacists raging about Black Miss America pageants for existing. But they were ignorant of the fact that the official Miss America pageant had a rule that said “no negroes” up until 1972-73.

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

#359

Post by scotomafascia » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:40 AM UTC

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…

Trying the ol’ Sam Donaldson dilemma from Bush Jrs first reign.

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

#360

Post by slowmovintarget » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:40 AM UTC

jensensbutton wrote: post #295

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-DEI argument is that modern racial disparities are predominantly caused by economic circumstances, e.g. black people are more likely to be poor and then less likely to have to startup capital to start their own business or be able to afford to attend a high status university. The same applies to white people who don't have affluent parents. "White people who grew up poor" are under-represented at the top of…

This is a simplistic view. E.g. how does this argument account for the data we have that someone with black sounding name will get less opportunity than someone with a white sounding name and an identical resume? In this case the lower chances to get ahead have nothing to do with economic circumstance.

https://thefederalist.com/2018/12/07/thomas-sowell-explains-...

It still has to do with economic circumstance, but here, according to Sowell it's about the cost of employing empirical discrimination (judging each specific case through complete knowledge of the individual) instead of a proxy for empirical discrimination (like likelihoods based on a non-arbitrary characteristic such as income or neighborhood).

The solutions that follow from that conclusion are to find ways to make empiricism less costly, or to change the stereotype (such as people from a poor neighborhood are likely to be a bad risk for a loan).

Systemic racism tends to apply so much economic drag to the system that any form of capitalism won't allow it to stand. Apartheid in South Africa was systemic racism, and businesses were violating those laws long before they were abolished just out of profit-motive. It became obvious and common-sense for the system to be ended. Thomas Sowell, in that same work, points out that Type II discrimination (discrimination based on arbitrary characteristics like race, ethnicity, belief... etc.) always ends up being economically unfeasible.