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

#361

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:43 AM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #316

Timon3 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Rich people have more money" isn't an interesting fact, it's just the definition of rich people. That's not what I said. This is bordering on bad faith, please don't do that. > The term "DEI" has been applied to disparate impact rules and other policies that amount to race quotas and correspondingly garner strong opposition. If you want to advance good policies, you should stop using the same term to apply to them…

Personally I appreciate your merit. Starting the race 100 meters ahead of the other runners probably doesn't get you a very accurate measure of who is the fastest.

The issue is that it's not an athletic competition. If someone is better at heart surgery, it doesn't matter if it's because their parents could afford books and someone else's couldn't, that's still the person you want doing heart surgery.

If you then want to buy books for people who can't afford them, that's an entirely different proposal than giving the job to someone who isn't as qualified.

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

#362

Post by jaredhallen » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:50 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #259

chneu wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DEI is just giving other people the chance to setup the opportunity pipeline that already exists for white people in a white dominated society. It isn't a law. It's just looking at history and going, "They'd probably be as successful if there was a pipeline for those folks to get there, since that pipeline doesn't exist we need to represent them to allow the pipeline to be built." You also don't seem to fully know wh…

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

This seems to be mostly a discussion in good faith, so I'm going to engage. There is definitely some ambiguity around the definition, and that's because DEI isn't law. Particularly in the context of this discussion, different companies implement different policies. So when asking if it's essentially affirmative action, the answer is "it depends".

But to shift gears, I've seen good arguments on both sides here. It seems like (in this discussion), there is a fair amount of agreement that the root of the problem has to do with disadvantaged folks lacking the same opportunities due to historical factors. So that's a good starting point.

The crux of the issue seems to be whether the appropriate course of action is to level the playing field for individuals who are starting from a disadvantage. This can be described as "equal outcome" rather than "equal opportunity". There are pros and cons to both options, but to put a fine point on it, I'm just not aware of any actions that can be taken to effect "equal outcome" that don't result in unfair circumstances at the individual level. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

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

#363

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:51 AM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #318

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not what I said. This is bordering on bad faith, please don't do that. The premise of a meritocracy isn't that everyone is the same, it's that everyone is subject to the same standard. The alternatives are things like racism or nepotism where someone gets the position even if they're not expected to do a better job, because of their race or because their father owns the company. But merit isn't a fixed prope…

> People don't strongly oppose libraries that stock study books. They oppose race quotas. People absolutely do oppose libraries. They also oppose programs that pay for tutors for poor kids, programs that allocate more money to schools in poorer neighborhoods and basically anything else you can think of. But I do admit it must make your life incredibly simple to just pretend racism doesn't exist and everyone ends up i…

> People absolutely do oppose libraries. They also oppose programs that pay for tutors for poor kids, programs that allocate more money to schools in poorer neighborhoods and basically anything else you can think of.

Opposition to spending in general is distinct from opposition to a specific policy because the policy has a deleterious effect, and is much easier to overcome if you would e.g. source the money from a constituency that supports the policy, or offer to cut something else to make room in the budget.

> But I do admit it must make your life incredibly simple to just pretend racism doesn't exist and everyone ends up in the exact position they deserve.

Straw man.

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

#364

Post by slowmovintarget » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 12:55 AM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #313

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kakistoc…

> 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. I feel like it's easy to notice the examples where it stood out. A survey of all the actual results might (or might not!) change your opinion. That being said, it's easy to say stuff like "everyone should be treated equal…

Not everyone should be treated equally, because not everyone behaves the same. Everyone should get the same opportunity to excel or fail, but you shouldn't treat excellence the same as failure or mediocrity.

Talking about how to encourage more excellence... now that's an interesting conversation.

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

#365

Post by osigurdson » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 1:02 AM UTC

andrekandre wrote: post #351

osigurdson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Honestly I think nearly anyone would do the same. Going against the flow is the rare territory of the founder.

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

#366

Post by bcoates » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 1:05 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.

That seems to indicate a catastrophically low bus factor--people get sick, take vacations, sleep, quit, etc. If you’re blocked on an IC doing anything other than finishing their task you've got a bigger problem than them going out of pocket for a day, fix the real problem.

(If they're a manager/decisionmaker of some sort then they better learn how to multitask online, which is like a 30 year old skill requirement at this point)

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

#367

Post by martinald » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 1:11 AM UTC

nunez wrote: post #206

martinald wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's bad management per se. I think some people are very well suited for remote; some people aren't. Probably a rough extension of introversion/extroversion in the people mix. If you take a bunch of very extroverted people and have them all work remotely they will not have a good time (in general). Equally; if you take a bunch of very introverted people and have them in an office they'll really not li…

Seeing posts on here and Blind advocating for interviews to go back on-site due to cheating next to "RTO bad" posts is wild af. It's wilder still that the handful of times I've dealt with this have all been before RTO!

I don't mean completely in person, but I do expect a lot of companies will want to meet the person in real life at least once. Which adds huge logistics problems.

Btw I'm not saying 'cheating', that's one thing. I am meaning industrial scale fraud with remote candidates. Eg having one person interview then another (much worse) person gets the job. There are gangs that are going to almost unbelievable lengths to do this.

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

#368

Post by martinald » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 1:13 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #153

martinald wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's bad management per se. I think some people are very well suited for remote; some people aren't. Probably a rough extension of introversion/extroversion in the people mix. If you take a bunch of very extroverted people and have them all work remotely they will not have a good time (in general). Equally; if you take a bunch of very introverted people and have them in an office they'll really not li…

I think both problems are real, and your last paragraph really gets at why. People and jobs vary widely, and so does the quality of management. If you have a strong business and reasonably mature teams, you might not even realize problems with your management culture and practice are until something big changes; conversely, if you have strong managers you might have been able to soak up a lot of personnel and job iss…

Agreed, but falling commercial real estate prices will allow some forward thinking companies to go back to private offices for developers, which arguably is the best solution (apart from commute/flexibility) for most, productivity wise.

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

#369

Post by bcoates » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 1:13 AM UTC

martinald wrote: post #17

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 don't know if it's bad management per se. I think some people are very well suited for remote; some people aren't. Probably a rough extension of introversion/extroversion in the people mix. If you take a bunch of very extroverted people and have them all work remotely they will not have a good time (in general). Equally; if you take a bunch of very introverted people and have them in an office they'll really not li…

Re:introvert/extravert I suspect it's the reverse.

Extraverts, broadly, aren't afraid of picking up the phone and calling you to chat about the email they sent you three minutes ago while driving and also on mute in a zoom; introverts can use remote work to be unreachable in a way they can't if you can just walk over and impose yourself on them.

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

#370

Post by Izkata » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 1:13 AM 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…

> Over time, however, fractures in the team, collaborations, efficiency start to show and people change their mind.

Also from what I saw, juniors struggled without always-available guidance while mid and seniors could get a lot done by avoiding interruptions. If the mix of employees changed in those couple of years, that alone could have been the entire difference.