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

theregister.com

461–470 of 504 posts

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

#461
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The government authority in charge of employment decides whether that change is enough of a change of the original job that it constitutes constructive dismissal. If so, you can quit your job and are eligible for unemployment and any other legal benefits of having been fired without cause, and a claim is put against the employers account in the unemployment system.

Oh for unemployment sure, but the claim here is that the person hired under a DEI initiative is now let go, but under a different scheme of “restructuring”. Now their job would be to find redress and either reverse that or win monetary damages. It’s not impossible but it’s an uphill battle unless someone find a written directive somewhere a red flag. Or all the terminated employees somewhere coordinate to prove a par…

I wasn’t commenting on that case. Constructive dismissal is irrelevant in that instance if you have been let go since you don’t have to prove that your job was changed if it no longer exists.

Also, it is perfectly legal to terminate someone in most of the US under a restructure.

My original response was just pointing out that proving constructive dismissal doesn’t have to do with the intent of the employer, merely the effect of those actions. In your original example the employer can’t pretend that asking someone to commute to Alaska three days a week is reasonable and therefore they weren’t fired without cause when they refuse to do that.

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

#462

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 think definition is definitely an issue in the debate. What you’re describing I knew as affirmative action. I’ve only understood DEI as being willing to hire from diverse backgrounds, implemented by posting job positions in diverse areas like HBCUs. I’ve not personally seen any examples of different criteria for different people. Is this actually documented as something companies with DEI initiatives were doing pos…

You can find a lot of this in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. At its most extreme an Asian Student and Black student with the exact same MCAT test score would have a 21% acceptance rate for the former and 80% acceptance rate for the latter. The lawsuit revealed the admissions office would use intangibles to discriminate, like giving Asian students low "Personality scores"

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

#463
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of that proposal is that the test scores are inaccurate as a result of the economic disparity, because people with less income have less resources to prepare for the test. That would apply in the case of an economic disparity because having more resources allows you to artificially receive a higher score. It's not about accepting someone with less merit out of charity but rather about adjusting for a meas…

> But the economic disparity is the reason for the racial disparity, because otherwise we expect people of different races are equally intelligent, right? So the economic disparity is the real one and accounting for that inherently accounts for the racial disparity as well, and you don't need both. That's only true if you assume prejudices like racism and sexism don't exist anymore, but they do. Even today, these are…

Yes but what prejudices we accept and which we do not is arbitrary. You have no choice over your height. Taller people can have more promotions and more dating opportunities, but we don't have affirmative action for short people, and we don't treat women who say they don't date short guys like we treat women who say they won't date black guys. There's always going to be discrimination, what form of discrimination is acceptable or unacceptable is still arbitrary.

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

#464
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

after covid is an illusion, there is no such thing as "after" for an ongoing pandemic.... and the company you work for seems rather incompetent

Unless you are willing to say there is an ongoing flu pandemic then I can't really agree with you.

Except one doesn't get the flu every 6 months like most people seem to get covid ; at most one gets the REAL flu every 10 years.

SOURCE: several studies and my own conclusion observing friends...

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

#465
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

after covid is an illusion, there is no such thing as "after" for an ongoing pandemic.... and the company you work for seems rather incompetent

> after covid is an illusion, there is no such thing as "after" for an ongoing pandemic.... The US death rate from Covid in Q4 2023 (so, pre-Trump II) is roughly the same as the US death rate from influenza. 14.9 or 16.8 deaths per 100,000 for Covid (first number is 12 months ending with Q4 2023, second number is the three month rolling window), 13.5 or 15.1 deaths per 100,000 for influenza. "After covid" is a perfec…

you are accounting for immediate deaths; you have to keep in mind that covid causes immune dysfunction, heart disease etc; 10% of people are still not recovered after 4 years...

long term effects are rare in the (proper, confirmed flu, not your cold you think is the flu) flu

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

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand how that conclusion follows from that comparison. We also wouldn’t describe the current day as “after the flu”. Both are endemic.

The phrase you picked to describe them is "endemic", rather than "ongoing pandemics". There's a reason for that.

by that token; you can argue HIV is endemic and nothing should be done about it... people will understand wearing condoms but apparently can't understand masking... hmm... neither are very difficult to do, I'd argue that wearing a condom is more tricky in some aspects.

the reason is simple: wearing a mask reminds people there is a risk and it doesn't "look good", despite its many advantages for many pathogens and pollutants; also acknowledging indoor air quality is crap is hard for businesses (and governments) to do since they would need to invest into better ventilation and filtration systems.

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

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In theory, perhaps, but in practice nothing is being done to help boys. Untrue. There’s a ton of work being done on how to better support boys in school. > In fact, DEI programs in universities continue to favor young women even as they approach 60% of students. What are these DEI programs favoring university admission for young women?

Here's the opinion of the Society for Women Engineers: > Cutting these [DEI] programs means fewer resources for students that need support. It’s devastating for women https://swe.org/magazine/dei-faces-rising-waters/ That's an admission that DEI in schools supports women, from some of its biggest advocates. Where are the programs to support boys in school? Edit: Of course, the mere existence of the Society for Women…

Women are not close to even 50% of engineering students or industry or academic engineers yet you go after society of women engineers?

Let's flip it - nursing, where men are a minority:

https://www.aamn.org/

Oh look, a society dedicated to men in nursing. This is completely reasonable. The idea to go from "women are most of college graduates" to "society of women engineers should not exist" is insane.

> without comparable groups for men

Did you even try?

https://www.naesp.org/resource/male-models/

It's a serious topic in education, yes it's a thing people care about.

I studied with and was friends with women in my computer engineering major, SWE helped connect them with industry engineers who could speak about what it was like being a women in engineering.

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

#468
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the economic disparity is the reason for the racial disparity, because otherwise we expect people of different races are equally intelligent, right? So the economic disparity is the real one and accounting for that inherently accounts for the racial disparity as well, and you don't need both. That's only true if you assume prejudices like racism and sexism don't exist anymore, but they do. Even today, these are…

Yes but what prejudices we accept and which we do not is arbitrary. You have no choice over your height. Taller people can have more promotions and more dating opportunities, but we don't have affirmative action for short people, and we don't treat women who say they don't date short guys like we treat women who say they won't date black guys. There's always going to be discrimination, what form of discrimination is…

First, let's not talk about dating and work in the same argument - they are fundamentally different in many important ways, and it's not conductive to the conversation.

Second, at least call a spade a spade - according to you, when people say meritocracy they actually mean "meritocracy with handicaps for non-whites and non-males". Let's not call that "meritocracy", okay?

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

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

What about Brown v. Board of Education? Do you think that Southern schools had an obligation to accept black students or did they not have to accept anyone at all? Do you think in 1900-1945 when Harvard Yale and Columbia were putting a quota on the number of Jewish students to limit their enrollment that was fine, as Harvard has no obligation to accept anyone, Jewish or otherwise?

I think you misunderstand what I wrote. Please reread it

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

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> race was essentially used as a tie breaker between equally qualified candidates. That’s demonstrably untrue. At Harvard, an Asian candidate at the top decile of academic index scores had roughly the same admissions rate as a black candidate in the 4th decile: https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-acti... The candidates were basically competing in entirely different lanes based on race.

Then that's wrong, Harvard should not do it, and it would be good to try to create/enforce regulations that prevent them from doing it. However, that doesn't mean that all DEI efforts are bad.

There would be almost no black people at Harvard if they did not do it.
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