IBM to Managers: Move Near an Office or Leave Company::International Business Machines Corp. delivered a companywide ultimatum to managers who are still working remotely: move near an office or leave the company.

  • @[email protected]
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    511 year ago

    Step 1: Enforce RTO mandates Step 2: Fire remote employees Step 3: Replace the fired folks with remote job positions, paying 10%-15% less.

    • @[email protected]
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      251 year ago

      Or not even hire replacements, so they cut workforce AND don’t have to pay severance packages. Costs are reduced, earning are higher, shareholder are happy. Yes, it’s a relatively short term plan, but that’s what analysts and investors care about, short term returns.

  • Queen HawlSera
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    81 year ago

    Have fun with the labor shortage, you’re not dealing with a bootlicker generation, you’re dealing with the no-notice quit generation

  • @[email protected]
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    351 year ago

    So they have to move to an office, any office?

    Meaning they can no longer be remote but don’t have to be in the same office as the people they manage?

    That makes a lot of sense.

    • @[email protected]
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      381 year ago

      This is similar to what most tech companies have aligned on. I work 200 miles from my co-workers, my manager is 100 miles away, and while I’m supposed to be 100 miles away our tracking software doesn’t care if I badge in 2 miles away at my local office.

      If you’re a multinational company, you’ll be on video calls regardless of what you do, so it’s fucking stupid that they enforce these rules.

    • @[email protected]
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      31 year ago

      Well at least when I was there IBM managers where managing multiple teams across different cities.

      They had the same made up issue years ago as well. I think I went to the office maybe once or twice a year, then all of a sudden, every Friday was “Think Friday” and we had to sit in a big room and hear some sales person talk nonsense about cloud, agile development and how soon field technicians would be ditching their clipboards for digital solutions (this was a good 20 years after every tech in IBM had stopped using paper fyi).

      IBM just wants to get rid of more people and this is their plan.

      Or as it was in the past, IBM is in the business of getting out of business, and that business is good.

    • @[email protected]
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      51 year ago

      They will.

      I joined a company about eighteen months ago and was hired as fully remote. Advancement etc will depend on remaining so. Company looks good on my resume, and there’s no fucking way I’m moving to DFW in this political climate.

      Might consider the MI office, big only as hybrid. We are settled comfortably currently. I’d be ok with driving wed night to be there thurs and fri, and make the entire trip at my leisure.

      It you better believe there’s going to be a huge carrot in it for me if that comes to pass.

      I don’t even have a reason to hate the MI town the company considers an office hub. For the right job I’d even consider moving, but SO has veto on that which I respect.

      Not that MI sucks entirely. There just isn’t much there for us and it increases the drive to fam for holidays hy 4 hours or so.

      Not averse to hybrid, could sort it out easily enough, but key is that it would be a new position or promotion.

      Got the paperwork that says I’m perm remote and would happily go to bat with said paperwork, esp for the right job. Just bc the internal positions says DFW, does not mean I can’t do 3-4 days here in Kettlecorn, Ks, and another day or two at the actual office.

      But - apologies to Barbara mandrel - I was remote when remote wasn’t cool.

      Nobody is taking that away from me. Circa 2014 I learned how to be remote, for context, and executed well.

      If hiring mgr doesn’t want to give a little on “mandatory” on office days, I’m out.

      Checking in with a disability that benefits greatly from remote work, and all the paperwork on place. Just try and mandate “RTO” and see what happens.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    Cool, are they going to pay more, so people can move closer to the urban area where these offices presumably are? No? Then fuck off.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 year ago

        Yea. Most don’t make that right out of college. A lot never make that and when you do start making near that you are also the first to be let go due to how much you make.

      • pacoboyd
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        1 year ago

        Deleted comment: “Tech people already get well into the six figures starting out of college… if anything, they fucked everything up for the rest of us, then ducked out to live in a cottage in Montana somewhere during COVID. Honestly I’m tired of hearing of their “struggles”.”

        Hahahahahahahahaha. When I started with IBM in 2010 (NOT fresh out of college, about 5 years experience) I made less than 40k with them.

    • @[email protected]
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      31 year ago

      HA! They would not even pay $1 for moving expenses when they asked me to move across the country. This was 8 plus years ago and not only was the offer no extra money, it was the same money in a more remote, colder, and higher cost of living area.

    • datendefekt
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      111 year ago

      They’re still a big name in mainframes and are also a cloud hyperscaler, and they offer software development and consulting. They do a lot of research in AI and quantum computing, and even blockchain a few years ago. But altogether just a shadow of what they once were. I used to work there when Lenovo took over ThinkPad production and the hard drive business was phasing out. I couldn’t imagine being there now.

      • @[email protected]
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        71 year ago

        cloud hyperscaler

        I know you’re technically right, but their “cloud” is the weirdest offering I have ever seen

  • WashedOver
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    1 year ago

    Sure seems like a great way to avoid severance in those places it’s required.

    Amazing how the companies that “care about employees” don’t care so much these days…

    • @[email protected]
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      531 year ago

      Not sure when anyone ever thought IBM cared about employees, except maybe 40-50 years ago. They have been steadily fucking people over. I wouldn’t shed a single tear if that company went out of business.

  • @[email protected]
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    981 year ago

    They asked nicely. Then they abruptly started threatening termination. Keep in mind this is after they had to close a few offices when the regular employee RTO mandate resulted in a large amount of attrition.

    So now there are people with 120+ mile round trip commutes because they live within the cutoff distance. Nearly all meetings are video calls anyway due to team members being scattered all over the world. When folks asked leadership why in a company-wide meeting months ago they basically said to suck it up.

    This has morale pretty low, when it was already terrible even for folks that prefer in-person and live close. Some quit after the announcement. The brain drain is already causing an impact because there’s so much tribal knowledge and teams are silo’d as hell.

    Never seen a company so out of touch or be so openly hostile to their workers. It’s just wild.

    • @[email protected]
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      431 year ago

      Never seen a company so out of touch or be so openly hostile to their workers. It’s just wild.

      Everything you described in this comment happened at my org as well.

  • @[email protected]
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    101 year ago

    Such a low effort way to reduce payroll. It actually made me laugh. The position of “People Manager” has to come in to work, but I didn’t see a mention of the managed. So the people manager can be at home, working remotely with their team, or they can be on site…working remotely with their team? I wonder how many years it’s going to take for corporate American to realize times have changed. Or for some organized crackdown from the other side.

    • @[email protected]
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      51 year ago

      They are forcing managers in first and then employees next. But the managers have to be in the office first or it doesn’t work.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    “Why are we spending so much on data security and oversight?”

    “What…? What the fuck are you asking…? Those are integral for our work.”

    “Can we reduce the need for added security measures by putting a physical layer in place? Like in the old days.”

    “No? Especially not while everybody works from home, ha ha ha… ha…”

    “…”

    “…”

      • @[email protected]
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        81 year ago

        If all the IT staff join an electrical union like the ETU then we would all have better conditions

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        I’ve often wondered how the world would cope without 24 hour IT support.

        All I know is I would love to see the chaos unfold, sadly, I think more than a few lives would end as a result so I can’t condone that for all fields.

    • irotsoma
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      41 year ago

      Because we’d lose our jobs long before voting on a union. No way they’d care about the very tiny risk of very tiny fines as opposed to the huge cuts in wages to IT workers that have been made over the last decade and continue to be made.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 year ago

        Okay sure, but you do understand that’s a risk witb every corpo, right? Anything big enough can shrug off fines. Worker protections by the government aren’t what allows unions to exist, they were pushed for by already existing unions. The real strength is in numbers. They literally cannot fire all of us, or even 90% of us.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    When other companies in my city have tried this move it just means more really, really good talent hits the market to start filling open roles at my employer!