I hope it's not an accurate theory. Downsizing this way means your most self-motivated, productive employees are likely to leave long before those who drive to the office because they feel they have no other choice.
Like Best Buy and Yahoo at the points at which they decided to co-locate, IBM is a business that needs to do something new.
Our businesses are shrinking, so let's try something new: make our employees less productive.
Despite the positive spin the writer puts on the plan, to me it seems like the death throes of past-their-prime companies.
And based on what others have said in these comments, the change is mostly affecting marketing employees.
I'd say co-location is a pet tactic of the writer, without any real evidence that remote work is anything but progress.
If a job can be done remotely, it should be done remotely.
But don't worry, IBM has tens of thousands of strap hangers who've been surviving layoffs for decades.
The bottom line will get brighter. The future of the company will get darker. It's the Jack Welch school of management.
Workers know. Workers who have worked at remote offices know that the best career-advancing projects happen at HQ where you can schmooze with the executive staff. They know that when the company hits a bad quarter, that the layoffs will disproportionately hit the remote office. They know that the best co-workers will be recruited, and offered little bonuses to relocate to HQ, and they're stuck working at the remote office.
It just blows my mind that in the Internet Age: we're still stuck in this 1890's model of "must work at HQ". Even among the very leaders of the information age: IBM, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and etc.
The whole point of the Internet and networked computing was "It does not matter WHERE you are." Unfortunately, to the businespeople who run these corporations, it very much DOES matter. If you're not in their office, they don't control you.
So we're all forced to move to these areas where the big corporations have invested in their corporate headquarters. It's the most secure way to work. And you end up paying either through commute-time, or outrageously inflated real-estate prices.
Damn. I finally get it. Thanks!
"I hope it's not an accurate theory. Downsizing this way means your most self-motivated, productive employees are likely to leave long before those who drive to the office because they feel they have no other choice."
That's the way downsizing always works. The most productive employees will have an easier time finding new jobs, and will move on as soon as the company admits it is in trouble.
The not-that-good stay, but you force them to be in the office, which is bad. But being in the office will turn these not-that-good into gets-the-job-done (I've seen 4-5 developers hunch over a trivial problem but, in the end, they solved it) and since you already have the product built and maybe you just adapt it, that is all you need.
Downsizing this way means people with kids or other obligations that make controlling your own schedule convenient are likely to leave long before those who drive to the office because they feel they have no other choice.
FTFY.
Ehh, I don't have kids or have a need to control my own schedule. I still work remote as much as possible. If my job said "no more working remote", I'd be hunting for another place of employment.
From my own anecdotal experience, it's pretty prevalent that the high-performers in the software industry also have some sort of flex schedule that includes remote work.
I personally know quite a few people where work from home is basically another word for coasting or taking care of personal stuff while logged into company's system. And since many of them are hardly motivated for technical work it is not going to be easy to get another job with similar compensation along with WFH facility.
I went through this article and it seems like a lot of FUD. The line to note is:
> Though not every department at IBM will be asked to colocate, many will.
So yes, some departments have been "asked" to colocate. However, AFAIK nobody is being "forced". My team lead was asked to colocate but decided to stay where they are because of personal reasons (family).
Speaking generally, I've had incredibly flexible hours, more so than at any other place I've worked so far (and I have worked at some of the "hip" places).
Anyways, the headline itself seems truly sensationalist.
Are there any technical IBM employees here who have been "forced" to relocate?
This post and all others I've seen are just rewrites of the original (unsourced) article last month in The Register (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/09/ibm_workfromhome_cu...) with no additional facts or updates.
I may be proven wrong, in which case I'll be looking for another job. But agreed, as far as I can see, at least regarding technical employees this is FUD.
To me, the fact that IBM has for years encouraged remote work, been affirmatively OK with people moving hundreds, even thousands of miles from their nearest co-location center to then yanking this policy and forcing employees to decide whether to move in a short amount of time makes this, in my mind, a thinly-veiled downsizing effort.
Imagine; for years, your department in is NY state, but you've been told it's totally cool to move to Colorado and work from home. In fact, IBM exclaims how it's good for the company because it saves space and money! You build your family's life there, then all the sudden - you have a month to decide to relocate to NY state (sell your house, change your kids' school, etc) or quit with a measly package. They won't even allow you to go to the nearby IBM office in Colorado because your group is based in NY state.
I know employment is at-will, and what IBM is doing is perfectly legal. It doesn't mean it doesn't stink.
Is that actually happening to you? pm90 below indicated that IBM wasn't doing this.
Edit: And as PM90 said, it does seem to be only some departments. PM90 said the article creates FUD, but I think you could argue IBM is doing that to its employees with this.
That must be the same secret recipe that quartered[1] GILT's value in less than 10 years!
[1] Gilt Groupe at one point valued at $1B, sold to HBC for $250M - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilt_Groupe
All the news I have seen has been about the marketing team, and my story is just one team, so I have no real idea what the big picture is, but it seems to be more nuanced than what we are reading about in the news.
I don't think IBM is in the same situation, though. Telecommuting works or fails based on a company's culture, work ethic, and employee accountability.
151% stock increase? Nearly double market cap?
I don't judge a business by the stock ticker, I judge one by their products.
“It’s time for Act II: WINNING!” read the subject line of Peluos’s blog post
I am always glad to get home from the office so I can focus and get work done in peace. It may not be the case for all roles, but for software development I think (motivated and diligent) remote workers are way more productive, and can provide a much better ROI for their employers.
That's the only explanation that makes sense.
It does not have to make sense, could simply be a case of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
IBM could be a place where you just might encounter a pointy-haired boss from Dilbert.
I haven't worked for them, but I work with 2 former IBM Engineers in Austin... both of them say the same weird things.. like, you can't get two monitors (when one asked, he was declined, then his boss pulled an old CRT out of a closet and gave it too him... a 640x480 CRT from what must have been 184 years ago) ... And other weird tales that just seem antithetical to a tech company..
Having said that, I could write books about the complete Twilight Zone that is IBM Services. Don't worry, I'll stick with writing invoices in stead ;)
Worth keeping in mind that this is the new policy as of about a year ago (they changed it before the big waves of layoffs last year).
Before the change you would get a week for every 6 months worked, up to 23 weeks.
Lately at traditional IT companies even temporarily non-billable resources are increasingly being scrutinized for their output.
For one of their flagship products, it's been an average experience at best.
One of my good friends that did it has an interesting take, he said that since he was more introverted he thought he was perfect for remote work when in fact it made him miserable. His dad worked remotely for a large part of his life but was an extrovert. He concluded that contrary to what may seem like common sense introverts do worse in remote work because the office is where they get a majority of their human interaction while extroverts are going to make that happen regardless of if they go into an office every day.
I have no experience with working from home for a long period of time but I know calling into meetings is the worst and that there are a TON of decisions/conversations that you get ZERO input on (most of the time you don't even know they happened) when you are remote. I have never been so happy that I didn't get a remote job I interviewed for a few years ago.
As much as I hate companies giving a perk and then taking it away I can't help but think this is the right move for IBM.
PS: Yes HipChat/Slack/Jira/GitLab/GitHub/etc/etc/etc can help with this but you are fooling yourself if you think that the people in the office are going to record every single interaction/conversation/etc of note. Remote-only teams might be an exception but even then you really do lose the ability to roll over to co-workers chair and have an impromptu conversation.
So why should this company offer perks to compete with Google or a startup? They only need a shrinking subset of lifers to keep the lights on.
If you want to telecommute, find a place that specializes in it.
But does anyone really believe that major strategic business and product innovation occurs at the level of the individual contributors and teams who will be affected by this change?
I mean, sure, cool new features happen at that level, but you can't tell me the iPhone would've fallen out of a "water cooler" conversation between a couple of C++ devs on a Wednesday afternoon in the office.
I think you are severely discounting the advantages of having people nearby/ in the same office. I'm not against working remotely, but personally do prefer a mix between working in the office and WFH. Its a lot easier to whiteboard designs and explain concepts. Its easy to ask a question and get an answer. There's also the other aspect of building a shared culture and getting to know your coworkers. That promotes a sense of comraderie so that when e.g. someone on the team has to take time off, there is a deadline for a deliverable or there is a service outage, the team works much more quickly and cohesively to solve problems. This also allows a better division of labor and I've seen this lead to many innovations as one person on the team focuses exclusively for a small time on solving a problem.
I'm not talking about innovation in the small, where a dev comes up with a clever new bit of user experience or a snazzy new algorithm. That stuff is nice but it's incremental.
I'm talking strategic innovation, the stuff that makes or breaks big companies like IBM when they're struggling to compete in 2017.
I would never claim there aren't advantages to co-located engineers.
But I struggle to believe that one of those advantages is big picture innovation as implied by the article.
Why is this news coming from the CMO? Anyone know?
#winning
Main reason is downsizing, easiest way to thin the herd. At that size, HR is just a spreadsheet exercise, quality of the individual employees does not factor in.
Of course this will not affect their "remote" workforce in India, this is about the high-pay western markets.
So this is just "IBM Classic" showing through the modern varnish.
https://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/tripping-through-ib...
1) plant 2-300% of the consultants on site that are necessary 2) create an enormous amount of power point slides that look impressive but mainly say nothing 3) outsource the real work to India or cheap labor 4) deliver 25% of the requirements in 300% of the time
the rest is just trying to deliver as little as possible, as cheaply as possible, without outright violating the contract.
real shame to apply the flimflam business consulting ethos to the it consulting arena, but it is the way of things.
I think that, as with enterprise software, is mostly about the management in the customer company trying to cover his/her ass. Big four and similar are the less risky options, not for the project but for the managers.
'Yes, the project was a disaster, but I hired IBM, so, no responsibility here.'
Of course, the management of the customer and the consulting companies are normally old friends. That helps too.
IBM has been failing for a long time.
of course, there is no correlation between certs and actually being able to deliver anything, but that does not matter. no CIO will risk their career by not giving big stuff to a non-Big4 contract.
file under herd mentality, etc.
All with a straight face.
Is it me or is this move seemingly initiated by female executives that want to project power in order to compensate for the perception that they are less dedicated to work because of their sex? Given a sample size of two, I would avoid working for anyone named Melissa.