IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department | Hacker News Reader

IBM has decided to co-locate its US marketing department

qz.com

139 pointsTerminalJunkie114 comments

A theory among some employees is that IBM is using co-location as a downsizing effort.

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.

> 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.

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.

You haven't really fixed much.

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 am sure many of us know or have known people who browse facebook, twitter and youtube at work all day. Anecdotal evidence or the actions of of a tiny minority is hardly helpful to any meaningful discussion and can be used to 'close down' any initiative.

So we know for certain people like that are in a "tiny minority"? I would guess they are more than a minority. Being super productive in a potentially distracting or accountability-free environment requires a lot of discipline and self-motivation, which is something I would have guessed is the minority attribute.

It might be anecdotal which I doubt but then how do we know this is action of tiny minority. I should add I do work from home certain times but I take it as privilege rather than a right to work whenever it is convenient to me.

Your employer is making more money off of your work output than they're paying you. I think you may be confused about who may be the privileged one in the relationship.

I also need to evaluate the alternatives to see how viable they are. Once legal, financial etc constraints are added I just do not see upper hand in bargaining.

Just to add I am in somewhat IBM like situation described here. A lot of us here are in similar predicament to move or to leave.

It might be anecdotal which I doubt

Is it "a short account of a particular incident or event, especially of an interesting or amusing nature"?

Its an account of "in my experience" or "the people I know do this" -- its not hard facts obtained through the scientific method (ie controlling for other factors and for biases). That makes it, by definition, anecdotal.

You are right. Re-reading my comment I find it a little meaningless.

> 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 am not sure it is all bad. So the best leave which is bad, but you don't have to pay their wages anymore which is good (and if you don't make enough money it's the only option).

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.

Yeah, but one of the reasons that the article puts forward to justify the move is to increase "innovation." Surely the hit to innovation from losing your best easily out-sizes any gain from co-locating.

It's the best way to get a large amount of your workforce to leave voluntarily. No workforce reduction paperwork. No severance packages. Yahoo did it. Nokia did it. In fact, the companies who pull this trick are almost all shrinking and past their prime.

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.

> It's the best way to get a large amount of your workforce to leave voluntarily.

Damn. I finally get it. Thanks!

Did you read the article though? They are offering 90 days to make the decision, and a month's severance (miserly, imo, but they're offering it). As mentioned in the piece this wouldn't be a very manageable or predictable way to reduce headcount. It's much more likely the motives are exactly what the company said the motives are: they feel like they will be more effective working together. I would likely be one of the employees who said goodbye rather than move, and I don't think this is ultimately a good decision, but neither do I think it's necessary to dig for hidden motives and agendas.

A month's severance is a lot cheaper than paying for unemployment benefits.

From my understanding, and this will vary from state to state since unemployment insurance is managed and dealt with by states, not the federal government, employees would still possibly be able to collect unemployment after that month of severance runs out if they are unable to get a new job (and are actively looking) and the unemployment claims will still ding IBM. That month of severance offsets their unemployment insurance rate increase(s). IBM is hoping folks can find a job in the next four months so they don't have to pay any out. Additionally, I would assume, part of accepting the severance might require the employee signing papers which state that the end of employment is voluntary and agreed upon possibly invalidating the employees claim to unemployment and thus hurting IBM's insurance rates. Whether that applies or works will depend on numerous factors, particularly the state the employment occurred in.

The relevant statute is called the WARN Act, Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification. This requires 60 days notice (or 60 days pay) among other things.

https://www.doleta.gov/layoff/pdf/WorkerWARN2003.pdf

Does a months severance pay eliminate the need to pay for 6+ months of unemployment?

No, in my experience accepting a severance payment does not prevent you from claiming unemployment benefits, however the severance is treated as salary and you can't collect benefits until however many pay periods it represents have passed.

This is one way real-estate prices are being driven through the roof in big cities -> Where these company HQ's are located.

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.

"'A theory among some employees is that IBM is using co-location as a downsizing effort.'

"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.

Yeah pretty telling that they are following in the footsteps of Best Buy and Yahoo. Two companies that no one considers leaders in the innovation space right now.

Driving off the most productive, most motivated employees is what IBM has spent the last decade and more doing. It doesn't want people who can get jobs elsewhere: it wants people who are too scared to leave.

Disclosure: I'm a developer at IBM, but not speaking in official capacity. The comment here is completely personal.

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.

So IBM employees who refuse the company's formal request to colocate shouldn't be nervous about their status in the medium to long-term future?

I agree. I think this is first step to separate out people who are unwilling to relocate. Next they will look at the work they are doing, if deemed non-critical I assume they will be first to go.

I mean, isn't that the case with any job? So sure, this might be an extra consideration when the time for layoffs comes around.

My intention was not saying that nothing changed; emphasis on colocation is definitely a real thing. But IBM is not "ending remote work", as the headline says (it should be changed to the actual article title, which is more reasonable). It is most certainly allowed.

True, it is with any job. I still think it will be good filter for people who think IBM job is critical for them and family vs family and location is critical than IBM job.

I agree IBM will most likely lose good remote workers but for company of IBM size individual super performers are not critical to their financial well being.

Definitely agree with the title change, thanks for your insight as an employee.

My mom works for IBM (and has for ages) and it really seems like this is more a way for them to shed some workers without layoffs because the completely arbitrary nature of who is getting the ultimatum to move to the nearest office.

I also work for IBM, remotely. So far I've heard no hint of anything like this internally. My boss claims he's heard nothing about it.

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.

/IBM employee rant begin

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.

> then all the sudden - you have a month to decide to relocate to NY state

Is that actually happening to you? pm90 below indicated that IBM wasn't doing this.

Not me personally, definitely to others I work with - there's been hints of no enforcement until later this year but nothing official.

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.

Yep... I know people who were affected in the same way you described -- encouraged to work remotely, so they bought houses in other states years ago, and then told 3 months in advance that they would need to return to the office. Of the people I know, one chose retirement, a few chose to leave, one chose to relocate, one was allowed to stay remote.

> Peluso, formerly the CEO of fashion startup Gilt, explained the “only one recipe I know for success.” Its ingredients included great people, the right tools, a mission, analysis of results, and one more thing: “really creative and inspiring locations.”

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

This isn't universal - a good friend of mine works for a team that is getting shipped off to IBM as part of a merger, and told to apply for the new IBM jobs if they want to keep working there. Ignoring the ugliness of that situation for the moment, he specifically asked about this news of remote work ending as it relates to how coding jobs would be impacted, and was told that the jobs he was applying for were intended to remain remote.

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.

He should get that in writing.

it might be that way while the company is run by ibm as a subsidiary, but my bet is the exception will end once they're full 'blue-washed'

Every time I've found myself needing to ask, or had teammates who needed to ask the question "Is my job safe beyond the next month?" the answer has been "no."

Marissa Mayer did the same thing shortly after getting to Yahoo. I think the results there speak for themselves. There's never a case where a move like this will boost morale or attract/keep top talent. IMO moves like this are all about showing dominance and being a "person of action." It's corporate politics showmanship at the expense of results.

> I think the results there speak for themselves

151% stock increase? Nearly double market cap?

are you seriously arguing Mayer's tenure was a success? Every major decision she had her fingerprints on (sumly, tumblr, etc) turned out to be massive, expensive failures. Lots of external factors go into stock price so I would argue stock price alone is not a good indicator of leadership.

I'm no fan of hers but I think she failed at an impossible task and could have done a lot worse.

I can't actually tell if you're kidding. Forgetting whatever made up number Wall St. has assigned as Yahoo's "worth" they've gone down in flames completely as an organization.

I don't judge a business by the stock ticker, I judge one by their products.

Yahoo had a negative valuation if you removed their stake in Alibaba.

Not really true..

The math that made the rounds was based on a faulty premise. You basically had what I'll call Yahoo Group (YG) comprised of Core Yahoo (CY), a stake in Alibaba (YAB) and Yahoo Japan (YJ).

People were saying that if you took YG and subtracted YAB and YJ, that the value of the remaining business, CY, was negative.

What they missed was that you can't just plop in the current market price of YAB and YJ. Yahoo's ownership in those companies was old enough that they would have to pay significant taxes to unload them.

So the real math would be YG = [YAB x (1-T)] + [YJ x (1-T)] + CY

Where T is the tax rate. Realistically, it'd be some Monte Carlo of the likelihood of tax rates as they were aggressively trying to minimize the tax paid, but still, CY wouldn't be negative.

As a final bit of evidence for this -- Yahoo's core business was just bought for over $4.5 billion. So.. you know.. not a negative number.

You mean Alibaba Holding Co? The value of Yahoo is entirely based on their Alibaba holdings.

I find the enthusiasm for tearing down Mayer gross, but to be clear: subtract the value of the alibaba stock and all that disappears.

Would it be less gross if she were not a woman? When other CEOs make decisions that ruin a company, they get critized too. Steve Balmer was a frequent object of ridicule. Other women execs such as Sandberg aren't treated badly -- the enthusiasm for tearing Mayer down comes from the fact that she was lauded as some kind of exceptional executive when she was really just a lot of high minded talk backed by questionable decisions and a slew of pointless acquisitions at ridiculous prices. She was positioned as some kind of ultra-woman when she was just mediocre at best (within the Yahoo context.) In my mind, Mayer earned every cent of criticism and someone like Sandberg has earned every cent of praise.

> Would it be less gross if she were not a woman?

> the enthusiasm for tearing Mayer down comes from the fact that she was lauded as some kind of exceptional executive

While some of the comments are no doubt rooted in the perspective you mention, there are also plenty of overtly misogynistic comments about her too. I think it's a bit of whitewashing to claim that all the enthusiasm for tearing her down is strictly disconnected from gender. I don't know how you can read the comments that go by on reddit et all and pretend that elephant in the room isn't there.

I think a lot of the criticism of Balmer is specific and factual, but that people also overlook that on raw financials his tenure at MS was successful.

I agree using a protected status classfication to justify what happened at Yahoo is gross. She made the company less profitable and a place few would apply.

The only reason Mayer was brought into the discussion is because she employed a similar tactic: not because I was "enthused" with tearing her down. I haven't read any criticism in this thread that was base or that smacked of sexism. The criticism has stuck to the facts of her tenure.

I can't even name a single Yahoo product I ever used beyond circa 2000 search. I don't even know what that company does anymore. Google owns half the internet, Apple makes stuff you can buy in stores.. Yahoo? The company that can't even secure email passwords? Hurray for Melissa!

I still have my email address from them since 1996. Still use it. People still consider me "aged" because of that.

Remember, though, Marissa's move came because a very large number of Yahoo remote employees weren't working. I went through something similar at Intel about 10 years ago when "telecommuting" became a code word for not really doing any work.

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.

If an employee can do nothing and remain employed, the issue is not where the employee does nothing from. It's the fact that the company doesn't expect anything from said employees. Telecommuting has nothing to do with it. Lack of a managerial layer that a.) makes sure employees have anything to do or b.) consistently accept late deadlines or a total dereliction of duty has everything to do with it. I'm not getting paid million of dollars a year like Mayer, or any c-suite executive is, but I managed to figure that out. They know it too, but again, it's easier to pick the lowest hanging fruit (the abused "privilege" of your employees) and say "look at how decisive I am making this major cultural shift."

    “It’s time for Act II: WINNING!” read the subject line of Peluos’s blog post

Nothing says "high-quality leadership role-model" like Charlie Sheen.

Could also be presidential quote. This timeline we are on is really weird.

I am remote, and have been for the last 3.5 yrs. As a software developer I find that the times I am least productive are when I need to work in an office. It is loud and distractions are everywhere. People stop by your desk to chat and ask for things, you inevitably get roped into ping-pong or foosball games, you take way longer lunches because that is what everyone else seems to be doing. The list goes on.

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.

It worked out ever so well for Yahoo when Mayer did it so surely it'll work for IBM who has two orders of magnitude more employees...actually, perhaps the end goal is voluntary resignations?

> perhaps the end goal is voluntary resignations?

That's the only explanation that makes sense.

Why not simply fire those who they don't want to work with anymore? They're clearly used to do that at IBM and it would be much more controlled and cost effective.

They don't know who those people are :)

You have to pay them to leave. You have to endure the publicity of large scale layoffs. This way, you are progressive, agile, and team oriented.

In a large bureaucratic corporation, individuals are never "fired". They are "managed out".

Check out the book Corporate Confidential.

Because the cost of firing (dismissing) someone depends on where they have their contract. It might be zero cost in the US but the US is not the World. In Europe it would cost them tons of money to remove hundreds of jobs in a single swipe. OTOH, let people leave, no cost for them.

> 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.

IBM is so weird.

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..

IBM is beyond weird. Source: I spent about 14 of the past 20 years there (as a contractor) in the Global Services division. But for all the weirdness, and downright idiocy at times, they were always truly supportive of working from home. None of those funny remarks or anything either with coworkers. At least in the teams I have worked in, everybody was always valued on output, not "visibility" or any of that typical business bullshitbingo. Of course, speaking from a technical role. Seen plenty of classic behaviour in management.

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 ;)

IBM isn't a tech company. It's a brand with an impressive marketing department that sells experiences, not products. The rest of it (the stuff you don't see unless you get close enough) is an accumulation of spaghetti acquired in an ad hoc and aimless fashion.

At my previous employer, we were evaluating solutions from IBM, TIBCO, and Oracle. The IBM solution was cheaper and met our needs. In the end, our VP nixed them with the statement of "I don't really want to support IBM software." The feeling was unanimous across the team.

Yes, IBM still sells IBM/Rational ClearCase which has impressive cost (about $5000 per license) and has about 5% features of Git, also absolutely bozotic UI.

What surprises me, some companies still use it in 2017 and still pay $5000 to buy a product that is inferior in every respect to Mercurial, Git, Subversion.

There exist many companies where one's perceived status as a manager derives from how much budget you command rather than on how effectively you choose tools or deliver solutions.

"At my previous employer, we were evaluating solutions from IBM, TIBCO, and Oracle."

I pity your previous employer.

"the severance payment will be equal to one month’s base salary, the standard at IBM."

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.

I have known many people who work in companies like Oracle, IBM etc where there is consulting at client location and then report at designated office. Generally reporting at designated office is very lax and people either are at client site or just stay at home. I wonder if tightening remote work requirement is for these people too.

Lately at traditional IT companies even temporarily non-billable resources are increasingly being scrutinized for their output.

Remote work has many benefits, but it's not all upside. Possibly IBM saw the successes they had by co-locating the Watson, Marketing and Health squads compared and decided there was a lot of productivity being lost.

When I went to sign up for Watson's API services, I had to allow for third party cookies just to enter my payment information. It was a pain just trying to dig through Chrome to allow this, but I wonder how many of their potential customers just punt on that point alone.

For one of their flagship products, it's been an average experience at best.

I use to think that remote work was goal I should be aiming for but after have a few friends did it and I thought more about it I've decided I would hate it. On the surface it sounds great and while I fully support working from home a few times a month I can't support any more than that.

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.

It's easy to forget that IBM is in the share buyback business. They're not a growing technology power. They have Watson, which isn't enough to save them. They can't invest money wisely, so every year they cut headcount and return some money to shareholders. It's the orderly returning of money to shareholders from a company that doesn't need investment anymore.

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.

What I find a bit odd is that this is ostensibly about becoming more innovative.

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 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.

None of which addresses my point.

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.

> In a video message, Peluso, formerly the CEO of fashion startup Gilt, explained the “only one recipe I know for success.” Its ingredients included great people, the right tools, a mission, analysis of results, and one more thing: “really creative and inspiring locations.”

Why is this news coming from the CMO? Anyone know?

I had to read the article multiple times as I thought the same thing. One paragraph mentions that the CMO is only talking about the marketing org, but that the sentiment is repeated elsewhere in the company.

#winning

HP did the same thing a couple years ago.

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.

For affected IBMers... find a new remote gig!

https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job

Some thirty years ago I heard a joke from a friend's dad (employee of IBM) that it stands for "I've Been Moved".

So this is just "IBM Classic" showing through the modern varnish.

They've come a long way since the 1930s:

https://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/tripping-through-ib...

IBM is not ending remote work. They're laying off thousands of North American workers every quarter and sending those jobs remotely to India.

IBM is a failed services company. Ive been a subcontractor for 2 projects run by IBM. Both fiascos of mismanagement. The project management at IBM had an incredible churn rate. On the first project, they were kicked off for completely failing to deliver. The second project had them completely marginalized. The sad thing is that it was another "big 4" consulting company that took over, who was only slightly less incompetent. I really have trouble understanding the big 4 consulting model. It mainly seems to consist of the following:

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

I was a "subcontractor" on 4 major IBM internal projects. All failed due to bad management. Then IBM became a services company.

IBM has been failing for a long time.

the model is mostly around slick sales people scoring fat contracts from largely non-technical corporate bureaucrats.

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.

What kind of consulting was that? Anything about development?

Yes. I write custom code for several commodity trading risk management software platforms along with integration, implementation, interfaces, etc.

That sounds complex, not something you want to outsource to a random freelancer

I hope you are being sarcastic. But I understand the point you make. For the systems I work on the number of skilled workers that can move quickly on a project is in the dozens. It's definitely a risk but the few in the niche do ok. The problem is that big consulting thinks they can stick a talented developer in there and not require the 18 month learning curve to ramp up.

the Big 4 win contracts based on necessary certifications. once it is a 100mil+ project, all kinds of certs come into play, small shops simply can't produce the paperwork.

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.

What certs are we talking about? SSL certs? PE certs? Cisco certs?

ha, no.

ITIL, ISO 20000, etc etc etc.

"I really have trouble understanding the big 4 consulting model. It mainly seems to consist of the following"

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.

Today, in the "companies that treat people like things" section we talk about IBM -- a company that routinely fires thousands of people. Today, the enlightened company is planning to relocate or dismiss the rest of their workforce, in the hope to change the company from the inventor and champion of all-that-is-waterfall to "agile".

All with a straight face.

This sort of 'cultural' double down is why I left. There's some talented people there - I'm thankful for everything I learned from them - but the culture is too rigid for creative exploration and [most importantly] discovery.

If co-location is so great, why are they in six different offices? Call a layoff a layoff. I guess they avoid paying severance if you quit because you live in Idaho.

Unrelated: Are there people in the world who prefer spending 8 hours in the office vs 8 hours wherever they want (office OR home OR cafe)?

I know someone who took an office gig after 5+ yrs of remote due to lack of the 'office experience'. He's a sane, smart guy, I think he just got tired of being home all the time. That or his kids reached the obnoxious age.

This sounds like an attempt to graft a small-company or startup atmosphere onto the dying trunk of a behemoth.

maybe there's a new and exciting product that they want to develop that needs everyone's exclusive attention, or it's a business idea that will fail miserably.

I'm not sure how you attract new people to work for a company with 19 straight quarters of declining sales. Pinky swear that they will turn around this time?

Whatever salary they're paying remoters now isn't going to be enough to live in NY or San Fran without a significant quality of life cut. And basically they get extra "work" out of you for free -- time spent commuting. So 40 hours a week becomes 50 hours a week assuming a 1-hour commute.

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.

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