IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office
wsj.com
wsj.com
How is that possible? For large companies in really expensive areas especially.
"Relocating offices or asking employees to move can sometimes be read as layoffs in disguise, since a certain percentage of workers won't be able to relocate."
That seems more likely to be the one of the biggest real reasons why they're doing this.
If it's true that they won't offer any COL adjustment for folks headed to SF or NY, then that would support the view that it's meant to reduce headcount.
If they had layoffs they would have to deal with unemployment payments. They might have to deal with lawsuits. Dpending on laws they might even need to rehire some of them. They will certainly have higher short term expenses than if a bunch of people choose to leave.
If they do get rid of a bunch of people who choose to leave they are also getting rid of people who least wanted to stay, which some might see as a benefit. I don't think this is a good way to decide but I have heard much more stupid logic than this.
I view this move as a life lesson since they will most likely do their best to retain remote workers that are in-line or above when it comes to performance.
The rest will need to figure out what they want to do; you can't cry about this if you did not pull your weight.
There are fewer and fewer incentives to work for IBM.
This is an argument of all things being equal. If IBM and Microsoft offer me the same package for the same job, but Microsoft offers me free coffee, I'll probably take the coffee.
If a company is going to nickel and dime you, charge you $0.25 for a coffee or force you to provide your own... they probably are going to be cheap in other places as well. If they aren't willing to give you coffee or seltzer, they are hardly going to give you good hardware or software - which is something that does affect me.
That being said, that only goes so far. I don't really care about free lunches, or if a company has some game console. I mostly just don't want to work for a company that is going to nickel and dime me because it means they're cheapskates.
Free coffee isn't really in the same realm. The most enterprisey places I've ever worked have still offered it, not because they felt like being sweethearts, but because it makes hard economic sense - people will drink coffee, and at modern professional salaries, having them spend their paid time dealing directly with all the ancillaries around it is quite literally more expensive than just buying coffee and maintaining the equipment involved. Dropping it is thus penny wise, pound foolish.
My first job after college was in a small company (now they call them startups) that had 5 people. We worked in an old building, had low end equipment, but we had free coffee and tea (and water).
It costs them next to nothing to have that basic "benefits", yearly it is probably much less then a single travel of any of their chief officers.
If they are so cheap, then they probably won't give you big money for your work (small pay increases, or none) also, for me it is a big warning sign: GET OUT.
Don't know when they started giving away coffee, but it was tried for some years and then stopped apparently. Like remote working.
I mean, just visit the IBM website. Try to figure out what it is they actually do. It's ridiculous. I have no idea WTF any of their services are.
I've worked for a couple of large companies where some employees came into the office everyday but did essentially nothing and no one really cared. If those same employees had the opportunity to work remotely, then they might actually have fun on company time - They could even take up a second "full time job" which also allows them to do nothing and they would get two paychecks for doing nothing.
It's actually not difficult to put yourself into a position within some big companies where everyone forgets you exist but you still get a paycheck.
There are some big companies where employees make quotation signs with their fingers when saying the phrase 'He/she is "working from home" today' whilst chuckling among each other.
For employees to be motivated to work from home, they need to be able to see clearly how their work affects the company and their career path - Unfortunately big companies don't offer enough accountability for this to happen.
If they're at home they can play computer games, go out, watch a movie, etc...
I see being allowed to work from home as a sign of respect and confidence. Therefor I return that respect by not fucking with said opportunity.
Given the ability to schedule in chores or a bit of fun during breaks, my breaks become far more productive.
When I get stuck or something or am blocking on someone at work, I tend to browse hackernews, some forums, ... You end up with activities that draw you in more and more, potentially wasting hours without really having the refreshing effect you need breaks to have.
When I'm at home, I get up and vacuum a couple of rooms, clean the kitchen or maybe even skip out an hour to work out when the gym's calm to help clear my mind. I'm confident in saying my days spent working from home are by far the most productive of my entire week.
> If they're at home they can play computer games, go out, watch a movie, etc... Someone like that can just as well be expected to spend their entire days scrolling through cat pictures. Don't hire someone you think you can't trust working from home, they won't fare much better on-site.
Sometimes employees can be moved onto other temporary tasks while the other team completes their task/dependency but this causes the employees in the former team to lose focus - Making employees context-switch between too many projects carries a cost which may be higher than just allowing them to busy-wait from time to time.
I've never seen a team with a big remote work culture that really worked unless it was part of the business where field ops make sense or when most time is interacting with customers.
We also had an article that said their marketing dept. was killing remote workers.
As far as I know multiple business units within IBM, including Cloud, Watson, and Watson IoT have gone through relocation requests for Design and Engineering roles.
I would only say that the scale of IBM operations dwarf other tech companies you might think of as "large", with a headcount around ~380k per the 2016 IBM annual report [1]. Making a concrete, sweeping statement about the values and policies concerning a collection of people this large is a fraught endeavor.
Think about it this way, the population of Seattle (668k) within the same ballpark as IBM. If a friend of yours living in Seattle were to make a blanket statement about some aspect of Seattle, how much would you trust it? And even if your source was WSJ, how precise and to what portion of the population do you think a 900 word article could be relevant? And even if you yourself lived in Seattle, would you feel comfortable making blanket statements about the impact of even something as widely discussed/published as a new law or ordinance?
[1] https://www.ibm.com/annualreport/2016/images/downloads/IBM-A...
So wouldn't this hurt the company a lot more in the long run since more talent will be gone and the less talented people will stay. Sure it will reduce the payroll expenses but they should be seeing less revenue rather quickly.
Here's a link that worked for me: https://qz.com/924167/ibm-remote-work-pioneer-is-calling-tho...
Both WSJ article and the one I linked to are from March.