IBM Chief’s Message to Remote Workers: ‘Your Career Does Suffer’
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
He says it right there in the article: "I don't understand how to do all that remotely."
Disappointing that these leaders are able to stick their feet in the mud so deeply without any journalistic criticism.
They seems to be playing along. The general rhetoric in the media is very one-sided: fall in line with the employers or prepare to get fired.
There is some truth to one argument he makes. When you are managing teams 100% remotely, there is a real risk of losing visibility. You have to actively engage with higher ups (not just your boss) and do showcases to stay relevant.
It’s not much different from office culture in large companies. But being remote-only in a hybrid culture makes it hard to pick on the “vibe” and course correct. You need to be very proactive about staying visible and relevant.
> In the short term you probably can be equally productive, but your career does suffer
It's leadership like him that shape people's careers in an organization so what he's saying is that because he feels that "we work better when we are together in person" he won't support people working remotely from advancing in their career. Gotcha, good job!
So if the client is in the office but the consultant charging the big bucks is remote, how will the client be happy.
IBM mostly does consulting, they spun off a lot of contracting and on site stuff when they ditched Kyndryl, but even before they ditched Kyndryl GTS wasn't generally deploying people to a customer site unless there was an urgent problem with hardware.
"Doing your job well does not help your career. Helping coworkers does not help your career. The single most important part of your job is sitting in an office. Maybe disrupt others trying to work nearby with conversations to show how collaborative you are? If you're lucky you might be able to interrupt the work of people who aren't even in those conversations!"
You can be an effective worker remotely. How can help you immediate coworkers (ie people in your project team) remotely. You can do a job remotely.
But a career isn’t a job. A career requires networking with people outside your immediate team. How will you organically meet higher-ups if you can share an elevator? How will you share info about new job opportunities two teams over if there is no water cooler?
People require interaction, and offices are a core way people can organically and naturally share ideas. Mandating “15-minute lunch zooms” won’t do it.
I’m all for supporting remote work, but I strongly believe that office environment are positive for individual careers and corporate culture development.
It's about control and force applied to employees.
Why should it keep existing? Nostalgia?
"He also led the building and expansion of new markets for IBM in artificial intelligence, cloud, quantum computing, and blockchain technology.[17][18] He was a driving force behind IBM's $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat, which closed in July 2019."
Didnt watson get shut down? and all those other expansions are bullshit ? blockchain? seriously?
Also IBM's stock price has been down for the past 10 years.
Maybe the CEO should spend less time in the office and more time remote.