"Companies began offering generous remote work policies because they expected large savings in office and real-estate costs, said Jennifer Glass, a University of Texas professor who studies telecommuting and advises companies on remote-work strategies. Those savings haven't materialized, Ms. Glass said, so workers are being called back to the office."
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.
> It’s unlikely that IBM employees, as they centralize in office hubs, will reap the lavish office benefits and constant supply of free gourmet food that companies like Facebook and Google use to keep employees on-site. They won’t even receive raises after moving to expensive cities like San Francisco and New York.
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.
With IBM, one can't help but feel this is a tactic to force layoffs without having to actually do a layoff. I believe they tried similar tactics in their Global Business Services division in the mid-2000s.
They probably took a good look at the performance of people onsite vs. offsite and noticed an issue and decided to act on it.
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.
At least as of 1990, at one large IBM location in the US there were regular vending stations for coffee and tea. Was <50 cents (20 cents, maybe) for a cup of "freshly brewed" coffee. You also needed exact change or lost the difference (the "exact change" light seemed perpetually on). Also there were ashtrays built in to the walls at regular intervals.
Don't know when they started giving away coffee, but it was tried for some years and then stopped apparently. Like remote working.
Wow! I'd be seriously worried if my company yanked free coffee and tea. I guess on IBM's scale that turns out to be some real change, but I have to imagine the time spent leaving campus for coffee and all is more expensive overall.
Hospice recall? When an elderly loved one enters hospice and is unlikely to ever leave, all the family is called back in to gather for their death. Happened with Yahoo a couple years ago. I didn't realize IBM was doing so poorly.
That's a great point! I tried out Bluemix and it was soooo bad! I was awestruck as to how a company as big as IBM could create something so hacked together. Amazon literally paved the way for cloud services, all they had to do was copy them.
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.
Having worked for both small startups and large corporations, I fully understand why remote work doesn't make sense for large companies.
Large companies have a lot of trouble keeping track of what their employees are doing even when they are in the office.
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.
I can see where big companies are coming from with wanting the people they pay to do work, but if you can't tell if that's happening when they work remotely why would you be able to tell if its happening when they are in the office. The only thing they can tell accurately now is that people are in their cubes/seat/open office plan. They'd be better off coming up with some way to evaluate the output of their employees if this was really about that. However I am of the opinion that this is just layoffs with a different name, and that's why you don't see an effort to actually evaluate output.
For most workers, work from home works as long as you don't do it all of the time and never hire an asshole.
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.
IBM is calling its marketing teams back into the offices. Not all remote workers. The marketing teams. At least as far as I, and the people I know who work at IBM, have heard.
Disclosure: I work for IBM on a team impacted by these changes.
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 work for IBM. I can't comment on any specifics of this article or related matters. My statements reflect only my personal opinion and not those of IBM.
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?
A lot of technical teams were given the same requests last year with more or less insistence depending on how much they wanted to retain people on particular projects.
A lot of people said that they just use that to fire people but isn't that the most counterproductive to do so because most of the good people who do not have trouble finding another job will just quit while the desperate who need the job and cannot find anything comparable will most likely stay.
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.
Seems more PR-friendly than, "We are doing a round of layoffs..." Cheaper for them too, as they don't have to pay severance. This is all-around skeezy.
[+] [-] blakesterz|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nugget|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] fensterblick|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt_wulfeck|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] korzun|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] krzyk|8 years ago|reply
There are fewer and fewer incentives to work for IBM.
[+] [-] misja111|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawski|8 years ago|reply
[0] http://wiki.c2.com/?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom
[+] [-] ballenf|8 years ago|reply
Don't know when they started giving away coffee, but it was tried for some years and then stopped apparently. Like remote working.
[+] [-] taternuts|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saltylicorice|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Harkins|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbob2000|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tome|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jondubois|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] lovich|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Callmenorm|8 years ago|reply
We also had an article that said their marketing dept. was killing remote workers.
[+] [-] drewg123|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codingdave|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbfr|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] abtinf|8 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] rtkwe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drewg123|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Matt3o12_|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisbennet|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] priam|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sctb|8 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14291461
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603831
[+] [-] dbg31415|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zachmax|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eesaitcho|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidgerard|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beezle|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] alltakendamned|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nandhp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crusso|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] matt_wulfeck|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] frgtpsswrdlame|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] T3RMINATED|8 years ago|reply
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