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The CEO of IBM wrote an open letter to Trump soon after the election. IBM had a long tradition of staying out of politics, but I don't see any way to interpret this letter that isn't some sort of endorsement of Trump's administration, partly because it barely alludes to the latest buzz-phrase "cognitive solutions in the cloud", At the optimistic end, maybe it's just saying IBM doesn't care as long as Trump lets the corporation make bigger profits, but at the pessimistic end it could be taken as a warning to IBM's employees and business partners to keep their mouths shut if they don't like the Donald.
Has your employer done anything along these lines? I'm guessing that Ginny Rometty's letter was emailed to all hands and posted on the intranet, as well as the public posting at https://www.ibm.com/blogs/policy/ibm-ceo-ginni-romettys-letter-u-s-president-elect/ for everyone. Can anyone inside IBM confirm? If you've gotten something along these lines from your employer, do you care to speculate about why? Or even say how it made you feel?
(Score: 4, Informative) by jimshatt on Wednesday November 30 2016, @09:48AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday November 30 2016, @10:11AM
Considering the NeoCons scurrying in the doors of the White House, I hope your country does not have oil or you're going to get a whole new appreciation of the American version of "freedom".
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(Score: 1) by shanen on Wednesday November 30 2016, @10:45PM
Well, maybe this is close to the nub of the matter. We have video of the Donald promising to run the government more like a business, and every large and "successful" American business is only measured by one number: The PROFITS. From that perspective, IBM's letter to Trump sounds downright patriotic, doesn't it?
Then again, Trump promised to reduce government corruption, too, even daring to appeal to his own experiences in bribing and manipulating the professional politicians. The Trump U settlement cost him a measly $25 million, but how much more would it have cost if Florida had joined in? One of my new predictions is that the investigation of his donations to her campaign is about to disappear, though he could always resort to a presidential pardon if things start looking too hot. Anyway, the bottom line RoI for that donation was YUGE.
I think things are in a rather sorry state. It's not just that Trump has been on every side of every issue, but you better not say that unless you have the videos, too. Otherwise he'll just deny he ever said such a thing.
However, we don't seem to be making any progress on the original questions, but that's probably a reflection of the tiny readership of Soylent News, and I've already offended people with my suggestions on that meta-topic. If there is someone around here who can still see inside of IBM, can you say anything about how hard the message was pushed internally? As regards the other question, the people who commented here did not report any such comments from their employers.
Going to risk going a bit meta and off of the central topic, but the international aspect has been raised... I think the international force vectors have been completely reshuffled by this election. Russia is much more influential than before, and Putin plans to completely consolidate his position in Syria before Trump can blink twice. Iran's influence in the power vacuum (originally created by Dubya) has grown even larger. I think America's international force vector has already been greatly weakened, even among the friends and allies, and enemies feel emboldened. China is the wild card, but that actually comes back to the original topic of economic power. China's economic entanglements with America are actually inhibiting now--so I predict China will start to redirect its business focus away from America, but that will take some time.
#1 Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice{5} ≠ (Beer^4 | Speech) and your negative mods prove you are a narrow prick.