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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: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday November 30 2016, @05:18PM
Do you even read the headlines? It isn't a state secret that Trump ran on a platform of being against outsourcing, offshoring, etc. Trump is not making a secret that he wants to help create jobs here, not elsewhere. So it makes perfect sense that any sales pitch, and that is what this letter is, would be sure to talk up their hiring here in the U.S. as a way to assuage those concerns.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 30 2016, @06:18PM
Its also not a state secret that he's backed out of pretty much every single campaign promise already, and he's still not even close to taking office, so your thinking he's going to stick to any of them is at best denialism, at work delusion.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Wednesday November 30 2016, @07:48PM
Oh I fully agree. But my guess is that they have a bit more to lose than just failing to sell contracts to the US government. Trump's administration could easily tilt policy against the outsourcing strategy they've been pursuing in recent years, which really has screwed over their stateside workforce. To me all the crap about their futuristic high-tech offerings sounds like padding around the more essential message of "please don't hurt us, we love America". I'm only disputing that this letter is about winning more, rather than losing less. And hey, I'm all for IBM taking some well-deserved punishment here, and it doesn't smell much like impending fascism to me. Maybe more like natural consequences.
(Score: 1) by shanen on Thursday December 01 2016, @04:24AM
Well, I definitely agree with your comments about outsourcing. My last dealings with Big Blue mostly involved substituting cheap chopped Chinese chicken labor on short-term contracts for expensive local people... However, that doesn't make much sense to me as the motivation here. Trump don't care, but if I were still closely involved with IBM, then I'd feel nervous about continuing to doubt Trump's competence, let alone his honesty. Or maybe I just hate liars too much? (Not just Trump, btw.)
Lots of ACs around, though I haven't seen any reason for their anonymity. No one has come out and said anything about their own employer getting on board the Trump train.
#1 Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice{5} ≠ (Beer^4 | Speech) and your negative mods prove you are a narrow prick.