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Exclusive IBM is cracking down on remote workers, ordering unlucky employees to either come into one of six main offices and work "shoulder to shoulder" – or leave for good.
In a confidential video message to staff seen by The Register on Tuesday, chief marketing officer Michelle Peluso told her US marketing troops they must work at "a smaller set of locations" if they want to continue with the company. Staffers have 30 days to decide whether to stay or go.
This means affected IBMers who telecommute, work at a smaller district office, or otherwise work separately from their team, will now have just a few weeks to either quit their jobs, or commit to moving to another part of America. The company's employee badge system will be used to ensure people do come into the office rather than stealthily remain remote workers.
According to sources, the six "strategic" offices US marketing staff must work from are in: Austin, Texas; San Francisco, California; New York City, New York; Boston, Massachusetts; Atlanta, Georgia; and Raleigh, North Carolina. El Reg understands that employees will not get to choose a nearby office, but will instead be assigned a location based on where their team is predominantly situated. The first wave of workers were informed of the changes on Monday. The next wave will be instructed in early March, we're told.
Marissa Mayer has worked wonders at Yahoo and the rest of the tech industry should follow her lead?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday February 09 2017, @03:10PM
Mayer's accomplishments at Yahoo are no less of a wonder than Ballmer's achievements at Microsoft.
For instance.
Ballmer: Linux is a cancer.
And just to show it is not Ballmer alone: Jim Allchin who was #4 guy at MS at the time: Open Source is un-American and legislators need to be educated to the danger.
I would just point out wonders such as Vista. And Allchin heading up longhorn.
Not to be outdone, is the Windows 8 and Windows Phone fiascos. This is Ballmer's most wonderous achievement of all. I must wonder whether Mayer's wonders match this.
Ballmer poo-poos the iPhone. (Just as a decade earlier Bill Gates said the internet is just a fad.) Ballmer ignores the rise of: smart phones, mobile devices, tablets, and Linux and open source powering embedded systems everywhere. (Even though by the 2007 intro of iPhone, it was obvious to anyone paying attention that Linux was already in all kinds of every day devices around us -- back then.)
Suddenly Ballmer wakes up and smells the mobile phone explosion and realizes he has missed the boat. So we get Windows Phone 7. Hey developers developers you need to write for Windows Phone 7 with its weird UI.
Now watch this. Pay careful attention. Ballmer will, at a single stroke, alienate developers developers, and OEMs and end user customers.
Next Windows Phone 8. Hey developers developers you need to write for Windows Phone 8. And BTW, it's incompatible with Windows Phone 7. So you need to rewrite. And BTW, you will have to release your apps through Microsoft's store.
But pray I don't alter the deal further. Windows 8 on the desktop / laptop is the new UI. We're going to screw over billions of everyday users with an unproductive unfamiliar UI just for the possibility of hope to lure them to our failed Windows 8 Phone.
And dear beloved OEMs, so you don't feel left out, we're screwing you too! Introducing the Surface, made by Microsoft to compete directly with you dear OEMs. Just a friendly back stab to show our appreciation. (In addition to forbidding you from making Linux Netbooks once we recognized the rise of this and squashed it by resurrecting XP.)
Oh, and developers developers, remember back in 2007 (year of the iPhone) when we told you that we're screwing you VB6 developers and you should use VB.NET. And we were telling you in 2007 to invest in Xaml, Silverlight, Expression Blend, and our web platform even though we didn't even have an MVC framework yet. Screw you again. Silverlight is dead. There is a whole new Windows 8 API you should be writing for. Forget legacy windows development. Just write off the investments we told you to make a few years ago and invest in what we're telling you today. It will be a wonder(!) anything like Mayer could dream of. I promise. Trust me. It will be the biggest, best . . . oh, wait. Nevermind.
I won't get into Ballmer letting Xbox dig a $26 billion hole before trying to do anything about it.
But, oh, wait. On the desktop / laptop, the Windows 8 UI isn't going over quite so well. So we're resurrecting the start menu. And it's back to legacy apps that work as good as they always did. So screw you developers developers if you rewrite to the new Windows 8 UI.
That almost catches us up to the present. But it all happens concurrently with Mayer's 'wonders' at Y!. So who achieved the most wonderful accomplishments?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday February 09 2017, @03:31PM
Wait, wait.
Yahoo is an average corporation, while Microsoft is the incarnation of Evil. Ballmer had to do evil thing by contract. I agree the evil should have been directed outwards and not inwards, but the Devil* is known to eat his own sons periodically, because victory and relative stability is too positive to last.
*) taken literally or as the system composed by performers of evil acts.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09 2017, @03:35PM
We were talking about Yahoo and Mayer, not about Microsoft and Ballmer. You've devoted the comment to a list of Microsoft's failures during the Ballmer's reign, but you haven't say a single word about what were the failures of Yahoo while Mayer was there. The only references to Mayer or Yahoo are:
The first paragraph:
The last paragraph:
I don't know if you did it on propuse or it was just your own obsesions, but you slickly changed the topic. ;-)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 09 2017, @04:37PM
Microsoft / Ballmer is probably my own obsessions.
Y! had problems before Mayer. I could start with their stock message boards. How nice it was the Y! would let one create unlimited numbers of accounts. When Y! was recently hacked and accounts stolen, that might lead some people (*cough*) to wonder "how many of my accounts were affected?" or "what percent of the millions of stolen accounts are my accounts?". Y! had a major troll problem and did not deal with it. Non trolls could get their accounts axed by the trolls reporting them. So you've definitely never seen such a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
It is unclear to me whether Mayer joined as the ship was taking on water. But under her leadership, 12 execs left and stocks fell 30 %. (Wikipedia) But even rats know when to get off a sinking ship, as they say. And this is within two years of her arrival.
I dearly wish that Microsoft had acquired Yahoo for $41 Billion when they had the chance. It would have de-fanged Microsoft quite a bit. And it would have provided years of entertainment to observe both the technical and cultural clash that would have resulted. Alas.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday February 09 2017, @09:49PM
[quoting some peanut] Open Source is un-American and legislators need to be educated to the danger.
I wouldn't trumpet this too loudly.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.