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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: 2) by sgleysti on Thursday February 09 2017, @03:22PM
I think it's a matter of trust. Perhaps your manager doesn't trust that you're doing work unless he sees you sitting at your desk.
Related:
If a train station is the place where a train stops, then what is a workstation?
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Saturday February 11 2017, @02:38AM
in this case, i am producing virtual 'widgets' , in the form of quantity takeoffs, various CAD graphics, and a data file for the shop...
they (meaning anyone and everyone in the company) can *see* the actual work i produce, AND the time i produced it/emailed it (whether at home or office), AND the elapsed time, as well as a chat app to annoy me in real time (again, either at home or office, same thing)... it is an IDEAL job for tele-commuting, as the exact same processes are used at home or the office...
the ONLY difference is that there is no face-to-face with sales reps/mgrs who are asking questions about a takeoff, etc... *BUT*, we can be 20 feet away from each other in the office, and most of the time it is more efficient to drop an email or a chat to get a question answered...
no, i am betting (have not gone back to the spreadsheet where all these jobs are cataloged) both the actual number of jobs, and the complex jobs i do are done in greater quantity/quality at home in the same period of time...
further, i know some of the development type work i have done customizing the CAD s/w, spreadsheet links, etc was best done at home where i could hear my brain cells squishing around...
in this case, i am pretty sure it has nothing to do with what is better for me or the company, but the simple human pettiness of a boss who has maxed out on their peter principle...
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Sunday February 12 2017, @12:37AM
Right, that makes a lot of sense. I'm just trying to figure out what it is psychologically about your boss that causes him to insist you work on site. Perhaps just adherence to tradition? Feeling like he's giving you a pass from some kind of 'duty' or giving you an undeserved favor if you work from home?
Maybe he just doesn't know how important this is to you and is worried about how other people would view him if he let you work form home.
My brother had a coworker who would always do the bare minimum and spent as much time as he could watching youtube on the clock. There was some reorganization at the company, and this coworker got promoted to manager. My brother was talking to a new hire who came in after this happened, and the new hire said something about doing the bare minimum and slacking off, to which my brother replied, "Be careful, if you do that, they might promote you to manager."
You know, I like doing the things I do at work -- the actual tasks. The parts I don't like all involve interfacing with other people. I really don't want to think deeply about what that says about me as a person.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Sunday February 12 2017, @02:45PM
i appreciate your response, and part of it is impossible to talk about as far as a personal aspect which is difficult to quantify or even confirm...
but here is a taste: this is a HEAVILY 'christian' company, from tippy top to bottom... i am not xtian (i believe in one less god than they do)... i have never said that there, but i *suspect* previous employers informed them (again, there is virtually no way to know behind-the-scenes communications like this)...
this -i *suspect*, again, part of the problem of wrestling with the smoke and fog of discerning someone else's state of mind- is what i believe is the source of my bosses distrust of me in general, and -frankly- discrimination against me in particular...
this particular job function *was* done from home historically, and only became centralized when they opened a home office... there is still one guy who does work from home 100% of the time, and two of us have worked from home when we were too sick to go to the office, but not so debilitated we couldn't work at all, or we had to wait on a cable tech, etc...
no, i think it is personal with this boss; were i xtian, i think he would allow it...
no practical way to 'prove it', but that is real life some times...