
IBM Calling Remote Workers Back to the Office - bwoj
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-a-pioneer-of-remote-work-calls-workers-back-to-the-office-1495108802?mod=djcm_OBV1_092216
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nerpderp83
Pulling in remote workers is a last ditch effort that admits a) they don't
know what they (Management) are doing b) they don't know what workers or teams
are doing c) they don't mind losing people that don't office. They must like
the attrition. Workers that are good will leave. I'd take it as a RIF to get
rid of their best people.

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garyrichardson
> 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.

I think this is definitely true. I also expected this was the case for Yahoo.
In general, perks and management philosophies only change when things aren't
going well. From what I can observe, IBM has been on a decade long crash
course of cutting and squeezing to show increasing profits.

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RickJWagner
I would _hate_ this.

Working from home is great. You get more time in your day, you don't burn any
fuel getting back and forth to work, everything costs you less, etc. It's win-
win-win-everything.

If IBM can't measure productivity and/or motivate people, I'd say that's a
symptom of poor management.

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macintux
IBM's been on this destructive kick for almost a year now. I was considering
interviewing with them as my last company shut down, and then this news broke;
that was in spring.

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xfour
Assuming this does nothing to change the trend of whatever executive decided
this was how to turn around some metric. Most likely profit, we can start
calling it officially a leading indicator of a march towards irrelevance. See
Yahoo! I've always wondered if IBMs largely touted shift to consulting to
maintain profits was just putting off the inevitable. Does anyone see IBM as
cutting edge technologists?

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abtinf
I work at IBM.

In terms of technical leadership, what you are interested in? IBM invests
enormous amounts of money in open source projects and IBM Research. And for
the last 24 years straight, IBM has earned more patents than any other company
(it’s not even close).

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albertgoeswoof
> And for the last 24 years straight, IBM has earned more patents than any
> other company (it’s not even close)

That's not a great measure of technical leadership. Shows they have good
lawyers though!

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abtinf
Why isn’t that a good measure of technical leadership?

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cannonedhamster
Because any old chump can file a patent request and get it approved. There's a
reason patent trolls exist.

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abtinf
Restating your argument: there have been cases in which patents of
questionable quality have been granted which recognize questionable rights;
there exist entities who act in bad faith to acquire patents for the purpose
enforcing those questionable rights; therefore, all patents are of
questionable quality in the possession of entities who act in bad faith to
enforce questionable rights.

This is self-evidently fallacious reasoning. It also drops the context that
tech companies in aggregate spend tens of billions of dollars per year on R&D,
creating the incredible world of technology, industry, and human flourishing
in which we live.

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albertgoeswoof
The point is more that creating patents doesn’t add value whatsoever, nor is
it representative of adding value in some other way.

The only people that see a net gain on patents are lawyers, and big corps-
that’s why they spend billions on them.

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rectang
This article was published several months ago: May 18, 2017.

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abtinf
Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14367304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14367304)

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bigtimber
Dupe also paywall.

