
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty's Letter to the U.S. President-Elect - maxbrown
http://www.ibmpolicy.com/ginni_romettys_letter_to_the_president_elect
======
AdmiralAsshat
Hey IBM, maybe instead of offering to create "new collar" jobs, you should
stop shipping your existing jobs to India:

[http://insights.dice.com/2013/09/27/justice-department-
hits-...](http://insights.dice.com/2013/09/27/justice-department-hits-
ibm-h-1b-hiring-practices-045/)

~~~
arcticfox
$44,400 in penalties? Is that a joke? I would be surprised if that even
covered 10% of the price of the investigation.

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hackuser
IBM allegedly helped the US government run the camps where citizens of
Japanese descent were imprisoned during WWII (and allegedly provided
technology to the Nazis that was used for the Holocaust).

What will IBM do if the U.S. government tries to lock up masses of Latinos or
Muslims? What will your company do?

~~~
arcticfox
Come off it, there have been four generations of workers and leadership since
then. If IBM isn't a responsible corporation, bring up modern examples.

Or maybe we should boycott Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes, GM, Coke, Puma,
Adidas, Bayer, Siemens, Zeiss...

~~~
tptacek
What is it that you theorize immunizes modern workers from the forces that led
IBM's employees to participate in the Holocaust? Do you think IBM's 1930s
employees didn't realize that genocide and mass relocation was wrong?

Further: tech giants have for the last several decades been arming the world's
most repressive regimes with information technology. What do you think the
Great Firewall of China was originally made up of? Whose databases do you
think track activists in Iran and Egypt? What evidence do we have that modern
tech companies will do anything different than IBM did, faced with the same
"opportunities"?

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threeseed
Almost none of these measures can be unilaterally actioned by the President.
They will all require Congress to pass bills. The very same Congress who have
been completely incapable of addressing the biggest issues facing the country.

Great ideas though and relevant in many countries in particular around a
combined high school/vocational education program.

~~~
esturk
It remains to be seen how Trump will use "Executive Orders" if things don't go
his way. As things are going, there's hopefully 2 groups of people in his
cabinet. One to tell him what he can do and another to tell him what he
cannot.

~~~
tptacek
Virtually no discussions I've seen on the Internet about executive orders seem
to involve people who really understand executive orders. Executive orders do
not in fact give the President the power to override Congress. All they do is
define the manner in which the administration will execute the authority
granted to it by Congress and the Constitution.

So it is indeed true that Obama altered immigration policy through executive
order by changing enforcement priority to avoid deporting children, and it is
indeed true that Trump will change that back. But in neither case is a
President making new law by doing so: US immigration law doesn't require the
administration to have or not have those priorities.

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tptacek
This is transparently a government sales marketing flyer. Why are we
discussing it?

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monkmartinez
This read to me like:

"We need to be relevant! We are not one of the FAANGS! Please hook us up with
some sweet, sweet deals!"

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protomyth
I would imagine their consulting arms placement on the H1B listing might be a
concern for them which makes point 1 of their letter a bit disingenuous.

Hard to really tell what the policies will be until the secretaries are
actually picked.

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waterphone
Just a reminder:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust)

~~~
sctb
Please don't drop flamewar-style comments into unrelated threads like this.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not sure this qualifies as that. IBM's role in politics has been
historically fraught. Is everyone here really aware of IBM's role in the
Holocaust? That really happened.

The whole thread is problematic. I dug into some of the claims --- for
instance, I'd like to see IBM's "15 ideas" for saving 900 billion in
healthcare costs (I was unable to find anything other than anti-Obamacare spam
sites suggesting IBM had offered to foot the bill for the whole system in
exchange for running it on IBM hardware).

I'm not sure there's much to this story, and so I don't think there will be
much to the thread.

~~~
sctb
If it doesn't qualify as entirely unrelated, I think it still qualifies as
flamewar-style (“Here—fight!”). The story might be different if the commenter
had something to say, as the guidelines ask when broaching these topics.

~~~
hackuser
Scott - Is this comment appropriate?:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12962658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12962658)

I understand it's tricky. I certainly don't want to start a flamewar, but I do
think that these issues are critically important and should not be ignored.

I'd appreciate your feedback if you think it could be improved somehow.

~~~
sctb
One thing in that comment that could be stronger is the connection between
IBM's behavior then and now ("connect the dots" as a prominent commenter might
say). It's perhaps enough to just be reminded of past behavior of the same
corporation in order to warrant asking the question in the present context,
but saying so may have addressed the objection that you've received.

~~~
hackuser
Fair enough. I want to find ways to address these issues and get people
thinking, not flaming.

