> On May 23, 2017, at 6:41 PM, Steve Beaver <[email protected]> wrote: > > As we all know IBM has started the no more Remote work. Looks like lots of > folks in marketing said thanks but no thanks > > Earlier this year, IBM's Chief Marketing Officer Michelle Peluso announced > that the U.S. marketing division's 2,600 employees would have to "co-locate" > or collaborate onsite from one of six cities. Those who worked primarily > from home would have to move to one of the cities or quit IBM. > > For decades, IBM embraced remote work. Eight years ago, 40 percent of IBM > workers worldwide telecommuted. As a result, it saved about $100 million a > year in the U.S. and had reduced office space by 78 million square feet. > > IBM remote workers who choose to resign rather than move to one of the six > cities will be paid severance, according to an IBM internal document, of one > month's base salary, the standard at IBM. Peluso says she plans to recruit > replacements for those employees from the six co-located locations-not > abroad. "If what I were trying to do was reduce headcount," she says, "there > are much simpler and easier ways to do that, which would be less disruptive > for everyone, myself included.”
> Can’t speak for other cities but in Chicago, There is/was a building that > housed mostly IBMers for at least 30 years that I remember. The address was 1 > IBM Plaza. It used to house IBM education/marketing and a data center (we IPLed the first version of MVS there late one night (or was it morning?)) I spent many weeks there in various IBM classes over the years. A couple of years ago I went past the place and it looked deserted (and somewhat dirty). I had a few friends that worked for IBM over the years and they moved to the East Coast and West Coast. I keep in touch a little with one now EX IBMer he was in G-burg and then the west coast. I was extremely disappointed with IBM over the last say 20+ years. What was once excellent Marketing people were reduced to call centers and it showed to the customer. We were an excellent customer of IBM and ordered the latest equipment available and really got over the top engineering support and marketing support. IBM once in a while would bring customers through our data center to show off any new equipment. When we had major issues with IBM equipment the place was overrun with IBM types helping out and making good suggestions. One time our brand new 168MP wasn’t quite dead on delivery but close to. IBM showed that they supported the customer when a jet flew in from the east coast with about 20 IBM types. They problem was found a part was supplied that fixed the issue (too long of a tri lead wire going into the High speed buffer). Talk about unreproducible S0C4’s. Then IBM started to go down little by little not as good support as they used to have. People seemed to be leaving IBM faster than they could hire. They tried to sell me a remote education class and I balked a little. I finally got them to not charge the company if I found it was unsatisfactory. The second day of the class I walked out and went to the person in charge and told them to refund the money and to make sure they specified in the education catalog if it was remotely taught. I stayed away from all remotely taught classes. Then somewhere around 1995 I found I needed to ask a person who has had experience with encryption and key handling. (this was a 1-800 number) I was told I was going to have to pay IBM to get an answer about their product, I answered back I guess you don’t want to sell new hardware anymore and I hung up) Then a few years laterI had some questions about hardware and was told the same thing. I only called IBM when we had a service contract. Even the IBM software (parts of it anyway) broke every IBM rules there was. That was enough for me. Good bye IBM it was nice for a while, not so much anymore. Ed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
