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IBM Chief's Message To Remote Workers: 'Your Career Does Suffer' (bloomberg.com) 184

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said he's not forcing any of the company's remote workers to come into the office just yet, but warns those who don't "would be hard-pressed to get promoted, especially into managerial roles," reports Bloomberg. From the report: "Being a people manager when you're remote is just tough because if you're managing people, you need to be able to see them once in a while," he said in an interview Monday in New York. "It doesn't need to be every minute. You don't need to function under those old 'Everybody's under my eye' kind of rules, but at least sometimes." "It seems to me that we work better when we are together in person," said Krishna, who described the company's return-to-office policy as "we encourage you to come in, we expect you to come in, we want you to come in." Three days a week is the number they encourage, he said.

While about 80% of IBM's employees work from home at least some of the time, Krishna said remote arrangements are best suited for specific "individual contributor" roles like customer service or software programmers. "In the short term you probably can be equally productive, but your career does suffer," he said. "Moving from there to another role is probably less likely because nobody's observing them in another context. It will be tougher. Not impossible, but probably a lot tougher."

Krishna, who became CEO right after the pandemic hit in April 2020, said people make a choice to work remotely, but it need not be "a forever choice -- it could be a choice based on convenience or circumstance." Remote workers, he said, don't learn how to do things like deal with a difficult client, or how to make trade-offs when designing a new product. "I don't understand how to do all that remotely," he said.

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IBM Chief's Message To Remote Workers: 'Your Career Does Suffer'

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  • Actual message (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nicolaiplum ( 169077 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @05:13AM (#63496424)

    IBM's Chief's message to remote workers: "I will make your career suffer for this"

    Also,

    Remote workers, he said, don't learn how to do things like deal with a difficult client, or how to make trade-offs when designing a new product. "I don't understand how to do all that remotely,"

    That is a professional skill deficiency in Mr Krishna. He needs to learn how to do such thing in order to be a good leader of a technical enterprise.

    • by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @05:37AM (#63496450)

      This guy is absurdly shortsighted. How can IBM's board allow someone with so little vision run a technology company?

      All the problems he has with remote working (and fair enough, there are problems) are massive business opportunities. I don't think Zuck has the right solution, but at least with his meta verse he is not sticking his head in the sand about the whole thing. There is also a huge competitive advantages for businesses that figure out how to make remote working successful, and this should terrify anyone in a senior leadership role. As the economy gets worse and business look to cut costs, that is going to become massively apparent.

      This guy would probably have been bleating on about how there was nowhere to fill or repair the first automobiles, and everyone should just stick with horses.

      • An IBM manager, narrow minded? Say it ain't so!
      • by jalvarez13 ( 1321457 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @08:00AM (#63496640)

        This guy is absurdly shortsighted. How can IBM's board allow someone with so little vision run a technology company?

        Maybe the board is pushing in the same direction?

        A very close friend of mine, founder and CEO of a successful startup, tried to make his company almost 100 percent remote after the pandemic. This move made complete sense as they are in a niche online retail sector that is, in a nutshell, a website coupled with a well-oiled decentrailzed logistic operation.

        The board refused, forcing his hand, which is stupid. They pay extra for prime real estate that also brings in more risk, as the internet connection is concentrated in one location. No matter how much redundancy you have, you can't beat having people distributed in many locations (as it would be if they were allowed to work from home), given that they can do their jobs independently. Also, the company is losing valuable employees that are no longer willing to spend two hours per day in traffic jams.

        Yes, Mr Krishna is pushing a dumb move, but that doesn't mean he is the only stupid guy up there.

        • The board owns the real estate that the business uses. They use that to shelter a large amount of the profits away from the visibility of the employees.

          • Most companies in silicon valley except for a tiny handful lease property. This is for tax reasons (buying means property taxes are reevaluated based upon current market value, leasing means legacy tax amounts that rise slower than property values). The company owns no real estate.

            Even if the board does own it is cheaper to lease that out to someone else than to pay yourself rent. I know this conspiracy keeps coming up but it doesn't make much sense financially.

            • No it does because the board doesn't own it but a board member or two do.

              Almost every company I worked for. Building was owned under a different. Company name and was leased. This is done for taxes as a leased building isn't an asset on the book just a liability.

              The leasing company is also then responsible for all building taxes.

              Commercial real estate is a scam upon a scam of easy money.

              The push for back to office is to keep those 5-10 year contracts goong

              • So they board member takes money out of one pocket and puts into a different pocket of his own? It's silly since you make more money by leasing the building to someone else.

                Maybe it happens in a case or two but I don't think this is uniformly done. Here in silicon valley most of the leasing companies are leasing out ot many diverse companies who can't all have a common board member. The original company that moved into the properties may be long gone, non existent (ie, Netscape had a lot of buildings her

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Not the first person in that role at IBM that is obviously unqualified. The problem is probably that the board has been essentially broken for a while now. That did kill, for example, Credit Suisse recently, more than a decade of board incompetence.

      • This guy is absurdly shortsighted. How can IBM's board allow someone with so little vision run a technology company?

        While you are at plus 5 insightful - sorry - you seem to be applying the aspirations of one subset of people, and applying it to everyone.

        Yes, given the tasks and the mental outlook of many programmers, they don't ever need to interact with another human being other than texts or Zoom. And this is not at all a bad thing.

        And if a person wishes to be nothing else but a programmer their entire life - then the career path is not affected, unless they fall behind.

        But not everyone wants to be hired, never i

    • Re:Actual message (Score:5, Interesting)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @07:04AM (#63496540)

      IBM's Chief's message to remote workers: "I will make your career suffer for this"

      I wonder if he's aware of his message to the board: "I will make your company suffer for this."

      To the CEO who wants to be "fiscally responsible" while championing a "go green" approach in the 21st Century; you will be perceived as THE hypocritical idiot if you also force employees to waste an entire workweek every month sitting behind a steering wheel commuting to an office building for the sake of sustaining the cube farmer people police you call middle management.

      Good employees, will leave. Shitty ones, will stay. Good luck.

      • Re:Actual message (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04, 2023 @07:29AM (#63496594)
        As a now former IBMer... there is no risk of that, the board is willfully blind. IBM is already letting go of their best and brightest under the banner of "Cost cutting" this is going to leave IBM unable to service its clients when things pick up (not that they were in a great position before due to mismanagement). No the board only cares about feeling like they are controlling the company and their quarterly dividend and stock price. They don't care about the long term sustainability of the company. When I left middle managers were backstabbing people left and right to save their own butts because of how silly the goals set for them were. IBM doesn't know how to invest in its people and hasn't since they got rid of their pension plan. When a company pulls someone off a full time billable project to lay them off, it's very clear it's not about good or bad people, it's about expensive people. But the most expensive people are the people deciding who gets laid off, and surprise surprise... their names aren't on the list despite them being redundant and even harmful to the company.
        • IBM doesn't know how to invest in its people

          It doesn't want to. Companies with a layoff mentality simply expect to get appropriately skilled staff when they want them.

          Not especially picking on IBM, unfortunately.

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Well, does not look like that will be the case. At this time, skilled IT people are rare (even rarer for IT security) and most good ones have jobs they feel comfortable with and will not be available to IBM, no matter what they offer. After all, you never know whether you will get fired again a year later if you sign on with them.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          That does not sound like IBM has a future. A board of bean-counters that do not understand what kind of business they are overseeing is usually the end. Giants dies slowly, but they do die as Credit Suisse has recently demonstrated. Prolonged board incompetence there as well.

      • I'm going to be the lone voice of the other side here, but you're dreaming if you think that.

        The truth is labor is a market. Market forces dictate whether good or bad employees stay. Right now, in the current credit crunch, layoffs are happening mostly because companies over-hired when there was plenty of free credit. Now there's a chance to wean people off of inflated salaries and over-staffing, and while that's a bit harsh every company uses macro environments like this to get more lean.

        What th

    • Agreed. I left IBM before he became CEO. When I saw the news, I had no opinion one way or another because I didn't know who he was. But I did have a really bad feeling. Althought Ginni wasn't able to drive IBM out of the mud, but that was a whole mess created by her predecessor, not her fault. Putting Krishna in charge, in my opinion, was actually a political BS. They wanted to be able to show the world that "yeah we don't discriminate, in fact we just mad an Indian guy our top dog". But I think messing wit
      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        The board needs to make a leadership change quite immediately to save itself.

        I think at this time it is clear that the IBM board cannot find its own behind with both hands, a map and a flashlight. The company is probably doomed.

    • by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

      He is not wrong. Management in corporations is about social interaction. The grunt who hunkers down and does the job doesn't normally get promoted. The ass kissers who spend their energy creating an image do. When you are doing your job you don't have the time to tell your boss how good you are.

      Our society is all about appearance. You can't be working unless you are seen running around and looking busy.

      • > He is not wrong.

        He is out of date though. Similar to how covid changed the way we work, that change also requires how you promote yourself too.

        I have had no problem getting promotion and recognition working remotely.
        All my team works in different parts of America. My clients are in different parts of the world.

        While I do have to occasionally travel fo clients, 90% of my work is remote. Having to work in the office would require 3 hour round trip to the nearest office and add no value whatsoever in how

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by brunes69 ( 86786 )

      These things are not even connected. I don't see what working with a client has to do with working remotely. Just because you work from home does not in any way prevent you from visiting a client site when needed. Nor is it obvious how learning how to make product trade-offs is aided by being in an office.

      It is a confusing thing to state.

    • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Anyone still working for IBM?
      To me IBM seems like the last outpost before retirement, so career doesn't seem to be a key factor.

  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @05:14AM (#63496426)

    those who don't "would be hard-pressed to get promoted, especially into managerial roles

    Those who think becoming manager is a promotion have never done management.

    Of course, if you mean the type of manager who gives orders and doesn't do diddly squat type, that's different. But giving an honest shot at doing management isn't worth the extra money in most companies.

    • by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @05:26AM (#63496444)

      Those who think becoming manager is a promotion have never done management.

      Of course, if you mean the type of manager who gives orders and doesn't do diddly squat type, that's different. But giving an honest shot at doing management isn't worth the extra money in most companies.

      If you're a talented developer then I would absolutely agree with you. But most people are not talented developers. Most people have pretty generic (aka replaceable) skills, and as they get older they have to keep competing with hordes of ever more desperate graduates who want to take their jobs.

      The best solution for these people is to get into the 'management club', where you are basically spending all day forming the personal relationships (schmoozing) with those who carry the power to, hopefully, protect you from losing your job when things go bad.

      But if you're just really good at what you do and can't be easily replaced then yeah, it basically herding cats.

      • Having a Masters or doctorate degree in mathematics might. There's so few of those guys they can write their own ticket. But I remember hearing about the 500 level math courses. Day one the professor would just start writing complex equations full of jargon on the board and if you didn't just nod alone you got out. Point being there just aren't that many of those guys and that's why they get to write their own ticket.

        The trouble is for some reason everyone wants to pretend they're one of those guys beca
        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          The trouble is for some reason everyone wants to pretend they're one of those guys because they know where the link list is and they can bubble sort.

          Hahaha, yes. Although linked lists are actually useful in some contexts, even if they are very elementary. I remember I needed to write the code for a doubly linked list with insert, delete, search in my written year 1 CS exam with about 10 minutes time to that (got full score). Use of bubble-sort is just a red flag. Although I did find it once in some critical code for a bank that was still in development. Needless to say the project was scrapped and one problem causing that was that even putting in only t

      • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @08:34AM (#63496704) Homepage

        The best solution for these people is to get into the 'management club', where you are basically spending all day forming the personal relationships (schmoozing) with those who carry the power to, hopefully, protect you from losing your job when things go bad.

        That's a pretty cynical take, though maybe not wrong. However, a company where that works, is a company with too many managers. Managers who should be fired, because they contribute nothing useful. So much for job security.

        People with replaceable skills still have skills. So what if a million other people can do the same job - there are also a million jobs out there.

        • by Njovich ( 553857 )

          However, a company where that works, is a company with too many managers.

          AKA 99% of companies with more than a handful of employees

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Hear hear. Think twice before going into management.
    • by chrish ( 4714 )

      Wait, you folks got extra money to be managers?!

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It is compensation for the job being so crappy. Had a manager at a customer project that one day told me he was going back into embedded development at some other company. Never before before saw him as happy as that day.

    • So becoming a manager you used to be a promotion. Nowadays it's just more work.. it used to be the only fast food restaurants would do that trick where they would give you a title just to make you work harder for the same or even less pay. The sort of nasty tricks used by the lowest paid jobs have percolated up to even the highest paid jobs.

      That's because rampant outsourcing couple with a large influx of work visas at higher levels and a generally crap economy being more and more desperation has left work
  • by Arnonyrnous Covvard ( 7286638 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @05:17AM (#63496438)
    He just told them the truth: Gotta switch employers to have a "career". This is good for the economy too. The brain drain spreads the knowledge and competition is good.
    • companies stopped training in the early '00's when they got access to a virtually inexhaustible supply of cheap H1-B labor. When the boomers were coming up and the cold war was still a thing they couldn't do that, so if they wanted skilled labor they had to fund the Universities and they had to train employees.

      Once they had access to that cheap overseas labor that was that. They lobbied to kill the State & Federal subsidies to public Uni (and tuition skyrocketed as a result) and they fired their tra
  • I always thought it was a strange thing to come work for a technology company and then become a people manager. If the company doesn't have a majority of paths for promotion because people are good at technology then what are they doing?

    Besides, people management involves psychology of people which, if you're good, is not hampered by remote work. Sad that the CEO of IBM doesn't understand people well enough to know that.
    • This. Why does career have to mean becoming a manager? Does someone who starts a career as a doctor dream some day of being a doctor who doesn't actually talk to and help patients? Does someone who starts a career as a firefighter dream of some day being the guy who stays behind at the station and files paperwork? For some time I was in management roles but I wasn't very 'good at it' according to my overlords. I spent too much time dealing with the day to day. Helping mentor the people on my team, making s
      • by xanthos ( 73578 )
        And here we come to the root of Mr. Krishna's problem, if people don't come back to the office, then it will be impossible to perpetuate traditional management practices. Such as face to face intimidation which he no doubt has found hard to do over a conference call vs calling someone into his office.

        The traditional promotional is long dead. The days of a boss seeing potential in a new hire and mentoring them up to the next level is long dead. The new industry standard is to fill all vacancies with ext

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Indeed. Also, a remote worker can a lot easier quit a crappy job. No need to move or the like. That may not be compatible with management by intimidation as well. My take is that companies like IBM will just not have access to first-rate or even mediocre tech experts in the future. They will just get the dross that has no choice. The establishment of remote work as a standard practice was very mich overdue.

  • by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @05:25AM (#63496442) Homepage

    Remote workers, he said, don't learn how to do things like deal with a difficult client, or how to make trade-offs when designing a new product. "I don't understand how to do all that remotely," he said.

    Judging from my experiences with IBM, they just don't know how to do things like maintain software or support features they advertise. It has nothing to do with remote workers, unless "remote" just means some busy call center in India hired by managers who think a script is a substitute for support.

  • by Sique ( 173459 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @05:59AM (#63496464) Homepage
    I know of an IBM region with a single IBM site, which has about 300 miles in diameter, and the IBM site is actually close to one border of the region. It means, that some IBM employees would have to commute 250 miles to their office. All other regional offices were closed during the past five years. As most employees are field service technicians, they have to stay close to their customers, so moving near the IBM site is not an option.

    Contractually, those employees are assigned to so called project spaces, which do not have IBM amenities like IBM Intranet, or a team assistant on site or similar. If they would be commanded to the IBM office (which is not their contractual place of work), this would legally be a business trip, and as the distance to travel is more than 50 miles per day, they would be entitled to a paid accommodation. I don't believe Arvind Krishna would approve of hundreds of dollars business trip expenses for each employee per week just to be in office.

    On the other hand, if IBM contractually assigned all those technicans to thei IBM site, their daily work would also be a business trip for hundreds of miles to their respective local customers.

    IBM has three choices: Re-open the local branch offices, so employees can commute to the office, pay large amounts in business trip expenses, or stop the requirement to be in office.

  • Oh no! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bodly ( 98030 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @06:08AM (#63496470)
    I'll never get promoted to management at IBM! It seems that people in management think that everyone wants to be in management. I have been in technical positions for 25 years and have a negative amount of interest in being "promoted" to management.
    • Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Informative)

      by khchung ( 462899 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @06:52AM (#63496510) Journal

      It seems that people in management think that everyone wants to be in management.

      Yes, those are the same ones that think everyone wants to be in the same office with them.

    • Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @07:48AM (#63496616) Homepage

      The *good* managers don't see management as a way to climb the career ladder, but as a way to help a team achieve more than they can achieve on their own. Good managers are teachers and coaches, they've been there, done that, and they want to help others learn from their own mistakes. These kinds of managers are rare, to be sure, but they do exist. And, these types of managers have no problem managing remotely.

  • by khchung ( 462899 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @06:51AM (#63496506) Journal

    Some of us remembered how IBM fell last time to the brink of oblivion, and now we may get to see it happen once again with a chief that has no vision and cannot see past his own shortcomings.

    Did Krishna forget that IBM is a *global* company with people scattered all over the world? Is Krishna's message telling IBM's client and shareholders is that IBMers cannot function well through remote collaboration? That IBM managers are incapable of managing remote staff? What does that message really say about IBM's ability to compete with other companies that are fine with remote workers?

    When a manager cannot manage people working remotely 20 miles away across the city from home, how could anyone expect those managers to properly manage teams of people working 2000 miles away from another country? In short, Krishna is telling the world that IBM is filled with incompetent managers. Good job.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Krishna may be telling the truth though about IBM being filled with incompetent managers. Including himself, obviously.

  • We have no career (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @06:56AM (#63496524)

    What's that "career" you talk about? You still promote from within? No? Then what kind of "career" is that?

    The only time I have ever been promoted was when I packed and moved to another company. You don't promote from within anymore, so your workers have zero reason to put any effort into having a "career".

    Also, why that sudden urge for human contact? You treat your workers like numbers, and now suddenly you have that need for personal relationships? I don't. If you feel lonely, get a dog.

  • In a way he has a point. Being in an office you can hear people talk and maybe learn something or hear things going on you do not get in meetings.

    To me, remote meetings and working remotely is like driving with one eye closed. It works, but seems odd and you can miss things. To get me back, I would want good mitigations against covid, good air filters in the office, people spaced further apart plus (and yes mod me down) everyone must be vaccinated against covid, including boosters. Without that I will n

    • Being in an office you can hear people talk and maybe learn something or hear things going on you do not get in meetings.

      Being in an office you probably don't hear anything because working without noise canceling headphones will drive you mad in less than a day.

      To me, remote meetings and working remotely is like driving with one eye closed.

      To me it is no different than working on premise. What exactly are you missing?

      • by jmccue ( 834797 )

        To me it is no different than working on premise. What exactly are you missing?

        As I said, people talking in the aisles and a group of people congregating at the water cooler or kitchen.

        You get a lot of information on what other people are doing as opposed to just over zoom. Usually zoom meetings are formal and you do not get to hear what is going on in the other organisations you happen to work by. So, you can hear trends, complaints from your users and if need be take action. Working remote you only get to see what your management wants you to see.

        • Who needs management to arrange meetings with your coworkers? We created a virtual watercooler, if someone wants to vent or wants to talk about something, it's trivially easy to enter the "watercooler" room and nudge the ones you want to join.

          We can't be the only ones who had that idea...

          • by jmccue ( 834797 )

            That is good for people you know, we have the same thing. But what about meeting people you do not know. I learned a lot over the years just by chatting with people outside of my circle, no way to invite people you do not know.

            For example, I learned about changes in some product lines and because of that, I got a head start in making/specing application changes. This made me look "good" (not that I care) by getting the changes ready quickly. Instead that time would have been lost. There are lots of thi

        • How can anyone possibly get any work done listening to all those conversations? What is the purpose? In my workplace the managers communicate everything that needs to be communicated. That's how it is supposed to work. If you have to be at the office to catch important information, than that's just a workplace with poor communication or people are protecting their kingdoms. I swore never to work at a place that allows that again.
    • It's true, managing remotely does require a different skill set than managing in person. But a manager who thinks he's getting the whole picture because he can overhear conversations, is missing more than he realizes.

    • "Out of sight, out of mind" is a truism for a reason.

      You can be very productive, but if you aren't entering the field of view people, they forget about you.

  • by sentiblue ( 3535839 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @07:14AM (#63496568)
    Lots and lots of IBMers have been working remote years before the pandemic. In the 2000s, besides the HQ, they sold most of their real estate holdings and opted to lease buildings for satellite offices. Most people had no permanent office/cubicle anymore. When we had to meet in office, we booked conference room and floating offices for the day. I was an IBMer for a decade and only left few months before the pandemic. The first 2-3 years I was based in a local office building, but when we consolidated buildings, I no longer had my own sitting place and began working remote. So to say now "return to office" is actually not really true. The following several years at IBM, I only visited the SF office couple times only for corporate events where the chairwoman/CEO spoke. I enjoyed the remote lifestyle quite much and after leaving there, I only accepted remote offers. Been working remote since I left IBM.
  • Reasoning is just silly. I worked for IBM retiring in 2016. The last 8 years I worked there my manager wasn't in the same location as me. Even if I came in the office (where I spent the majority of time talking to others around the world), my manager is nowhere around to see me. To compound the situation, IBM discontinued any travel for the manager or employee see each other in person as a cost-saving measure. Just dumb

  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @07:52AM (#63496628) Homepage

    The IBM chief is admitting that he personally doesn't know how to manage remote teams, and therefore he can't imagine how anyone else could do it successfully.

  • Sounds like this CEO is still used to the old school way of thinking. My wife managed global teams for a major corporation for over 10 years. All from home. I think she might have met with some of her teammates every year or so, but not everyone could attend at that was fine. She continually increased the efficiency of these teams - all without stepping foot at any company facility.

    Remote management is completely possible. It takes time to build the tools and keep to the work ethic needed, but with upper ma

    • I have no doubt that she was effective. But, if you compare her to a person with similar education, experience and background managing the same number and type of people where the only difference is that the team is all local in the same office, I wonder which group of people would be more effective, the all remote team or the all local team?

  • Gears and grease (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @08:08AM (#63496660) Homepage

    One of the biggest problems in the tech industry is the old-fashioned idea that a manager is somehow a higher or better position. Managers are the grease that let the gears turn with less friction. You need both gears and grease, but I don't see that the grease is more important.

    You wouldn't promote a manager to be a developer. Why would you promote a developer to be a manager? It's a different skill set. I have repeatedly turned down offers to move into a management position. It's meant as a compliment or a promotion, but it shouldn't be.

    • Managers are the tools I use to cut the red tape and get the resources I need. If they can't provide that, they need to be replaced.

    • Supposedly management has more responsibility and risk so they are compensated for that. Your impact generally is going to be smaller than the impact of a manager -- more along the lines of how much damage you could be doing than how much improvement you can create.

      A manager can nearly destroy a division or even a whole company. It's almost like blackmail... and who gets input on pay? managers.

      Who has the TIME to self promote and report to the higher ups? managers.

      Are they worth higher pay? no. they are ea

  • The bloody morons that need people in the office to justify the largely useless jobs of the former now resorting to threats. Consider yourself middle-fingered, Krishna.
  • by Lavandera ( 7308312 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @08:34AM (#63496706)

    One of primary drivers of going fully-remote for me was realization that my chances for managerial roles are very slim ...

    I they promoted me before going remote - I would probably stay to be up to date on office politics...

  • by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @08:38AM (#63496710)
    IBM has 30,000 more employees in India than the US, but Krishna lives in New York. Under his own advice, shouldn't he be "in the office" in Mumbai?
  • When the IBM Linux Technology Center was founded it was created on the concept of remote work, remote management. It was innovative for IBM, and it worked. We frankly crushed it in meeting the goals of contributing to Linux and bringing Linux into the IBM portfolio all while utilizing remote work and remote management.

    One of the purposes of management be it at IBM or elsewhere is to foster the environment for its staff. If they want an all in person situation, that comes with costs in real-estate as well as

  • There are people who need to work remotely, at least part of the time, as an accommodation for a disability.

    I wonder what lawsuit will emerge if plaintiffs can prove they're doing this. These statements go a long way.

  • It's about control. The vague rationales are just misdirection, anyone who has managed people over the last 2 years knows he is full of shit. The folks in power want you in the office because that act of going into the office is itself a form of supplication.

  • I've been saying this since before the whole pandemic came along and forced the issue, and I still believe it today. There's a "sweet spot" for a lot of these career "white collar" jobs where a mix of coming in to an office or business and working from home is the best option. Is it "3 days a week in the office"? I'm not going to say that's the "right" answer. But that's what I do where I've worked for the last couple of years, and it's not bad. I think even working from home 3 days a week, and coming in 2

    • by endus ( 698588 )

      Nonsense.

      The cost of a few plane tickets and a couple nights in a decent hotel is a lot less than the rent on office space. Getting the drivers and devs together is an absolutely fantastic idea...but most of their time is better spent where they can actually do work and not constantly get interrupted, they don't need to do that every single week.

      • by King_TJ ( 85913 )

        Nah... just not buying it, because I'm literally watching the experiment happen in front of my eyes. And it mirrors what I saw at previous employers too.

        The devs *always* act like what they need is "no interruption". But what their employers need is a little bit different. You can be all "nose to the grindstone" for 8 hours straight, coding at your PC. But you've got others around you who need to get their jobs done efficiently too. And sometimes, issues come up where you really need to ask one of the devs

  • by peterww ( 6558522 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @10:34AM (#63496996)

    You know why people like seeing other people in person? It's familiar. It's easy. It's what we know how to do.

    Working remote is completely different from working in person. You can't just walk up and interrupt someone, you have to first be granted their time. You can't monitor what someone is doing at random moments (unless you install spy software). And you can't walk around an office and ask random people how to find X or who knows about Y, you have to have an internal online directory that indexes who works where and what they do.

    In short: in-person working allows you to be completely disorganized and still get work done. Remote working requires you to be organized. This is why managers and executive leadership hate it. They don't want to organize.

    Another reason they hate remote work, is it's harder to hide things. Has your boss ever said over Slack "hey do you have a minute to talk? let's jump on a call." It's because they don't want a record of what they are about to say. Easier to have record-less conversations in person. There's no evidence you ever even called them. And you can write a document and shred it and nobody will ever know.

  • Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by endus ( 698588 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @11:05AM (#63497104)

    Remote work is better for the environment, better for employees' wallets, better for employees' stress levels, saves employees hours and hours per week, reduces company operating costs while increasing employee morale...the list goes on and on. Yet executives continue to try to convince us that some ethereal office kumbaya far outweighs these much more readily quantifiable benefits.

    Grow up. This is business, not your favorite college dive bar on a Saturday night.

    How did managers in global companies cope with employees based overseas before the pandemic if face time is so critical? As such a manager I can promise you I was not flying to multiple continents every week to get face time with people.

    Are these executives ensuring they have face time with all of their directs every week? Any CEO of a multinational company is going to be spending a majority of their time on a plane. How can these companies possibly continue to function if *the head of the entire company* isn't even getting weekly face time with their directs?

    The answer is, of course, that all of this is complete and utter nonsense. The good thing about executives speaking out like this is that its easier to identify companies who don't care about employee morale, aren't forward thinking, don't change with the times, don't want to take an opportunity to cut costs while actually improving morale and productivity...in short, companies you don't want to work for. They can enjoy their third tier talent while the high performers flock to companies with a better chance of future success.

    • See, that's what I don' get. The same type of managers who glorified outsourcing overseas and heralded it as the new big thing are now exactly the same people who insist that "face time is valuable".

      BULLSHIT

  • by OfMiceAndMenus ( 4553885 ) on Thursday May 04, 2023 @12:05PM (#63497236)
    The entire "problem" companies see when you work from home is that their managers are completely useless and bring no value to the company. They are nagging helicopter supervisors who actually slow down work in a lot of jobs. They're one of the MAJOR reasons people don't want to come back to an office.

    Oh no, now you might not be able to get promoted to a lifeless drone job making other people miserable! Mostly because that role won't be necessary if you don't work in one of their overpriced long-commute corporate offices! Oh noes!

    Companies that oppose WFH are just telling on themselves. Sorry you made bad real estate investments, sorry you hired all that staff you don't really need, now fuck off and fix your company without making your workers suffer and their work environment suck.

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