IBM orders workers back to the office, or face the consequences

Date:
Fri, 18 Apr 2025 13:42:00 +0000

Description:
IBM tells US Cloud and sales staff to work from the office at least three
days per week.

FULL STORY

IBM has reportedly enacted a mass return-to-office policy, mandating US sales staff to work at least three days a week at a client site, flagship office or sales hub.

The news comes just days after the company told its US Cloud employees to return to strategic locations (company offices) on similar three-day-per-week terms.

In the case of IBMs US Cloud workers, theyve been given until July 1 to
adhere to the new policy. Workers needing to relocate have been cut a little more slack, with until October 1 to find a new home. Its unclear when the companys sales staff will need to move by.

IBM workers given renewed RTO mandate

On the face of it, IBMs return-to-office policy is on the nicer side for
those in favor of remote and hybrid working.

Three days has long been the average in a post-pandemic world, however many
of IBMs fellow tech giants, including Amazon, have enacted full-time five-day policies, marking an end to remote working altogether.

Across the US, IBM has five flagship offices in New York, Raleigh, Washington DC and San Francisco. The fifth, in Austin, will be open by next year.

A further eight sales hubs in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Los Angeles and Seattle are also available for in-person work.

According to an internal memo by Adam Lawrence seen by The Register , Dallas-based Digital Sales workers will be relocated to the new Austin office when it opens in 2026.

Lawrence billed the RTO move as a return to client initiative, suggesting
that sales staff need to be closer to clients to secure sales.

Casually referred to as an initialism for Ive Been Moved, IBM has a long history of relocating workers, however positions have been relatively stable
at the company in the grand scheme of things.

Apart from around 1,000 layoffs in August 2024 relating to the closure of a China R&D department, IBMs only other big job cut was in January 2023, when 3,900 lost their jobs. Only a handful of much smaller reductions have
followed since then.

Via The Register

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/ibm-orders-workers-back-to-the-office-or-face-th e-consequences

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Mike Powell wrote to All <=-

IBM orders workers back to the office, or face the consequences

This story was pretty amazing - "relocation assistance" for people 50
miles away from the office or greater, meaning no more remote work. 8
offices in some of the most expensive places to live in the US with no
mention of compensation for people who need to move, and buried in the
story is some confusing language around DEI - sticking to ideals of DEI
while adhering to local applicable laws and government policies, while
10x-ing their hiring in India left me confused.



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IBM orders workers back to the office, or face the consequences

This story was pretty amazing - "relocation assistance" for people 50
miles away from the office or greater, meaning no more remote work. 8
offices in some of the most expensive places to live in the US with no mention of compensation for people who need to move, and buried in the
story is some confusing language around DEI - sticking to ideals of DEI
while adhering to local applicable laws and government policies, while 10x-ing their hiring in India left me confused.

Having worked closely with IBM for many years, I am not too shocked that
this all sounds confusing. With tech, and especially sales, a lot of
workers are on the road most of the time anyway so I am not sure why having them "in the office" would even be important. Even when they are "in the office" they won't be there.


* SLMR 2.1a * ...a host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance...
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Mike Powell wrote to KURT WEISKE <=-

Having worked closely with IBM for many years, I am not too shocked
that this all sounds confusing. With tech, and especially sales, a lot
of workers are on the road most of the time anyway so I am not sure why having them "in the office" would even be important. Even when they
are "in the office" they won't be there.

It sounded like a big part of the directive was to allow for techs
embedded in large contracts to include time at customer sites as part of
their RTO. RTC, as they called it.

My first IT gig was at a shop that was all IBM - PS/2 desktops and
servers, AS/400 and S/38 midrange computers and token ring networking.
We had a dedicated rep who was onsite 2 days a week, primarily
schmoozing the VP of IT (who seemed so old, but it about my age now!)

I suppose they still have those "big iron" clients out there, pretty
sure they sold the server business to Lenovo along with the desktop
business.

Pretty interesting times, being able to have IBM branded schwag, mice,
desktop PCs, network equipment, operating systems, applications, intel
servers and big iron all supported by the same company.

My OS/2 pen just recently ran out of ink - it outlasted the OS by many
years!



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I suppose they still have those "big iron" clients out there, pretty

Yes, they did where I worked. They actually moved to hosting the "big
iron" in a cloud-like service. I forget what they called it, but the
machines reside at one of their IBM facilities.


* SLMR 2.1a * Safe sex used to mean to put the car in "Park"
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Mike Powell wrote to KURT WEISKE <=-

I suppose they still have those "big iron" clients out there, pretty

Yes, they did where I worked. They actually moved to hosting the "big iron" in a cloud-like service. I forget what they called it, but the machines reside at one of their IBM facilities.

There were some interesting products from IBM - apparently an AS/400 can
run a ton of Linux VMs in their own protected memory space, while
running a DB2 database on bare metal - meaning you could build an entire
web infrastructure on one box. They did something like that for one of
the olympics.



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