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Re: IBM is having a Yahoo moment: No more working from home
Subject:Re: IBM is having a Yahoo moment: No more working from home From:Chris Morton <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 10 Feb 2017 09:31:40 -0500
IBM and Yahoo aside, I do perceive value in certain sociability aspects of
being on-prem.
But at one client whose facility I frequent one a month or so, all are
engaged in meetings all day, every day. I leave wondering how anyone
actually does any work. And Mr. ImAllImportant marketing guy wants to
quibble that medical device user manual reading audiences (if any exist)
that no one will understand what "unwell" means (he wants it to read, "not
feel well").
Further, I just read in the local edition of the Business Review that yet
another company has bought a building and is going to create an open
workspace environment. No thanks.
At least my HP cubicle afforded some degree of privacy, and it was common
to let team members know when one was "on critical path" (read: don't bug
me right now). From what I've read, all the open workspace does is promote
more slacking off, not desired "team building" (unless that definition has
come to mean playing fraternity house pranks).
Once upon a time I had a high-ceilinged 12' x12' office with a door I could
shut. If I needed to attend a meeting, no problem. If I needed to coach an
engineer how to construct an actual useful UI, no problem. If I needed to
go in the lab to bang on a piece of kit, I could. Yet when I needed some
freakin' quiet think-and-do time, I could retreat to my man cave and have
at it with no interruptions.
Today I have a nicer man cave at home, from where I do my clients' work. At
the medical device place, all they give me is a study carrel, a crappy lamp
that can't be positioned such that I'm not looking directly into it, and no
external monitor (they all have twin 24" units in their cubicles). My
handler was put off when I insisted on going back to my nearby hotel room
between their all-important cross-dysfunctional meetings. There I had set
up my external keyboard and 24" rotating monitor with my laptop, along with
Bose SoundLink Mini. I had all of the peace and quiet I needed (except for
the snowplow at 4:00 am one morning)âespecially during one very intense
1-1/2 hour critical path where 150+ pages were flying as I hastened to
update yet another iteration.
On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 9:04 AM, Cardimon, Craig <ccardimon -at- m-s-g -dot- com>
wrote:
> The idea of working shoulder-to-shoulder is not exciting to introverts
> like me.
>
> If the introverts have options, they will skedaddle.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+ccardimon=m-s-g -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:
> techwr-l-bounces+ccardimon=m-s-g -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of
> Stuart Burnfield
> Sent: Friday, February 10, 2017 8:51 AM
> To: 'Techwr-l' <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
> Subject: Re: IBM is having a Yahoo moment: No more working from home
>
> It sounds a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
>
> IBM is a vast, surprisingly decentralized, enterprise so it's hard to sum
> up in simple terms. But if you poke around on ibm.com and browse the
> marketing material that's written by marketing people and not technical
> people, you'll find a lot of "I don't understand what this means"
> translated from English into marketing jargon.
>
> Getting the writers to sit with other marketing people who don't
> understand what it means either isn't going to help with that.
>
> If cutting payroll really is the unstated goal, this will work. A lot of
> good people who can leave will leave because they have options. Some staff
> who suspect they won't thrive on the job market will stay.
>
> If the real target is lack of productivity from some remote workers, this
> is a ham-fisted way of going about it. It's a management problem that could
> be solved by better management.
>
> > "I know this is hard ... But we have gotten to a place where > we're
> excited about the path forward."
>
> <retch>
>
> Stuart
>
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