Remember that this is not the first time IBM pulled this trick. They did the same thing in 2017, when they were being hailed as an innovative company for reducing cost by not having physical offices. They forced people to RTO and caused a bunch of people to quit without severance.
“IBM to managers: Move close to an office or quit”
@drahardja My employer did this same thing right before COVID. Asked everyone to RTO in a new office opened in a red state with a $7.25/hour minimum wage. Forced 50% of a large, distributed workforce to quit.
And hilariously, because of COVID, within a year everyone was WFH again, proving that WFH was not the problem. The goal was to get rid of older, higher-paid workers, without firing them, by forcing them to RTO.
@drahardja It’s nothing new. ExxonMobil moved their campus from Houston to The Woodlands, making it an impractical commuting distance for many employees in other suburbs. But it was close enough to the original campuses that it didn’t qualify for any relocation assistance. No question that this was a deliberate move to drive attrition.
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