14 ms·

2,445 IBM Employees Openly Condemned IBM for Enabling Racist Regimes

34 points by URfejk 6y ago

mensetmanusman 6y ago
Are they asking management to pull out of having any operations in China and India?
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  Are they asking management to pull out of the USA? Which has conducted illegal wars, and pulled out of nuclear talks with Iran.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    Unfortunately, the US legal system has inadvertently legalized all wars/conflicts the military happens to be a part of. This is a consequence of so many things...
  - geogra4 6y ago
    Right? It's really hypocritical for any American company to be talking about these kinds of things.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
      It's okay to be a hypocrit. Just some be surprised when people call you out on it. Doesn't necessarily make what you say or do invalid in and of itself.
  - frenchtoastboat 6y ago
    They aren't. You forgot to answer the original question, though.
  - CWuestefeld 6y ago
    The USA has plenty of problems. But they don't include murdering 10s of millions of people, harvesting organs from prisoners, policies leading to enforced abortions and murders of baby girls, and universal suppression of speech. Moral calculus can be dangerous, but the numbers are so huge that it seems fair to me to put the 20th century communist regimes at the top of the list for most evil.
CincinnatiMan 6y ago
> (2) Expand our diversity recruitment programs specifically targeting women, people of color, and LGBT people with the goal of doubling recruitment of these groups in 2017 and steadily increasing the share of these groups as a proportion of new hiring in subsequent years. Initiatives like this worry me that we'll end up like my previous employer where we were off-the-record instructed not to hire a white male for our open position.
- stateofnounion 6y ago
  It's already happening.
  - teekert 6y ago
    The technical University of Eindhoven (the Netherlands) announced they'd only hire women from a certain point in time on and they did for months. Then a judge called them back. In their defense, it was needed, almost all professors were male so I understand how they came to this action. Generally I think it is better to stimulate people to hire outside their comfort-zone and build heterogeneous teams in all dimensions.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  Yes, “don’t hire white men” is a much different policy than “please increase your funnel and hire more non white cis hereto men”. I would argue your previous employer more or less just misses the point of these things.
  - supergeek133 6y ago
    But that's the whole issue. Policy versus practice. I'm usually hard pressed to find people who disagree with the thought of "we should try to hire people other than white men in a white men dominated profession". The issue comes when the unspoken (OP's "off the record") enforcement of this is willful hate towards those people.
makison 6y ago
Broken db
Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
"...reaffirmed IBM’s moral leadership by refusing to discriminate on the basis of race, resisting the prevailing attitudes of governors in the southern United States." "[We petition you to prohibit] IBM and its employees from using any Trump owned or Trump branded properties for business purposes..." Ugh. When did so many employees become fifth columns pushing a very narrow and minority political view? This is happening at many large companies lately.
- jaywalk 6y ago
  The problem is that companies started giving in to these fringe groups, which just emboldens them. These people can never be pacified, so giving them an inch is the worst mistake you can make.

34 points by URfejk 6y ago

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Are they asking management to pull out of having any operations in China and India?

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
Are they asking management to pull out of the USA? Which has conducted illegal wars, and pulled out of nuclear talks with Iran.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Unfortunately, the US legal system has inadvertently legalized all wars/conflicts the military happens to be a part of. This is a consequence of so many things...
- geogra4 6y ago
  Right? It's really hypocritical for any American company to be talking about these kinds of things.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    It's okay to be a hypocrit. Just some be surprised when people call you out on it. Doesn't necessarily make what you say or do invalid in and of itself.
- frenchtoastboat 6y ago
  They aren't. You forgot to answer the original question, though.
- CWuestefeld 6y ago
  The USA has plenty of problems. But they don't include murdering 10s of millions of people, harvesting organs from prisoners, policies leading to enforced abortions and murders of baby girls, and universal suppression of speech. Moral calculus can be dangerous, but the numbers are so huge that it seems fair to me to put the 20th century communist regimes at the top of the list for most evil.

CincinnatiMan 6y ago

> (2) Expand our diversity recruitment programs specifically targeting women, people of color, and LGBT people with the goal of doubling recruitment of these groups in 2017 and steadily increasing the share of these groups as a proportion of new hiring in subsequent years. Initiatives like this worry me that we'll end up like my previous employer where we were off-the-record instructed not to hire a white male for our open position.

stateofnounion 6y ago
It's already happening.
- teekert 6y ago
  The technical University of Eindhoven (the Netherlands) announced they'd only hire women from a certain point in time on and they did for months. Then a judge called them back. In their defense, it was needed, almost all professors were male so I understand how they came to this action. Generally I think it is better to stimulate people to hire outside their comfort-zone and build heterogeneous teams in all dimensions.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
TeaDrunk 6y ago
Yes, “don’t hire white men” is a much different policy than “please increase your funnel and hire more non white cis hereto men”. I would argue your previous employer more or less just misses the point of these things.
- supergeek133 6y ago
  But that's the whole issue. Policy versus practice. I'm usually hard pressed to find people who disagree with the thought of "we should try to hire people other than white men in a white men dominated profession". The issue comes when the unspoken (OP's "off the record") enforcement of this is willful hate towards those people.

makison 6y ago

Broken db

Wolfenstein98k 6y ago

"...reaffirmed IBM’s moral leadership by refusing to discriminate on the basis of race, resisting the prevailing attitudes of governors in the southern United States." "[We petition you to prohibit] IBM and its employees from using any Trump owned or Trump branded properties for business purposes..." Ugh. When did so many employees become fifth columns pushing a very narrow and minority political view? This is happening at many large companies lately.

jaywalk 6y ago
The problem is that companies started giving in to these fringe groups, which just emboldens them. These people can never be pacified, so giving them an inch is the worst mistake you can make.