As the wave of leaks from within IBM and Red Hat continue to pour in, I wanted to take a moment to post two items that don't really fit anywhere else.
Neither of these leaks below reveal anything entirely new about IBM... but they help to provide a more clear picture of the culture within IBM -- and the daily work lives of IBM employees. Plus... these are just plain quirky.
The first is a simple flyer -- which was taped to the Men's bathroom at the IBM office in Sandy Springs, Georgia.
It reads:
"When you hear a woman at work being talked over, interrupted, or worse -- having her ideas co-opted by someone else -- speak up to help pass the mic back her way. be an ALLY."
This was placed on the Men's Bathroom door by the IBM "Culture Club".
"Hey! I know you need to go potty, but read this quick lecture first." It's just... peculiar.
Now let's turn to the "Pause for Black Lives" event.
IBM employees were encouraged to go "Offline" and "Unplug" in support of "Black Lives". Effectively a moment of silence.
Ironically, people were encouraged to post online messages -- one specific message in particular -- to declare that they were, in fact, not online. Resulting in a massive flood of messages being posted.
Specifically... this one:
"I am participating in IBM's Pause for Black lives by observing a moment of reflection in solidarity with the National Strike for Black Lives Movement. #BlackLivesMatter"
Over and over and over again.
A few variations were posted... but mostly it was that exact same message -- all flooding into IBM's Slack channels, and email inboxes (as people set this as their "Out of Office" auto-reply).
How many people did this? Turns out... a lot.
1,210 posted this message to IBM's Slack server (or set it as their Out of Office email), to be precise.
That's a whole heck of a lot of copypasta.
We know that number thanks to Drew Valentine, IBM's Vice President of People and Culture. Which, apparently, is a real job.
Thanks to the whistleblowers who continue to come forward with this insider information.
And thank you to the supporters of The Lunduke Journal for making this work possible.
