Dave Carvajal

IBM Tells Its Remote Employees to Get Back to the Office

By Martha C. White / May 23, 2017

For a company whose embrace of mobile work predates the internet and even the personal computer, IBM’s decision to recall employees back to the office has human resources experts warning that the move could make it harder for Big Blue to compete with the likes of Google and Apple, along with hot startups, to recruit and retain the best people.

“I think it is going to be a talent problem,” said Jennifer Glass, the Barbara Bush professor of liberal arts at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas. “It’s very clear in the literature that autonomy is something talented workers want, especially millennials.”

A survey by Flexjobs.com found that 80 percent of respondents said that flexibility was a top consideration when considering a new job, and a third reported leaving a job because it didn’t offer the flexibility they needed.

“People work from home for a lot of different reasons,” Sara Sutton Fell, founder and CEO of Flexjobs.com, including accommodating childcare, eldercare and disabilities. “They need it. They don’t just want it.”

Some experts say the rollback of telecommuting reflects a more seismic shift as IBM struggles to adapt to rapid changes in an industry it once dominated. “When technology companies change priorities or shift focus, there can be a change as well to how and where employees work,” said Scott Dobroski, community expert at Glassdoor.com.

“This is is a sign of something much bigger,” said Dave Carvajal, CEO of Dave Partners, a technology-focused recruiting firm. “IBM is struggling to compete in the competitive tech marketplace that has become significantly more agile and nimble over the past decade.”

IBM’s quarterly report last month had higher-than-expected earnings but missed analyst expectations on revenue — marking five years straight of year-over-year quarterly revenue declines. Company executives say making people work together will help reverse its fortunes. At a conference last fall, CFO Martin Schroeter talked to investors about “get[ting] the teams back together as opposed to so spread out,” saying the relocation would make them “more agile.”

It Didn’t Work for Yahoo

But not everyone agrees that proximity can foster performance gains. “I’m personally a little skeptical,” Sutton Fell said. “It didn’t really help Yahoo.”

The news of IBM’s reversal on telecommuting drew many comparisons to Yahoo. When CEO Marissa Mayer eliminated Yahoo’s work-from-home perk in 2013, it provoked a backlash from those who said the shift placed an unfair burden on working parents — especially since the news was coupled with reports that Mayer had a nursery constructed adjacent to her office so she could bring her then-infant son to work with her.

Given IBM’s performance struggles, some observers suggested that the shift away from remote work could be a way to shed workers through attrition without resorting to layoffs.

“IBM has been bringing teams like these together for several years, across many areas of the company: software development, digital marketing, Watson, design, and IBM’s CIO teams, just to name a few,” IBM spokeswoman Laurie Friedman said via email. She did not respond to a question about how many employees ultimately would be affected but said workers could reapply for other jobs — around 5,000 in the U.S. — with the company, and added that some workers would be able to continue working remotely.

“I’m highly suspicious of this idea that if you corral everybody into the same room you’re going to get magic,” Glass said. “I think it’s an attempt to exert more managerial control when business is down and they’re under pressure to turn things around.”

Collaboration May Need to Be Relearned

Some experts do see the potential for a positive outcome as IBM expands its work in areas like cloud computing and artificial intelligence. “We know it’s an added focus on innovation,” Dobroski said. “That’s very enticing to today’s tech talent.”

By making people come into the office, managers will be able to focus on more hands-on mentoring and training — benefits that attract ambitious millennials but are harder to execute with a far-flung workforce.

“This is the generation that says, if I’m not learning, I’m gone,” said Dayna Fellows, president of consulting company WorkLife Performance, Inc. The back-to-the-office movement could work if management is “really smart and clear” about the benefits working in an office will provide, she said.

But to achieve this, experts say IBM will need to invest in restructuring its work environment and culture.

“If they simply bring people in and expect them to work exactly the same way in a crowd situation, it will fail,” Fellows said. “That would be the mistake, is if everything stays the same but people come in.”

“Collaboration is helped by being together, but it has to be on purpose. You have to create a culture… It doesn’t just happen by bumping into each other,” said Ellen Galinsky, senior research advisor at the Society for Human Resource Management. “If the problem is collaboration, that probably needs to be addressed directly. You can’t just assume that if people are in the same space, they are going to collaborate and work together,” she said.

“Holistic change at that level requires real leadership,” Carvajal said.

Via: NBC News

A Challenge to Finding Uber’s New COO: Its CEO

April 13, 2017

Help Wanted: A chief operating officer to help change a Silicon Valley giant’s now-notorious “bro” culture, but who can thrive in a power dynamic that hands the boss overwhelming control.

At Uber Technologies Inc., co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick commands everything from board decision-making to the exact hour the beer taps will open at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

That management approach is rooted in more than just a cult of personality.

Uber ‘s governance and share structure, and the “founder-friendly” terms of the $13 billion in equity the company has raised, give Kalanick, his co-founder and a fellow employee ultimate control over the company, according to company documents and an Uber investor with knowledge of the matter.

As the company searches for a chief operating officer who can in theory take on some of Kalanick’s sweeping authority, that looks to be a problem.

“A COO would report into Travis, so structurally, there’s the rub,” said Dave Carvajal, an executive recruiter for venture-backed tech companies. “This COO is going to need to have influence at the board level to effect change.”

Kalanick’s near-total control at Uber is made possible largely by a dual-class share structure that gives certain owners 10 votes per share, according the company’s certificate of incorporation filed with the State of Delaware.

Kalanick, along with Garrett Camp, Uber ‘s co-founder who is now working on another startup, and Ryan Graves, Uber CEO prior to Kalanick, together hold enough of those super-voting shares to give them control of the company, according to an Uber investor with knowledge of the matter.

The documents say Uber ‘s executive board may have eleven voting members, including nine seats controlled by shareholders with super-voting rights.

But Kalanick has kept the power circle small, leaving four board seats empty. In addition to Kalanick, Camp and Graves, the board includes venture capitalist Bill Gurley of Benchmark, David Bonderman of TPG Capital, Yasir Al Rumayyan of the Saudi Arabian public investment fund and media impresario Arianna Huffington.

Leaving control with founders has become popular in Silicon Valley in recent years, both because of the success of founder-led enterprises like Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, and because investors compete with each other to fund entrepreneurs by offering them the best terms.

Those circumstances helped Uber obtain a $68 billion valuation, the biggest of any private venture-backed company.

But with Uber rocked by scandals, including detailed accusations of sexual harassment from a former female employee and a video showing Kalanick harshly berating an Uber driver, Kalanick just weeks ago promised to “grow up” and hire a COO who would offer “leadership help.”

The COO search is ongoing, but Uber ‘s human resources chief told reporters last month that Kalanick, 40, is already showing a more collaborative style.

The share structure leaves investors with few options if they lose patience with Kalanick, though there is little sign of that happening. With two public exceptions, investors have either supported Kalanick or stayed silent as the company’s all-important rider numbers continue to grow even in the face of controversy.

Mitchell Green, a partner at Lead Edge Capital that invested in Uber at a $40 billion valuation, believes the controversies will blow over and he even wants to buy more stock.

“We believe that Travis continues to drive shareholder equity value higher,” said Green.

Read: Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s Ex Reveals More Details About the Company’s Culture

The most effective COOs have broad authority and direct access to the board, governance experts say. At Facebook, for example, COO Sheryl Sandberg works in partnership with founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and holds a board seat.

At Uber , it’s not so easy to envision what a power-sharing arrangement would look like, or how the brash founder could be an agent of managerial change under such a governance structure, the experts said.

“People don’t like to correct their own homework,” said Bill Aulet, managing director of the entrepreneurship center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This is a situation where the checks and balances are not really in place.”

An Uber spokesman declined to comment for this story.

Read: Despite All Its Scandals Uber Says It’s Growing at a Record Rate

A string of high-level executive departures – including company president Jeff Jones last month and top communications chief Rachel Whetstone this week – has centralized even more authority with Kalanick and raised questions about the staying power of his deputies.

Kalanick is known to obsess over details like office decor alongside big issues like pricing strategy and driver relations.

Kalanick at one point ordered the beer taps in the office locked during certain hours, controlling when employees could pour themselves a pint, after expressing displeasure with one imbibing staff member, said one former employee.

The CEO closely managed Uber ‘s logo redesign last year, despite himself not being a designer, according to a source close to the company. Design chief Andrew Crow announced he was quitting the day after the new logo was unveiled.

Read: Uber’s President Is Leaving the Company After 6 Months

Soon after, Kalanick rejected the new logo designers brought him for Uber Eats, the company’s food-delivery business, upset that the team hadn’t shown him every iteration of the design, according to a second former employee.

The CEO also at times edited press statements following a PR incident, the former employee said. He was especially anxious that the company didn’t come across as too apologetic.

This sort of iron grip may deter qualified COO candidates who “don’t want to do their job with one arm tied behind their back,” said Robert Siegel, a lecturer at Stanford University and venture capitalist at XSeed Capital.

Via: Fortune

5 Books That Recruiters Say You Must Read — Even if You Don’t Need a Job

By Martha C. White / Mar 17, 2017

Whether you’re actively looking to climb the corporate ladder or you’re happy in your current job, professional headhunters explain that these are the books that will advance your career — and why.

The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness

Courtesy of Amazon 

It might seem strange to have a high-tech recruiter to recommend a book by a Greek philosopher who lived nearly 2,000 years ago, but Dave Carvajal, CEO of technology recruiting firm Dave Partners, says it contains some surprisingly modern insights for today’s professional.

“Some of the virtues from the Greek stoics are perhaps more relevant today with the increased pace of innovation and the need to manage the velocity and depth of external relationships,” Carvajal says. Even in an age when social media dominates much of our interaction, this advice proves timeless. “A sense of affiliation with like-minded people leads to high satisfaction rates at work,” he says. “Managing the internal world and self are the only things we can control.”

Read the full article Via: Time

Competition in Job Market Lets Professionals Set Their Travel Terms

By MARTHA C. WHITE / MARCH 13, 2017

With the unemployment rate low and competition for top talent rising, travel perks are increasingly coming into play as a bargaining chip in recruitment.

One of those who benefited was Eleanor Lacey, a Silicon Valley lawyer, who said she had initially dismissed a job offer from a cybersecurity company because the position involved frequent travel, nearly all of it overseas.

“I was very secure and happy in my current job, and so I didn’t need the job,” she said.

But other benefits were appealing, like a schedule that would let her be home with her family in the evenings. So Ms. Lacey employed a tactic human resources and executive compensation experts say they see more frequently today.

“As a general counsel, I see C.E.O. agreements all the time. A few years ago, I realized it’s not unusual for C.E.O. or other C-level to negotiate their travel,” she said. “I felt like I could do a real negotiation.”

Ms. Lacey said she asked to choose flights based on the airline’s safety record rather than making price the sole determinant, and for weekends to remain travel free whenever possible so she could spend more time with her family.

When the company agreed to her terms, she took the job.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 17 percent of American companies in 2016 offered first-class or business-class flights for employees traveling internationally, up four percentage points from five years earlier. The number offering the same for domestic travel grew by two percentage points over that same period.

“I do think companies are aware that the best workers are more in the driver’s seat,” said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an executive outplacement firm. “Companies know that if they lose someone they value, it’s harder to go out and replace skilled workers in a low-unemployment environment.”

Greeley Koch, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, said nearly half of corporate travel managers in a recent survey said they had fielded employee inquiries about managing work-life balance in regard to travel.

“If a company’s going out to recruit people, some of those people are asking about travel policies,” he said.

Industries where competition for talented employees is fiercest, like technology and financial services, are most likely to be flexible with travel perks to attract and keep the best workers.

As a result, Mr. Koch said, “One thing we’re starting to see is that not all travelers and not all trips are being treated the same.” In one case, he said, a company measured a travel manager’s performance on travelers’ satisfaction rather than on cost savings.

In-demand professionals say they have asked to fly nonstop rather than be forced onto cheaper connecting flights, or stipulated which airlines they will and will not use.

Making business travel a little more pleasant is a tactic companies are using for retention as well as recruitment.

“Travel is one of those sorts of things that makes life hard for people who are on the road all the time,” Mr. Challenger said. “So looking for ways to make that experience easier is something companies are doing to make it more palatable.”

Lacey Van Luven, a consultant at American Express Global Business Travel, said, “About 20 percent of the inquiries I received in the last six months alone were related to senior executive or frequent traveler perks.”

“We focus on the road warriors,” she said. “These are typically the high performers for their companies, willing to look at a better job.”

A report issued jointly last year by the Airlines Reporting Corporation, American Express Global Business Travel and the travel consulting firm tClara found that roughly four-fifths of more than 750 business travelers surveyed would be interested in working for another employer — and traveling just as much — if the travel policy was attractive. Nearly as many said a prospective new employer’s travel policy was as important as or more important than pay and responsibilities.

Companies are eager to keep these workers happy. So paying extra for business-class seats might be the more economical choice, as research has found that the cost of replacing top-level executives can total more than 200 percent of their annual salaries.

“What I’m seeing is many of these clients are willing to loosen up the purse strings a little bit at first just to see if it’s going to facilitate traveler buy-in,” Ms. Van Luven said.

“The cheapest choice is not always the most efficient choice, and that’s something corporate travel policies have trouble articulating,” said Loe Cameron, a bioengineer in research and development who spends about three-quarters of her working time on the road.

Since her company was acquired about a year and a half ago, Ms. Cameron said that she had noticed more restrictions on the hotels and airlines employees were allowed to book, but that inconveniences like overnight layovers, convoluted itineraries (say, a United States-to-Britain trip via Turkey) and routes that require stopovers in cities with political or sectarian tensions were far less common.

“It’s been, on average, an improvement,” she said. “I think we have a lot of autonomy around travel.”

For human resources managers trying to woo candidates, agreeing to offer more flexible or comfortable travel arrangements is often more appealing than paying more in compensation, said Dave Carvajal, chief executive of Dave Partners, a technology recruitment firm.

“A company can win big points making their offer attractive without giving too much,” he said. It is not a fixed budget item that must be justified to investors or shareholders, and it makes the company look good from a corporate culture standpoint.

Mr. Carvajal said it was common for professionals he contacts on behalf of companies with open positions to ask for travel-related perks, along with salaries and other benefits. “Especially at the executive level, it’s all negotiable,” he said.

“The nature of work has really become ‘always on,’ ” he said. “To the degree you can find some creature comforts and make it easier for people to be more productive, it’s a sound investment.”

Via: The New York Times