My regard for IBM: IBM's regard for me.

When I put up my last post on similar matters, my blog I received a fair amount of activity. I suppose therefore, that what I say about the general corporate attitudes toward telework raises some controversy. Being that I am not averse to raising a little controversy (better to say that I am averse to the dearth of activity on my blog), I'll here post a letter I wrote to someone earlier this week disclosing more detail around the trouble I've had with IBM.

Here it is. I've taken the liberty to edit it a little to hide the identities of individuals, to correct some statements of fact in the initial letter, and make it say what I want it to say here.

• From February 2005 to May 2006, I was employed by IBM as a graduate software developer. Originally, because I explained at the interview how I felt uncomfortable moving to Sydney and would prefer a less hectic working environment, I was offered a job in Hobart. Several weeks before I was due to start, I was advised that the work in Hobart didn't look likely, and I was to attend a week's induction in Sydney. Near the conclusion of this induction I was told that I would be "deployed" on a customer site (Vodafone) in Chatswood, a northern suburb of Sydney.
  
  That was a start of about 15 months of hell that saw me plunged into an environment wholly inappropriate for me. I was made redundant, and with my redundancy, I received fifteen thousand dollars (14 December 2012: actually, the sum was almost ten thousand dollars) which allowed me to re-establish myself in Wollongong. I was 32 years old, and at this point, I was not diagnosed with any condition that may have resulted from an Acquired Brain Injury I sustained more than 20 years earlier.
  
  Just before I left IBM, I crossed paths with the nice motherly lady who interviewed me for the position, and said to her that I felt betrayed because I believed that IBM always intended to put me in Sydney, and was prepared to pay me pasty lip-service; to sacrifice my intentions for their ends. She suggested that I apply for "redeployment" to Hobart, but I explained to her that IBM had screwed things up so much that I was in no fit state to do anything for IBM. The fact was that I felt barely in a state to do anything for myself.
  
  I had secured two more employment positions after this time, but similar circumstances conspired in each that resulted in my resignation from both. My last resignation was in 2008 at the age of 34. In 2009, I decided to seek some help to find out why I couldn't hold down a job, and why my repetitive appeals to telework part-time were consistently shunned by the IT profession. Finding out that my brain injury may contribute significantly to stress I feel when placed in circumstances which may not hinder other people was an eye opener to the origin of what appears to have become a philosophical argument in favour of telework.
  
  My ABI seems to answer a lot about why I selected software development as a career within a few years after my accident; it seems to be evidence that is strongly suggestive of the reason why I formed, and am so partisan of, the concept of part-time telework. It appears that I cannot cope in highly social environments or commit my attention to specific tasks for extended periods of time. That's too bad: I probably would have grown into a better man or, at least, one more compliant with the norms and expectations of cosmopolitan secular society, had I not fallen off my bike when I was twelve.
  
  I was drawn to computer programming soon after leaving hospital because, as an outpatient, I found the activity was intellectually engaging, and provided me with a self-paced barrier of solitude. But yet, I felt that it would provide me the opportunity to contribute to some productive endeavour. I decided to make it a career probably as a 15 year-old. Over the following two decades, I observed how society has apparently adopted what seems to be to be a perniciously antithetical stance against my core motivations. The IT industry appears to have merely adopted traditional working models of collocation and supervision. The IT industry has matured at the same time as myself, but seems to have purposefully and systematically forgone any consideration to a working style that would accommodate me. In denying me a legitimate place within society, I think this industry has perpetrated a grave injustice.
  
  I think the industry has taken a wrong turn. Although it certainly can, I think it has not fully encompassed the potential in the technology that it has created. It remains wilfully ignorant of its lack of effort in this regard. I got into this industry because of its promise for part-time telework, and if I have formed an adaptive behaviour around my ABI as much as I might have formed a philosophy around the promise of technology, then I will assert that I have nothing to reconsider: I assert that my wish to telework is not, in any conceivable way, incompatible with what IBM needs or wants (15 May 2013: and although I do think my brain injury puts me at a disadvantage to others, I certainly think that anyone who makes an appeal to telework should not have to show they have disability to make a case). I do observe, however, IBM's misapplication of supervised and collocated working tradition that may be the result of cultural inertia. While IBM's behaviour is unacceptable to me, it is merely a reflection of a general cultural regard for people who have a desire to contribute to their society in ways other than those established about 250 years ago.
  
  Deciding that IBM was a suitable target to make my point, I have asked them repetitively to re-employ me. They have repetitively refused. They appear capable, legally as well as culturally, of evading the question of why they think I haven't put a reasonable proposition to them. I have taken them to the Australian Human Rights Commission two times before, and in at least one of these times, when presented with an opportunity to make a reasoned case at a conciliation meeting, they have refused to attend. I could not attract pro-bono legal help for this instance within the 60 days I had to take such action to the federal court. Now, I spend my time writing cathartic letters using words that are inappropriate for this letter to IBM's recruitment department, a previous manager at IBM, at least 40 state and federal politicians, and various others who may have paid me lip-service in the past. I don't remember the name of the motherly lady I mentioned above, and she seemed too motherly to be a direct recipient of my catharsis. Maybe she was a pawn too.
  
  IBM are wholly uncooperative; they will evade any opportunity to pay respect to their own statement that they value workplace diversity especially when it comes to employing someone with a "disability".

Backatya!