Letter to Instapundit

Someone who works at IBM wrote a wonderful letter to Instapundit about Gaurav Sabnis and his decision to resign from IBM:

As an IBM employee I was very interested to read about IBM vs The Indian Blogosphere, however if you read Gaurav Sabnis's post you'll see that isn't actually the case, or at least it shouldn't be. Rather it's a case of IIPM - The Indian Institute of Planning and Management - and their reprehensible tactics in attempting to silence a critic. As far as I can tell much of the brouhaha on this issue re:IBM has arisen from the article you linked to on Global Voices posted by Neha Viswanathan. That article excerpts Gaurav Sabnis's blog post where he announces that he's resigning from IBM, however it does so without mentioning why he left, loyalty.

It seems that the Dean of IIPM contacted Lenovo (IBM) and threatened them with a student protest where IBM Thinkpads would be burnt in front of the IBM offices in Delhi. In the face of what could only have been a public relations disaster Lenovo demanded that Gaurav do...nothing. No pressure was brought to bear, no demands were made, there was no "counseling session" where it was darkly hinted that any failure to mollify the demands of IIPM would go on his permanent record, nothing.

In fact Gaurav decided to resign because out of appreciation and a sense of loyalty to IBM. He wrote, "The second thing dear to me is IBM's well-being. IBM has been a good employer to me. I have no complaints about them. Even in light of these events, they did not pressurise me to go against my principles and hush the matter up. Yet, IBM was being dragged into this unnecessarily. It was being made a target of bizarre pressure tactics. If even one Thinkpad laptop was actually burnt, it would cause a lot of bad press and nuisance for IBM. So I did not want IBM's well-being to be compromised in any way."

To me that is the big story, that any corporation can still inspire such loyalty in it's employees that they'd rather leave the company than see it get hurt is, these days, nothing short of wondrous. That there are still people like Gaurav Sabnis who stick to their principles, even when it means making the tough decisions, is marvelous. I'm sorry I never got a chance to meet the man, or work with him, as he's exactly the kind of person we need to keep.

Glenn at Instapundit thought that IBM should have stood up for Gaurav and not accepted his resignation. No one really disagrees. The letter-writer seemed (to me) to be hinting that IBM should stood up for Gaurav in the last sentence.

IIPM (technorati tag)