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IBM Adding Almost 19,000 Jobs
cyngus writes "IBM has announced they will add 18,800 jobs worldwide in 2004. They say about a third will be in North America. I don't know how many they have added this year so far. After the new hires IBM will employ about 330,000 people worldwide." More good news for the unemployed techie. Although things are far from the halcyon days of dot-com yesteryear, it's good to see companies doing better.
Well, about a third would be in North America, which is about 6,000 jobs. I would figure that most of those would be in the U.S., with maybe a few in Canada. This leaves a range of about 12,000 - 14,000 jobs outside of the U.S., and I'm leaning toward 12,000 in that estimate.
I guess open source does create jobs! Well, in terms of linux support services. I think a huge area of growth is going to be people with solid knowledge and experience helping companies switch to linux and other open source software.
CS is a good idea, for the right person.
You have to understand that a university degree is going to become a part of you, and hopefully refine talent you allready have. Once that matter becomes clear it should be a hard time convincing you why not to start a four-year degree, depending of course on how expensive it is to acquire. I pray you use something other than Microsoft Windows?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
There was a time when some people would look down on the idea of working for IBM because they seemed stuffy and out of step with the market. Now they're a hot spot for job seekers again
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Note its North America for that 1/3, not all will necessarily be in the US.
-kaplanfx
Visualize Whirled Peas
The significance isn't so much the amount; it's that they are hiring. Companies do not hire massive amounts of new employees if future outlook is grim. IBM obviously thinks things are going good and that the economy is done throwing up, and that's good news.
Okay, this is getting tiring. Why is it that every story that has the word job anywhere has to contain "dot.com hay day" of the late 90's. I know that Tech's been in a slump but it seems kind of useless to keep hanging on to that short 5 year period.
Get over it people.
**watches troll mods fly**
Or jobs they pick up from outsourcing deals? If schlotsky house of bacon outsources its IT dept to IBM, and transfers 500 employees to IBM, that aint job creation, but it is increasing IBM's headcount.
Don't go study CS thinking about jobs. You should do CS if you like computer theory, math, programming and alikes. A good job will be a consequence of your higher level of knowledge.
Maybe you were thinking about this and just added a zero?
I realize that it's very important to the Kerry campaign to emphasize that (1) the economy is not doing well despite the tax cuts and (2) the war in Iraq is not doing well and should never have happened, but (1) won't fly and (2) is debatable.
Don't blame me -- I'm voting for Nader.
Because I live in MA.
everything in moderation
At this rate, they will simply be deminishing the overall loss rates. When we are losing thousands of jobs, the IMB jobs will make us lose less thousands of jobs.
-kaplanfx
Visualize Whirled Peas
And of those 6K jobs, I'd wager most will be sales, marketing, or support roles with the actual development happening offshore.
Just a guess.....
-- Posted from my parent's basement
Ahem,
That first interview is normally conducted by HR. The second, if you progress that far, is often handled by the direct department you would actually work in. In fact, if you consider the telephone interview, most of us actually endure this process three times.
Storming out of interviews is a poor way to put food on the table or flesh out that resume. Please, use more caution in the future. You have a lot of skilled and experienced competitors who are willing to suffer the idiocy of an HR drone for a short period.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
HR is good for managing employee benefits, doing all the paperwork involved with a hire and so forth. When it comes to actually interviewing a person for a technical position, its crucial that (at least one of) the interviewers himself has at least a basic background in that subject. Its pretty much impossible for a nontechie to differentiate between a mediocre programmer and a great programmer.
On the other hand, a generic HR person is perfectly capable of judging general people and communication skills of applicants.
If you want to do 4 years of school and start a career, I strongly advise you to focus on software engineering. Take as little mathematics as possible and focus on business and more software engineering.
I was a mathematics & computer science double major in my undergrad years and I was all but unemployable with my BS degrees. To work in software development, you need to show experience working in... software development, go figure. I had academic experience working in computation, graph theory, programming language concepts, algorithm analysis, and all sorts of mathematics that were pretty exotic at the undergrad level in CS. That's all fantastic, but what the hell type of job did that qualify me for? Basically nothing.
It did virtually assure me a seat in graduate school, where I was working toward a graduate degree in computation. I dropped out of graduate school for a career that met all my "reasonably ideal" criteria for post-undergrad school, though, so my Master's remains unfinished to date.
Anyway, I advise that you do NOT focus in "computer science", but rather in software development. It is INCREDIBLY more employable with a 4 year degree.
Your lack of knowledge makes me skeptical of your post... I mean, IBM hiring Computer Science guys? IBM /IS/ CS guys. Their entire business model is writing software, sold on their own hardware, and cashing in on big support and customization contracts... 3 of those 4 things(OS/software development, Hardware design/development, Software customization) are the core of CS. Supporting software and hardware isn't far off.
The true cost of outsourcing industry is that U.S. corporations have turned India and China into massive energy consumers. China especially is competing for oil which is driving the price to over $45/barrel. The crows have come home to roost as the stock market buckles under the pressure of the tighest oil market ever.
For the most part, disregard most the replies here. It sounds like a number of people have been suffering for the last few years. It tends to produce a jaded outlook.
CS, CE, and EE will be needed here for years to come. If you stay with CS, no problem. But, you need to consider getting a master no matter what you do. While my generation excells with a Bachelors, yours will require a master or PhD to stay in the industry.
Rather than looking at IBM and other companies to hire you, I suggest starting your own company. You will be going to school with some talented people. Meet them and try to get something going. If you can can try to hook up with a salesman. Likewise, read Business for dummies. It will get you started. Consider doing something in the OSS world, but with a consideration to how to make a buck at it. Think Yahoo or Google. Or see what industries that you know and has MS software develoed for, but not for Linux. Develop something but think through the license and how to make money.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Many of the jobs IBM will add in 2004 are simply employees from other companies being "rebadged" to IBM in outsourcing deals. Sprint is an example of this. Approximately 1100 Sprint IT workers will become IBM employees in the next few months in a billion dollar outsourcing deal. IBM adds 1100 employees, but they're not previously unemployed tech workers.
It's kinda odd, that when good news comes out, some people manage to find something bad about it. Totally focusing on the negative stuff, which may explain why so many are unemployed while their peers are getting hired. Seems to me that IBM adding thousands of new jobs is always good news. Your math is correct, but it doesn't even matter what the job scene was 5 years ago: It's moving in the right direction NOW. To any reasonable person, this is good news.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Yes, but a Linux Solutions Sales Engineer with 1 year of experience makes a better Linux Solutions Sales Engineer than an AIX Printing Software Programmer with 10 years of experience.
The firings likely represented mostly positions that were becoming less in demand, and the hirings represent ones that are becoming more in demand. Experience and knowledge aren't just scalar quantities.
IBM hires people with any kind of degree. They seem to look for the quality of your mind rather than knowledge and then stuff u with all needed knowledge through OJT.
It implies that there were American's to take all the jobs that were sent overseas.
As for jobs that are marketing, support, or admin. These are all valid positions and should not be discounted just because you or someone else doesn't feel they are the right jobs. I know quite a few people who make a great living in marketing, let alone support or similar.
A lot of companies are overseas simply because to compete overseas you have to have a presence. A lot of people in the news industry ignore this requirement because it does not generate the headlines they desire, let alone drive their own agenda.
What it comes down to is that many people just need to grow up and realize that there are jobs worth taking and its up to them to do so. People, including the media, spend to much time dwelling on the actions of big corporations, many of who are truly multinational, because it makes them feel better when they can create a "Bad guy" instead of taking account of themselves. The majority of jobs in the US are not from big businesses but instead from the small business. Lastly too many people are upset they are offered only what they are worth and not what they think they are worth. Time to move past the selfish attitude and realize they are not the center of the universe.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The IBM it work at now is understaffed, and we're overworked. Worthless overpaid beancounters like you have cut development staffing to a level where quality is suffering, yet my division has a hiring AND internal transfer freeze. We've seen plenty of layoffs, and no hiring.
AC because I'm not at home, and I have a new job too!
Laid off in RTP December 2003 (Software Group (SWG) resource action). Replaced by 5-member team in IBM India. Got work again on a scientific computing project in C + Perl running on Linux.
My friend still working for IBM in RTP reports that job postings are starting to appear in the cafeteria: "Two years programming experience, $75,000". Quite a bit of money for so little experience, right?
Curious, he investigated and saw identical listings on the Employment Security Commission website, using IBM's position titles like "Staff Software Developer", "Advisory Software Developer", etc.
Turns out there is a law on the books to explain it. Before a position can be staffed by a foreign national, it MUST be listed locally so that an American can fill the position if they qualify -- just like we expect with the H1-B visa positions. Since virtually NO American with two years' experience can qualify for a $75,000 job, the listing can't be filled locally.
Our conclusion: IBM's new SWG hires are actually just replacing existing high-paying positions into outsourced/visa'd lower-paying positions.
ok so by keeping the jobs in US will stop the oil demand. Somehow I doubt it.
Did I say that it could be reversed? It's far too late to put that genie back into it's bottle. My point was that this is a side-effect that must have been totally off of corporate RADAR when the decision was made.