IBM to Lose 13,000 Jobs

KingDaveRa writes "The BBC is reporting that IBM is losing 13,000 jobs. This comes after disappointing financial results. Most jobs will be going in europe."

Comments

Re:Losing your job is hard

[hotdiggitydawg]

Hardly do anything and I assure you that you will lose your job. Unless you're a public servant... in which case, doing nothing will result in a promotion.

It's not a problem!

[Tibor the Hun]

Just like W said. All they have to do is get some edumacation and they'll be able to get better, more paying jobs. Heck they can even hold 3 jobs, which is uniquely american!
It's happy times all over again.

Re:My uncle (to all: please read this)

[iamcf13]

Disclaimer: This post is an 'Advertorial' with a relevant, one line ad for myself at the very bottom of this post. If you hate ALL ads--even if preceded by GENUINELY, useful content--then read no further. By including this disclaimer, I expect this post to avoid downmods from readers who would feel 'hoodwinked' into reading ANY useful content that contains ANY form of advertising whatsoever.

has just been laid off from the Greenock plant, where he was involved in manufacturing for 20 or so years. He's now working in a call centre handling mortgage applications... :(

This pardigm shift happened decades ago in the USA--possibly around the time of the entrance of the IBM PC personal computer to the market (how ironic). Briefly, the US economy has moved away from making things (industrial economy) to playing with money (financial services) and bits (information technologies and telecommunications) with the instrumental help of mass computerization. As a result, most of the real jobs left in the USA are in the service and retail industries--infamous 'McJobs' at large, giant, impersonal, 'low-balling', retail and service/hospitality chains such as Wal-Mart, McDonald's, and Hilton.

Don't belive me?

Look at how the terrible events of 2001-09-11 in the USA crippled the financial services industry world wide and changed global air travel procedures for good. Note that just recently, billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian's offer to buy 5% of GM "sent GM shares and the Dow Jones industrial average flying Wednesday [2005-05-04]." according to a news article in the Kansas City Star. (Note: Registration may be required to view this article -- I saw it for free once via this Google link.)

There IS hope.

Thanks to the Internet, individuals can become full or part-time entrepreneurs by offering specialized goods and services for sale to others in small, niche markets not being serviced by large corporations because it is inefficient or outright unprofitable for them to do so. While the purists denouce the (over)commercialization of the Internet, this trend began as least as early as 1978

I am a part-time Internet entrepreneur, how about you?

Re:My uncle

[benjamindees]

What we need get back to is the idea that there is dignity in all work. It does not matter if it is picking up trash in a park what you earn is yours.

No. What we need to get "back" to is the idea of personal responsibility.

What we're getting to, slowly but surely, is the idea that all work is boring and unnecessesary.

In Bush & Co.'s "Ownership Society", you own your trash. If you throw it in a park, you get your ass kicked. You don't get somebody whose job was replaced by a machine to pick it up for you.

And the great thing is, the libertine liberals can't do a damn thing about it, because their candidate will lose badly against whomever follows Bush.