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

Losing your job is hard

[Aussie]

Must be really bad to lose 13,000.

Re:Losing your job is hard

[OpCode42]

Oh how appropriate/ironic (delete as misunderstood) that the parent post is marked as redundant!

Re:Losing your job is hard

[MartinG]

Losing your job is hard

No it isn't. It's incredibly easy to lose your job. You hardly have to do anything. In fact that's the best way. Hardly do anything and I assure you that you will lose your job.

Re:Losing your job is hard

[mboverload]

That "doing nothing to lose your job" thing doesn't seem to work for my boss.

Re:Losing your job is hard

[Anonymous Coward]

* <--- joke

__o__
| <--- you
/ \

Re:Losing your job is hard

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

sometimes I get tired of this "public servants are lazy leeches on the working stiffs" sentiment. actually my wife works as a district attorney (criminal prosecution). she makes $35K per year when others with her same degree earn hundreds of thousands in firms. she works her butt off, dealing with murderers and rapists on a daily basis, receiving threats on her life.

not to mention police officers and firemen who put their life on the line every day for even less money than that.

all to have themselves lumped into the statement (and I can assure you common public sentiment) "Unless you're a public servant... in which case, doing nothing will result in a promotion."

guess what; getting a raise of any kind as a public servant is quite a thing. sometimes entire classes of public servant have to go on strike to be recognized with even a pittance of a raise after years of watching prices go up but not their wages.

many police forces and district attorney's offices are understaffed, underpaid, and overworked. we see a few ficticious examples on TV perhaps to the contrary, but those are really both few and for the most part ficticious. yes there are lazy podunk police precincts, there are abusive cops, etc.

but there are a hell of a lot of people working their asses off in dangerous conditions for little pay or chance of meaningful promotion (where promotion means more than a different placard for your cubicle).

and don't get me started on the National Guardsmen or Army Reservists, or even full-time military.

public service can bring an immense amount of meaning to one's life. it's simply too bad that so many want to demean all public servants because of the atrocities of a few or television's take on a few in some of the largest cities in the world.

maybe you mean the clerks at the DMV, or the post office, or garbage men, or the psychiatrists at the VA. guess what, not even all of them are lazy assholes who would prefer for you to wait as long as possible.

yes, there are lazy people in public service. there are lazy people every-damn-where in America. if you find it okay to call all public servants lazy, then perhaps you also find it okay to call all Americans lazy?

Re:Losing your job is hard

[Martin Blank]

It's generally accepted that most people are not referring to law enforcement (which includes the DA and PubDef offices as well as probation departments) or the fire departments when talking about public servants being slow and/or lazy. They're generally referring to the office workers and bureaucrats who move through arcane processes, playing politics with a viciousness akin to Washington, supported by a union that will fight tooth, nail, cudgel, mace, sword, gun, howitzer, and ICBM to keep from losing someone, even though there is plenty of justifiable cause.

I work for a county government. There are some good people, yes, but there are also a lot of people who play backstabbing games (particularly with those of us on contract to the county) or who can't bear to let a little bit of control leave their desks. I've had to go out to the various agencies and the amount of random chatter I see happening is far and away more than I ever saw when working in large corporations. Deadlines on simple projects are missed by months -- we're more than a year behind on rolling out one e-mail server because of politics involved with other agencies trying to shape our Active Directory implementation.

The highest quotients of good people are usually where the workers are most visible -- police, fire, DA/PubDef, probation, and healthcare and social services field personnel. Get back in the offices, though, and the signal to noise ratio can get extraordinarily bad.

Re:Losing your job is hard

[CmdrGravy]

Not true, I am doing some work for the admin arm of the NHS and doing nothing, all day, is the norm.

Maybe if you did do something there is a chance it could go wrong and I'd be sacked but more likely me doing something would have the knock on effect of causing someone else to have to do something, a scenario which would no doubt be frowned on and could result in me getting the sack.

Hmm not a suprise

[Foo2rama]

Gee maybe becuase they sold the whole PC MFG dept?

Re:Hmm not a suprise

[n9891q]

Two points.
(1) the sale of PCD included selling the employees. PCD lay-offs will appear as Lenovo actions.
(2) PCs are manufactured outside Europe (Mexico, China, etc.).

The loss of however many jobs is still unfortunate.

My uncle

[MaestroSartori]

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... :(

The UK as a whole seems to be moving towards this kind of economy - jobs involving manufacturing, especially, are going, to be replaced by jobs where you can be sacked at the drop of a hat, and are generally pretty poorly treated. Sad.

Re:My uncle

[Marcion]

Yeah thats pretty sad. IBM eventually will not produce any hardware but instead subcontract everything to outside cheap labour. Whether people will be laid off from the software side too is an interesting question.

Re:My uncle

[Smerity]

While yes, your uncle being laid off is certainly not good, it's really not IBM's call at the moment.

My mum works at IBM and the IBM/Lenovo split is a very short time off now. This is the main transition point for the company. Your uncle losing his job most likely is that Lenovo is unwilling to hire him, not IBM 'firing' him.

IBM has been making hairline profits on their PCD section for years and years, under very heavy competition. They're changing their whole buisness setup. Losses are to be expected...

Re: My uncle

[Anonymous Coward]

My sympathies go with your uncle. I've been made redundant twice - it is not fun. What the the election in the UK today there is a LOT of talk about the UK economy (what with the collapse of Rover etc.). The problem is that we are becoming a service industry - which is no bad thing in itself (unless you are a manufacturer). This is the crux of the issue a lot of Brits have with jobs going to India - it is NOT based on racial prejudice as most would suggest - it is simply a matter of job competition. The reason we can get 'sacked at a drop of a hat' is because people are willing to do the job for a paycheque virtually worthless over here. Just a quick side note - all those hyper-patriotic halfwits shouting for Thatcher like she was the 2nd coming in the 80s now find their jobs sent to India and are sad. Why don't they research Thatchers attitude into shipping jobs abroad when it suited big businesses. Maybe a bit less flag waving and a bit more thought would've helped. No disrespect to the people of India - but its not a good situation for the British nation to be in, and could have been avoided.

Re:My uncle

[Monkelectric]

Welcome to the world economy Europe. Thats been going on in the US since the 80s. It SUCKS. We can't figure out a better system, why don't you guys work on it for awhile and get back to us with something. Whats your hourly fee again?

Re:My uncle

[Saeger]

We can't figure out a better system ...

A better system would be to provide a living wage (as opposed to the welfare dirty word) to those people whose jobs are increasingly replaced by automation and cheap labor. If you're one of the lucky few who still does USEFUL work in exchange for something, then you get extra incentive gravy for your WANTS, while those not so lucky/smart/quickly-adaptable get enough redistributed gravy to meet their NEEDS. Nobody should have to live in mortal fear of losing their job (unless you're one of those asshole sadists who believes that keeping the serfs suffering is a great motivator and makes it easier to keep control (and if so, fuck you)).

Robotics, IA/AI, nanotechnology, and other exponentially advancing technology will inevitably lead to this kind of world. "It's different this time". We can either choose a humane leisure society fed by intelligent automated production & fair redistribution, or we can choose to continue the greedy ratrace to the bottom as the wealth gap widens.

(I'm sure a lot of people who worship at the alter of dog-eat-dog hyper-capitalism and "globalism" will just write me off as some kind of idealistic-socialist-commie-hippie or whatever. Oh, and I am one of the "lucky" ones, but I've also got a conscience.)

Re: My uncle

[mikael]

I'm curious about that -- how do you think it could have been avoided?


Mrs T. was keen to cut away the dead wood (the declining shipbuilding industries) in order to give tax breaks to the South East. Not a bad thing by itself, but the money saved would have been better invested in retraining and education for the communities in the North of England. At the time of these cutbacks, the local people were crying out for financial assistance in regenerating their cities, but Mrs T. wouldn't help - She was only interested in tax-breaks for the City. As a result the Militant faction of Labour gained power. This led to Mrs T. imposing rate-capping on the various Labour city councils. Both sides (Militant Labour and the Conservatives) realized that this was going to be the class war of the decade and were determined to fight to the bitter end.

The collateral damage of this war, was that the middle classes left the inner cities a generation ago, moved down South and have never returned. It was only a decade later with financial aid from the EEC that the North of England is slowly regenerating. But the only new business that are setting up are service jobs: supermarkets, pubs, nightclubs and maybe the odd software company,.which usually gets bought out.

Instead, the communities in the North of England have continued emigration, with everyone who could, having moved down to the South of England, which itself is now becoming overcrowded and overpriced (So overcrowded, that they even building flats and houses on the communal piece of grass in the squares (three streets facing each other).

The current Labour government is trying to fix this "North-South divide" by dispersing asylum seekers and moving government jobs away from the South of England, but everyone wants to stay where the wealth is.

Re:My uncle

[Vince Mo'aluka]

I've also got a conscience

So do I, and that's exactly why I do not believe in robbing Peter to give to Paul. The fact that government is "giving" to Paul (and -- cough -- taking a cut for themselves) does not, by any rational means, make the act of robbing Peter moral and just.

And please spare me the lies about the people "choosing" to submit themselves to force. A person cannot voluntarily submit to force, any more than a person can force another person to volunteer.

Re:My uncle

[eric2hill]

A better system would be to provide a living wage (as opposed to the welfare dirty word) to those people...

That's called socialism. This is a democracy. Be sure and understand that distinction as it leads to a government-controlled life.

Re:My uncle

[LWATCDR]

"That's called socialism. This is a democracy. Be sure and understand that distinction as it leads to a government-controlled life."

This in one of my pet peeves.
Yes it is called socialism but you can have a socialist democracy.
You are confusing economic systems with political systems.
China has less of a socialist economy than Sweden does. But Sweden is far more democratic than China.
I agree that giving people money for nothing is wrong. It is degrading and self defeating. 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.

Re:My uncle

[kayak334]

What you say sounds great, in theory. However, that isn't how the real world or economics works. Robotics and automation lead to cheaper goods for everyone and free up a portion of the workforce to do other things. "Other things" meaning other jobs in the workforce that are in higher demand than the job that just got automated. If you think that we will one day just run out of jobs because everything will be automated, then you need to read a book on basic economics and a book on the human spirit.

Re:My uncle

[KrackHouse]

Your idea is exactly what Germany is trying right now. Their unemployment is approaching 15%. Would you rather have a living wage if it meant there were far fewer jobs available? In fact, the living wage increases the incentive for business to use robots.

Toshiba (the evil greedy capitalist corporation) is producing a new nano-battery in 2006 that has the potential to cut pollution dramatically as it'll be used in cars instead of gasoline. Greed leads to good things and cheaper products much faster and more efficiently than a gigantic, well meaning beuracracy, hence the fall of the Soviet Union and China's decision to free up their markets in the late 70s.

Re:My uncle

[Seumas]

And what, exactly, defines a "living wage"?

You are typically paid what the market determines you are worth. If the market is flooded with people who do what you do, you are not worth as much - so why should a company have to pay you as much?

This gets to me as much as people who demand that minimum wage be increased, because "A family of four can't live on minimum wage". Well, who the hell lives on minimum wage? Very few people work full time and make minimum wage after more than a month or two. It's just a silly argument.

Re:My uncle

[SunFan]

The irony in the living wage/minimum wage arguments is that the economy adapts within a few years such that the new living wage is worth no more than the old one. There is simply no way that the government waving a magic wand in the law books can change the fundamental strength or weakness of the economy, unless it is the biggies like the federal interest rate or tax law (i.e., money to/from the government itself).

Re:My uncle

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush's "ownership society" is a joke. He fails to recognize that nearly everyone who opts into Personal Savings Accounts will need a professional money manager who gets commissions. He also fails to admit that "past performance is no guarantee of future results." For example, the US economy has been flat for over a year, now, after a brief recovery in 2002/2003. He also fails to admit that real estate costs are rising much faster than inflation (10%/year where I live, most people can't even afford down payments any more). He also fails to admit that wages are nearly stagnant (wage freezes are almost the rule in several big sectors--manufacturing, health care, universities, etc.).

His plans are so transparently unviable that I feel sorry for people gullible enough to fall for them.

For the Democrats, while a woman canidate would be wonderful, can she overcome the misogynistic attitude many people have towards leadership on top of all the other issues? What would be awesome is Condi vs. Hillary. Hillary's ego, then, would simply crush Condi into a pulp. No debating would be needed, just post big pictures of Hillary glaring down the opposition.

Re:My uncle

[IgnoramusMaximus]

So do I, and that's exactly why I do not believe in robbing Peter to give to Paul.

The trick is in the choice of terms here: what if Peter is an oligopolistic Robber Baron who scammed billions of Peters until their livelhood became untennable? You would like to present it as a case of saintly, highly-talented, God's favourtie child Peter innocently and piously pursuing his "destiny" to great wealth and unlimited power over others and on the other hand a Satanic band of evil, underhanded, greedy wolf-like Pauls aided by a communist monster called "guvmnt" to rob our hapless hero. But perheaps Peter is a greedy asshole who abused every rule in the book to con, deceive, cajole and force other people to work for him, give to him far more then he compensates them for and who in the result ended up with 1/2 of the planet and a private army as his "property".

In which case I would be cheering for "robbing" him as violently as possible.

As to people "choosing" to submit themselves to force: they do it all the time because the power (and incidentally wealth) elites control education and keep their serfs ignorant enough to not understand what they are "choosing".

That's good!

[Anonymous Coward]

13.000 new OSS developers.

Re:That's good!

[Anonymous Coward]

And 13,000 new 0.1 version desktop managers or graphics engines on SourceForge...

Wheel? Never heard of it before!

See the opportunity

[dublinclontarf]

This is an opportunity for all those who lose thier job to go and start thier own company, I think that there is a need in the European market for more small I.T shops. But are we Europeans up to it? At least the Irish are.

Re:See the opportunity

[MartinG]

I'm more likely to start up in India than Europe becuase it's looking likely we are going to have software patents over here and that will kill off all the small IT shops more than anything else.

Re:veryhai

[shyampandit]

Heh, you have a very weird logic there.

Atleast if the jobs went to India, someone would gain, as Indians would get more jobs.

I dont know why this resentment over jobs going to India. India is a poor country and many people cant find jobs easily and there is no welfare system, so if you dont have a job your as good as on the streets. India can use all the jobs it can get!

RSS of this story

[tokyopimpdaddy]

I only noticed this story via the BBC RSS feed as it had some extensive strikethroughs - nothing massively interesting, but it shows that they do indeed have editors! Shameless plug of my blog here with pics:

http://www.nanikore.net/?p=364

Re:Pray for forgiveness sinners!

[Marcion]

Er what? Trolls for Christ, You are a bit weird I have to say. You also are a bit tasteless; this being a thread about people losing their jobs. What would Jesus do? He wouldn't troll Slashdot thats for sure, he would sell his domain names and computers and give the money to the poor. RTFB! You weirdo.

erm

[Turn-X Alphonse]

The blerb is misleading. This was reported earlier on BBC news 24 (about 5 hours ago) and they said IBM hasn't said where they will be cutting the jobs back. It could be in several places not just Europe.

Dont forget about Poland

[AdamPiotrZochowski]

IBM is expanding in Poland, hiring almost 200 people in Cracow alone, and so are
many other big name companies like Motorolla, KPMG, Lufthansa, 3M, Phillips:

http://miasta.gazeta.pl/krakow/1,35798,2689839.htm l

everyone in europe is moving to Poland, its as nice as Ireland, just as many drunks
but much cheaper, people are educated, and lots of beautifull clean land.

--
/apz, Don't kid yourself. Little is relevant, and nothing lasts forever.

Uh, people?

[mr_snarf]

Am I the only one who thinks the article title is odd. I mean 'IBM to Lose 13,000 Jobs'. I would have expected '13,000 IBM workers to lose their jobs'. *shrug*

Multi-national corps do not outsource

[Senor_Programmer]

they just reallocate.

Advice to the corporate slave ... A Rant

[Ice Station Zebra]

If you work in the corporate environment you should remember that you don't matter. What you do doesn't matter. You should be ready and willing to do anything...anything for the corporate bottom line.

The stock holders must be paid first, the CE0, the board, everybody with VP in their title second, and --- if there is anything left --- you.

That doesn't mean they won't take your stapler and forget to pay you. It means that you are nothing to them, all those times you supported the Republician party because you believed in lower taxes and less government, lies. Your pay has decreased since they took (and I really mean took) office. Sure, the price of your home as gone up, but the bank still owns it and you pay even more in property taxes and insurance costs. Oh, and don't use that insurance. Too many claims (and by too many I mean one) and you are off looking to the state for help, because no one will insure your castle. And you now that government help is bad. You don't want to be a welfare queen do you?

So, follow my advice. When the corporation tells you to bend over and take it up the arse. Just do it. Then, head straight for the nearest pub. You will need a good pint and this may be the last time you can afford one.

Re:Advice to the corporate slave ... A Rant

[bigtallmofo]

You are a liar. My pay as a developer has gone significantly up since Republicans took office.

Keep doomsaying and maybe you'll be back in power. That's a lot easier than coming up with your own ideas and presenting them in a way that brings people to your side.

How times have changed

[btarval]

For almost all of the last century, when you worked at IBM, you were guaranteed a job for life. I don't know if people realize this, but IBM reportedly didn't have layoffs even during the Great Depression (which made the dot-com bust look like peanuts).

How times have changed. I'm sorry to hear about how this will impact the lives of all those people affected, directly and indirectly.

Re:How times have changed

[ebooher]

I think what you meant was:

The Great Depression was bad. Really bad. You couldn't believe how vastly, hugely mind-boggingly bad it was. I mean, you may think the Dot.Com era was a horrible circumstance, but that's just peanuts to the Great Depression.

They're Not Lost....

[bobdobbs3]

IBM didn't "lose" 13,000 jobs - that sounds as if they misplaced them, or had this happen to them. Not so. IBM *cut* 13,000 jobs. Or *slashed* 13,000 jobs. In a related news item: 13,000 IBM *workers* lost their jobs.

I love it

[Bigthecat]

13000, a full thirteen thousand lose their jobs and some guy on Slashdot says that it isn't a problem, they'll find work elsewhere. I'm glad that you're in a position to easily make such predictions without experiencing what is happening for yourself.

Re:Governments Should Tax Their Profits More

[Xoro]

"Makes the corporation think twice about outsourcing and messing up local economies when thousands of job losses occur when a major facility in an area gets closed down..."

Makes a corporation think twice about locating there in the first place. Better to have loved and lost...

I'm afraid I don't see any simple solutions to this trend.

Hmmmm...

[Bad to the Ben]

Bill Gates can't find enough IT workers, so he wants to change visa regs to get more in. IBM has too many IT workers, wants to fire them.

Perhaps Microsoft (European division perhaps) could hire the retrenched IBM staff?

Re:moving to cheaper countries

[JohnnyKlunk]

It's already happening. I don't know why the media hasn't picked up on it. I've got friends at a major UK corporation. Some time back they were all outsourced to IBM. Now they're being flown to Bangalore to show people there how to do their jobs.
Once they've handed their own jobs to these people they then get moved to 'project teams'.

Will be interesting to see how many redunancies are made without ever suggesting that the jobs have been moved to India.

Europe in a not so graceful decline

[jamej]

The world is happy to sell in Europe but nobody wants to produce in Europe. The unions have strangle hold on the economy and labor/business laws are hostile to corporations. Much of their young talent moves to the US. I firmly believe they might consider changing shortly after hitting rock bottom.

Re:Europe in a not so graceful decline

[b5turbo]

The labor laws are there for a reason, due to corporate abuse and dangerous work conditions, if we didn't have the labor laws, there would be 10 year olds still shoveling coal instead of in school or working tech support for some corporation in a little 3 x 5 cubicle (cell).

Re:veryhai

[ErikZ]

Notice how all those countries who were "exploited" back in the 80s now are much better off and are headed to 1st world status.

From a 1st world view, these jobs are horrible. From a 3rd world view, these jobs rock.

"Losing" is completely the wrong verb.

[Anonymous Coward]

This article's headline is completely wrong.

IBM is not "losing" jobs; IBM is firing people.

The only way IBM could lose jobs is if it's Human Resources Department realized it could not locate the job descriptions for 13,000 people.

Worse still, can you "plan to lose" something? Of course not. Losses are unintentional.

Re:"Losing" is completely the wrong verb.

[CastrTroy]

Thank god someone said it. They always try to put such a nice spin on things. They aren't losing jobs. They are firing people because they only made x Billion in profits instead of yx Billion in profits, where y is a number greater than 1.

Re:"Losing" is completely the wrong verb.

[Emperor Cezar]

In business, just because you have money now, doesn't mean having money later. There are costs that don't show up on this quarter's report, but that need to be paid later none the less. You also have to return money to the stock holders, many of them middle class people who have invested money into your company and need to support thier life.

Sometimes you have to make the decision of firing people now, so that others can keep their jobs later.

Re:A quote to all the corporate Stalins out there

[bengoerz]

If you RTFA, you'll notice that 13,000 jobs constitutes only 4% of IBM's workforce. While this is by no means a small reduction, it is far from "near-cataclysmic random-act-of-God-like massive". If you apply this percentage cut to a small shop of 20 people, you've just fired 1.

Also, I am sure it is far from a "RANDOM-act-of-God" move. You don't fire your best employee. You fire the least-profitable one. And if you are the one who has been marked as the least-profitable, shame on you for not having foresight enough to view your own job in the context of the company and make alternative plans.

Re:Job losses voluntary in Europe - facts

[geoffrobinson]

You may have a point. Their jobs may be more expensive just b/c they are in Europe than in a more economically free area.

How does this work?

[gregoryl]

From the article:
"The news comes just weeks after IBM reported worse-than-expected earnings in the first quarter."

Why fire 13,000 workers for that? It's clear that it's the profit forcasters that are doing the crap job - fire them.

"IBM sets free a workforce"

[RedLaggedTeut]

"IBM loses 14,000 jobs" - how pessimistic - why not phrase it:
"IBM sets free a workforce of 14,000 skilled workers".

It's all about spin. After all, people thought it was cool when the Sovjet Union collapsed and set free millions of workers employed in the military complex.

Re:Not "lose" actually.

[bosz]

IBM: I've Been Moved

Wal-Mart to Hire 600,000

[thelizman]

So who do you love?

Re:moving to cheaper countries

[stevesliva]

In fact it is far too difficult to check if the crisis really occured or if it is a fake.

If you think it's fake, I'll sell you my IBM shares for what they were worth in January. It's real enough for me. It's pretty naive to think that something like this would be a facade given the huge amount of press and criminal prosecution has gone into condemning fiscal tricks here in the US.

And yes, the point is valid that the UK is partcularly expensive right now. A "cheaper" country could well be the US. What's the pound worth in dollars now?

At least...

[ari_j]

Hey, at least the article didn't say "IBM looses 13,000 jobs."

Your wife is lucky.

[glrotate]

As I'm sure you realize, getting a job as a government attorney isn't easy. Whenever a city / county / state / fed agency has an opening they are overwhelmed with resumes. Why? Because life is so much easier as a government attorney than as a real attorney.

How many thousands of hours did your wife bill last year? Most decent firms will can you if you only bill 2000, ie 40 hours a week 50 weeks a year with no breaks or goofing off.

Let your wife get a job with a firm that expects 2700 hours, ie 10 hour days plus weekends, and then tell us how hard being a government employee is.

Uncomforable Irony

[Jukashi]

John: Hi Bob!
Bob: Yeeeah, Hi Bob. We had a problem over the weekend..
John: Geez Bob, sounds bad, what happened?
Bob: Well, its embarrassing, but we seem to have lost your job
John: You lost it ?!?
Bob: Like I said, its embarrassing. And it wasnt just yours. Looks like we misplaced a good 13,000 of them
John: So I'm fired ?!?
Bob: Oh no not at all. You're a great employee John we'd never fire you. Lose you job yes, fire no.
John: I'm going to look for a new job..
Bob: Well if you find your old one let me know!