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IBM to Lay Off Half of Global Services Division
Rolgar writes "Cringely says that IBM has begun massive layoffs in a quiet manner, starting with 1300 employees, but by the end of the year, the total will rise to at least 100,000 and probably closer to 150,000 employees, nearly 40% of their U.S. workforce. Some people will be temporarily retained as contractors at a fraction of their salary, and eventually, IBM will also dump many of the unprofitable customer contracts worked on by Global Services or outsource the work to Asia. If these people are looking for work, that could seriously drop wages for technical workers in the US since they will have to compete with these people for available jobs."
I worked for IBM as a contractor and I'm sure for anyone else who has worked there whether as a full time employee or as a contractor, I am not kidding when I say they are highly mismanaged. I worked as a security engineer responsible for managed firewall services they were doing and I was extremely frustrated at the methods upper management handled things. We'd often spend an hour to two hours over the phone talking about nonsense and waiting for others to join in on the calls. Mind you I worked from home so IBM wasn't spending on me what they did for their normal employees. Whenever I had to head to Southington CT, I would see nothing but waste. I won't be crying for any one of those workers, that's the name of the game, making money. I only wonder why it took so long since this was inevitable anyway.
Infiltrated dot Net
That's the publicly announced ~1500 or so, it does not confirm a 40% US workforce layoff. 40% would be a ludicrously desperate move for a company that at worst is described as stagnant, not exactly in trouble. When you aren't announcing any losses, just less-than-awesome gains, it doesn't make sense to just cut out that much in as short a period as a year. IBM is topheavy and I definitely agree that the management is the bulk of the problem (not only *way* too many of them, but they are also more highly paid than the technical people who do real work), and so I wouldn't be surprised if a couple thousand more get screwed over the year, but 40% would be the dumbest thing and I think even shareholders would see it as a detrimental, stupid move.
One problem they do seem to have is startup envy. They see a company come out of nowhere and achieve great fame and a sizable market cap, and wonder why they can't achieve the same percentage growth. The obvious answer (that IBM's market cap is overwhelmingly huge already, nowhere to really go) doesn't seem to occur to them.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Monday
Yup. They spent some huge sum of money to an advertising/PR firm, in order to come up with a name for this new, hot (well, they wanted it to be hot), consulting company. That's what they came up with. "Monday." Like, everybody's least-favorite day. The day you wish was always some other day.
And that's how they got called "IBM Global Services," which doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but then again, nobody ever says, "sounds like a case of the IBM Global Services."
(Well, actually they might, but that's a different topic.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Anyone need a Arcserve / Veritas / Tivoli Storage Administrator ?
On the bright side, there are a lot of people out there who are of the opinion that IBM hardware and software is pretty great (although a bit pricey) but that their consulting stuff is what sucks. So the fact that you have experience with IBM systems isn't a bad resume line at all.
Personally I've always thought that buying PwC was a bad move for IBM, and they should have just consolidated down to their core strengths -- big iron hardware, the AS/400 series, pure research, microchips and processors, and intellectual property.
But still, I'm not sure I believe all this, because Sam Palmisano was a consulting/GS guy, not a hardware-and-systems guy. If anything, I'd expect them to be axing hardware (which is what they're really good at, but I never said I thought they were bright).
At any rate, IBM GS still has a lot of USG contracts, and those can't be outsourced.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Let's be honest here. I work in Global Services in South America. A lot of the accounts were way overstaffed and the people there were not exactly the best and brightest yet still getting 80K+ a year. I'm not a senior sysadmin by any stretch of imagination, but it can be seen from all 5000 miles away that my American counterparts are in no way superior to many of the seniors that I work with who have 10+ years of experience managing servers in environments where there's less money and you have to be more inventive to solve problems, and who've had to face even more difficult economic situations
Many accounts are overspecialized and action is held back by massive bureaucracy. Despite everything, my pet theory is that IBM simply can't support its massive managerial structure divided by a million differente criteria -accounts, competencies, etc.- , eventually it had to give way.
Walk down any street in India and ask yourself: Why are people in India so poor? They are poor because their culture is extremely self-defeating.
Tell that to all of the farmers in India committing suicide because they can't compeat with all of the heavily subsidized produce from the US and EU. The same thing happens in South Korea and Mexico. People wonder why so many Mexicans come to the US as "illegal aliens". The reason why is US subsidized agriculture products and NAFTA. Because of the subsidies US agribusinesses can export to Mexico and sale it for less than Mexican farmers can grow the food for. This drives Mexican farmers off their farms and they go north to try to cross the border or they go into Mexican cities and those already in the cities are driven north.
Remember, Time-Warner bought AOL and immediately lost 88 Billion dollars.
WRONG!!! AOL bought Time Warner!
FalconShould there be a Law?