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IBM Says 'Couldn't Fire 150K US Workers If We Wanted To'
theodp writes "In an e-mail worthy of the Dilbert Hall of Fame, IBM execs responded to Robert X. Cringely's Project LEAN layoff rumors, reassuring employees by pointing out that they've already wiped out too many U.S. jobs to be able to lay off another 150,000. Big Blue's employment peaked around 1985, when it had about 405,000 workers who were acclimated to a long tradition of lifetime employment. IBM puts its current global workforce at 355,766, with a 'regular U.S. population' of less than 130,000."
Silly Cringley! We're Hiring negative 20 thousand employees!
I've always wondered why they don't just move all of the IBM employees and their families into one big town.
Is this evidence enough that Cringley's stuff can never appear on Slashdot ever again? He's a complete hack of a "journalist". I'd rather see blogs written by 12-year-olds than "articles" by Cringley.
I'm ashamed that he is funded in part by non-profit funds from US taxpayers and makes a bad name for PBS in general.
I guess it would be kind of hard for them to fire more employees than they have...
If I hadn't been modded down, you'd be reading this right now.
Nobody
What?
Yep sure did. Including my job to cheap out sourced labor at $16hr to people who know absolutely nothing about computers. Thanks IBM... morons.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Recently IBM Global Services has been fighing for its life on many fronts especially when they are competing with IBM Partners.
It used to be the case that the Sales Execs didn't care where the revenue comes from. Partner or GS it didn;t matter. Now GS is walking all over Partners in attemts to wrest business away from partners and as a consequence several partners I work with are getting right pissed off.
Once the quote/order info get put onto the Internal Siebel System, it becomes visible to GS who then walk mob handed into the Parner and take the biz away from the partner.
I see this as a last ditch attempt to save their jobs. Therefore IMHO a reduction in GS headcount is long overdue.
There are a lot of really good people in GS but the metrics in which they are having to work are awful. Many are good ones voting with their feet leaving the dross.
This ends up with the customers suffering as the people left in GS to actually deliver the solution can't.
This is nothing new. I saw this 10+ years go in DEC with their services division. It got even worse when Compaq came in a bought the show. Try fitting a services business model into a volume PC business model. They just don't fit.
Just my 2$ worth.
So, Cringely's scenario is entirely plausible. IBM could fire 150,000 Western employees and hire 130,000 Chinese and Indian employees. Certainly, most outsourcing work is in India. So, putting the core of Global Services in India makes economic sense.
I am a former IBM employee. When I was axed in a layoff in 2003, I had worked at IBM for about 2 years after just graduating from college. Upon receiving my pink slip, I visited the job fair at my old college and saw a big IBM table recruiting new employees. IBM was hiring and firing on the same day.
... because it shows that Cringely's claim is not based on real IBM figures.
Americans are getting poorer and cheaper. They're 25% cheaper than just a couple of years ago. The urgency to outsource to cost effective workforces is reducing.
Deleted
I used to work at a company, where the standing joke at headquarters was if a plant (factory) did anything wrong, they would close it. The big boss would say: "Either they make target, or I'm going to close the plant!" Of course, the targets were completely unrealistic, so the next meeting would be: "Well close the plant dammit!!! Close the plant!"
The people at HQ would keep a running tally of how many divisions (plants) were closed that week. 15 plant closures was a bad week, as the company only had 13 plants. At one point, things got so bad they had to purchase a few more plants to make up for the plants they really did close. I'm glad I'm not working for that company anymore.
Yes, it is possible for management to discuss closing more plants than they have, and to fire more employees than they have hired ...
IBM stock has reached a 52-week high and is set to go higher. After a quick look, it seems the job cuts are a balance vs their investments in future growth. Gotta have good quarters and making the Street happy.
Looks like IBM is getting some money from Amazon (via thenewsroom) to settle some patent disputes, maybe they can hang on to a few of those employees after all....
The Army reading list
I find it interesting that people have clung to the "US" bit so much that they feel the need to point out that IBM doesn't have 150k US employees, instead of pointing out that IBM does have well over 300,000 workers internationally, which is more relevant.
I worked at Nortel Networks, a company that had 105k - 110k employees in 2001. In the first 4 months of 2001 the company fired 27k people. In the rest of the 8 months of the year, they fired another 26k people. They fired even more in 2002. Overall, the company fired 57,000 people, over half the company.
IBM has 150k people to fire, and it can do so with ease. The "US" reference is irrelevant, since even 50,000 US workers would be a huge amount of people, but possible.
As for Cringely, he isn't a journalist. He's never claimed to be one, and his 9 years of weekly articles speaks to this. Cringely is a tech insider and writer who writes about interesting topics, and wrote this article not to report it, but in the hopes that IBM employees, and the publicity his articles garner, could help to prevent IBM from making a mistake. And he is right to do so - at Nortel the CEO wiped out half the company and walked away with a 9-figure compensation for inducing mass unemployment and wiping out billions of value and spinoff value when the tech sector of the TSE crashed.
The effects of 150k layoffs in the US would be very bad, and that's what he hopes to stop, because the way they do it is slow and steady, and if people don't figure it out ahead of time, they find out when it's too late. So in that respect, his article is very worthwhile and commendable.
All too often the people who say as you have either 1) have a job from which they haven't been fired, or 2) fire their "inferiors" and need a maxim to assuage the guilt over the damage theyt've done, or 3) are sociapaths who really don't deserve jobs.
As they say in reality television: "You're fired". Two years from now when the market turns up, you'll wait in line to hear the potential employers in your field say "If you had been good; you wouldn't have been let go. Someone would have hired you." and ask, "Are you an alcoholic?"
I haven't had the above said to me, but I've heard accounts from many others. They weren't alcoholics. They chose the wrong initial employer. That is their only "sin".
You should expect a job and expect to be retained; if you do the work assigned. You shouldn't be promoted, but you should be retained. What's happening now is that even those who do good work are not retained and treated like dirt if retained.
...I do know that some American jobs are currently being moved to India. I also know that some Indian jobs are currently being moved to the states. In an industry like this, nothing stays the same for long, and things are always being moved around. A prediction like 'IBM is going to move around some jobs around' is too vague to be meaningful. And one that says they are going to move overseas more jobs than they currently have is too dumb to be worth repeating.
Just send a preemptive pink slip strike in on all the prospective employees.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Were compensated damn close to 800 million dollars last year if not more. I hope all the Libertarians here starve in the freezing cold this year.
That 130,000 number is total US employees. Cringely's previous estimate supposedly just included Global Services employees, which only represents a fraction of the total workforce. So if we assume half of all US IBM employees work for global services, that still means IBM needs to hire 85,000 new employees before his estimate is even mathematically possible.
This whole thing reminds me of a scene from the South Park episode, "Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow".
Reporter: Tom, I'm currently ten miles outside of Beaverton, unable to get inside the town proper. We do not have any reports of fatalities yet, but we believe that the death toll may be in the hundreds of millions. Beaverton has only a population of about eight thousand, Tom, so this would be quite devastating.Anchor: Any word on how the survivors in the town are doing, Mitch?
Reporter: We're not sure what exactly is going on inside the town of Beaverton, uh Tom, but we're reporting that there's looting, raping, and yes, even acts of cannibalism.
Anchor: My God, you've, you've actually seen people looting, raping and eating each other?
Reporter: No, no, we haven't actually seen it Tom, we're just reporting it.
Isn't journalism so much more fun when you don't have to worry about those damn things called 'facts'?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
We said when we released 1Q results we would be putting in place a series of actions to address cost issues in our U.S. strategic outsourcing business. We have undertaken efforts toward that, and recently implemented a focused resource reduction in the U.S. While any such reduction is difficult for those employees affected, these actions are well within the scope of our ongoing workforce rebalancing efforts.
I dunno, if I ever get "resource reduced" or "workforce balanced" I'll probably still feel like I was laid off.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
...as they go out of business over the next decade. IBM has lately become nothing more than an overpriced version of Infosys. Their tech innovation has died, and the only worthwhile projects that they're still involved in are their open source contributions. Tech companies simply shouldn't have so many god damned employees. Once you spread yourself too thin, you're bound to become useless.
The memo that supposedly refutes Cringley's claim doesn' really deny it.
It say, "recently implemented a focused resource reduction in the U.S." Sounds like layoffs to me, and it doesn't say there won't be more in the future. And notice there are no numbers at all.
If Cringely really were wrong, IBM would say so. The fact that it doesn't leads me to think he is right and they just don't want to admit it.
Mod Crazyjim1 up. He is absolutely correct.
My daughter is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma with bachelors and masters degrees in human resources, criminology and psychology. Her overall GPA for both degrees was 3.8. By the way, she did all of this while raising three children as a single mom.
Prior to graduating from the masters program she sent out over 50 resumes and responded to many letters of interest from major corporations and government agencies. Every one ended up requiring more experience than you could reasonably expect a recent college graduate to have. It makes one wonder what the point of contacting recent graduates is; better annual reports perhaps. I can just hear these companies and agencies complain that they can't find qualified candidates to fill their positions and have no choice but to out-source.
Don't give up Crazyjim1. My daughter finally found a job, although the pay wasn't quite what she had hoped, across the street from the university no less.
Back in my days there (90s), the thing to do if you were an old time Beemer was to take early retirement, severance package, or just get canned if that was your only option, and then come back as a higher paid contractor. But even then, we were seeing more and more workers from India who were here in the States "temporarily" from the IBM India division.
It sounds like those days are gone too.
Globalization! Got to love it! Consumer items are cheaper than ever, but it takes more of my pay.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Excuse me but the Napoleonic Law was innovative and revolutionary - so much in fact it remained the legal code of choice for the countries formerly-occupied under Napoleon. If anything the French Code Civil was and is a very good system of law. And today most of the world's legal systems are based up on the Civil Law legal system with deep French roots. The US legal system however is mostly based up on Common Law..
But has no idea what it's about.
He wrote: It has to be since the very essence of LEAN is foreign hiring.
LEAN http://www.lean.org/ has nothing to do with foreign hiring. It's a philosophy for process improvement that focuses on eliminating wastes in that process. Such wastes include: excess inventory, re-work, moving things around more than needed. It's about redesigning the process so that there is as little wasted effort and material as possible.
LEAN is well-executed when the culture of a company is changed to empower workers to have more control over the way they do their work - and those employees are encouraged to find better ways to do what they do. For example, Toyota is often held up as a prime example of LEAN. There, an employee who finds a better way to improve a process is rewarded with cash bonuses.
Now it may be that a company has hired a consultant to tell them do do layoffs and they call it LEAN, but that's not what it is.
But, everyone here seems to be of the opinion that Cringley's full of shit. I'll have to agree.
Sadly, he did write that, and no, it doesn't look tongue in cheek at all. Catch: XP Decay.
Genuine quote from the great pundit: "When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing?"
I've read the article again, just in case there might be some subtle sarcasm I've missed before, but it looks as serious as it gets, if anyone asks me.
The whole list is framed between:
- "This week's column is about exploring the commonly observed problems that crop up with each new release. Maybe Microsoft should patch the patches once in a while. Here are a few of my gripes - most of them a result of excessive patching." which doesn't really sound like the start of a joke, and
- "And please, will the characters who "have never had a crash or blip" in 10 years of "heavy use" not contribute. I'm sick of these people. They're full of it." Which, again, would indicate that not only he's not joking, but he thinks that anyone who hasn't had those newbie problems is, in his own words, "full of it."
Speaking of which, the rest of the complaints sound... shall we say, computer illiterate. And that's putting it mildly. He sounds like the average Uncle Osric or Aunt Emma, who are terminally stumped as to why would their computer suddenly be sluggish or takes a while to connect on the network. It must be all those MS patches, really. Not like the kind of expert who fixes such things for fun, and/or knows exactly what worm was hogging the network.
Believe me, I've tried finding some trace of tongue-in-cheek irony there. I've hoped it would be an April 1st article. Nope.
But, hey, judge it for yourself. If you can detect some trace of sarcasm there, please tell me.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Where in the hell do you think IBM is going to find 150k qualified people in India? Maybe if you're ignorant of the realities of employment there. The labor market is very tight and salaries are skyrocketing as a result. There aren't 150k engineers on the market in the entire country right now. They could try sniping people from the big companies already present there (Google, Microsoft, etc.), or from the local companies (Infosys and the like), but it's going to be tough. The average salary for a software engineer in Bangalore has gone from a little under $10k 3 years ago to over $20k now. If IBM started trying to pull in another 150k heads, they'd see the average shoot over $30k as competition for talent gets fierce.
Silly IT people, IBM will not 'fire' them, they will simply change their status from Employee to Contractor, or 'Temporary Full-Time Employee'.
Say bye-bye to all your benefits, so more low-cost employees can be hired.
What's your point? Are you saying those top 40 employee's should be taxed more? That the government should enforce a salary cap? Really what's your solution? And really what's the problem that needs to be solved? Are you you saying that Americans should be guaranteed jobs in perptuity?
If we assume an average employee compensation cost the company about 100,000 a year (salarly, benefits, taxes, etc.) then that 800 million could only save 8,000 jobs out of a possible 50,000. That's not much more than a good will gesture.
I wouldn't normally reply to a flip little comment like this, but you seem to be pretty confident that you have a point and I honestly don't see it.
In addition to laying off US employees of IBM Global Services there are contractors, that I believe don't ever get into "we laid off N people" reports (because they are not employees but just a "resource"). And, in addition, there is a BIG turnover of employees in India. Because as soon as they get training they understand that IBM pays them peanuts. And HP or any other outsourcer will have bigger peanuts, so they move on. And IGS needs to train a new batch etc etc. So yes, with high turnover you can lay off in a year 2x or even more employees. Easy as that.
I've never read Cringely's stuff before, but he does seem to have missed a key point in his article. He calls it "IBM's mysterious LEAN program" as if LEAN itself is the project. If you read the reply from IBM, they point out that they're using the LEAN methodology and not that this project is called LEAN. He also says that "the very essence of LEAN is foreign hiring", which is tripe.
He's deliberately scaremongering by using the term out of context to suggest that it is the title of a project that's synonymous with cutbacks, knowing that most people won't be aware that LEAN means something else entirely. Maybe he should read up on the LEAN methodology first before he starts worrying people by writing all this nonsense.
And here's the obligatory Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing
--- Band: Joey Ultra
Boring but technically correct writers will not attract eyeballs and will not get published.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
*Who* said every job is going to India? To avoid this kind of skyrocketing in wages, *if they are really going to layoff that many jobs*, they will distribute them among many countries... Hungary, Romania, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, India, China, ... There are lot of countries with competent IT professionals out there.
ilex paraguariensis for all
Lean isn't mysterious. It's popular, especially in manufacturing.
It ain't about laying off people. Not if you do it right.
However, for many companies, it's a radical re-think of the corporate culture and hard to implement because far too many managers can't wrap their heads around some of the concepts and think it's just simpler to get rid of people. That's not Lean. That's just stupidity.
--
BMO - "I'm not anti-business. I'm anti stupidity" - Dilbert
... ...
Because goods are free to move, but not people.
Jobs are free to move, but not people.
Oil is free to move, but not people.
Money is free to move, but not people
New Model Army - Another Imperial Day
(honestly, great song)
I am learning shed loads of hindi.
such as "no problemo" koi baat nahi and "that's so funny" hansane wali baat, don't try to pronounce it.
I'm so looking forward to the next ones such as Chinese that I've actually recorded the learning chinese in ten steps from Sky.
You gotta luv this stuff, I look forward to every new day and challenge ahead.
Working and helping the customer is what makes my day. If I can help our Indian contingent become more effective at this, from the experience I have, then why not.
rgds
It's not "your" pay. The days of being entitled to a job with constantly increasing salary due to time of service are long gone.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
That seems to be the standard practise these days (mostly in England). Many employers just take on fresh graduates to "bring in new ideas", then dump them as soon as they have been "brainjuiced" after a year or so, and then take on a new set of graduates. The only way to survive this is to set up your own company, or work in a research lab.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Well, sorta yes and no.
The yes part is: I can aggree with all you wrote there. It's common sense, really.
The no part is: well, that was not really my gripe. Maybe I didn't explain it well enough.
My gripe is with people who should know better, but are taking such entertainers as the new Oracle Of Delphi, and their words as 100% accurate prediction to go by. Cringely said that Intel will buy Apple? It must be as good as an Intel press release. Cringely said that IBM will fire 150,000 out of 130,000 US jobs? It's as good as already happened!
Keyword there being: who should know better. I can understand Jack Hasbeen and Jill Manager reading it for entertainment value, and to feel on top of a domain they don't even understand. But I like to think that Slashdot == nerds who should have already caught on to the idea that the likes of Dvorak and Cringely are arse-clowns talking out the rear end.
Well, actually, on second thought, let me take back a bit of the "yes" part too. I can see how that sells better, but it's a bit of dishonesty anyway.
Thing is, "normal" people don't find computers entertaining at all, and don't buy computer magazines as entertainment. Whoever buys these, has some genuine interest in finding things out, whether because they're a techie, or because they manage some techies, or because they want to sound all knowledgeable in a meeting, or whatever. Telling them whatever lie or outlandish prediction just because it sells... well, is a breach of trust.
Briefly, while I can understand why it makes more money, I can't help feeling some disgust at the perpetrator anyway.
It's, if you will, like hearing about the WorldCom scam. I can see how it made them money (for a while), and how it was more profitable (for a while) than doing the honest thing, but somehow I end up disgusted at the whole thing anyway.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Nortel only fired all those people because it had to, when it's market fell out from under it. IBM's market(s) are doing fine, and has no good reason to lay off half its workforce.
Is there such a thing anymore in the US? Or did it all disappear with "trickle down"? Is it only in government where you can expect lifetime employment now? I had an Uncle who put in 40 years with the post office. Retired with 95% percent of his pay till he kicks the bucket. Does anybody know anybody who is still working a non government job with the same employer for over 20-25 years? Do they expect any retirement benefits? Will they be able to trust the company to come across with it?
What?
> Where in the hell do you think IBM is going to find 150k qualified people in India?
Your mistake is that you apparently assume that real-world challenges would stop IBM from pursuing this strategy. As an ibmer i can assure you that it won't. Consider for a minute:
1. IBM will replace sysadmins with 10 years experience in AIX and 3 years in Linux with Indian sysadmins with *zero* experience. I know this is true - since they are already doing it. Lack of experience absolutely doesn't matter to them.
2. Once IBM finds that experienced (8 months) labor in India is unavailable, then they will either outsource to China (scary) or just learn to be satisfied with completely unskilled labor.
What they won't do is adequately automate or pay for senior skills. They apparently have never read the Mythical Man Month. If it takes their customers an entire month and $1000 to provision two userids on a server (to do little more than create the userids, tie them to home directories, and put them into the documented groups) - then fine, the customers will have to live with it.
The top 40 people at IBM were compensated damn close to 800 million dollars last year if not more.
The point would be lost on a stereotypical Libertarian. The doctrine posits that everyone is equally empowered to enter into a contractual relationship. So, if the stockholders want to retain a board that approves this sort of compensation, that's their business.
That not everyone is really even vaguely equally empowered isn't stated up front. However, the truth is that a hardcore Libertarian doesn't care about economic screwiness in any form, as long as no one is welching on a contract. Therefore, a society on a Libertarian model would end up as an extreme oligarchy without either some sort of compromise on principles, or outside intervention.
Luke, help me take this mask off
> That 130,000 number is total US employees. Cringely's previous estimate supposedly just included Global Services employees,
> which only represents a fraction of the total workforce.
His original note also said 50% of the US (or perhaps GTS) workforce. It's entirely possible that he made a mistake there (was told 50% by a contact then mistakenly took 50% of 350k instead of 50% of 130k). Or perhaps he's talking about 'The Americas' (as IBM calls it) - which includes Canada, US, and Latin America - and could certainly top 150,000 employees.
And since he's already made the convincing point that IBM does plan to lay off *ALL* ibm US employees - 150,000 may take a while, but it will happen. As an IBM employee I completely believe (and have reason to believe) that they plan to lay-off 99.99% of all US employees.
> Isn't journalism so much more fun when you don't have to worry about those damn things called 'facts'?
aren't slashdot postings so much more fun when all you have to worry about is nitpicking?
> For example, Toyota is often held up as a prime example of LEAN.
Let's See. Toyota did LEAN. Toyota doesn't treat their employees like crap. Therefore, IBM doesn't treat their employees like crap.
No, I don't think that logic works.
> But, everyone here seems to be of the opinion that Cringley's full of shit. I'll have to agree.
Everyone? You don't speak for me, Buddy. Cringely has been around for a long time, does great PBS series and usually is insightful on his column. He's made some goofs over the years, but he's still worth hearing out. I'm just wondering why there are people who are so venomous in attacking Cringely yet so vigorous in their defense of IBM. Stakeholders, perhaps?
IBM now has more employees in America and India than anywhere else. Just last week while all this was going on Sam was in India paving the way for more IBM business to be transferred there. IBM is the modern day Benedict Arnold. Sure, Indians are going to do great out of this and all's fair in love and war, but I don't see why the Americans losing their job should bend over and take it.
> Free market capitalism works... up until a point.
If the Government hadn't stepped in, every American would now be an employee of The Rockefeller Corporation.
The trouble with Free Markets, is they're usually not. Heard a Pundit on BBC World Service saying we shouldn't worry about Rupert Murdoch taking over the Wall Street Journal because it's a "Free Market" anyone can set up a blog and compete. (Level playing field, my ass.)
If there are 120000 people in a room and then 150000 leave, how many people have to enter the room again for it to be empty?
You haven't looked deep enough. The new deal was to defuse the righteous revolt that was NEEDED and going to come to get the conmen crooks in the central banks and wallstreet strung up by their slimy necks like they deserved. FDR was the biggest friend the fat rich guys ever had. The great depression was not an accident, it was a calculated economic fraud, a congame designed to steal untold billions "legally" as a followup to the federal reserve "act" swindle and the hijacking of the money supply by a handful of already rich people. And it worked. It worked bigtime. And it got an entire generation hooked to the idea that the government is big brother, even before the book was written.
And they keep doing variations of the same con and tons of suckers keep falling for it. The best con is one where the marks don't even realize they have been swindled, and defend the swindlers because of stockholm syndrome and long term conditioning and from sheer cognizant dissonance-they just can't "believe" like a cultist, it gets into rejection of data and into "beliefs"- that they have been swindled, ergo, it never happened, they live in delusion land.
"I don't see how IBM could fire 150,000 regular employees."
I don't see how IBM GS manages to get it's payroll printed.
They certainly have no clue how to bill for services rendered or do what we call "Computer Stuff".
It's the worst branch of IBM.
Remember when they broke it off and called it "ISSC"? Well, I talked to some of the IBM regulars, and they told me it was the dumping ground for 40 years of bad hiring decisions at IBM. What you got ISSC (now GS), what you were getting were the people that IBM themselves didn't want.
So that $50M/year outsourcing contract? If you signed that you were, what we call, an "idiot".
The rumors about LEAN and layoffs at IBM have been circulating for a few months, but have really intensified over the past few weeks. I jumped ship two weeks ago and two days after I gave my notice I received frantic IMs from co-workers who have been laid off, because 80% of the department is supposed to be outsourced - primarily to South America as part of LEAN. Two days later some of my ex-co-workers got re-hired, but, of course, as contractors without benefits. Yea, it is that easy.
The F500 clients are "not pleased", because they have been struggling with communication and logistical issues for quite some time with the new overseas staff, because you simply cannot expect that a non-native English speaker with (most of the time) heavy accent can elaborate highly technical and complex issues. We have been rolling our eyes for months while listening to daily conference calls with our South American or Indian peers. It simply does not work. The clients are paying a high premium for "excellence" and get served an understaffed, underpaid and "not very motivated" workforce. A server goes down in NJ and there is no staff to physically reboot the machine. I have seen instances where the client has to wait 3 months, before someone was found for "on-site" support.
My US co-workers are naturally all pissed off. Contractors are let go without notice after almost a decade of service. Managers are trained to be naturally unemotional alpha-males with mostly poor people skills. Teams primarily consists of an equal number of computer-illiterate managers/techleads and technically skilled people who *do the job*. Sure, it's their right to lay off people, but the way it has been implemented has been traditionally poorly managed. After all a serial number is easier to let go than a human being. The published reports don't surprise me at all. I know plenty of ex-co-workers who have been let go (and rehired) a dozen times during my time at IBM. I am not disgruntled ex-employee, because I thought that the IBM way was the "way to go", because I never experienced any other work environment.
I worked for IBM for almost a decade and I didn't even realize how miserable I was until I started my new position. When I got home from my first day at my new (non-IBM) job, I was so (positively) overwhelmed that I uncontrollably sobbed. This is what 10 years of working with IBM have done to me.
Uh, after a decade with no increase, and lots of stupidity arguing about it, the minimum. It's buying power has been depressed because we have learned that when you increase the minimum wage, poor people that need to get their act together lose their jobs (that are stepping stones to better jobs hopefully), and wealthy white teenagers make more money in their after school jobs. Instead we created the earned income tax credit, which puts the working poor into a negative tax zone.
In fact, have some fun to see how not real the numbers are... Do a 1040 for the theoretical working poor families, single mom + minimum wage job with 3 kids (and again at $6.50, and $8/hr for more realistic numbers). When you factor in the earned income tax credit, child tax credits, etc., it's not as horrible as you make it out to be.
In addition, you are comparing median housing prices to the MINIMUM wage, that's silly. Compare MEDIAN housing prices to MEDIAN wages and you'll see that while affordability has gotten worse over the past few years, monthly expenditures have not because of low interest rates.
You suggest that "a vast amount of Americans" earn the minimum wage. I agree that some do, but not a vast amount, it's small.
You say that in the 1960s it was possible for anyone to own a home, and imply that it isn't now. The fact is that's a myth, home ownership is MUCH higher now, which means MORE Americans are able to own a home, so I suggest that its easier to own a home now than it was in the 1960s.
Gullible fools... hey I heard Bill Gates eats babies! It must be true!
Interesting. Other differences in Japan are there isn't the huge disparity between Executive and worker wages and perks: Everyone is on the same side, and everyone can work together because no one is making out like a bandit. Lets be honest. There's nothing the least bit special about Sam: there are a hundred thousands inside and outside who could do his job, and many of them could do it better. In IBM at the moment we're seeing glutinous pilfering from the executives, who aren't even running the company well, while at the same time asking employees to make the ultimate sacrifice.
IBMs has embraced every management fad to come down the line. This time the suspicion is that Sam is using LEAN as a smokescreen: A nice sounding acronym that makes him sound "with it", at the same time he retrenches thousands of employees.
So they're going to hire 20,000 more workers and then quickly FIRE them?
Wow - and we thought Microsoft was evil!
Compared with what the occupied countries had it certainly was innovative.
Actually I strongly disagree with you. The UN has been instrumental in creating new treaties securing new, better and stronger civil rights for the people of the world. However the conventions are not effective with out a strong enforcer.
That problem has been solved in Europe with the European Human Rights Convention of 1950. The treaty is valid in every European country and then some. It is enforced by the Council of Europe and more importantly by the European Union. The EU restricts political and trade links with countries that do not respect and adhere to the convention(s) and their additional protocols.The last few years a growing number of citizens in Eastern European countries have found it an effective tool to pressure their national governments into respecting their rights. Western European citizens have used it successfully since the 1950s. Especially in Russia where freedoms are under extreme pressure this has given people a strong position that even powerful and ruthless governments are afraid of! I invite you to read the catalogue of righs contained in the convention. And please compare it with your comparable American Human Rights Convention (not the Bill of Rights).
But I will say this much; my own legal system uses one (1) single core volume of some 3000+ pages. And the German work of codification, BGB, inspired the world as far away as China and Japan.
Of course they've read it! What you are missing is that they are billing their customers on a time and materials basis for everything that isn't nailed in the SLA/OLA between IBM GS and the customer.
If your contract doesn't explicitly state "Sysadmins roles should not be filled by primates" then if IBM can make money out of supplying you with a chimp in a suit, they *will* do it...
The truth is.. they all ready outsourced those 150,000 people years ago.
In the 1960s, more people could AFFORD to buy a home. These days, many people are buying houses that they cannot really afford. Many people are buying home with no down payment and getting interest-only payments, which means they're not building equity, and any slight downturn in their finances means they lose everything. Yes, home ownership is much higher than in the 60s, but so are foreclosures.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Cringley is not referring to "Lean Thinking", the Toyota Way, etc. He's referring to the IBM-internal program that has been code-named LEAN. "It has to be since the very essence of LEAN is foreign hiring." within IBM's use of the term.
It's sad they're poluting the names of one of the best ideas in business with their bad management, but, it happens...
-Stu
Imagine Cisco permanently shutting down most of their Silicon Valley operation. Or Intel, HP or any of the other giants with tens of thousands of people in Silicon Valley. We've already had a small-scale precursor called the dot-com bust. It wasn't pretty. And it had a significant impact on the lives of many others in Silicon Valley.
And, lest one dismiss this scenario as impossible, that's what Detroit thought back in the 1960's. You might want to see the movie "Roger and me".
Personally, I think there's a very large chance of this happening in the next 30 years, simply because of the way India, China and others are rapidly growing.
So consider this a "Heads Up". IBM hasn't forgotten its experiences of the past; indeed, it has learned from them. Most other companies have choosen not to learn anything, and really don't care about long-term planning.
When (not if) this happens, the results won't be pretty.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
-- snip --
We said when we released 1Q results we would be putting in place a series of actions to address cost issues in our U.S. strategic outsourcing business. We have undertaken efforts toward that, and recently implemented a focused resource reduction in the U.S. While any such reduction is difficult for those employees affected, these actions are well within the scope of our ongoing workforce rebalancing efforts.
-- snip --
Translation:
------------
Q1 sucked, so we'll sack undisclosed number of technical people in the worst managed division, to make likely failure of that division more or less assured, but less costly. Some folks will be hired in Bangalore, etc... so we can keep milking the contracts we managed to land for a while until our reputation as a vendor is truly in the toilet. But this is business as usual, so you shouldn't be worried.
You haven't told us whether to count contractors as "people".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Is this evidence enough that Cringley's stuff can never appear on Slashdot ever again?
You're assuming IBM is telling the truth and Cringely has it wrong or is lying.
That's fine, we can test it (science is cool, kids). Let's come back in a year or two and see if IBM has reduced its workforce of employees and contractors by some fraction similar to what Cringely said. If it's 100,000 instead of 150,000 can we call that 'close'?
But then you take it a step further, and prescribe a course of action - banning Cringely from Slashdot based on the assumed veracity of the IBM memo. He's backing a different source and you're willing to ban said backer based on the eventual veracity of his source. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, so if it turns out in that year's time IBM has done massive US workforce reductions - you'll pledge never to post to Slashdot again, OK?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
IBM's market(s) are doing fine, and has no good reason to lay off half its workforce.
Sure it does. When IBM fires half of its workforce, Wall Street will reward it. The stock price will spike, management's options will be worth quite a bit more, and they can move on to the next job before the walls come tumbling down.
Here's hoping they're not like all the rest...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
There are plenty of bloggers that write interesting stories that aren't accused of being journalists, so why single out this blogger and hold him to a standard that he doesn't hold himself to?
We're probably better off to not to try classify people and say that sometimes Bob is a journalist (Electric Money, Triumph of the Nerds, that 3-mile-island book) and sometimes is a gossip columnist, philosopher, speculator, or analyst.
I enjoy reading his columns, even the ones that are plane crazy.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
No. Actually, the jobs will get back to US when the salaries goes down. You know, economic laws... If there are too many workers for a position, the salaries goes down. If there are few workers for a position, the salaries goes up.
(not calling you Stupid, just a play on words)
But the Social Security and Medicare tax aren't going to go down, neither are any other welfare programs, the OSHA requirements, building codes, zoning ordinances, etc. We've built a house of cards based on ever-increasing salaries and cheap oil.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You're both right and both missing an important point. $800M for 40 employees is ridiculous, obviously, unless they maybe all Warren Buffett. But people should be able to earn as much money as they can.
Now, the real problem: paying $800M for 40 employees is ridiculously stupid for a company to do. They should be pushed by their customers and/or owners for doing so. Paying that kind of money is doing one or all of: a) diluting shareholder value, b) decreasing the quality of product, or c) raising prices. If the market is working, companies that do stupid things go away and efficient competition replaces them.
So, we have efficient market theory and an obvious (and rampant) exception to it. There's only one conclusion - the market is not efficient. And there's only one entity that can bollix up the market: Government.
The ways in which the Government can and has screwed up the markets and permit these kinds of situations to come about would fill volumes. That's not to say there's no need for the Guiding Hand, but that the presence of a hand does not require the competency of that particular hand.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
A cynical approach to hiring only nets you cynical employees.
And if the markets are working that leads to poor product and service, and the company goes out of business.
That's why we need to implore every Slashdotter complaining about draconian working conditions to go find a better job. Unfortunately, IT workers too often lack the self-confidence to do so, but encouragement and re-assurance can be beneficial.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If you're going to rake computer pundits over the coals for the empty calories they feed us, you should apply the same standards to business pundits, stock pickers, political pundits, economists, IANALs and any other discipline where people attempt to predict the behavior of organizations for which they can't tell valid data from misinformation.
We are the 198 proof..