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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."
As a follow up, PBS has an internal, independent ombudsman. You can contact the current ombudsman, Michael Getler, at pbs.org or call him at 703-739-5290. You can also find and contact your local PBS member station as they control your local content schedule. The less stations that maintain Cringley programming, the less likely it is that PBS will retain him, and the less relevant he becomes.
I have no problem with Cringley being called a hack. But like the old saying goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Whether or not he's got his numbers exactly right, if you've got any doubt there are massive layoffs occuring at IBM, read the comments attached to Cringley's articles:
0 70504_002027_comments.html0 70511_002058_comments.html
s .php
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20
Not to mention reports from other IBMers here:
http://www.allianceibm.org/jobcutstatusandcomment
Also, consider that IBM's employee headcount doesn't include contractors. I don't know how much including them would effect the headcount, but it's certainly by a substantial amount.
Being an idiot doesn't necessarily preclude his occasionally being somewhere in the ballpark of the truth.
I don't see how IBM could fire 150,000 regular employees.
I can easily see how they could dump that many combined regulars, long-term supplementals, and contractors.
Specialization is for insects. - R.A.H.
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.
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.
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.