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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."
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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.
One can only wish, but I wouldn't hold my breath. After all, we still see Dvorak drivel making the front page. One would have thought that after the "my idle process is hogging 95% of the CPU cycles" whine, that would have been the last any tech-savvy site ever links to Dvorak, right? Well, dream on.
/. gave up on the whole class of "computer pundits" entirely. It's an easy job, and it's really about entertainment not computer expertise, ok? It's just a glorified SF version of the astrology columns in some newspapers. It just requires a thick enough skin to pretend it never happened, or that you were misunderstood, when 99% of the predictions don't come to pass. Better yet, phrase your predictions in a way that (A) gives them a time or an event, but never both, so it can't really be disproved, and (B) in the tried and tested "why X should do Y" way, so if it doesn't happen, it's obviously only because X is more stupid than you.
TBH, though, much as Cringely _is_ just a hack, I'd rather
Briefly, it's not just about Cringely, but the whole caste is little more than a bunch of entertainers, and not one iota more reliable than astrologers. Linking to any of them, not just Cringely, as if they actually predicted something about to happen, is akin to linking to an astrology site. "The great Mr Psychic says this is your lucky day, go do an interview for a job if you're a Capricorn. [Read more...]" No more, and no less.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Whether or not he's got his numbers exactly right, if you've got any doubt there are massive layoffs occuring at IBM...
It appears IBM didn't dispute claims of mass layoffs either. They only discounted Cringley's numbers. IBM seems to be using Cringley's number problem as a red herring agaist the existence of coming layoffs.
Table-ized A.I.