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Layoffs at Microsoft, Intel, and IBM

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the that's-a-lot-of-pink dept.

Normally I try to avoid posting straight business news, but I think that these 3 stories combine to something meaningful. Muleguy noted Microsoft is laying off 5,000, Mspangler reports that Intel is cutting 5-6k, while nonyabidness afraid4myjob submitted that IBM Layoffs have begun with no number, but estimates as high as 16,000.

10 of 623 comments (clear)

  1. WTF is up with IBM? by Prien715 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So yesterday, IBM posted great profits that beat wall street estimates. And today they're doing layoffs? That makes no financial sense to me. Why should any company lay off people just because "Everyone else is doing it"?

    --
    -- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
    1. Re:WTF is up with IBM? by Skreems · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Sadly it sounds like that's not what they're doing. The articles and the leaked Balmer memo mention a number of divisions that will be included in the cuts, and product development is suspiciously lacking. It sounds like they're cutting all the fringe divisions (legal, HR, R&D, etc) and leaving the developers alone entirely. Which is really a shame, since they have a number of completely incompetent devs who need to go as well.

      --
      Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
      The Urban Hippie
    2. Re:WTF is up with IBM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      hey man everyone who actually works for ibm knows that the real bloat is up top. if ibm wanted to save money they would take the ax to the ridiculous tripple tiered management. then you wouldnt need to make excuses for getting rid of your best guys. (and they were the best)

      stop drawing blood from the stone already and cut all the fat from up top. Why does every customer need 3 project mgrs??? why are new tools introduced and the old ones not repaired? why is every data center walk through an exercise in tickling 10 managers butts with a feather?

      its only a matter of time before they begin to feed on themselves.

      bunch of "personalities"

    3. Re:WTF is up with IBM? by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Joking aside, most of the "journalism" I read today from major news outlets is filled with apostrophe errors, spelling errors, grammar errors, and just plain poor writing style. Go back 25 years or more and compare newspapers from then with newspapers from today; today's "journalists" can't write for shit. My local paper is even worse: "too-to-two" errors, words left out, just plain unintelligible writing, and more.

      Newspapers aren't just being killed by the internet; they're being killed because no one wants to pay for such poor quality writing any more, especially when many papers are so blatantly biased in their reporting.

  2. Some perspective. by Albanach · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft are cutting up to 5,000 from a total of 90,000 employees - 5.5% of its workforce.

    IBM might cut 16,000 from a workforce of 387,000, a cut of 4%.

    Intel are cutting up to 6,000 from a workforce of 84,000 - 7% of jobs.

    1. Re:Some perspective. by gad_zuki! · · Score: 5, Interesting

      >It's not that simple. A lot of those visas do in fact go to workers for jobs that an employer can't fill locally.

      Yeah right. Im sure thats true a certain percentage of the time but the scenario "why pay someone 80k when we can get a slave for 24k" plays itself out too.

  3. When will it end? by jollyreaper · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Economists like to pretend that they're dealing with a hard science but they are wrong, so very wrong. Economics is certainly a complex field of study but it is also one of the squishiest sciences there is. Economics is psychology with graphs and math. You can talk about supply and demand, this curve and that, but we're ultimately talking about human psychology. You can't use normal logic to figure this stuff out, you have to work with crowd dynamics, herd instinct, quit talking about how people should behave and pay attention to how they really behave.

    If you want to understand how everything is going pear-shaped, just look at the Great White club fire. Huge crowd, small venue, and the band's pyrotechnics set the place on fire. Rationally speaking, there's no reason why anyone had to die. There were sufficient doors and sufficient time for a calm and orderly evacuation. And our economists are the ones who would look at that situation and not quite grasp why there was a panic, a human log-jam at the door, and a whole lot of dead bodies. "That wasn't rational behavior! That was irrational exuberance, or maybe irrational shit-the-bed terror. The problem here is that my observations of this event do not fit my models."

    That's what we're seeing in this economy, a fire in a club. Everyone is working to maximize their own survival even though it will harm the chances for the group as a whole. Companies are shedding jobs everywhere, getting work is damned near impossible, and we've got a negative feedback loop that nobody seems to be able to break. And nobody wants to take a look at the wall where the writing stands hundreds of feet high -- "we need to reform the way we're doing business and this will change our entire economy as we've come to know it." The thought is too frightening.

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  4. Re:Is it cos I iz black? by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To be fair, it was Hoover's fault. Not that he could know; most of the techniques we use today to try and mitigate the effects of a long term downturn weren't even invented during Hoover's administration. It wasn't (at that time) recognized that unregulated capitalism was perfectly capable of committing suicide.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  5. Re:When did things change? by Punko · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It changed when your company went public. As soon as the first duty of the company changed from working owners to non-employee shareholders, employees are simply meaningless. As a shareholder of our own privately held firm, our employees are our number one asset. Layoffs, when necessary due to lower service demands, are keenly felt. If our firm was to go public, we would morph into the same heartless money machines as all other publicly traded firms. You want employees to matter? Don't go public.

    --
    If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
  6. Re:Not H1-B: Try Offshore Contracting by fmoliveira · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Don't blame entire countries because of the people your out-sourcers end contracting. I'm in one of these countries, and I know how fast and bad executed are the recruiting for american companies. They don't expend more than between a day and a week searching. These HR firms are gold-diggers that know you guys have loads of money, and that you don't expect much, so they pick the first worker they think they can bullshit you in, and ask for a lot more than they pay for him.