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Massive Layoff Underway At IBM
Tekla Perry writes: Project Chrome, a massive layoff that IBM is pretending is not a massive layoff, is underway. At more than 100,000 people, it is projected to be the largest mass layoff by any U.S. corporation in at least 20 years. Alliance@IBM, the IBM employees' union, says it has so far collected reports of 5000 jobs eliminated, but those are just numbers of those getting official layoff notices. According to anecdotal reports, IBM appears to be abusing the performance appraisal system to cut additional employees without officially laying them off.
It is disgusting really, and it's all about satisfying Wall Street. Read Cringely for more info, he's being blogging about this IBM situation for a couple of years. :-/
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
Meanwhile Lenovo, the PC business they sold off that moved into tablets and smartphones is doing really well. All of the same chinese factories and technologies are available to IBM that were available to Lenovo, only the management was different. One decided it couldn't make money on making actual computer stuff, the other went ahead and made actual computer stuff.
One went a route of selling vague data mining services at high prices, a bit of patent trolling, and slow expensive lock-in mainframes. The other made stuff people want without the hard selling to dumb middle managers.
The speculation is that IBM is trying to push the dividend to a record level. In the process they may very well destroy the company. Because the only way to get the dividend to that level is to basically wipe out long term profits for a short term boost.
That's probably the goal, the new MBA generation from the baby boomers is taking the point of view of taking every dime out of the company and giving it to the insiders even if it guts a major American corporation and hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost to China.
It's funny but the CEO from the Movie Dick and Jane reminds me so much of these CEO's that are only out for themselves, yet he was supposed to be fictional.
I know a company has to be profitable to keep people employed...
IBM's net profit in FY2014 was $15.75B (down from $16.48B in FY2013).
If you have a 401(k) or any kind of mutual fund investment, you are part of Wall Street. That's how the system works, it's not spinning in a vacuum. That 6% return you got last year did not fall from the sky, it ended up in your pockets because institutional shareholders put pressure on companies like IBM to help the stock price and/or pay more dividends.
Clearly you doesn't understand what "the 1%" refers to. Here's the information you need. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
They didn't need to do this to stay profitable.
Companies exist to produce profits, not to provide employment. If an employee is not providing net value, then it is better for the company, and the overall economy, for that employee to go somewhere else. In the long run, it is better for the employee as well.
On the topic of not commenting on rumors, this one was even more fun:
When reached, IBM sent the following response: “We do not comment on rumors, even ridiculous or baseless ones. If anyone had checked information readily available from our public earnings statements, or had simply asked us, they would know that IBM has already announced the company has just taken a $600 million charge for workforce rebalancing. This equates to several thousand people, a mere fraction of what’s been reported. Last year, IBM hired 45,000 people, and the company currently has about 15,000 job openings around the world for new skills in growth areas such as cloud, analytics, security, and social and mobile technologies. This is evidence that IBM continues to remix its skills to match where we see the best opportunities in the marketplace.”
Wow, 5 sentences of non comments. I'm thinking IBM PR doesn't understand what "no comment" really means.