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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.
Layoff is the most disingenuous patronizing goddamned thing these rich assholes could say. Call it what it is. You don't want to give up a yacht this year, so you're firing a city the size of boulder Colorado. Call me cynical, but the ship is officially sinking.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Sometimes some management forgets that employees are stakeholders just like the people who have invested their savings are. In this case, IBM has had 11 consecutive quarters (three years) of falling sales. If they don't take decisive action to turn things around, the company will be gone and everyone will be out of a job. They haven't been able to keep brining in the money selling the old products and services, cloud services are keeping them alive for now but Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple dominate cloud, so there is no guarantee that IBM will be able to exist on cloud revenue five years from now. It sucks, but the truth is, IBM hasn't kept their customers happy, and with the customers leaving there isn't money to pay workers. On the other hand, Apple is opening a huge new data center where some ex-IBM staff might work, and several companies are expanding operations in Texas.
Your math doesn't work out. The global population is roughly 7 billion, 1% of that is 70 million. There are more than 70 million people with flushing toilets, computers, and homes in the US alone, and there are other places where our standard of living, or better, is just as common (i.e. Canada, Japan, a surprising amount of the Mideast, most of Europe, ect.) At best what you describe is the global 1% is now the global 10%, and is probably more like the global 25%. Why do I bring this up? Because the old "you don't know how good you have it" is getting really old. Americans have been told that for fifty years now, as other countries have steadily overtaken us in quality of life, and as more and more of our income flows to fewer and fewer of our citizens. It's nothing more than a distraction, a rhetorical trick to try and avoid conversation about what's really been going on.
Right, but if you are the top 10% performance rating and you see layoffs, you start looking. Regardless of how much profit they are making, you see that they are going to grow their profit by downsizing and that says a lot right there to someone with a long career ahead of them: 1) it may one day be you, 2) They're probably going to "core competancy" themselves into stagnation, your skills will degrade and you will get bored, 3) If you were upwardly mobile, your chances of promotion are going to shrink, 4) New projects, new development, etc. are all going to be shelved in place of band-aids for what exists, not good for you personally, 5) They'll use this as an excuse to reduce bonuses and give fewer RSUs/stock options, you probably can get a better deal elsewhere.
In a nutshell there's never a good reason to stay around a company that is laying off like this. The only reason is comfort.
Companies exist to produce profits
Nope. Companies exist for the benefit of society. There is no natural limit of liability and there is no natural corporate personhood. These are all artifices of law because it is believed that it is to the benefit of the country with those laws that such things exist.
That and only that is why companies exist.
SJW n. One who posts facts.