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IBM Added 70,000 People To Its Ranks In 2015, And Lost That Many, Too (businessinsider.com)
walterbyrd writes: IBM is very particular in hiring for the hot new skills where IBM is expanding like machine learning, big data, mobile, and security. However, even with adding 70,000 people to their payroll in 2015, IBM actually ended the year with a slightly lower headcount than when it started, according to a SEC filing. IBM is always very careful when talking about its global headcount, which has been going through major shifts for years. It won't say how many people it lays off each year, or how old they are or in what areas they work. It only talks only about "resource actions" or "workforce rebalancing" in terms of the total amount of money it spends on them. It spent $587 million on such things in 2015 (and nearly $1.5 billion in 2014), it said.
The talent left this company a long time ago.
- The research folks on Watson all left after the Jeopardy publicity stunt. they're all at greener pastures. The CTO for Watson left fairly quickly.
- The people sold off to Lenovo have mostly left - though Lenovo was a bit better than IBM
- The people working on Cloud are basically what was left over after the SoftLayer folks left, and the remnants of old System X & P. Musical chairs. The Softlayer CEO and exec staff also left.
- The Blade Network people and the entire Systems Networking business left to Google, AWS, and other greener pastures
- The DB2 people have mostly left to new startups.
- Just about every key architect for CPUs has moved to ARM competitors
Did I mention that their pay and bonus sucks? One mans loss it another mans gain... Just about every company outside of the HW business has benefited from influx of talent running away from this company.
BTW - That new company called HPE... it's basically the same as above with another name....
Let's not be coy...we all know what this Corporate DoubleSpeak means.
"resource actions" = "firing people"
"workforce rebalancing" = "firing people"
"rightsizing" = "firing people"
"personnel adjustment" = "firing people"
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The politicians tell us is that giving perks to big companies will create jobs.
This is a lie.
Jobs are created when people *start* companies, or when small companies grow. Big companies generally have all the workforce they need, and don't hire more people just because they get more money.
Indeed - it's the big companies who look to cut costs by shaving quality or outsourcing or moving to Ireland. You don't generally see the small, lean, hungry startups looking to outsource from India or move to Ireland.
I cringe when I see the federal government giving [ice cream maker] Ben and Jerry's a grant of $200,000 to increase their competitiveness, because that money spent on sales training could fund 4 small startups, employing 5-7 people each.
Next time you hear a politician, check to see if their speech doesn't end with "and this means more jobs" or similar. It's their way of selling their influence and making it palatable to the voters.
The most I have seen is is on the z13 which has ~140 cores - you can run a bunch of separate instances of Linux but it's nowhere NEAR the same performance as running Linux on fairly cheap dedicated "standard" servers.
According to the IBM marketing material, the 2016 Z13 can run up to 8,000 virtual servers on a single system. Slide deck doesn't break the down specs for each of those virtual servers. A Slashdotter who commented on another article said he ran 2,000+ instances of Linux on an IBM mainframe.
http://www.slideshare.net/fgonza93/new-ibm-mainframe-2016-z13
The classical pension was too easy for management to abuse - fired on the 29th year, etc. 401(k) is the way of today, and only works if you choose to participate.
I used to work at IBM (as a senior-level manager) and I can say truthfully that the only way IBM is going to make it is if it completely lets go almost all of its business units and rebuilds from the ground up. Every single LOB they have is archaic. I remember when I was first hired at IBM. They showed every new employee a propaganda video which was like a 10 minute montage of IBM's innovation since it started. That video ended with the final innovation -- landing on the moon. That's right. The last real innovation IBM truly contributed to was LANDING ON THE MOON. Fifty years ago.
In the last 20 years, all IBM has done is try to innovate through acquisitions. Buy a company. Put together a five year business plan to milk the acquiree's customers. "Blue wash" their products. Push new IBM bloatware to those customers. Get rid of 95% of the acquiree's employees through attrition... and replace them with IBM employees from other liquidated business units. Wash, rinse, repeat.
They have a requirement for all business units to ensure that a certain percentage of the workforce was offshore. Also, since their HR review process uses comparison against your peers... people get fired or put on performance plans every quarter. I remember going into ridiculous meetings where my boss would tell me that I didn't have enough of my peopl eranked as low performers... I needed to come up with some names. Didn't matter if my entire team met their personal goals. I had to rate a certain percentage a "3" or my boss would do it for me. Wonderful. IBM used to have a policy of matching 401k contributions with each paycheck. Well, they changed that to a one-time match in December. The kicker there was that if you got laid off/fired before December... then you lost all of your match. Nice, eh? It just so happened that the big layoffs came before the 401k match date. Lots of wonderful cost savings for IBM.
Meanwhile... during periods where several consecutive quarters of revenue misses happened... and tens of thousands of people were fired... Ginni Rometty and her peers received millions of dollars in bonuses. Nice, eh?
I could go on and on. But IBM is simply a crap company. My advice to anybody would be to stay away from there. If your company gets acquired by IBM... stick around for three years. Collect your paycheck, come in late every day, go as slow as possible in your daily work, don't fret while IBM ruins your product by demanding you include 20 year-old technology into your shiny product. Then leave after you are fully vested. Leave immediately and don't look back.
If you are a new college graduate and you get hired by IBM, stick around for no more than two years. You will get a much better job elsewhere. But do not stay.
IBM is a dying company. It has been shitting the bed pan for the last five years and it is only going to get worse. Steer clear.
IBM is hiring lots...in Romania, Malaysia, Costa Rica, and India. Many new there in 2015.
IBM is not hiring in the US or avoiding doing so at all costs. There are slots that are open, but they are going off shore.
Its fun when Romania is ending their day and US is starting. Complete break down as they walk out the door. "What about...? Oh never mind, maybe tomorrow...."
Malaysia skips what they aren't able or don't feel like doing.
Costa Rica, jury's still out though pretty inexperienced.
India's a mixed bag. Some areas they make the US look like bad amateurs. Other areas, not so much. Really difficult issues come back to the US to solve.
I've heard from a number of older friends in Silicon Valley that once they pass 40 yrs old, they don't get callbacks for jobs.
(Now, yes, some have outdated skills, but when someone in there 30s with those same skills is getting jobs, something is broke.)
It appears companies are getting rid of higher paid worker and replacing with cheaper, younger works (sometimes overseas), to bring this into the light, all diversity reports from companies should include age of employees broken down.
Basically what they did was can the old farts and replace them with younger folks and H1-bs.
I was one of the younger folk back in '94. We were told the older folks "didn't have the skills" and "didn't want to learn new skills" so they had to go.
Then over night, I woke up and found out that I "didn't have the skills" and was replaced by folks who did "have the skills" - doing exactly the same work.
Technical skills are age and wage dependent in this profession. At 20, C++ is a great skills. At 50, C++ is out of date.