Reports Coming In Of Mass IBM Layoffs Underway In The US (ieee.org)

Tekla Perry writes: Last week, IBM reported to investors that its workforce at the end of 2015 was almost as big as its workforce at the end of 2014 (within less than 1 percent), in spite of a year in which 70,000 employees left the company, to be replaced with new hires and acquisitions. Today reports are coming in that massive layoffs across the United States are underway, likely one-third of the U.S. workforce, according to one soon-to-be-laid-off-IBMer. In addition, a recent change in IBM's severance policy may leave workers with less cash than anticipated. IBM maintains that things are just business as usual, but this appears to be the day IBM Watchers have long warned about.

Comments

IBM Layoffs. Been bad times and union is gone

[Zeio]

I know some folks who currently work at and worked at IBM. It is not "B". It is taking people who put a lot of time in and are very good at their job and not even giving them the opportunity to lose some salary to keep their jobs. I heard a story from one friend who was at IBM where they were excited to be working with a new team to support them in India but then suddenly being laid off with the Indian team taking over their jobs. So its a train-and-dump scheme a lot of the time.

What IBM isn't realizing is that a lot of these folks will be relearning the know how without the benefit of those who were knifed in the back and also that in other cultures being an engineer for 10-20+ years is not the goal, they _all_ want to be in management and gain "rank" rather than experience and technical know how.

Invariably you get a bunch of freshers with no real experience being lead by the bureaucrats. Its really unfortunate to see very smart very talented people be summarily fired after training what are supposed to be supporting teams and engineers. I also bothers me they are not given the opportunity to meet new terms to save their jobs.

What is not realized is in other cultures the competitors often build up a presence near to or sometimes next door to a place like IBM and poach engineers and intellectual property. And given IBM is all about decent (not trollish) intellectual property this is not a long term good strategy to be using scabs to replace true blue engineers.

You can also read some stuff here about the former IBM union http://www.endicottalliance.or... - they were not a strong or unreasonable union but you can get a feel for how many good long term employees are facing the firing squad.

In 1985 IBM had 230,000 employees mostly in the USA. Now its 71,000 in the US or so - and who knows where everyone else is employed, not here.

Re:IBM Layoffs. Been bad times and union is gone

[rtb61]

It is really bad language to say IBM did this and IBM did that, IBM is a fabrication, an economic structure, it does not think, it does not do anything, it is a label and most definitely not a person. So basically a team of psychopaths have colluded to gain control of IBM and are seeking to maximise their short term profits ie bonus by reducing costs and inflating profits margins in the short term, even though, they know full well they are crippling IBM in the long term. They do not care if they bankrupt IBM as long as they make millions personally by doing it. These ass hat bean counter bonus pumping plans all sound good because a whole bunch of information is left out ie all that information associated with medium and long term consequences. Interestingly enough as it collapse so more psychopaths gain control, blaming everyone else for further failure as they seek to personally strip mine the company for anything they can, hmm, much like the US government is currently run. Total disregard for consequences all more money now, more, more, more and not for the company just for the plotters and schemers.

This is how company fail by far the majority of time, every thing is fine for decades with management team after management team cycling through and then blam, they get the psychopath team, one out of the many, just one team once and blam, the board have just put a gun to their head and pulled the trigger, the company goes down. Healthy corporations should mandate psychopath testing for it's executive team existing and new, if they want to survive. Unhealthy corporations, well of course they wont, remove the cancer and the corporation recovers and the cancer is not about to volunteer to self terminate. Psychopath plans might look good on paper but they always blow up in everyones faces because those plans only really ever have one goal making those psychopaths richer and screw everyone else, screw the employees, screw the customers and screw the investors (screw them the hardest they have the most money).

Re:IBM Layoffs. Been bad times and union is gone

[ark1]

Excited to work with an Indian team? Should have been a huge red flag right there.

Re:IBM Layoffs. Been bad times and union is gone

[timholman]

This is how company fail by far the majority of time, every thing is fine for decades with management team after management team cycling through and then blam, they get the psychopath team, one out of the many, just one team once and blam, the board have just put a gun to their head and pulled the trigger, the company goes down.

IBM's decline didn't start with the most current crop of managers. It began a long time ago. I was working for IBM at the Essex Junction fab back in 1990 when John Akers did a corporate-wide broadcast and told everyone, "IBM remains committed to its full employment policy .... unless, of course, the business environment forces us to re-examine it." That was all the clue I needed. By the next year I was out the door and back in graduate school working on my Ph.D. The company-wide layoffs started a few months later.

That was more than 20 years ago. What you're seeing now is just the end game.

Re:business as usual

[ShanghaiBill]

They will probably move most of the positions to India, Brazil, Hungary, where-ever ...

IBM has had a strong presence in India for more than 30 years. Global companies hire globally. Get over it.

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[ADRA]

"would have dropped 2.5 million job-seekers into the workforce overnight"

Wouldn't these grey/illegal migrants already be in the workforce (illegally)? If anything, it hurts scumbag employers unable to exploit those that have no other options.

Re:Hope it's in their sales

[lgw]

My better idea is "stop bailing-out failures, and let nature take its course". That's the other half of what you have to do to be capitalism. Most of the areas with the worst history of customer service have a matching history of bailouts.