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

business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

so...1/3 of IBM's US workforce is being replaced with H1Bs?

Re:business as usual

[naris]

IBM will most likely not replace 1/3 of the workforce with H1Bs. They will probably move most of the positions to India, Brazil, Hungary, where-ever so there would be no need to H1B for all positions, just a few H1Bs to "coordinate" with the off-shore team.

Then who do you recommend?

[Okian Warrior]

Donald Trump will wave his magic wand and force all American multinationals to keep jobs in the US.

If not Trump, then who do you recommend I vote for?

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[MightyMartian]

Someone who isn't a Nazi

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[Anonymous Coward]

If not Trump,

Are you fucking kidding me?

Trump is a selfish demagogue. He's held every position on every subject. He gleefully advocates war crimes. He's whipping his supporters into sickening frenzies. Once a mob of racist fucks gets moving it's hard to control them. For fucks sake, he's quoting Mussolini, and pretending not to know who David Duke is. Yet here you are, suggesting he is a sane choice.

Seriously, WTF America?

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[StevenMaurer]

If not Trump, then who do you recommend I vote for?

A Democratic member of congress and Democratic national senator from your state.

Just FYI, we have a pretty damned good President now who has for five years asked Congress to do basic stuff, like not give tax credits to companies for their exporting American jobs, and instead give those tax credits to companies bringing jobs into the United States. No go from the Republicans. They listen to people like Carly Fiorina.

So stop focusing so much on the presidency. No matter who is President, if we have an old-school Republican congress, American workers, including American IT workers, are going to be screwed.

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[MightyMartian]

Fine, head Brown Shirt then.

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[Archangel Michael]

Someone who isn't a Nazi

You can't mean "Hillary", can you? I would rather drive a nail through my scrotum than vote for that ____________ (fill in the blank insult)

And if you say, "but at least she isn't as bad as ________" ... she is just as bad, maybe worse in just about every category that actually matters.

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[mrchaotica]

Sanders.

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[Okian Warrior]

I advocate voting against the incumbent in almost all cases

I'm confused. Are you advocating voting against the incumbent because they are doing a bad job, or because you don't think they should be able to have multiple terms?

Both, actually.

Politicians are given a chance to work for the people, and when they don't I vote against them.

In almost all cases this means voting against the incumbent. It's not a D or R thing, although in any one election I advocate for one or the other(*).

This tends to avoid the "no real choice" argument, or the "throw your vote away" argument, or the "lesser of two evils" argument, all of which are inherently flawed.

It also sends a message to the sitting politicians: help the people or you won't get reelected.

Simply vote on the *history* of the politician in question: if they helped, give them another term.

(In 2000 I was pro-Bush, and *boy* was that a bad idea! Then in 2008 I was pro-Obama, and *boy* was that a bad idea! In-between times I was against whoever was sitting at the time. Even though both Romney and Kerry were poor choices, would they have done worse than re-elected Bush or Obama?)

In other news, they have American employees left

[Salo2112]

I am an IBM customer, and I am trying to remember the last time I spoke to an American on the phone when calling IBM. Outside of the on-site technicians who physically replace broken parts, I was unaware IBM had American employees, and I figured it was only a matter of time before even they were H-1B-ed out of a job.

Economy

[fluffernutter]

Good thing the economy is so healthy! People should have no trouble finding positions at equal pay. Furthermore, I expect a suspension of the H1B program until all these people are employed again.

Not so Big, but definitely Blue

[rmdingler]

It's a great question, but you have failed to put your self in the shoes of some of these longtime employees.

An Uncle of mine owns a paid for house in Nashua, NH and has worked for IBM near there for decades. Some folks are just going to settle where they are, and where they are doesn't offer a a f*ck ton of alternative employment opportunities.

It really just depends on where you are in your career, I suppose.

Re:Not so Big, but definitely Blue

[rmdingler]

I agree with the statement that

family quality time

and a successful career are often at odds with one another.

Don't forget to ask yourself this before you decide each option's weighted value:

When you are finally dying of something money cannot fix, will you ask for your collected gold and silver to be sent to your bedside?

Re:Not so Big, but definitely Blue

[fluffernutter]

Without a family to nurture with the salary coming from the work, I really don't see a point of a salary.

Re:Hope it's in their sales

[Dunbal]

set short term money/earning goals that were so aggressive that they burned long-term good-will to reach them.

Story of any major corporation, be it a software manufacturer (fuck you, it's our computer now you're just the user), a fast food chain (let's replace all our ingredients with cheaper stuff and the customer will never know the difference), a consumer goods company (let's make the cheapest possible product we can in China who cares if it falls apart/doesn't remove stains/poisons pets - we have brand recognition and market share baby), clothing manufacturers (let's make clothes in Bangladesh that are so badly made they literally fall apart after two washes, and charge premium prices) and I could go on. It's the story of the world.

Some visionary busts his ass building a leading company in the business, and then he gets sick and dies and his kids fuck it up, or he sells it and some CEO fixes things for a record profit in a few quarters when his stock options become vested and who cares if it all comes crashing down the moment he cashes out and leaves the company, etc. It's a symptom of capitalism, really. Screw the customer for as much as you can, screw the employees as much as you can, grab the cash and to hell with anyone else. Actual success requires more than this.

Re:Why would anyone still want to work at IBM?

[aardvarkjoe]

Why do your friends stay at IBM?

Well, they pay me a decent wage and are located where I want to live.

If (realistically, when) they get around to cutting my job, I'll find something else. But I could lose my job anywhere I go. Why should I lose sleep over it?

Re:Hope it's in their sales

[Dunbal]

Your impression that only pure capitalism exists and nothing else is false. The world is full of shades of gray. There is a set where profit can be achieved without destroying a) the environment b) the worker force c) the brand. When you realize that "maximum profit" usually means offloading hidden economic costs onto someone else (which usually comes back to bite you in the ass anyway), it becomes possible to accept less than maximum profit as a goal. Very few people who build successful businesses do it ONLY for the money.

Look at Wal Mart. Absolute lowest price in everything - so low they put everyone out of business. Paid their employees as little as possible with as few benefits as possible. Even then, they get into financial trouble. Well what are you going to do when Wal Mart came to your town, put everyone out of business and then leaves town taking the few remaining jobs with it? Success story?

Um... what decline?

[rsilvergun]

they're stock price is over $130. They're doing just fine. Turning themselves into an H1-B and Indian offshore farm has been wildly profitable.

They're not there to provide you with a good, meaningful living. They're there for the shareholders. If you want jobs either start a company yourself or ask Washington to protect you from the global race to the bottom. Don't have the capital to spin up a new business? Tough. There's plenty of gutters to die in.

Um, he's not even close

[rsilvergun]

for one thing, he didn't let a city drown. He also didn't get us involved in Iran and calmed that shit the heck down. You want to put a stop the the drone strikes and murders? Stop sending right wing wack jobs to your State Legislatures and the National House and Senate. Give the man something to bloody work with. Given the fucked up state of our country right now he's doing what he can. He's made some terrible mistakes, but Jesus, what the hell do you do with the loon balls he's working with every day?

Re:Hope it's in their sales

[lgw]

The executives and the board are different groups. The stockholders don't get to move before the shit hits the fan, they get screwed too. The stockholders who don't get screwed are the ones who see the trade-off being made, and sell in the short term - but most shares of most companies are held fairly long term by mutual funds and pension funds. I've been at 3 companies now where all or most of the C-level people were fired because of this sort of nonsense screwing the business - the board and the stockholders do care.

The golden parachutes are a different matter. They remove the incentive for the CEO to care whether he gets fired for this BS. Why the Hell boards keep offering that perverse incentive is beyond me - they're not (usually) benefiting from it.

Re:Why would anyone still want to work at IBM?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also profoundly unhealthy. Maybe that's what we should be doing, but there's still every reason to object to it.