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

Why would anyone still want to work at IBM?

[bangular]

Why do your friends stay at IBM? This is an honest question. It seems crazy to me to sit around and wait to get laid off. I couldn't imagine getting up every day and wondering if you'd still have a job at the end of the day for years on end.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi - I've worked for IBM for decade and a half, and I can offer you my perspective for why I stay:

1. People can have two different perspectives on their company (IBM, Oracle, VMWare, Google - any company). Some people think of their company as a faceless, monolithic corporation which makes bad decisions and doesn't have your best interest at heart; and that perspective is valid.
Other people think in more immediate terms - when I think of "IBM", I think of 15-30 people around me - co-workers and immediate layers of management - who I know, enjoy, and trust. This perspective is also valid.
If *neither* of those perspectives offers a positive view, then certainly, it's time to go! But time & again, my management has stood up for us in face of market and HQ adversity. Will they always be able to do so? Possibly not. But I trust them to try :)

2. Skillset confidence: I believe I have 'dynamic job security", which means that I have faith that if IBM were to fire me tomorrow, I'd be able to find a job in the market reasonably quickly based on my skills, capabilities, experience, and reputation.
Having such faith, I extend it to my current position: I firmly believe that I am good value and provide good work to the company.
If my management ever believes otherwise - it could be because they're wrong, or it could be that I'm wrong. I keep my skillset current, I look hard to be useful beyond just "doing what I'm told", and generally try to be integral if not indispensable.
But point is, I don't think I'm about to be laid off, and I'm perhaps arrogant enough to believe I would see it coming with reasonable distance.
Did others feel exact same way, just before the hammer dropped? Possibly. Only they can tell, in the heart of their hearts, if they genuinely believed their job was secure and their performance/value sufficient. I certainly believe there are tons and tons of cases where companies do the wrong thing and get rid of people they shouldn't.

3. Fun
I genuinely enjoy what I'm doing, feel productive, and proud of the work and product we're creating. People may disagree (for decades, uncharitably, I've wondered if anybody was _proud_ to be working on MS Windows, for example;), but that's how I feel nontheless.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at IBM. I will tell you why people stay there, it is because articles like this that pepper slashdot are woefully inaccurate.

The thing people on /. do not understand is how big and sprawling IBM is. If you read through the people complaining in this story, you will see a trend - they are all in global services. Global services is the "outsourcing" arm of IBM - it is a body shop. GBS bids consultants out at the lowest possible dollar - they have to, because if they don't they will be underbid. GBS people are also, for the most part, interchangeable and expendable. GBS does things like call centers, Level 0 and Level 1 support, IT outsourcing. It is *NOT* cream of the crop people. GBS however is not all of IBM - it is just a part.

I work in IBM Security for example IBM security is not laying off people in the US, or anywhere else. In fact we have 1,000 job openings right now. We pay VERY well and are growing like crazy. IBM Security is now the largest enterprise security vendor in the world by revenue - we are larger than Symantec, larger than McAfee, larger than Cisco. But you know what? We're only ~ 10,000 people. That is out of the 350,000+ at IBM.

Think on this for a second and put it into some perspective - the largest enterprise security company in the world is only 2.8% of the IBM workforce.

IBM Security is just one of many very large business units in IBM - there is cloud, commerce, analytics, infrastucture, mobile, data, outsourcing, and Global Services. Every one of these is a multibillion dollar company all by themselves. People who work for IBM range from low level call center employees to software architects to nobel prize winners in physics to airline pilots. IBM is a MASSIVE beast and it is literally impossible to take any singular person's experience and try to extrapolate it across the whole company.

Posting as anon because I don't speak for IBM.

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

[ErichTheRed]

"when I think of "IBM", I think of 15-30 people around me - co-workers and immediate layers of management - who I know, enjoy, and trust. "

^^^ This! I know no one will see this but thought you deserved a reply. Everyone chooses their work environment for different reasons. If people are happy _and_ growing in a workplace, so much the better. Not everyone is a 20-something hipster working for a social media startup and hopping jobs every 6 months for 20% salary increases. I just turned 40 and have 2 little kids -- stability is way more important to me now than when I was 25 and on my own. I feel like I'm in a good spot, even while knowing I'm not being paid top dollar for our local job market.

I work for a medium-sized faceless corporation, but the group of engineers I work with is a refreshing change from the rest of the company, which I freely admit is a mess. We get lots of work done, products built and problems solved even while working within the massive bureaucratic disaster that is the larger company. I imagine it's like this in some of the more interesting arms of IBM (Research, etc.) People who succeed at our location are capable of tuning out the mess and focusing on what we can change. We have gone through more than a few new hires who just can't accept the fact that they won't change the overall culture of the company. What they don't realize is that the company leaves us alone for the most part because we do good work. When this changes, I'll be one of the first to go, but for now life is OK.

The thing that sucks is that a lot of people don't take the time to develop themselves after falling into a safe comfortable spot. I really hate it when I see someone in their mid 50s get tossed out years before retirement age, and know that they're not going to find new work easily because they spent the last 20+ years doing the exact same thing. My goal for the second half of my career is to stay useful. Lots of people advocate climbing the corporate ladder, but that's only good if you're suited for that sort of thing, Plus, lots of your effort gets wasted on navigating that particular company's politics and bureaucracy. That's only useful within that company's structure, and leads to a lot of "lifers" spending more time reading the tea leaves and politicking than doing useful work.

Trump vs the clean slate

[Okian Warrior]

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?

True, all true.

When you compare Trump to a blank slate, the blank slate will win every time.

The blank slate has never advocated war crimes, never flip-flopped on an issue, and never done anything dishonourable or ill-conceived.

If the blank slate were running for president, I'd vote for it!

Now answer my question: Who do you recommend I vote for?

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[Plus1Entropy]

What you say is true, but at least he's not planning to continue the failed policies of the sitting president. He doesn't pander to Planned Murder, the feminists, or the homosexuals. Those are points in his favor. Donald is refreshing precisely because he's a loose cannon. We need a non-establishment man in office.

Sorry, I'm confused... What exactly is "refreshing" about an anti-gay, anti-women, anti-abortion, anti-immigration, pro-war Republican?

Re:Hope it's in their sales

[Tablizer]

That's what IBM did wrong: set short term money/earning goals that were so aggressive that they burned long-term good-will to reach them.

Technology is such that one can often sacrifice the long-term to get short-term gains/features/improvements.

If you want to succeed in consulting for the longer term, then view yourself as a reputation company instead of a product/deliverable company. Measure your success by how happy your customers are at least as much as by current profits. If you make them happy, they'll go to you again for other projects.

You can use your good-will as a selling point in that you invite potential customers to interview current and past customers having similar projects. If your competitor(s) is a jerk, then the potential customer will find that out either when the competitor cannot provide sufficient references, or when their references tell the truth (Oracle, cough cough).

Re:Hope it's in their sales

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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.

You got a better idea?

Centrally-controlled statism? BWAAAA HAAAA HAAA HAAA

But what about STEM

[Dcnjoe60]

IBM is laying off 1/3 of it's workforce at the time kids are told to pursue education for careers in STEM. Seems one of those things is incorrect.

Re:business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Former IBM employee here, It is funny that you bring up H1Bs, you really have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes on the H1B issue with IBM.

I worked for nearly 3 years for IBM global service delivery division and single handedly provided gold standard support to 150 on site customers and 5000 worldwide employees and what happened is chapter and verse what should not have happened if they IBM and the customer wanted to remain in a stable and profitable 'work relationship'. IBM used to be my dream company to work for, but now I wouldn't work for them if they hired me back at 10X the pay.

I can break this down for you quite simply here:

1- Buy low and sell high -
- At the location I was working, nearly every end level user reported and documented on a regular basis that the brand and product I delivered was "gold standard" SLA's were met on time with time to spare and under budget across the time that I worked. This didn't stop the customer from re-negging on the agreement (the contract was for service delivery from 2010 to 2014) and hiring Tata consultancy services (TCS) in 2012 and firing the service manager who had just moved his family across the country for the job from Arizona to Chicago. A real dick move if you ask me. It gets worse... read on.

2- screw the employee over-

- once the IBM manager had been fired the team form IBM was retained (basically to be given the option of keeping their jobs, but were basically given a hostile work place where the people they were training to do their jobs, barely spoke english and they went through 3 service delivery managers who couldn't speak enough english to find a bathroom in an english speaking country, in a 3 month period.) The former IBM employees were interviewed and given minor pay raises, but were given steep performance deadlines for equipment to be delivered for new hires while a lot of "Fake" tickets were being filed to provide an excuse for getting rid of higher paid and experienced employees who were then blacklisted when they either left or were fired. I know some moron is going to come up and say something vacuous like "oh well maybe your Gold standard is pyrite standard". I have always kept tight records on service delivery and copies of tickets and definitely complaints that came through on both what was requested and when, when it was expected and what was done and how the tickets were closed. The tickets that complaints about me were filed about were the fake tickets, and I know this because the company required, 28 laptops to be ordered and imaged for new hires, yet put out a "IT purchase freeze" and required an exception form to be filed for all replacements and denied all requests despite the fact that they had been signed and resigned and resubmitted by the (former) executive vice president. This was just one issue. A property manager borked her laptop and then filed a complaint after it was fixed that she was "Missing data" and was a little too slow to realize that all of her data was backed up and meticulously put back on her replacement laptop (seriously how did she get a replacement when a freeze was put on all IT purchases? I call shenanigans here, and also I have it on good authority from non-IT employees that she spread a rumor that I was quitting when she went to other IT support people from IBM trying to say that she still had the same issue with her laptop not working and wanted "fresh eyes" on the problem (and of course the problem was just passed back to me before the bogus complaint about the missing data. She had the exact same number of bits, according to my check sum of the backup image, that she had before and just an FYI according to company policy, backup of her data was he

Well you're sorta right

[rsilvergun]

now remove the visionary and replace it with a tonne of gov't funded research. Mix in the occasional accident like the internet and you're back on track.

Oh, and it's not about screwing the customer. It's about buying _everything_. We let a small group of folks (dubbed the 1%) pretty much own everything. Like parasites they suck 30-40% off the world GDP. God only knows why, with a world full of so many democracies, we allow this...

It's a dupe!

[kamapuaa]

I remember this exact same post from the same time last year!