Slashdot Mirror
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.
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).
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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.
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.