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

Hope it's in their sales

[Anonymous Coward]

They have to have among the worst sales I've experienced, one of their divisions has harassed me at work to the point I have actually banned their emails and their known phone extensions from contacting me.

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

[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: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?

Re:Hope it's in their sales

[gweihir]

Or in other words: They are selling the silverware to delay when their problems become severe. Of course, that makes the problems worse, long-term. The current layoffs are possibly just an effort to boost the stock-value while the C-level cabal IBM has in place of leadership can still profit from it.

Re:Hope it's in their sales

[Bing Tsher E]

Here in our town, WalMart came in, drove some of the worst gougers out of business (all those upper middle class store owners who have charged a ludicrous markup for years) and then when they outgrew the building they had built and started in, moved to a bigger building. Their old building has more new businesses in it now.

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.

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:Hope it's in their sales

[Grishnakh]

Or maybe they really were charging a ludicrous markup because the alternative is a 30-mile drive the nearest competitor. That canard about "personalized service" is just that. Mom-and-pop shops run the gamut, and a lot of them truly are horrible, with terrible customer service. Walmart pioneered the liberal return policies we enjoy today; with the old mom-n-pop stores, once you bought a product, you were stuck with it, even if you never opened it and realized you didn't need it. I for one don't want to go back to that time.

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.

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: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

Re:business as usual

[kilodelta]

Wow - that's a horrendous story. I'd be hiring an attorney and suing the fuck out of the bitch who did you in and anyone else who crossed you. Particularly since you have the documentation.

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.

Trump, you're our only hope

[Sir_Eptishous]

Workers are also reporting work is being moved offshore to Hungary and Brazil.

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

Re:Trump, you're our only hope

[gweihir]

Probably with the same type of "success" his "university" had at turning people into successful entrepreneurs: Namely, none for them, but quite a nice bit of cash for Trump. Will be interesting to see whether the US electorate is stupid enough to vote a con-man into office. I fear they may be.

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?

[fluffernutter]

That describes 95% of tech jobs these days. If you are not in such a job, then good on you.

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?

[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: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?

[technomom]

This.

If you start writing your resume the day you get laid off, you're waaaaaay too late.

You should **always** be looking for your next job. It's just common sense in today's market.

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.

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?

[Okian Warrior]

Someone who isn't a Nazi

Trump 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?

[alvinrod]

You can vote for me as I've decided to throw my hat into the ring and I have a great plan to solve the debt crisis. Since I'm just a nobody the odds of me being elected are at least a trillion to one, which means a few wagers on my self should cover a lot of the current US debt.

But here's where my brilliant strategy comes into play. Since it looks to be Trump vs Clinton at this point, it's a battle of which candidate do you hate less. I will legally change my name to Neither (just Neither, no first name) which means I'll likely get a majority of votes in any state where I'm on the ballot. I secure a win and pay off the debt in one fell swoop.

And for my encore, peace in the Middle East. I'm already working on a news letter you can subscribe to.

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[Okian Warrior]

Neither a Democrat nor a Republican be.

"And to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."

I'm neither a D nor an R, I advocate voting against the incumbent in almost all cases.

This election I'm making an exception for Trump and Sanders, because both of them are non-mainstream.

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: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?

[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?)

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[Curunir_wolf]

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.

I can't tell if you're trolling, or if you really do get all your information from your Facebook friends...

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[reboot246]

Nice flamebait there.

Being against illegal immigration does NOT make one a xenophobe. Methinks you are against Trump because he's a capitalist.

Sanders is still a socialist at his age - that's pretty fucking pathetic. All that time for growing up and he just . . . didn't.

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[Okian Warrior]

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.

Holy Christ on a Cracker! Where have you been for the last 8 years?

He flip-flopped on a campaign promise for more campaign money, he ordered the assassination of a US citizen without trial, made the "law" that justified that act secret, ordered his 16-year old son assassinated two weeks later (via drone strike of an outdoor restaurant, killing 8 others), told the justice department not to enforce certain laws, made a completely new law by executive order...

And that last bit, the one giving amnesty to illegal immigrants, would have dropped 2.5 million job-seekers into the workforce overnight!

Obama is every inch as bad or worse than George Bush.

I'll never vote Democratic again!

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:Then who do you recommend?

[gweihir]

He is just a very good con-man. He will say whatever gets him votes. Of course, after he has your cash, I mean vote, he will take it and run. Not that actually making good on his promises would be too much trouble, the problem is he has never even thought about doing that, so he cannot. But expect grandstanding and great gestures to no positive effect at all while he is in office.

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[AmiMoJo]

Yeah, but in the scheme of things his predecessor started multiple illegal wars, imprisoned people without charge or trial indefinitely... Obama is a saint in comparison, even if he has murdered people.

Re:Then who do you recommend?

[Plus1Entropy]

Hey, I should run for President! Plus1Entropy 2016!

Awkward

[A10Mechanic]

So, the banner ad at the top of Slashdot is an ad for IBM, with Princess Leia. Awkward.

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?

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

[fluffernutter]

I'm very surprised no one has answered with the usual rhetoric that we should bow down to our corporate overlords and move to some city where our mortgage is double and we live three times further away from work; practically abandoning any family quality time in the process.

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.

Didn't you know, you have a 'recovery'.

[roman_mir]

Didn't you know, don't you listen to your POTUS? You have a recovery, didn't you know? You have 'low unemployment', didn't you know? Your economy is the best, first in the world, didn't you know?

The hundreds of trillions of dollars in debt ... don't exist.
The structural problems with the economy due to massive central planning, government regulation, money manipulation ... don't exist.

For even *more* H1-Bs?

[Okian Warrior]

Sanders.

Bernie Sanders voted to increase H1-B visas.

Advocating Sanders to people who were (just now) replaced by outsourcing is a bit disingenuous, don't you think?

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.

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...

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?

It's a dupe!

[kamapuaa]

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

Re:Um... what decline?

[timholman]

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.

Or ... go back to school, earn a Ph.D., and start a new career .... which is exactly what I did.

IBM never owed me a living, and I never owed IBM my loyalty. I moved on when I saw what was coming. But my point is that what's happening at IBM right now has been a long, long time in the making.