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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.
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.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
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.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
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.
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?
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?
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.
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?
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
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.
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 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.
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
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?)
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.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"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.
Bye!
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.
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?
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I remember this exact same post from the same time last year!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.