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IBM Promises To Hire 25,000 Americans As Tech Executives Set To Meet Trump (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the lick-and-a-promise dept.

IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty has pledged to "hire about 25,000 professionals in the next four years in the United States" as she and other technology executives prepared to meet with President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday. Reuters reports: IBM had nearly 378,000 employees at the end of 2015, according to the company's annual report. While the firm does not break out staff numbers by country, a review of government filings suggests IBM's U.S. workforce declined in each of the five years through 2015. When asked why IBM planned to increase its U.S. workforce after those job cuts, company spokesman Ian Colley said in an email that Rometty had laid out the reasons in her USA Today piece. Her article did not acknowledge that IBM had cut its U.S. workforce, although it called on Congress to quickly update the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act that governs federal support for vocational education. "We are hiring because the nature of work is evolving," she said. "As industries from manufacturing to agriculture are reshaped by data science and cloud computing, jobs are being created that demand new skills -- which in turn requires new approaches to education, training and recruiting." She said IBM intended to invest $1 billion in the training and development of U.S. employees over the next four years. Pratt declined to say if that represented an increase over spending in the prior four years.

11 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. How's Ginny going to gt 25K green cards that fast? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I suppose they'd have to let go of 50K already here first as well.

  2. Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    They'll buy 50 companies with an average of 1000 US workers each, then lay half of them off.

  3. I'm highly skeptical by NothingWasAvailable · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The leopard doesn't change it's spots.

    IBM's principle strategy for the past decade has been moving work to lower cost countries (layoffs), stock buybacks, and acquiring other companies; these lower costs, increase earnings per share, and starve R&D of funding.

    1. Re:I'm highly skeptical by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The purpose of the Trump presidency is to oversee the end of USD Hegemony and the transition to a UN mediated reserve currency for foreign exchange.

      Hah, hah, very funny conspiracy theory you have there.

      In reality, it's much simpler, and far more obvious. The purpose of the Trump presidency is to enrich Donald Trump.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    2. Re:I'm highly skeptical by gtall · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "forcing all government funded contracts to be carried out by US citizens within the US, will force companies to comply"

      Nope. You forget companies are adept at gaming a system, any system. They have legions of lawyers to figure out how to do that and they can pay much more than the hired guns for the U.S. government. And the U.S. spends roughly $4 Trillion out of a $19 Trillion economy, but most of that is cash payments and stuff that could only funded within the U.S. regardless of what is offered in foreign countries.

      What's likely to happen is that Trump does his Monkey Dance on Twitter complaining about some perceived inequality. Companies will make treks to Trump Tower where Trump will receive them. Trump will make some grand pronouncement of a deal that only he could make. Companies will laugh all the way home on how they took that rube to the cleaners. Everybody is happy.

    3. Re:I'm highly skeptical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > In reality, it's much simpler, and far more obvious. The purpose of the Trump presidency is to enrich Donald Trump.

      I disagree. I think the the purpose of a Trump presidency is

      (a) For Trump to try to fill that hole in his heart created by an unloving and disapproving father - the man is a walking needball craving approval and adoration, right now he's doing a god damn victory tour, who does that? All the generals he's filling the cabinet with are father-surrogates he imprinted on while in a military boarding school.

      (b) For Bannon to tear down the institutions of government (as evidence for this I point to all of the cabinet appointments of either incompetents like Carson or those outright hostile to the very mission of the departments they will head, like EPA, Energy, Labor and Justice).

  4. There's always a catch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Heard it before - they tout how many new hires they've brought in over the years. What they don't say is they do it through letting older, higher-salaried employees go. If you lay off one engineer that's been with the company 20+ years and making $120k, it's easy to hire one or two new college grads making $50k. I'd estimate the 25k new hires will be at the expense of 10k-12k experienced engineers.

    I was lucky - I left IBM five years ago and six months before my entire team was moved offshore. A part of me still has fond memories of IBM, but it's heartbreaking to hear all the stories of really good, experienced engineers that have received top ratings year after year suddenly get a low rating with no explanation and let go two months later. It's happened quite a bit, and it's sad.

    There used to be a movement to get a union going at IBM (Alliance@IBM), and on its website you could read a number of stories off the layoffs for younger or offshore replacements, but IBM eventually got to them and they folded.

    1. Re:There's always a catch by CaptainDork · · Score: 5, Funny

      The answer is blowing in the wind. ~ Bob Dylan

      I was a suit at Mobil Oil in the IT department.

      They kicked us all out and hired "contract" people.

      The people in Dallas walked across the street to Kodak.

      I got an email from my replacement(s) asking me questions like the password for this and that and asking how the spaghetti code tied the mainframe into the local area networks tying Beaumont, Dallas, and Reston together via a T1 with Unix boxes (ca. 1996).

      I had the complete list of email addresses at the time and I replied with .cc to the big players, including Fairfax, that, "Mobil Oil has made certain business "rightsizing" decisions and I fully support the corporation's new direction and we should all begin, immediately, to trust the expertise of the "best of breed" new players that were selected to work within the new paradigm."

      I got some calls from my former managers and had lots of fun with that.

      I found a new job in four days.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  5. Meaningless figures by ranton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Your comment seems half in jest, but then again so must IBM's statement be. Saying they will hire 25k professionals over 4 years is meaningless. They didn't say they will have a 25k net greater number of US professionals, just that they will hire 25k people over 4 years. With 84k US employees today (roughly), it would only take a 7.5% yearly turnover for them to hit that target with no net job increases at all. The only extra bit of information is that they intend their US workforce to be greater in 2020 than it is today, which would be true even if they only gain a few dozen jobs.

    This type of PR drivel is only possible in a country with math education so poor there is a market for tip calculators.

    --
    -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
  6. Incorrect headline by kimvette · · Score: 5, Informative

    The actual quote:

    "We have thousands of open positions at any given moment, and we intend to hire about 25,000 professionals in the next four years in the United States," Rometty wrote in a USA Today piece published on Tuesday afternoon.

    Ginni Rometty did not indicate that IBM would hire Americans. They would hire " 25,000 professionals in the next four years in the United States" - and Ginni did not specify "additional." For all we know they could be laying off 25K Americans and be bringing in 25K H1-B and L-1 workers to replace them.

    Next paragraph:

    IBM spokesman Adam Pratt declined to say how that hiring might be offset by staff reductions or disclose how many people IBM employs in the United States.

    See? It is nothing but DoublePlusGood DoubleSpeak.

    --
    The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
  7. Re: Trump hasn't divested his buinesses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Most EC votes are bound, EG: They must vote the way they are told.

    Depends, in some states, if you read the laws, they can be punished after, but the vote remains valid.

    More importantly, in 21 states there are no laws, and that is more than enough to swing this election.

    That said, those that voted for President Elect Trump knew exactly what they were voting for - and that's what they want. While I question the wisdom of their vote, I don't question they were simply uninformed of the consequences.

    I do question their information. Lots of folks didn't realize a thing about Trump, and only gave a superficial examination. Even worse, I've seen people claim that they didn't care what happened, they just hoped he broke the system.

    Just as Mr. Trump is president of the whole country, so am I bound to the consequences of the votes of those I vehemently disagree with.

    Nope. You are bound to the limits of your conscience. My state makes that express in its constitution, and thereby ascribes the role of ultimate arbiter to the people in their individual persons, but it is true in those others that don't say it.