
IBM says 'several thousand' layoffs on the way - oulipian
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ibm-says-several-thousand-layoffs-on-the-way-1.2931612
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pesenti
So does that mean we can finally stop listening to Cringely altogether? I am
an IBM employee and I can tell you a lot of my fellow IBMers had a really bad
week-end because of his ridiculous claims.

For context see previous discussion on the 110000 employee layoff that won't
happen:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8944637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8944637)

~~~
jacquesm
I think for an error of this magnitude some kind of apology would be in order.
If he can't manage that he's lost a lot of credibility.

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hristov
An error of what magnitude? IBM has not said exactly how many people will be
laid off so we do not know what the magnitude of the error will be.
Furthermore, they can certainly perform a 110K layoff by splitting it into
multiple layoffs of thousands.

~~~
jlukanta
Response from IBM (via its Hong Kong office’s blog):

IBM does not comment on rumors or speculation. However, we’ll make an
exception when the speculation is stupid. That’s the case here, where an
industry gadfly is trying to make noise about how IBM is about to lay off 26
percent of its workforce. That’s over 100,000 people, which is totally
ludicrous.

The fact is that IBM already announced, after 3Q earnings report, that the
company would take a $600 million charge for restructuring. That’s several
thousand people. Not 10,000, or 100,000. Moreover, IBM currently has job
postings for more than 10,000 professionals worldwide, with more than half of
them in growth areas such as cloud, analytics, security and mobile
technologies. IBM’s new cloud leader, Senior Vice President Robert LeBlanc,
told Fortune this week that IBM has plans to hire 1,000 cloud professionals.

A little perspective on IBM’s earnings is in order. The company still makes
huge profit… $21 billion in operating pre-tax profit last year. And IBM’s
“strategic imperatives” represent 27% ( and growing ) of the company’s total
revenue… $25 billion in revenues, up 16 percent. We have high growth in a
substantial portion of the portfolio, and those areas (CAMSS) have better-
than-normal margins in areas that matter most to clients today — that’s the
heart of the IBM transformation.

[https://ibmhkblog.wordpress.com/](https://ibmhkblog.wordpress.com/)

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jmspring
I've known more than a few IBMers over the years associated with IBM Almaden
and other places. Many of those on contract/part time/etc, kept their heads
down. Many full timers, the same thing.

Cringley may or may not be right on the magnitude of the numbers, but the one
thing he is right about is IBM is purely governed by pleasing Wall Street
above all else.

The IBM that existed when I was growing up and seeded more than a couple of
the early founding staff of the UC Santa Cruz Computer Engineering staff
(Patrick Mantey and Glen Langdon -- my advisor to name two), is _WAY_
different than the IBM of today.

IBM is a shadow of itself, there are still interesting groups, but even the
research arms are being hit hard by genuflecting to wall street.

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x0rg
I think IBM should stop selling the ultra crap software that is selling right
now like Websphere commerce and all the crappy enterprisey stuff. They really
need something good to change and if layoffs are for the better, it's probably
worth trying. If the plan is to keep this stuff going, it's gonna be bad.

~~~
aragot
Yes the most interesting revelation in Cringely's rumor was that IBM made
software.

Let's be honest: An big IT product is about 25 programmers and 25 diverse
people (incl marketers, designers, accountants) working for 3-10 years. With
this you make a GitHub, a Word, an IE. IBM could be owning the planet today.
But no, they're in the business of hotels, golf, and conferences.

~~~
AlisdairO
They do make many billions profit on software every single quarter. Who cares
if the market is not very sexy?

If you think there's only 25 people working on Word, I think you're off by an
extremely large margin.

~~~
easytiger
They make billions by corporate lobbying and political marketing

~~~
AlisdairO
I wasn't commenting on IBM's methods - although I think attributing the
entirety of their profit to scammery is extremely far-fetched - but on the
choice of market. My comment was simply to point out that I don't think
there's any shame in targeting boring market segments, and that there's
clearly plenty of money to be made.

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trhway
The correction is coming, and companies are starting to lay off people (like
EBay doing "restructuring"). Some companies do global office "optimization" \-
i.e. completely closing offices in some countries/locations. Given that IBM
commented on such a "baseless and ridiculous" claim puts a lot of foundation
under it. Obviously not all the 100K at once. After all laying off people in
Germany is completely different process than in CA. The fact that they point
to open listings just shows that a lot of it will be sold under the sauce of
"rebalancing" \- lets layoff 10K there and hire the "best" 1K of them here.
I've seen that an another legendary SV company (some of its former offices are
occupied nowadays by a very "Like"-able company) I think IBM has big plan to
close some regional offices, downsize/close some projects and to spin off some
pieces with resulting IBM headcount expected being 100K less than today.

~~~
Gustomaximus
> The correction is coming, and companies are starting to lay off people.

In the last 3 companies I have worked for over 10 years this seems to happen
every 6 to 12 months. Restructuring or right-sizing as HR love to call it is a
fairly standard thing these days as companies search for optimal
profitability. Every company I have worked for preaches employee loyalty in
their mantra but I've never really seen it.

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xienze
Cringely definitely tends to... exaggerate but I have to say, getting IBM to
even ballpark the number of people they're cutting is quite a feat. Remember
this is the company that doesn't break down its head count for "competitive
reasons" and prefers to stagger cuts so they don't trigger WARN in various
jurisdictions.

~~~
jimbokun
Not sure of the original source, but a meme I've been seeing around the
Internets lately goes something like

"The best way to get an answer to a question on the Internet, is not to ask
the question, but to give a wrong answer and wait for people to correct you."

I'm not sure whether this was is what Cringely was up to, but if it was, well
played indeed.

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dangerboysteve
Anything with Cringely on it should be suppressed on this site.

~~~
ryanmarsh
He's been wrong about a lot of things for a long time. I'm surprised people
still listen to him.

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TD-Linux
>"IBM does not comment on rumours, even ridiculous or baseless ones," the
company said in an email to Reuters.

... isn't that exactly what it is doing?

~~~
jimbokun
"IBM does not comment on rumors or speculation. However, we’ll make an
exception when the speculation is stupid."

[https://ibmhkblog.wordpress.com/](https://ibmhkblog.wordpress.com/)

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calcsam
TechCrunch has a source saying 43,000 over the next year -- ie, 11,000 per
quarter (scroll to bottom): [http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/26/sources-say-ibm-
planning-on...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/26/sources-say-ibm-planning-on-
laying-off-12000-over-next-year/)

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mfringel
So Cringely guessed incorrectly, but forced IBM's hand in announcing more
accurate information.

Well played, I say.

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johnward
As an IBMer I still cannot understand how the "IBM Alliance" can have a
website from '95.

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pkaye
How many employees does IBM even have in the US anyway? Except for a few
research or sales divisions, I'm sure very little is left.

~~~
huxley
IBM doesn't report its headcount in the US any longer, but in 2009 IBM had
approximately 105,000 employees in the US, based on congressional testimony
(via this article [http://www.computerworld.com/article/2520399/it-
outsourcing/...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2520399/it-
outsourcing/ibm-stops-disclosing-u-s--headcount-data.html) ).

IBM has 431,212 employees worldwide (according to their 2013 annual report).

~~~
FranOntanaya
Trying to wrap my mind around the number -- 6 employees per 100,000 people
worldwide is equal or higher than the number of physicians per 100,000 in
Benin, Ethiopia, Niger, Burkina Faso, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Malawi,
Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia,
Tanzania, Togo and Zimbabwe.

~~~
empthought
Very surprising given how easy it is to become a doctor, relative to getting
hired by IBM. Combined with how appealing it is to live in those places, I too
share your mind-wrapping-around-difficulty.

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mathattack
Project Chrome? It's hard to fathom that a tech company would name their
layoff program after a competitor's technology. That just strains credulity.
If that part is true, it's a sign of bad things in the company.

~~~
mynameisvlad
First off, it's just a name, not really a big deal nor would it really be a
sign of anything. Secondly, if your requirement is "not a competitor's
technology" then practically every single word would be excluded because it
would have been used, at some point or another, by one of the hundreds of
thousands of competitors IBM has and has had.

