
IBM Watson Health slashes workforce - shawndimantha
https://www.massdevice.com/report-ibm-watson-health-slashes-workforce/
======
phren0logy
I'm an MD, and I dabble in programming and AI/DL. While I don't really care
much about Watson in particular, the pervasiveness of the "enter healthcare =
death" equation is worrisome to me. And it should worry you, too.

There's a lot of potential for good applications of this type of tech in
healthcare, but the barriers to actually getting it off the ground strangle it
in the crib.

~~~
criley2
I work for a medical software company which evaluated Watson for use in our
diagnostic product.

It should be seen as a Good Thing that medical is a Serious Field where Non-
Serious Ideas get run through the ringer and fail.

And that's what happened with Watson.

The word from our engineers was that Watson was designed to sell commercials,
not be a useful tool in a problem space like differential diagnosis or drug
reactions.

I think this is good. Financial has the same reputation. You can't just use
agile to bust out a minimum viable medical or financial product. You will be
chewed up and spit out. And rightfully so. Because when it comes to our
health, or our money and our investments, we don't have tolerance for failure.

OK, my social network double posted my communication, annoying but it's just a
communication. However "my financial tool just double posted a transaction",
or "my prescriptions tool just doubled the dose of a medicine" \-- these are
not OK states at all.

I wish Watson lived up to the hype, but sadly, our experience was that it does
not. So it failing out of Healthcare isn't a surprise to us, nor is it a bad
thing.

~~~
yosyp
Tangentially related: how does one get their foot in the door at a medical
software company? Is there a big market for such professionals?

~~~
pram
Learn MUMPS and move to Wisconsin.

~~~
walshemj
Is MUMPS still a thing :-) maybe I ought to dust of my RT-11 / FORTRAN skills
off

~~~
prepend
The biggest EMR company was Epic and uses Mumps [0]. However, they are losing
share to Center and others [1], so this formula will only work for a little
while longer.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13860937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13860937)

[1] [https://ehrintelligence.com/news/cerner-epic-mckesson-
among-...](https://ehrintelligence.com/news/cerner-epic-mckesson-among-
top-5-global-health-it-vendors)

~~~
sergers
Epic still dominates the EHR space.

They have deployments slotted for 3 years.

If you have ever worked with epic, they offer "managed" solutions, which you
either do the epic designed way, or don't go epic... They have enough market
share and business to dictate how things will work in a hospital env

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seem_2211
IBM is a confusing one. For a while I was getting IBM powered blockchain ads
coming through my Instagram feed, and I seem to remember stopping by their
booth at Dreamforce a few years ago where Watson would help determine what
candy they'd give you (or something like that). One thing I'd be interested to
know is what they actually _do_ vs. the marketing spin of what they do.

~~~
pridkett
I also used to work for Watson. It remains one of the best jobs I've had.
There's a number of useful services available through Watson on the IBM Cloud.
I'm a little biased toward Watson Assistant which can be nicely customized and
integrated with other solutions to create some terrific customized virtual
agents. You can also easily train natural language systems using Knowledge
Studio.

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oliviergg
Very sad for long time IBMers. But Is it the beginning of the much
controversial AI Winter revival ?

~~~
TaylorAlexander
It seems Watson was founded on the false premise that lots of hand coded
things could be called an “AI”. It’s the victim of its own winter, because it
was never going to live up to its own hype.

~~~
dmreedy
Do you imagine that other, more successful "AI" services from large companies
do _not_ involve a lot of hand-coded things?

~~~
throwawayok
Yes. Well, at the very least, they don't involve _only_ hand-coded things.

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belthesar
I was hired by an acquired Watson Health division a little over a year ago,
and after seeing the very confusing story of how IBM expects to grow and
strengthen these disparate companies, I'm not surprised. I'm also saddened
that some of my former colleagues were among those laid off.

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mathattack
IBM seems expert at stealth layoffs. Possibly to avoid lawsuits?

[https://www.propublica.org/article/federal-watchdog-
launches...](https://www.propublica.org/article/federal-watchdog-launches-
investigation-of-age-bias-at-ibm)

------
Bartweiss
Is there a full breakdown of scope anywhere? I know there have been major
complaints about Watson Health before, but I still can't tell if this marks a
retreat from the program, or just a harsher-than-usual instance of the sort of
layoffs pretty common for acquisitions.

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mlthoughts2018
> “The message was that there are about 7,000 people in Watson Health today
> and this was a cost-cutting exercise. 90 days’ notice with 30 days’
> severance.”

If accurate, that severance benefit is just shameful, and simply not good
enough from a large corporation. Absolutely no excuse for that degree of
unjustifiable, unmitigated greed to offer so little when possibly damaging
lives, especially for older workers who may face IBM-like ageism elsewhere now
too.

Hard fought career advice I’ve learned: _always negotiate adequate severance._

It should be a heck of a lot more than 1 month, even if you’re a junior
employee. Just turn down jobs if they won’t give substantial severance
agreements. Unless you’re in dire straits & have to take the job. Otherwise,
don’t do it. That employer will not consider the impact that some surprise
layoff has on you. Get it in writing, up front in the negotiation, and don’t
waste time with firms that won’t offer it. Not worth it.

~~~
dudus
Severance packets is probably not an easy thing to negotiate when you are
trying to sign an employment contract.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
If it’s a serious company, it’s just an expected, standard part of
negotiating, no different than salary, bonus, benefits, vacation, etc.

In general, you should ask if you’ll be required to sign any NDA, non-compete,
or non-disparagement agreements, either as part of a company handbook or as
standalone documents. If so, the severance package should be commensurate with
the duration and condition of those.

It is common to negotiate severance equal to your salary for the duration
covered by the agreements, or at least a large fraction like 30-50% of the
duration, so a competitive severance package would certainly be in the range
of 4-6 _months_ of your base salary.

You can also negotiate to have company-paid insurance benefits extend past
your termination date as part of severance, to avoid needing COBRA in the US.

The severance agreement should also cover anything like a company issued
laptop, etc., if you are promised you can keep it after employment ends.

To get this, they’ll likely require you to sign waivers to any additional
monetary claims, and draconian IP, NDA, etc., agreements. And this is why you
should force the issue of negotiating severance up front and why you should
walk away from companies (like IBM) that won’t negotiate.

Otherwise, they’ll announce the restructuring or layoff and then hold you over
a barrel, by claiming you have to honor their company policy non-compete
anyway, and pressure you to sign restrictive documents at your HR exit
meeting, generally offering some insultingly low severance benefit, like only
a few weeks or months of pay and no continuation of benefits.

All of this advice is specifically for junior-level employees as well. Never
let anyone treat you like you cannot negotiate severance just because you’re a
junior employee. Walk away from those companies.

For experienced employees, the amount of severance should absolutely be at
least 6 months of pay and continued company-paid health coverage, and in many
cases you can negotiate for it to fully match the duration of the non-compete
or NDAs, usually 12 months.

Above all, don’t accept any baloney nonsense about “standard policies”
restricting severance to a small number of weeks of pay per each year of
tenure, or any of that garbage.

That’s just the standard line they feed to people who don’t negotiate. And if
a company refuses to be flexible on it, walk away.

~~~
shostack
I hear what you are saying, but feel like it also requires the caveat of "for
in-demand roles where one has leverage in the negotiation."

At this point, a junior engineer _may_ have some of that, but I'm not sure you
can really apply that to all levels of experience across all functions. I
agree with the sentiment and logic behind it, I just am not sure that is
actually something most people could consider.

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redshirt
Not surprising. Many “tech” companies enter the field with arrogance, thinking
of course they can do health better. They unfortunately often have no
comprehension of the regulatory regimes for the markets they enter and
therefore the projects are doomed to failure before they start.

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Lendal
No need for employees when Watson can do it all. Unbeknownst to these people,
they renamed it Watson Health due to the fact Watson is going to run the
entire division itself. Amazing! The future of AI is finally here! Watson has
spent the last few years learning all these peoples' jobs.

~~~
GavinMcG
This sort of sarcastic, content-free comment doesn't contribute much, and
isn't a great fit for this community.

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seibelj
I disagree, I think it is satire showing the over-hyped nature of Watson and
AI in general during this latest VC investment boom. HN still has room for
humor

~~~
GavinMcG
I agree that there's room for humor. But for that, it should be well-written
satire that makes that point.

"[T]hey renamed it Watson Health due to the fact Watson is going to run the
entire division itself" is a complete non-sequitur, just filling up space.

~~~
Lendal
That's not what a non sequitur is.

Massive layoffs at a company that hypes its AI and is actually named after
that same technology is called "irony", not non sequitur. I'm disappointed for
having to explain this.

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BogdanPetre
I find the discussion relevant to Tesla's autopilot much?

