
IBM Is Already Gutting Red Hat and Firing Employees Without Warning - URfejk
http://techrights.org/2020/08/02/red-hat-layoffs/
======
JoeAltmaier
A giant corporation buys a Silicon Valley company, the result is generally
carnage. The old-boy marketing-driven process-heavy big company will roll out
decisions like a bowling ball careening across a cafeteria, knocking over
tables and chairs and sending people running for cover.

Since big companies are driven by managers not engineers, and the managers are
always, always from the bigger company, the decisions are perceived as
clueless. They are generally about optimizing or cannibalizing the small-
company product for fit with the big company product space. With superficial
understanding of the product itself, generally confined to marketing
descriptions.

Thus, carnage. Been through it twice.

~~~
chrisseaton
> A giant corporation buys a Silicon Valley company

I don't know what you mean by 'giant corporation' and 'Silicon Valley company'
\- do you think these groups are distinct?

RedHat isn't a 'Silicon Valley company' as far as I know. It's from the east
coast - North Carolina isn't it? The Carolinas seem as far as you can get from
Silicon Valley, culturally and geographically.

And many Silicon Valley companies are traditional giant corporations - Oracle,
Intel, etc.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
So, we don't think the linux community and companies are much different from
century-old business-process company with 1/3 million employees? Is this
really a question, or just pedantry?

~~~
chrisseaton
Yeah, but 'Silicon Valley' isn't the term to use for that. I don't know why
you think it would be?

Silicon Valley is also huge old companies built with massive defence
contracts. If you think Silicon Valley is mostly small startups you're
mistaken.

~~~
willcipriano
I use management focused vs technology focused when talking about this
distinction. For me it boils down to is the organization more concerned about
choices in regards to process/organizational structures or technology.

------
yipbub
The article is purely speculation based on the anecdotal evidence of one IBM
acquisition "victim", someone who has been an IBM insider from what seems like
pre-acquisition.

The rest are smears on the direction of Fedora for changing their default
filesystem on their workstation variant, for developing (not replacing
anything with) Silverblue - an "immutable OS".

The claim that the Btrfs push came from Facebook is ridiculous. I know Fedora
some community infra engineers and leaders personally. The Facebook developers
were there in their capacity as Btrfs contributors to speak about its
stability. They did use their @fb.com email unlike what the article suggests.
Not that that matters.

Here's the whole mailing list archive for that discussion:
[https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fe...](https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/IOPR2R3SCKOFUCKPLMS4MDD5664SGQFR/)

Disclaimer: I work at Redhat as a Software Engineer, and what I write here
represents only my perceptions.

~~~
siliconpotato
I have a rule of never clicking on a techrights link, and it serves me well.

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zxcvbn4038
Unless you are in research and have a significant portfolio this is what you
can expect from IBM. They are notorious for letting people go under dubious
circumstances or telling people to relocate to a third world country and work
for local wages. I worked for them on three different occasions in three
different parts of the countries and it was always a really toxic environment
and it didn't end well for everyone I've known from there.

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bryanlarsen
The last time this was posted it was quickly flagged into oblivion for being a
highly unreliable source:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049672)

~~~
pinewurst
I really wish people wouldn't pay attention to anything coming from this
"source". IBM _is_ indeed a terrible employer, but anything from this joke of
a web site isn't to be taken seriously. Look at the history - it's all "X
stole my giant ball of aluminum foil" written in quasi-English.

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animalgonzales
not just IBM, but the link to the microsoft layoffs is kind of mind blowing:
[http://techrights.org/2020/08/02/microsoft-layoffs-
secrecy/](http://techrights.org/2020/08/02/microsoft-layoffs-secrecy/)

>“Microsoft rarely, if ever, allows anyone working there to reach 55 and have
their pension become vested.”

>“Microsoft was twice as likely to lay you off if you were over 40.”

>“Cortana is an analytics and telemetry app that data mines people while
pretending to be a digital assistant,”

~~~
gesticulator
What pension? I don’t think that’s a common US benefit.
[https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/usbenefits](https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/usbenefits)

~~~
chrisseaton
It says in your own link - 401k, which is a type of pension.

~~~
wmf
401ks don't have vesting though. At worst the match might be in December so
people who are laid off mid-year lose half a year of matching.

~~~
hinkley
I had employer match with a 3 year vesting period at one place. I've never had
anyone else do more than 12 months, and not everyone did that. The matching is
for the paycheck you just paid me for work I already did. Why is it tied to
the end of the year? As an employee retention hook it's a lousy idea. It's too
small, and lacks all of the dopamine of watching a stock price seesaw up and
down, wondering what it'll be worth when you can finally spend it.

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hddherman
I guess that this is an example where corporate sponsorship of open source
projects is both a blessing and a curse: it's fantastic while the corporation
is doing great, and can get real bad real fast when priorities (or owners)
change.

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IronWolve
Lucky it was archived @ [http://archive.is/oUbQZ](http://archive.is/oUbQZ)

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AcerbicZero
VMware has been one of the few companies to be bought by an old dinosaur of
tech (Dell) and so far, managed to survive. It helps that they're much closer
to equal with Dell than RedHat and IBM, but I'm pretty sure RedHat knew
exactly what they were doing when they decided to let IBM in the door.

~~~
s1t5
> but I'm pretty sure RedHat knew exactly what they were doing when they
> decided to let IBM in the door.

Call me cynical but isn't it possible that the people who were responsible for
the acquisition on RedHat's side were also the ones who would benefit most
from it financially so they simply sold out?

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notacoward
One part of this rings true to me. I left Red Hat a bit over three years ago,
and _part of the reason_ was container-itis was sucking all of the oxygen away
from everything I cared about there. The rest of the OP might well be BS, but
that part seems very likely.

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alexktz
Unsubstantiated bullshit. The entire 'article'. How this passes for
'journalism' is baffling.

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thrownaway954
people are talking about pensions and what not. honestly, if you want a
pension, go work for your local city or county government. in florida, frs is
probably the best pension system out there. there are a ton of government
position available right now that fall under frs benefits.

[https://www.myfrs.com/](https://www.myfrs.com/)

[https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?l=Florida](https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?l=Florida)

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hindsightbias
Any “gutting” is Jim Whitehurst doing it. Redhat acquired IBM, not the other
way around regardless of what wall street thinks. IBM mgrs are not lording
over the RH folks. These orgs are not integrated (or hardly integrated) and
IBM did their covid layoffs in May.

RH’ers thinking they are immune to the covid reality can blame the blue side
all they want but that is not how the company is structured.

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CrankyBear
Techrights is not a reliable news publication.

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euix
How do the pensions work at Microsoft or IBM? I was under the impression once
you vest into a pension you get it come retirement age regardless if at the
time you are still working at the company. Otherwise that seems ridiculous,
couldn't they just fire you at 54 and you get nothing?

~~~
wmf
I don't know about MS or IBM specifically, but often pension payouts will
increase over time, e.g. when you hit a certain age (or years of service) your
pension increases from 50% to 60% of your salary. So laying someone off at 54
wouldn't cause them to lose money per se but they wouldn't get that 10% bump
(which is a lot of money multiplied by 20-30 years).

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tibbydudeza
Gut and outsource ... that has been the IBM way for a while now.

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catsarebetter
Didn't they just acquire them last year? Is it b/c they're trying to cut costs
or did they want to kill the company from the start?

~~~
wmf
IBM doesn't "want" to kill anything but they definitely have a habit of
"optimizing" acquisitions by cutting R&D and letting the product(s) coast.

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woodandsteel
I recall at the time of the purchase some, I think it included Cringely, said
that Red Hat culture was going to take over IBM and save it. Alas, it looks
like that is not going to happen.

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LordOfWolves
Does anyone else see this more likely to be “mere” reductions in staff due to
a presumed decline in business due to the global pandemic, rather than some
nefarious plot to gut Red Hat?

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awinter-py
how does a site called techrights not have a working SSL cert

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solinent
Interesting, I just saw a posting for Red Hat. Doesn't IBM have an automated
HR system now? Perhaps that's not functioning as well as they'd hoped.

~~~
opencl
They could be gutting all the current employees to make room for new people
hired at lower pay.

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cyb_
"Error establishing a database connection"

I looks like the site may have been hugged to death. Anyone have a mirror?

~~~
hddherman
Readable in Google WebCache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:36DhuqT...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:36DhuqTFlw0J:techrights.org/2020/08/02/red-
hat-layoffs/)

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t0mmyb0y
I hope this means red hat goes away sooner.

~~~
dan_quixote
Why? What could you have against Red Hat? Even when I worked for a direct
competitor, I had nothing to hate at Red Hat!

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marmaduke
“This is why we can’t have nice things”

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freddy418_sc
"A good engineer is replaceable in 3 months But a chicky [sic] manager, hard
to find. :)"

I assume this is common knowledge

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LaSombra
This has been flagged before.

