Reports Coming In Of Big IBM Layoffs Underway In The U.S.

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Rumors of layoffs at IBM are everywhere today. According to the rumor mill, not only is the company laying off 1/3 of its employees in North America, it has cut severance pay from six months to just one. :(


It is bad, really bad. It’s a mass layoff today. It is a sad day for IBM. People are being told not to talk about it. I was told by a manager in getting the news [of my job being eliminated], who was reading off of a script, that one third of the U.S. workforce is being ‘rebalanced,’ which is what they call it.
 
What I am getting out of this is that their company has still has a severance package!
 
"I am cut while my replacement H1B visa worker stays."

Sums up tech jobs perfectly nowadays. So I've often wondered; what keeps the foreign workers in India, Brazil, etc, from stealing your trade secrets and hacking your financials? An NDA?
 
cageymaru said:
"I am cut while my replacement H1B visa worker stays."

Sums up tech jobs perfectly nowadays. So I've often wondered; what keeps the foreign workers in India, Brazil, etc, from stealing your trade secrets and hacking your financials? An NDA?
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It's not a problem until it's a problem in this industry
 
In all fairness alot of them should be let go, or replaced by a H1B.
 
#rekt

#TBTF

#BuyStocks

#StrongEconomy

#CorporateBuyBack

#Bail-in
 
Shmee said:
What I am getting out of this is that their company has still has a severance package!
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A lot of places it's required by law if you're not giving the employees warning, which companies usually do not.
 
This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. At one point IBM made 85% of it's annual revenue from IT outsourcing services. IBM has had a rough go of things in recent years as market conditions have changed. I know IBM lost a number of larger and more lucrative contracts. Mismanagement of resources and being management heavy is one such reason for this. IBM also has a huge R&D budget for creating patents and selling the technologies. At one point, even around 9 years ago, a full time employee that moved across country for an IBM job that couldn't sell their house would get assistance from IBM. IBM would buy the house at market value and then work on selling it for as long as necessary to recoup the cost. Benefits, retirement packages and all that were fantastic. They used to reimburse for internet service, pay for cell phones and all kinds of crap.

Last time I was at the IBM office near Grapevine it was empty. The building was built probably in the 1970's and at one time was lavish. It still is in some areas, but the areas that were once filled with cubicles and offices are now vacant. IBM had very little presence there and rented space out to a few other companies, but it seemed like a questionable financial decision to maintain the property given that it wasn't necessary. No one worked there!
 
Place has been falling apart for the last seven years or so.

IBM Offers To Move Laid Off Workers To India - InformationWeek

If you're still at IBM, this one's on you. You saw this shit coming, for almost a decade. Because of management's mistakes and the cut-throat services market, they can't afford to pay US wages. So they move jobs overseas.

I'm sure they'll let the US workers keep their jobs if they move to India...and take Indian-level salary :D
 
Dan_D said:
This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. At one point IBM made 85% of it's annual revenue from IT outsourcing services. IBM has had a rough go of things in recent years as market conditions have changed. I know IBM lost a number of larger and more lucrative contracts. Mismanagement of resources and being management heavy is one such reason for this. IBM also has a huge R&D budget for creating patents and selling the technologies. At one point, even around 9 years ago, a full time employee that moved across country for an IBM job that couldn't sell their house would get assistance from IBM. IBM would buy the house at market value and then work on selling it for as long as necessary to recoup the cost. Benefits, retirement packages and all that were fantastic. They used to reimburse for internet service, pay for cell phones and all kinds of crap.

Last time I was at the IBM office near Grapevine it was empty. The building was built probably in the 1970's and at one time was lavish. It still is in some areas, but the areas that were once filled with cubicles and offices are now vacant. IBM had very little presence there and rented space out to a few other companies, but it seemed like a questionable financial decision to maintain the property given that it wasn't necessary. No one worked there!
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This is a big reason I would guess of IBM's current issues. Companies like HCL (the company Disney is using and is pushing their name in mud with H1B) and Wipro (both India Based) have been stealing business for past 10 years. These India companies don't have the long term management overhead that IBM has and were also better suited to take advantage of offshore resources by being local to the market. The big problem that a lot of outsource subscribers are now seeing; customer service and the IT experience is at an all time low.
 
Az Syndicate said:
This is a big reason I would guess of IBM's current issues. Companies like HCL (the company Disney is using and is pushing their name in mud with H1B) and Wipro (both India Based) have been stealing business for past 10 years. These India companies don't have the long term management overhead that IBM has and were also better suited to take advantage of offshore resources by being local to the market. The big problem that a lot of outsource subscribers are now seeing; customer service and the IT experience is at an all time low.
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You bring up a good point. IBM has or did have a ton of middle management that was largely redundant and pointless. Personnel are almost, if not always the single largest expense of operating a business. Having hundreds of middle managers you don't need and their associated costs is something IBM simply can't afford anymore.
 
cageymaru said:
"I am cut while my replacement H1B visa worker stays."

Sums up tech jobs perfectly nowadays.
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I was just about to quote this myself, so I'll just quote you instead. It is an odd sort of dystopia in the tech industry to bring a bunch of jobs back to the US, only to make it cheaper to keep H1B employees, than it is to keep residents.
 
spugm1r3 said:
I was just about to quote this myself, so I'll just quote you instead. It is an odd sort of dystopia in the tech industry to bring a bunch of jobs back to the US, only to make it cheaper to keep H1B employees, than it is to keep residents.
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IBM has really switched over quite a bit of their company mission from hardware and software to consulting services which are highly lucrative.

And yes there is a lot of middle management these days. It's because everyone wants to be a manager. It means more money and less being down at the tech level where you have to keep your skills sharp. Given the rate code size is ballooning, and technology that's changing ever faster, no one is willing to work in the trenches any more.

All you have to be is a good politician, good at scheduling things, and and good at generating reports upper management can understand. I'm not minimizing a managers role, as they are facilitators to their staff. They remove roadblocks to make stuff happen so the employees don't have to worry about it.

And yes I've dealt with a number of Indian tech companies. I don't want to say they are inferior as they work their tail off. And I met a few that can out-engineer me in certain areas. However, as a whole, their tech base is lacking. (At least with the ones I encountered.)
 
Az Syndicate said:
This is a big reason I would guess of IBM's current issues. Companies like HCL (the company Disney is using and is pushing their name in mud with H1B) and Wipro (both India Based) have been stealing business for past 10 years. These India companies don't have the long term management overhead that IBM has and were also better suited to take advantage of offshore resources by being local to the market. The big problem that a lot of outsource subscribers are now seeing; customer service and the IT experience is at an all time low.
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I've seen this happen over and over in the IT industry. It always end in failure for the companies looking to lower their costs, and for the low cost outsourcing companies.

I used to work for a company that did a lot of network support. We where one of the largest supporter of specific vendors product in the area, and had a large number of contracts with high tech companies. After several years of building the company's support business, other companies came in and started under bidding us on the contracts. After loosing several major contracts, our largest remaining contract came up for a bid. The owner lower our bid to the point that we would be lucky if we broke even. We lost the contract when we were under bid by almost 40%, and the owner decided to no longer support that product., an eventually got out of the network sales and support business.

About 8 months later we get a desperate call from the customer (large aerospace company), who was having terrible problems with their new support and wanted to know if we could re-bid on the support contract. We told them "Sorry, but we no longer do that."
I talk to some of the people I knew who work there and they said going with the low bid was one of the biggest IT mistakes they made.
 
Watson has to be a giant cost center, lots of companies really really want off shoring to work, but the reality is you build a knowledge base where you can't access it and communication issues lead to projects that meet the requirements, but are nightmares to work with
 
In like 2003 I was working in IT for a large multi-national bank when they decided to outsource us to EDS and I bailed during the "Please turn over your knowledge and train your replacement phase.".
I was actually an EDS employee for a short time and they promised to "try to find us a project after we got released from the bank outsourcing". I remember laughing at one of the big meetings when
they said that and got stink-eyed from the EDS managers. :rolleyes:

Our internal IT staff was a well-oiled efficient machine and we kept telling the higher ups it was a huge mistake to replace us, we were actually really good. They didn't listen, and it turned into a disaster
last I heard. The contract was not renewed when it expired and they hired all new in-house IT staff who had to figure out everything from scratch. Huge waste of time and money (many millions wasted).

It doesn't surprise me to see IBM outsourcing operations collapse.

.
 
acairman said:
In all fairness alot of them should be let go, or replaced by a H1B.
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I agree. All the stupid overpaid talentless fucking dinosaurs in technical positions who have a high salary based on time and not skill, should all be replaced by HB1s.
 
They advertise seemingly nothing, constantly on cnbc with dumbass bob dylan commercials.


Run away from that company... run away.
 
TheMadHatterXxX said:
I agree. All the stupid overpaid talentless fucking dinosaurs in technical positions who have a high salary based on time and not skill, should all be replaced by HB1s.
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Don't laugh at the dinosaurs, some of us not only have the skills to keep that 15 year old software running, but can also run circles around many of those recent grads on current products.
 
I'm no true supporter of offshoring but in all fairness, if I were CEO these days and had to choose between India H1B's and US millennials I'd choose H1B's. The workers from India (although mostly dumb at first) tend to be less arrogant, more respectful and less whiney.
 
I worked for Computer Associates years ago. Although never as big as "Big Blue" - it's another company that has fallen. When I started with the company, there were about 18000 employees. Within a few years, I think they peaked around 24000. I was not in the New York office, but we were growing fast at out location. They had accounting scandals, failing to adapt to a changing industry, CEO ends up in jail, - ouch. The layoffs hit several times.
The office I worked in is closed (we had about 400 in my city at our peak). The product I worked on (Unicenter) is basically dead. Everything was outsourced to India. My boss had to fly to India and live there for 3 months training our replacements.
IBM hasn't made the same missteps, but its another unfortunate tale of an American tech company crashing. Anyone else remember the days of the IBM PC? The Charlie Chaplen adds? Ever worked on AIX?
 
DigitalGriffin said:
And yes I've dealt with a number of Indian tech companies. I don't want to say they are inferior as they work their tail off. And I met a few that can out-engineer me in certain areas. However, as a whole, their tech base is lacking. (At least with the ones I encountered.)
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I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment. Work ethic is not an issue. Even skills in some cases are better. But one thing that nearly all H1B employees I've dealt with have lacked is a childhood spent playing around with tech as a toy, not just a job. Things like building computers, hacking Xboxes, or modding video games is the necessary introduction to facilitating great ideas. Without this introduction, the best you can often hope for is a really precise, efficient version of the thing you already make.
 
evilsofa said:
What does IBM do?
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These days, IBM is largely a service provider of IT Outsourcing. They used to be the largest and most successful IT Outsourcing firm in the country, if not the world. Unfortunately, IBM's been plagued by bureaucracy due to having far too much middle management. The company isn't adaptable as it's very set in its ways. Running that same old business model without adapting is why they aren't as competitive as they used to be. IBM has lost a couple of larger contracts in recent years which has effected it's bottom line.

Another thing IBM does is R&D technologies. It sells IPs and technology that it has no plans of using and pockets the cash. As of last year IBM still filed for more patents in that year than any company in the world.

BrinNutz said:
Who wants to bet that majority will be close to retirement?
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IBM will certainly start with people close to, or past retirement age. They will likely offer incentives to anyone close to retirement to bail out early. Again personnel costs are always a companies biggest operating expense. Even paying out severance packages, or pensions it will save more in the long run.

TheMadHatterXxX said:
I agree. All the stupid overpaid talentless fucking dinosaurs in technical positions who have a high salary based on time and not skill, should all be replaced by HB1s.
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One thing you don't understand is the difference between us dinosaurs and some of these entitled millennial douche bags. The modern IT world isn't what it used to be. Now large companies segregate different technical disciplines by departments which forces people into one position. This has a negative effect on them as it shapes their skill set based on what the company need at the time. Someone who gets thrown into networking is likely going to stay there and not move into anything else. Someone stuck doing backup and recovery will likely only do tasks related to backup and recovery. Someone who is on the backup team won't end up troubleshooting Active Directory issues, or deploying servers, or managing Virtual or physical infrastructure. In a larger company, the guys responsible for racking servers on the raised floor don't deploy applications or even know what OS will go on them half the time.

This has a negative effect on IT professionals who end up with very narrow kill set and limited troubleshooting ability. The only time you don't see this now is when someone works at a smaller company and ends up having to be a jack of all trades. I think this is essential in finding out where your true skills and passions are, as well as giving you a well rounded foundation for being adaptable later on as the field changes. Most millennials that end up working for larger companies first aren't likely to develop a broad set of skills and experience. Companies adopted this compartmentalized IT model based on things like change management processes and as a buffer to prevent one person from being able to do too much damage, or to prevent someone from being so integral as to cripple the company if that person quits, has to be terminated, or is injured or killed and thus cannot work anymore.

Personally I like it when whiny ass entitled millennials get replaced with H1B Visa workers. Your average H1B Visa contractors tend to be hard working, disciplined, they don't complain and they are more respectful than the millennials who think they are special snowflakes. Because everything is so compartmentalized, you actually don't need much talent for most specific roles. Occasionally you find really good talent in the H1B's and you can put them to work doing important things, while paying them less. It's a win win for businesses. Unfortunately.

nutzo said:
Don't laugh at the dinosaurs, some of us not only have the skills to keep that 15 year old software running, but can also run circles around many of those recent grads on current products.
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Indeed.

vr. said:
I'm no true supporter of offshoring but in all fairness, if I were CEO these days and had to choose between India H1B's and US millennials I'd choose H1B's. The workers from India (although mostly dumb at first) tend to be less arrogant, more respectful and less whiney.
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Absolutely. Some of the most talented IT professionals I've worked with tend to be H1Bs. They work hard and educate themselves so they can be valuable to companies.
 
Dan_D said:
One thing you don't understand is the difference between us dinosaurs and some of these entitled millennial douche bags. The modern IT world isn't what it used to be. Now large companies segregate different technical disciplines by departments which forces people into one position. This has a negative effect on them as it shapes their skill set based on what the company need at the time. Someone who gets thrown into networking is likely going to stay there and not move into anything else. Someone stuck doing backup and recovery will likely only do tasks related to backup and recovery. Someone who is on the backup team won't end up troubleshooting Active Directory issues, or deploying servers, or managing Virtual or physical infrastructure. In a larger company, the guys responsible for racking servers on the raised floor don't deploy applications or even know what OS will go on them half the time.

This has a negative effect on IT professionals who end up with very narrow kill set and limited troubleshooting ability. The only time you don't see this now is when someone works at a smaller company and ends up having to be a jack of all trades.
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This is why I don't think I could work for a large company. I've worked for small companies (or a local department of a large company) since I've been in the computer field.
I currently do everything from desktops, servers, phone system, backup, network, internet firewall, Exchange, SQL, and even ordering new product and software for the small company I work for (around 100 employees). That's the life of a one man IT shop.
As for a replacement, I doubt they could fine a single person that could handle half of what I currently do, and it would take years for anyone to come up to speed on everything, especial the older stuff. We had a corrupt FoxPro database file on a 15 old application a few months ago. The product is so old there's no support, but I was able to rebuild the database without any data loss. Good luck finding someone with that skill set :)
 
nutzo said:
This is why I don't think I could work for a large company. I've worked for small companies (or a local department of a large company) since I've been in the computer field.
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There are certain advantages to working for larger companies. In some cases they can offer more stability and better benefits. That's not the exclusive domain of larger companies, but generally speaking they are more competitive with compensation than smaller companies tend to be. At least, that's been my experience.

nutzo said:
As for a replacement, I doubt they could fine a single person that could handle half of what I currently do, and it would take years for anyone to come up to speed on everything, especial the older stuff. We had a corrupt FoxPro database file on a 15 old application a few months ago. The product is so old there's no support, but I was able to rebuild the database without any data loss. Good luck finding someone with that skill set :)
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And this is precisely the reason why companies try to avoid reliance on a single person.
 
Entitled millennials? You have no idea what you're talking about. Go look up the definition of millennial. The people that are getting screwed in this country are the millennials who have to bust their asses but are under a glass ceiling because of some old farts that sat at a job for 20+ years with their thumbs up their asses doing one simple task are grandfathered in to a high salary because they're in with the good old boys in higher positions bur yet have no technical skill. I'm 35 and come from H1B-land and I have a vast technical skillset in my organization so I'm at the far end of your millennial generalization, but yet I'm getting screwed salary-wise NOT because of H1B's but the older retards who don't know shit except for their one stupid job but are laughing all the way to bank with their undeserved high salaries and bonuses. I hope every single one of them gets replaced by an H1B.
 
nutzo said:
This is why I don't think I could work for a large company. I've worked for small companies (or a local department of a large company) since I've been in the computer field.
I currently do everything from desktops, servers, phone system, backup, network, internet firewall, Exchange, SQL, and even ordering new product and software for the small company I work for (around 100 employees). That's the life of a one man IT shop.
As for a replacement, I doubt they could fine a single person that could handle half of what I currently do, and it would take years for anyone to come up to speed on everything, especial the older stuff. We had a corrupt FoxPro database file on a 15 old application a few months ago. The product is so old there's no support, but I was able to rebuild the database without any data loss. Good luck finding someone with that skill set :)
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Give me a fucking break, this is a technical forum. Every single one of us here could research that shit online for a few hours/days for a solution and fix it if we were paid for it.
 
Sadly this is a common problem in many organizations: Dumb Old man thinks he's better at a job because he's been there 20, 30, 40 years. Cok of yung gai with technical knowledge comes in does job better, faster more efficiently but old fart still reaps the rewards.
 
Sadly this is a common problem in many organizations: Dumb young bastard thinks he's better at a job, and smarter, because he's 20, 30, 40 years younger than everyone there. Mature, older folks with lots of experience and knowledge do the job better, faster and more efficiently but get replaced by these young retards because the company can pay them half of what they pay the older, more experienced employees.
 
Sadly this is a common problem in many organizations. Dumb old people still think more time = more skill. You're getting paid $150k to copy paste the program into the PLC's in the field like a mindless grunt. While I'm writing the logic because you're too dumb to learn how to program PLCs and you don't even have a college degree because it wasn't a mandatory thing for pre-millenials like you who have a deathgrip on an antiquated salary structure because you'll never find work again because your skillset is really shit and can't compete against todays college graduates despite your delusional ideas that your tenure is worth more than someone's superior skill.
 
A lot of these skilled service jobs are becoming automated. I am sure this won't be their last cut.
 
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