IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas • Hacker News Board

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#21

Post by alephnerd » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

scottLobster wrote: post #20

yardie wrote: post #5

> Chief Executive Arvind Krishna has been trying to pivot Big Blue from its traditional business of infrastructure and information technology services to the fast-growing cloud-computing market. Skating to where the puck has been. While other companies are taking a look at how much they are spending on cloud. It's already a commodified market yet IBM sees itself as the one to grow into it.

Given their existing relationships they can leverage and the romanticism finally bleeding out of FAANG's reputations, if they can put together a stable, fundamentally capable platform they could definitely grab a chunk. Toyota has made a multi-decade business model around "skating to where the puck has been". Why can't IBM?

Regulatory stuff doesn't really impact Big Tech's Cloud presence. I've been working closely on JWCC related RFPs and the big boys at the DoD are 100% going to push back significantly if AWS or GCP are even slightly inconvenienced. There's an internal recognition with the DoD and DHS that antitrust in the Cloud Platform Security space could lead to national security issues due to turf battles and mismanaged divestments.

And people on the Hill trying to make their mark are concentrating more on the Ad Business and Marketplace portions - those are easier wins for consumers and (more critically) small mom and pop businesses that love to participate in local politics.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#22

Post by emurillo510 » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

costco still uses IBM products.. DB2 ... spufi anyone? I believe some companies like Gap are still using them as point-of-sale as well. It seems IBM has too many employees for the things they do.. I expect more cuts.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#23

Post by chr15p » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #5

> Chief Executive Arvind Krishna has been trying to pivot Big Blue from its traditional business of infrastructure and information technology services to the fast-growing cloud-computing market. Skating to where the puck has been. While other companies are taking a look at how much they are spending on cloud. It's already a commodified market yet IBM sees itself as the one to grow into it.

But to selectively quote from slightly further down TFA:

> Krishna’s strategy has been focused on bolstering the company’s offerings in hybrid cloud — providing services to customers that run their own data centers in some combination with public cloud

i.e. making it easier to move between data centers and cloud, and back again, so if "companies are taking a look at how much they are spending on cloud." then sounds like IBM are skating towards where the puck is going.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#24

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 4:48 PM UTC

myth_drannon wrote: post #7

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #2

Ooo, this sounds like a nice recipe for company collapse. You hate to see giants who advanced computing get taken over by MBAs who play that "cost center" and "revenue center" bullshit. I'm sure all their enterprise customers will be understanding of the unfixed bugs when the service agent explains how they made Watson 0.03% more effective at capturing pet names this fiscal year

IBM has been a dead company since about late 80's/early 90's.

Dead companies don't swim in profits and own a major part of Linux projects.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#25

Post by figassis » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 4:51 PM UTC

danrocks wrote: post #8

Not to be snarky or anything, but a legitimate question: what does IBM actually do? I used to work for a partnering engineering team at and met with dozens of enterprise clients (think Fortune 100) and I never heard anybody ever mention any IBM products. I am really intrigued to understand what keeps this company afloat. My main hypothesis is selling to government and acting more as a holding of acquired companies th…

This comment made me realize how much of an echo chamber HN is (myself included). We seem to call ourselves "tech enthusiasts", but it's only for some tech, and we wonder how other tech survives because we do not comprehend their usefulness.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#26

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 4:52 PM UTC

jstx1 wrote: post #6

> IBM’s current headcount is 260,000, Kavanaugh said. That is about 22,000 lower than the figure disclosed for December 2021. 4000 seems like a tiny number in context of total headcount, and when you take into account that they've somehow lost more than 5 times as many in the past year. > The cuts will focus on workers remaining after spinoffs of the Kyndryl and Watson Health units So the already dead parts of the co…

10% churn is not abnormal for a big, bureaucratic business.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#27

Post by claytonjy » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 4:53 PM UTC

horsawlarway wrote: post #10

jstx1 wrote: post #6

> IBM’s current headcount is 260,000, Kavanaugh said. That is about 22,000 lower than the figure disclosed for December 2021. 4000 seems like a tiny number in context of total headcount, and when you take into account that they've somehow lost more than 5 times as many in the past year. > The cuts will focus on workers remaining after spinoffs of the Kyndryl and Watson Health units So the already dead parts of the co…

> It's almost like they're doing layoffs for the sake of appearances It's almost like you're noticing this because the media is playing up layoff reports in tech. To quote... you - "4000 seems like a tiny number in context of total headcount, and when you take into account that they've somehow lost more than 5 times as many in the past year." They've reduced staff by 5 times this amount over the last 24 months, but t…

Another way to think about this is that IBM may be the ones playing up this comparatively-tiny reduction in headcount, because they expect to be rewarded for it (share price up). They would have seen the opposite effect from publicizing the cuts of '22, so they did the cuts but didnt talk about it.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#28

Post by rhacker » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

chr15p wrote: post #17

danrocks wrote: post #8

Not to be snarky or anything, but a legitimate question: what does IBM actually do? I used to work for a partnering engineering team at and met with dozens of enterprise clients (think Fortune 100) and I never heard anybody ever mention any IBM products. I am really intrigued to understand what keeps this company afloat. My main hypothesis is selling to government and acting more as a holding of acquired companies th…

For Oct-Dec 2022 (according to https://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM-4Q22-Earnings-Chart... ) Mainframes: $4.5 billion Consulting: $4.8 billion (even after selling off Kyndral) Software: $7.3 billion Software includes all of Red Hat, a pretty big security business, and "transaction processing" which isn't explained but I guess is running payroll and the like for other companies. So lots of un-sexy stuff that never…

pretty much anything you purchase at a store goes through ibm

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#29

Post by digitallyfree » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

danrocks wrote: post #8

Not to be snarky or anything, but a legitimate question: what does IBM actually do? I used to work for a partnering engineering team at and met with dozens of enterprise clients (think Fortune 100) and I never heard anybody ever mention any IBM products. I am really intrigued to understand what keeps this company afloat. My main hypothesis is selling to government and acting more as a holding of acquired companies th…

Aside from mainframes other IBM products I've seen used in industry include the Watson AI, Aspera, and LSF.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#30

Post by aeyes » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

StevePerkins wrote: post #14

myth_drannon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM has been a dead company since about late 80's/early 90's.

In terms of developer credibility with the entrepreneurial community? Sure. In terms of being a going concern for large customers and investors? The make billions of dollars of profit per year, have a P/E valuation better than Apple's, and pay out 4-5% dividends annually. I'm not sure what it really means to "be dead" for 40 years. In a sense, the average human is "dead" for 70-something years. But periods of time at…

This only shows that financial engineering works. Paying dividends and buying back shares while taking on billions of debt to finance it isn't a good long-term strategy.