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

latimes.com

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

#51

Post by ferminaut »

softwaredoug wrote: post #47

> (IBM) delivered an upbeat annual sales forecast while announcing it would eliminate about 1.5% of its global workforce > The cuts will focus on workers remaining after spinoffs of the Kyndryl and Watson Health units and will cost the company about $300 million, he said. IBM still expects to hire in the “higher-growth areas,” Kavanaugh said. > Chief Executive Arvind Krishna has been trying to pivot Big Blue from its…

IBM would do these layoffs regardless. The whole "everyone else is doing it" is just convenient timing. IBM has lots of dead areas / legacy software & typically those areas are the ones hit hardest.

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

#52

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

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…

IBM now owns Linux.

(Oh the irony...)

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

#53

Post by jacobsenscott »

yazzku wrote: post #34
chr15p wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A piece of my soul died just trying to imagine the depths of boredom this would take you.

One of the best places I ever worked. Really good engineers, and a really calm workplace where you are given the time and space to do good work. No dysfunctional 2 week sprints or hours of "agile ceremony" madness, etc. Of course this was 20 years go, and maybe it depended on the team you were on. I don't know if it is the same now. The only time I had a problem there is when my manager came in and said I had to take down my anti-microsoft sign. Idk why - maybe they were trying to do some deal with them.

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

#54

Post by jjice »

belter wrote: post #33
chr15p wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And that is $4.5 billion in Mainframe just in one quarter...

It's an interesting thing they have going on. I worked at a large retailer who depended on an IBM mainframe running DB2. That thing was crazy expensive and their migration to their cloud mainframe offering was even more expensive for the raw compute, but made sense when maintenance and everything was added.

Something like 90%+ of the top 100 banks depend on mainframes and same with the top 100 retailers. Few customers that pay a lot is a solid model.

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

#55

Post by Merrill »

alephnerd wrote: post #21
scottLobster wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 divestment…

In the early 1980s, DoD pushed back vigorously against the breakup of the Bell System, but the breakup happened anyway. Once the anti-trust suit is in progress, they have little influence over the legal outcome.

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

#56

Post by theGnuMe »

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.

The IBM cloud is for IBM customers.

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

#57

Post by op00to »

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

uhhh... IBM is a bank masquerading as a technology company and has been since the 1960s when they started getting real fancy with financing. MBAs have been running things at IBM for at least that long if not longer.

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

#59

Post by umeshunni »

alephnerd wrote: post #21
scottLobster wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 divestment…

JWCC is https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/323937...

https://community.hacc.mil/s/jwcc in case anyone else was also wondering

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