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IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

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Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#71

Post by gjadi »

rybosworld wrote: post #55
manicennui wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea what you are talking about. IBM does more cutting edge research than the entire HN bubble combined. Hard research like materials science and semiconductors. Consulting is less than a third of their revenue and regardless of how you feel about consulting, it seems kind of idiotic to claim that this "barely makes sense at all at this point". Are the only companies that make sense the ones that work on…

They have seemingly 1000 products so it's definitely not fair to apply experiences with one of those, to all of the others. That said, I've hated the handful of IBM software products I've needed to use. Another anecdote: I've never met a fellow developer that spoke highly of IBM. That includes the folks who used to work there. I think it's remarkable how rare it is to meet someone that speaks highly of the company. C…

"There are two types of companies: the ones people complain about, and the ones nobody has heard of."

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#72

Post by bonzini »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #33
aflag wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very cynical view. It might be true, but I hardly think they were just waiting for the perfect opportunity. If it made business sense before, they would've already been halting their hiring.

They've been going through cycles of doing that for many years. Their head count has dropped by about a third in the last decade. It peaked at 460K people in 2012 and they are now closer to 340K. So -120K people in ten years. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/number-of-... What they just announced is a relatively minor round.

That source doesn't seem too accurate, 2020 is shown as a decrease but it's when RH was acquired, and 2021 or 2022 should have had a -90K from the Kyndryl spin off.

Also I am not sure if the 2014 decrease is also related to the formation of GlobalFoundries but I couldn't right away find news about a -80K layoff that year.

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#73

Post by a4isms »

giantrobot wrote: post #67
hgsgm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's Management Consulting. Tech consulting is building expensive boondoggles.

AbstractBoondoggle boondoggle = new AbstractBoondoggleFactory()

Thor's Law:

As the length of a thread about software design increases, the probability of someone mentioning a "general-purpose tool-building factory factory factory" approaches one.

Including the act of quoting Thor's Law.

———

https://www.danstroot.com/posts/2018-10-03-hammer-factories

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#74

Post by fdye »

This is just using the AI hype as cover to not get slammed by the markets. If they came out and said "We are pausing hiring..." the markets would rightly be like "Man they are screwed..."

Expect to see more of this from zombie companies in the future, as long as they spend $20/mo on a ChatGPT subscription somewhere they are probably not violating SEC disclosures either.

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#75

Post by dlevine »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #52
manicennui wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea what you are talking about. IBM does more cutting edge research than the entire HN bubble combined. Hard research like materials science and semiconductors. Consulting is less than a third of their revenue and regardless of how you feel about consulting, it seems kind of idiotic to claim that this "barely makes sense at all at this point". Are the only companies that make sense the ones that work on…

I think the true thing is that IBM has ceased to be a leader in Computer Science. They used to be! But they gave that up long ago, and have resorted to various publicity stunts (e.g., remember Jeopardy?). But sure, they may be a leader in materials and semiconductors (though honestly I have no idea, that's not my space).

[flagged]

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#76

Post by t43562 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #66
jillesvangurp wrote: post #11

IBM as a company barely makes sense at all at this point. They are a very large and a former tech company that mostly coasts along on doing expensive consulting projects around me-too clones of things that other people have invented just so they can still pretend to be a tech company. So you can do things with AI, cloud, and databases with them. But they aren't really leaders in any of that for a long time. And havin…

It was always the case that IBM stuff was way overpriced compared to alternatives but a senior manager who bought it could rest easy, knowing that if he called and complained, they'd be right on it. Even 10 years in the future, they'd be right on it. That's worth something to some people, who really don't give a shit about technology and just want the problem solved.

Software for people who don't care about software! Personally I think if you don't care about something it will be bad.

This is great for small companies and startups - if the bigger ones did things properly how could anyone compete?

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#77

Post by AlbertCory »

t43562 wrote: post #76
AlbertCory wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was always the case that IBM stuff was way overpriced compared to alternatives but a senior manager who bought it could rest easy, knowing that if he called and complained, they'd be right on it. Even 10 years in the future, they'd be right on it. That's worth something to some people, who really don't give a shit about technology and just want the problem solved.

Software for people who don't care about software! Personally I think if you don't care about something it will be bad. This is great for small companies and startups - if the bigger ones did things properly how could anyone compete?

Exactly! They're creating a Quality Umbrella.

"if you don't care about something it will be bad" -- maybe to you. To them, it's not causing any problems that they care about.

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#78

Post by skeeter2020 »

rybosworld wrote: post #55
manicennui wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea what you are talking about. IBM does more cutting edge research than the entire HN bubble combined. Hard research like materials science and semiconductors. Consulting is less than a third of their revenue and regardless of how you feel about consulting, it seems kind of idiotic to claim that this "barely makes sense at all at this point". Are the only companies that make sense the ones that work on…

They have seemingly 1000 products so it's definitely not fair to apply experiences with one of those, to all of the others. That said, I've hated the handful of IBM software products I've needed to use. Another anecdote: I've never met a fellow developer that spoke highly of IBM. That includes the folks who used to work there. I think it's remarkable how rare it is to meet someone that speaks highly of the company. C…

For a company that's done so much tech, and had such a huge impact on the computer industry, there are very few "true blue" IBMers who you can hold up as engineering pioneers. Tehy've always been bog-standard salesmen.

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#80

Post by t43562 »

IBM felt to me like the last holdout of the shiny shoed salesmen when I briefly worked for them. Before the internet and big tech companies with leaders who were theoretically technical there were the companies dominated by salesmen because selling was the critical part.

I imagine that getting a board to spend a lot of money on some project is hard and you need the support of the kind of people that can influence board members.

So to get your project past a lot of people who basically don't respect or believe in nerds you had to hire a company with non-nerdy salesmen to back you up.

i.e. the entire thing is social. And just because the nerds (us) have trounced them for the last N years, it doesn't mean that the world has converted into 100% nerd. Shiny shoed salesmen are probably still quite necessary.

I joined as part of an acquisition. I am probably biased but they spent a year making the product multilingual and not fixing anything. Everyone knows the name of the Open Source knock-off of that product but not the name of the product anymore. It's probably still there taking almost no investment of effort.

So I got the impression that IBM is a company where software goes to live out its old age and die. I think of Redhat (perhaps unfairly) with their super complicated Linux distribution which must be a nightmare to maintain because it does so many things and needs to keep long compatibility guarantees. I'm not expecting any innovation whatsoever from them. Perhaps this is very unfair and ignorant of me. I'm happy to be corrected.

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