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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

#101

Post by retrocryptid »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #92
retrocryptid wrote: post #90

I am sad J. G. Ballard is no longer with us to comment on IBM's plan. IBM is replacing humans, who can identify an exceptional events which weren't anticipated by planners, with AI, which only regurgitates past training data. I'm sort of imagining IBM human resources department now as some hellish mashup of Ionesco, Nietzsche and Ballard (with a piquant dollop of THX 1138 to provide that absurdist, institutionalized…

Hmm, all my experiences with the old, more-human IBM (randomly powering off VMs, randomly breaking the UI for cloud admin, etc.) have been pretty much Kafka all the way, so maybe this will be an improvement (though not for the 8K employees who will be replaced).

I can only talk to my experience at IBM on-and-off from '89 through '94. There were many things wrong with IBM, but at least through '94, internal processes were fairly solid. Compare that to my current firm, where we wasted three days of employee time trying to figure out how to get Workday to properly render the text area I was supposed to use to provide employee evaluations. (This doesn't include the days it took to find someone in HR who understood what Workday was and had an idea who in the company managed it. It turns out that employees are given access roles in Workday (not really a bad idea) but our humans didn't understand that only people with specific roles could create surveys with form elements regular users could fill in. We apparently fired the people who knew that during the last round of layoffs.)

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

#102

Post by sidewndr46 »

abakker wrote: post #98
sidewndr46 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, those 24 consecutive quarters of revenue decline under Rometty is an obvious indication of cutting edge. Cutting edge research on how to turn investors money into into option traders profits.

I'd point out at that Ginni Rometty was a bad CEO, but that doesn't mean that people there didn't do good research. Like, they're pretty unrelated. Research and Development is notoriously hard to commercialize. Over here in HN land, we just say that product market fit is poor or that products didn't get traction, but those are just as akin to R&D as anything. A better model was that Rometty was not good at choosing w…

What good is a R&D performed that can't be commercialized? To me, that is just good research followed by bad development. No one investing in IBM is expecting it to be a public works project.

Lookup the saga of HP's memristor followed by "The Machine" for a similar story.

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

#103

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

manicennui wrote: post #49
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…

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…

You can't hire their research arm.

> regardless of how you feel about consulting

It's a matter of how well they do it. They're not known for creating customer value.

> Are the only companies that make sense the ones

... who don't lay off entire arenas full of people and discuss stupid platitudes like replacing them with AI.

Pretty much. Management's messaging around this was so delusional - "replace with AI" - that it's obviously a stock play from a company desperate to cut losses, not a positive statement from a going concern.

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

#104

Post by flavius29663 »

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.

exactly. As I heard, google can be pretty bad at support, for example. Better tech does not mean better experience overall

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

#105

Post by TigeriusKirk »

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…

My college roommate has worked for IBM his entire career, over 30 years. He loves it there, obviously, and never seriously considered leaving.

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

#106

Post by swexbe »

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.

Now when they call I guess they'll be directed towards the AI chat bot helpline :)

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

#107

Post by ResearchCode »

qualudeheart wrote: post #41
seu wrote: post #36

AI will not replace humans. IBM's CEOs and managers will replace humans with AI. Shareholders will force IBM to replace humans with AI. Let us stop blaming the only thing that is _not_ making any decision. Capitalism is a powerful idea that will kill the same people that vouch for it.

Managers will do every job.

AI will do management.

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

#108

Post by agumonkey »

manicennui wrote: post #49
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…

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…

This is the strange side of IBM. Very muddy and mild "normal" software engineering, and all of a sudden, top 3 (maybe top 1) Quantum Computing research.

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

#110

Post by oofta-boofta »

sumoboy wrote: post #65
gumballindie wrote: post #16

Nah, they are letting 7800 people go because of poor business practices. The AI thingie is to save face.

Poor middle management, those should be the majority of the people to let go.

That's literally every tech company. Middle managers, product owners, project managers, etc can all go.
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