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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

#161

Post by sys_64738 »

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…

IBM lost its way in the 90s and was overrun by startups which became massive. Nobody wants to work for IBM as it's kiss of death to your CV.

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

#165

Post by JAlexoid »

tempest_ wrote: post #146
theRealMe wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the case for companies that overhired during the bull market. IBM, on the other hand, has been losing employee counts steadily for over a decade. If a company that people are expecting to be losing relevance does a layoff, it’s still not a good sign.

I don't even properly know what IBM is now that they spun a bunch of things off. I guess they tossed all the services/consulting into Kyndryl and everything else got to stay blue.

They spun off only Global Technology Services, which was only IT infrastructure consulting.

Most of the business consulting, including outsourcing software engineering, is still with IBM.

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

#166

Post by alfalfasprout »

fdye wrote: post #74

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.

Exactly. As useful as ChatGPT is for a lot of menial tasks, people give humans far too little credit.

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

#167

Post by dralley »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #115
sidewndr46 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What good is a R&D performed that can't be commercialized? Then I guess we can throw out Xerox Parc's NLS because they never commercialized "windows, hypertext, graphics, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor." They were commercialized by others later on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos We can also…

Also 2000 years of Mathematicians talking about Prime Numbers before someone came up with the idea of cryptography using prime numbers.

And the laser, which took a few decades to find an application.

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

#168

Post by mynonameaccount »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #105
rybosworld wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He doesn't need to consider it, IBM will consider it for him

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

#169

Post by dc-programmer »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #78
rybosworld wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do get innovation points for inventing SQL (over 50 years ago)

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

#170

Post by MikeTheGreat »

JAlexoid wrote: post #165
tempest_ wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even properly know what IBM is now that they spun a bunch of things off. I guess they tossed all the services/consulting into Kyndryl and everything else got to stay blue.

They spun off only Global Technology Services, which was only IT infrastructure consulting. Most of the business consulting, including outsourcing software engineering, is still with IBM.

So they're a consulting company now?

I know they got rid of OS's and laptops a while back; I assume they don't make or service mainframes/minicomputers anymore. Do they do any software/hardware development, or is it all consulting?

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