Fire everyone. Keep the coders.
IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
131–140 of 142 posts
Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I don't completely understand your comment, I didn't say my level of english was perfect ;)
Appreciating that you're undoubtedly communicating better in English than I would in your native language, the fact is that if you're a (principally) English-speaking company, with (principally) English-speaking customers, hiring (principally) non-English-speaking support or contract services, there will be communications issues, and those lead directly to business issues. I've encountered this in dealings with compa…
And that is my point. You can not hire people who do not have a minimum level of english. It is not the person's fault, but IBM's fault for hiring them.
Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Notes is a terrible piece of software. So outdated, slow, with a horrible UI and UX. And Sametime is not lagging too much behind.
Not a big fan of sametime, but I don't have a problem with Notes...
Unicorns do exist!!! I kid, there were a bunch of IBMers who liked Notes too, so I'm sure there must be other people in the world who like it as well.
Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed! Iowa's genius governor did a hiring freeze for the state universities. Which mean researchers could not spend their grants in Iowa; they fled. Brilliant move.
I hadn't even thought of that unintended consequence. A firm I used to work for did a hiring freeze. The well run parts (in a part of the world that is easy to fire people) of the organization obliged. The poorly run parts (in a place that's hard to fire people) didn't. So the bloated core got fatter, and the money generators got starved for growth.
Happens so often - like executives can't do simple math. Example: I contracted at a mobile-handset company. Their best seller accounted to 40% of revenue. The CEO came to our site, gave a talk: you guys have to cut down R&D expenses, you amount to 20% of total R&D budget.
So, 20% of R&D yielded > 40% of revenue (more than one product came from our site). How is that a problem? I was flabbergasted. As a contractor I said nothing, but was astonished no one else spoke up either.
Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
#135Unlike Capitalism, Globalization is Zero-Sum.
Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
#136IBM has spent an astonishing US$100K, per IBM employee!, on stock buybacks in the last 3yrs alone, and they are committed to more than half of that additionally in the next couple of years. They are only interested in increasing equity value among executives. IBM executives have stopped investing in their people, instead focusing on their personal bank accounts. IBM has given up on the idea of organic growth with the talent that they have -- they would rather chop off what they don't know how to manage and acquire new skills through acquisitions. Innovation is dying on the vine at IBM.
Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Appreciating that you're undoubtedly communicating better in English than I would in your native language, the fact is that if you're a (principally) English-speaking company, with (principally) English-speaking customers, hiring (principally) non-English-speaking support or contract services, there will be communications issues, and those lead directly to business issues. I've encountered this in dealings with compa…
And that is my point. You can not hire people who do not have a minimum level of english. It is not the person's fault, but IBM's fault for hiring them.
Fair enough.
Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hadn't even thought of that unintended consequence. A firm I used to work for did a hiring freeze. The well run parts (in a part of the world that is easy to fire people) of the organization obliged. The poorly run parts (in a place that's hard to fire people) didn't. So the bloated core got fatter, and the money generators got starved for growth.
Happens so often - like executives can't do simple math. Example: I contracted at a mobile-handset company. Their best seller accounted to 40% of revenue. The CEO came to our site, gave a talk: you guys have to cut down R&D expenses, you amount to 20% of total R&D budget. So, 20% of R&D yielded > 40% of revenue (more than one product came from our site). How is that a problem? I was flabbergasted. As a contractor I s…
I get the need to improve productivity but blind mandates suggest that something else is wrong.
At yet another employer they did a very well thought out layoff of approx 15% of the workforce. It was very well thought out and preceded by 6 months of heavy analysis on new ways to work. The culture was hurt but the firm saw process improvements too. Perhaps it was too easy as every time management needed to cut after that, they skipped the process improvement step.
Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
IBM has sold the XSeries division, STG is a different division (storages and systems), and is not up for sale AFAIK.
Systems and Technology Group is the hardware wing and within contains X-Series Division. IBM is keeping the other power, storage and Z (mainframe) IIRC.
You're forgetting about networking and the STG software divisions (e.g. firmware, some cloud software, the products that they acquired when they bought Platform Computing..)
Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Happens so often - like executives can't do simple math. Example: I contracted at a mobile-handset company. Their best seller accounted to 40% of revenue. The CEO came to our site, gave a talk: you guys have to cut down R&D expenses, you amount to 20% of total R&D budget. So, 20% of R&D yielded > 40% of revenue (more than one product came from our site). How is that a problem? I was flabbergasted. As a contractor I s…
I get the need to improve productivity but blind mandates suggest that something else is wrong. At yet another employer they did a very well thought out layoff of approx 15% of the workforce. It was very well thought out and preceded by 6 months of heavy analysis on new ways to work. The culture was hurt but the firm saw process improvements too. Perhaps it was too easy as every time management needed to cut after th…
I guess I see it differently. It seems to me that you can cut back, and enter the profit-margin-death-spiral. Or you can invest in new growth.
And our site had the highest return on investment in the company. Cutting back was suicide. In fact, that's how it played out - declining revenues due to a stagnant product line, for years.
I work at a startup now.