Iowa Spent $50M to Lure IBM. Then the Firings Started
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Re: Iowa Spent $50M to Lure IBM. Then the Firings Started
#2"Instead, Ross found herself toiling on what she described as a new-age assembly line -- each employee solving a narrowly focused part of a corporate customer’s technical problem and then passing the baton to the next person."
Can anyone decipher the above and explain what kind of work IBM employees in these kinds of offices perform?
Re: Iowa Spent $50M to Lure IBM. Then the Firings Started
#3"Instead, Ross found herself toiling on what she described as a new-age assembly line -- each employee solving a narrowly focused part of a corporate customer’s technical problem and then passing the baton to the next person." Can anyone decipher the above and explain what kind of work IBM employees in these kinds of offices perform?
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Re: Iowa Spent $50M to Lure IBM. Then the Firings Started
#4"Instead, Ross found herself toiling on what she described as a new-age assembly line -- each employee solving a narrowly focused part of a corporate customer’s technical problem and then passing the baton to the next person." Can anyone decipher the above and explain what kind of work IBM employees in these kinds of offices perform?
Call center?
Re: Iowa Spent $50M to Lure IBM. Then the Firings Started
#5> It’s a blow to Dubuque and Columbia, cities that spent a combined $84 million on tax breaks and other incentives to lure Big Blue in the hopes of attracting other technology firms and incubating a startup scene.
Anyone who would pursue IBM in hopes of 'incubating a startup scene' is, not to put too fine a point on it, grossly incompetent.
> Instead, Ross found herself toiling on what she described as a new-age assembly line — each employee solving a narrowly focused part of a corporate customer’s technical problem and then passing the baton to the next person. As a result, said some of IBM’s Dubuque workers, they became experts only in a narrow set of skills that weren’t easily transferable.
That's exactly IBM's MO: try to solve problems with a smart process executed by low-skilled people. Never mind that a process can never execute judgement, and that low-skilled people executing a process never get the experience needed to develop their own judgement. Never mind that deep knowledge is necessary to solve complex problems.
From IBM's perspective, it's good to have low-skilled people who can't easily find jobs elsewhere: it means lower wages and less turnover (and when there is turnover, imparting a few low skills to new hires is easy!). Never mind that if other places wouldn't want to hire them, then one probably doesn't have a reason to hire them either. Never mind that if one's company is composed of low-skilled employees, then customers don't have much reason to use one's services.
Re: Iowa Spent $50M to Lure IBM. Then the Firings Started
#6"Instead, Ross found herself toiling on what she described as a new-age assembly line -- each employee solving a narrowly focused part of a corporate customer’s technical problem and then passing the baton to the next person." Can anyone decipher the above and explain what kind of work IBM employees in these kinds of offices perform?
Mostly operations, I imagine: OS, database & storage administration.
While other companies were investing in their employee base, IBM was cutting costs. Much like a farmer who eats his seed corn and then has nothing to plant while others steward their resources carefully and see a bumper crop, IBM is seeing the results of over a decade of underinvestment: who here would choose an IBM cloud solution over AWS, Google, DigitalOcean or Linode?
While those companies were hiring smart people to design & implement well-crafted systems, IBM was cutting, cutting, cutting, using human beings to do work which is better scripted, underinvesting in automation and generally setting itself up for failure.
Re: Iowa Spent $50M to Lure IBM. Then the Firings Started
#7> It’s a blow to Dubuque and Columbia, cities that spent a combined $84 million on tax breaks and other incentives to lure Big Blue in the hopes of attracting other technology firms and incubating a startup scene. Anyone who would pursue IBM in hopes of 'incubating a startup scene' is, not to put too fine a point on it, grossly incompetent. > Instead, Ross found herself toiling on what she described as a new-age asse…
> Anyone who would pursue IBM in hopes of 'incubating a startup scene' is, not to put too fine a point on it, grossly incompetent.
Indeed -- and just one of the most painfully obvious illustrations of why the "high taxes with favored big companies getting tax breaks" strategy is a lot less fair and efficient than the "medium-low taxes for everybody" strategy. (Of course, the latter doesn't give the politicians any chances to dole out favors and toot his own horn for getting his constituents jobs!!!, so expect ongoing cronyism well into the future. why capitalism gets a bad name...)
Re: Iowa Spent $50M to Lure IBM. Then the Firings Started
#8> It’s a blow to Dubuque and Columbia, cities that spent a combined $84 million on tax breaks and other incentives to lure Big Blue in the hopes of attracting other technology firms and incubating a startup scene. Anyone who would pursue IBM in hopes of 'incubating a startup scene' is, not to put too fine a point on it, grossly incompetent. > Instead, Ross found herself toiling on what she described as a new-age asse…
> Anyone who would pursue IBM in hopes of 'incubating a startup scene' is, not to put too fine a point on it, grossly incompetent
Could be they are geniuses: banking on IBM laying off tech workers in order to get the startup scene going in the wake. Scratch that. Having seen some of these legislative bodies at work, that's too advanced.
Re: Iowa Spent $50M to Lure IBM. Then the Firings Started
#9> It’s a blow to Dubuque and Columbia, cities that spent a combined $84 million on tax breaks and other incentives to lure Big Blue in the hopes of attracting other technology firms and incubating a startup scene. Anyone who would pursue IBM in hopes of 'incubating a startup scene' is, not to put too fine a point on it, grossly incompetent. > Instead, Ross found herself toiling on what she described as a new-age asse…
> Anyone who would pursue IBM in hopes of 'incubating a startup scene' is, not to put too fine a point on it, grossly incompetent. Indeed -- and just one of the most painfully obvious illustrations of why the "high taxes with favored big companies getting tax breaks" strategy is a lot less fair and efficient than the "medium-low taxes for everybody" strategy. (Of course, the latter doesn't give the politicians any ch…
There's a multitude of interpretations there, but to me the obvious(TM) takeaway is that corporate taxes should be zeroed out for everyone, and income/consumption/environmental taxes (take your pick of weighting) increased to make up for it.
Re: Iowa Spent $50M to Lure IBM. Then the Firings Started
#10"Instead, Ross found herself toiling on what she described as a new-age assembly line -- each employee solving a narrowly focused part of a corporate customer’s technical problem and then passing the baton to the next person." Can anyone decipher the above and explain what kind of work IBM employees in these kinds of offices perform?
Mostly operations, I imagine: OS, database & storage administration. While other companies were investing in their employee base, IBM was cutting costs. Much like a farmer who eats his seed corn and then has nothing to plant while others steward their resources carefully and see a bumper crop, IBM is seeing the results of over a decade of underinvestment: who here would choose an IBM cloud solution over AWS, Google,…
> who here would choose an IBM cloud solution over AWS, Google, DigitalOcean or Linode?
Why do you think IBM bought Softlayer?