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Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.

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Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.

#121

Post by morgante »

makecheck wrote: post #34
mattzito wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, these types of comments are (again) why people have negative opinions towards silicon valley types. You may be right, but a good sign for whom, exactly? For the people who lost their jobs? For shareholders? For fans of IBM the company? Sure, yes, I agree that IBM probably has to shed people in order to stay competitive. However, it's not the fault of the people who are being affected by this, as by and large the…

Executive pay doesn’t seem to follow the high-risk-high-reward scenario; they keep the “high reward” but see apparently none of the “high risk”. A much more balanced system would be something like, for each executive: - Your base pay is $51 million. - If you FAIL at your task, YOU OWE THE COMPANY $50 million. - If you succeed, you receive an extra $20 million. If you choose to split $15 million of this reward with em…

Every sane CEO realizes that even if they're really good there's still an element of chance.

At the very least, you'd have to make the expected value of their compensation greater than it is today. So if they succeed they get an extra $60 million but if they fail they lose $50 million (with a baseline of $51 million). Then you would incentivize risk-taking CEOs.

Of course, that's not actually far off from what we have today: CEOs receive a majority of the compensation in stock, which does have risk. Maybe it would make sense to set the strike prices much more aggressively instead though.

Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.

#122

Post by Zigurd »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #2

That is awful. I wonder how much of this is cursed by the bet everything on IBM Watson strategy that I have read about. Are they laying off non-Watson staff?

IBM omly appears to be betting on Watson. It is good for annoucements and putting a veneer of technology on a company that's been hollowed out. Once customers realized they could get the same Indian coders cheaper elsewhere, IBM was done.

Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.

#123

Post by mathattack »

mattgrice wrote: post #108
mathattack wrote: post #40

Here's what I don't get... If you have any options at all, why stay at a company with sub-par technology that abuses their workers? They've been stuck in low 3 Glassdoor [0] range for a while. It's layoff after layoff as they slowly dismantle the company. Why stay? Geographic limitations? Narrow skillsets? [0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/IBM-Reviews-E354.htm#trend...

Say you're a support person working at IBM in Dubuque, Iowa, where local and state taxpayers spent $50M to lure IBM in a delusion of becoming a tech hub. [1] You specialize in Lotus Notes support for local businesses like Hormel. Last year, IBM laid off 2/3 of their Dubuque workforce, 700 people, in a city of 60,000. More than 1% of the population. Your only skill is Notes, same as dozens of other people that were la…

Very good point - the human toll is tough. Did Dubuque get anything in writing about the jobs to be provided? $50M in tax breaks to support 1000 jobs is very expensive!

Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.

#125

Post by hkmurakami »

dredmorbius wrote: post #117
mathattack wrote: post #40

Here's what I don't get... If you have any options at all, why stay at a company with sub-par technology that abuses their workers? They've been stuck in low 3 Glassdoor [0] range for a while. It's layoff after layoff as they slowly dismantle the company. Why stay? Geographic limitations? Narrow skillsets? [0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/IBM-Reviews-E354.htm#trend...

Among other factors mentioned: employer-specific skillsets. Technology jobs are very highly specialised. And I'm not just speaking of computer tech. I'm old enough to have seen several generations of obsoleted "gold tickets". Nuclear Engineering, future destroyed March 28, 1979. Freeway engineers, the freeway protests of the 1960s/1970s. Big Three auto manufacturers, dream destroyed with the first oil embargo, and su…

I've been simultaneously waiting for and dreading the same future for rails engineers, since so many are under the belief that web development is the ticket...

Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.

#126

Post by PhantomGremlin »

mattzito wrote: post #47
rdtsc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may be right, but a good sign for whom, exactly? For the people who lost their jobs? For shareholders? For fans of IBM the company? For IBM. For shareholders. For people who are not laid off and still work there. > it's not the fault of the people who are being affected by this, as by and large they were not responsible for IBM's decision to get more and more into support and services. Is it surprising that IBM…

Oookay, so to dig into it: > They can provide severance packages, extra benefits maybe. Try to re-train some people perhaps. But can't keep everyone till retirement just to provide jobs (That is what Uncle Sam does). Right, but they cut their severance packages. So clearly they're trying to contain costs. So yes, that's also a good sign for IBM the corporation, less good for their employees. > Services was bringing a…

EDIT: I also would have tried to "get out in front of it" - 50,000 people's jobs don't become redundant overnight other than through wishful thinking on leadership's part.

Everything you said was good, but this was what I liked the most.

Management lives in the la-la land of denial for years and years. And then BOOM! Like a bolt out of the blue.

That's management failure, they should have seen it coming, and reacted to it, years ago. It's one of the most important aspects of their job.

Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.

#127

Post by SilasX »

dredmorbius wrote: post #117
mathattack wrote: post #40

Here's what I don't get... If you have any options at all, why stay at a company with sub-par technology that abuses their workers? They've been stuck in low 3 Glassdoor [0] range for a while. It's layoff after layoff as they slowly dismantle the company. Why stay? Geographic limitations? Narrow skillsets? [0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/IBM-Reviews-E354.htm#trend...

Among other factors mentioned: employer-specific skillsets. Technology jobs are very highly specialised. And I'm not just speaking of computer tech. I'm old enough to have seen several generations of obsoleted "gold tickets". Nuclear Engineering, future destroyed March 28, 1979. Freeway engineers, the freeway protests of the 1960s/1970s. Big Three auto manufacturers, dream destroyed with the first oil embargo, and su…

>It's not that these people are dumb, many were brilliant. But they're also laden with a tremendous amount of arcane knowledge, that, unfortunately, gets in the way of learning new skills.

I don't use the term "brilliant" for anyone who can't learn outside their narrow specialty.

Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.

#128

Post by hkmurakami »

mathattack wrote: post #40

Here's what I don't get... If you have any options at all, why stay at a company with sub-par technology that abuses their workers? They've been stuck in low 3 Glassdoor [0] range for a while. It's layoff after layoff as they slowly dismantle the company. Why stay? Geographic limitations? Narrow skillsets? [0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/IBM-Reviews-E354.htm#trend...

Because H1B.

Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.

#129

Post by wallflower »

dredmorbius wrote: post #117
mathattack wrote: post #40

Here's what I don't get... If you have any options at all, why stay at a company with sub-par technology that abuses their workers? They've been stuck in low 3 Glassdoor [0] range for a while. It's layoff after layoff as they slowly dismantle the company. Why stay? Geographic limitations? Narrow skillsets? [0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/IBM-Reviews-E354.htm#trend...

Among other factors mentioned: employer-specific skillsets. Technology jobs are very highly specialised. And I'm not just speaking of computer tech. I'm old enough to have seen several generations of obsoleted "gold tickets". Nuclear Engineering, future destroyed March 28, 1979. Freeway engineers, the freeway protests of the 1960s/1970s. Big Three auto manufacturers, dream destroyed with the first oil embargo, and su…

Perhaps IBM has more workers that are like the workers at AT&T than we would have expected. AT&T is in a difficult position as its extremely large workforce is being attacked into irrelevance by new technology upstarts.

> To Mr. Stephenson, it should be an easy choice for most workers: Learn new skills or find your career choices are very limited.

“There is a need to retool yourself, and you should not expect to stop,” he said in a recent interview at AT&T’s Dallas headquarters. People who do not spend five to 10 hours a week in online learning, he added, “will obsolete themselves with the technology.”...

By 2020, Mr. Stephenson hopes AT&T will be well into its transformation into a computing company that manages all sorts of digital things: phones, satellite television and huge volumes of data, all sorted through software managed in the cloud.

That can’t happen unless at least some of his work force is retrained to deal with the technology. It’s not a young group:

The average tenure at AT&T is 12 years, or 22 years if you don’t count the people working in call centers. And many employees don’t have experience writing open-source software or casually analyzing terabytes of customer data."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/technology/gearing-up-for-...

Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.

#130

Post by ngoede »

eru wrote: post #103
nickff wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$6.2M is not a lot for a big company if the leader can increase sales or profits by even a few percent... which does not appear to be the case here.

Perhaps he kept them from shrinking faster?

Not to nit-pick but the CEO of IBM is a woman.
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