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IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'

wraltechwire.com

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Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'

#121

Post by dfc »

walshemj wrote: post #110
dfc wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you notice that the quote at the top of mjn's comment says "here in the states"? The geography was clear from the start. The only person that did not realize this was you, but at least your ignorance was a nice excuse to get some America hating in before bedtime.

The op was explicitly about IBM in India and the redundancy there FFS. Where exactly does the WARN act apply to India? abotu as much as fucking TUPE does Its fracking karma whoring civilians chiming in with anecdotes they heard from their mate down the golf club about labour law in a different country entirely that piss me off

Yes the original link was about IBM/India. Smoyer started a discussion by comparing the layoff in India to his personal experiences in the states. From smoyer down, this thread is about layoffs in the states. That is why someone commented on US labor laws. Why are you so threatened by a discussion of US labor law?

Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'

#122

Post by fennecfoxen »

tluyben2 wrote: post #48
fennecfoxen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says they messed up? IBM sold their server business and Lenovo didn't want all the employees. IBM made money off the sale, IBM saves money not employing everyone anymore, profits and shareholder value. For a variety of other layoffs, adding management punishment would make some sense. This one, not so much.

Like I said; not messing up would be making sure they have other jobs either at IBM or elsewhere. Not calling laying off 13000 people messing up sounds strange to me; you have a social responsibility here. People are not things you can discard when you don't need them anymore. If you have no other way, then ok, but IBM is not close to any kind of bankruptcy or situation like that.

> not messing up would be making sure they have other jobs either at IBM or elsewhere.

Oh, I see. You're a Communist and think IBM exists to provide jobs, not to provide shareholder profits. That'll necessarily lead you to a different conclusion than it led me.

Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'

#123

Post by crag »

mrjatx wrote: post #114
crag wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cloud is not the silver bullet." You can say that again. And it depends on where you are. In South Florida the cloud - well - sucks. Due to the carriers not being able to keep their networks up. I know companies who moved their PBX into the cloud (I'm going to name carriers) with Earthlink, Windstream, Comcast and ATT - misdirected, noisy (like talking in a wind tunnel), dropped calls; all classic signs of over exte…

You're using a very, very basic definition of cloud- one that really shouldn't exist anymore. You're talking about moving a physical service into a hosted service; IAAS/SAAS. We're talking about actually developing and coding the IAAS/SAAS solutions to be cloud ready and performant. This infers automation, utilizing version control systems, scaling, stateless servers etc. What those companies did was move their serve…

"You're using a very, very basic definition of cloud- one that really shouldn't exist anymore."

Really? This is exactly what the "cloud" service are selling. Ok there's a middle-guy in there. The actual service provider. But from a customer point of view - this is the cloud.

IBM, Microsoft, Google sales guys are all over the place "selling" the cloud. "Move your infrastructure to our cloud - cheaper and access everywhere on everything. No need to maintain a server, or even a PC. Run your business from your iPad".

Sounds great. And would be great, if we had the communication infrastructure in place to support it. Look, it doesn't matter what's running the cloud if no one buys the "cloud".

Back to your topic.. I agree. But we've seen this story before from IBM (and Cisco and MS). They are late to every party these days.

Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'

#124

Post by mathattack »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #116
mathattack wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Though I find corporate hiring freezes to be a reaction to organizational disfunction. If you starve your growing areas because you haven't found a way to keep your stagnant divisions from increasing headcount, then you have bigger problems. Apple used to be guilty of this. They would do hiring freezes, then when they'd lift them, managers would hire everyone in sight. There was no concept of internal transfers…

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.

Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'

#125

Post by reversethrust »

booruguru wrote: post #106
jmsduran wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former IBM'er here. The reason IBM gives severance and extended benefits is not to look good, it's to prevent their employees from filing unlawful termination suits. Second, there is a rumor in IBM that once an employee is marked as an RA (layoff), they are placed on an HR blacklist preventing them from finding another job internally. Departments that hire an employee placed on the RA blacklist are believed to have t…

> Departments that hire an employee placed on the RA blacklist are believed to have to layoff another employee to take their place. I don't understand. Why is it so important to prevent laid off workers from being rehired/transferred? What's the rationale?

I've only ever heard of one person being RA'd (she then went to Lenovo, and was eventually let go from there) and coming back. Now she's a manager at IBM again.

Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'

#126

Post by reversethrust »

boobsbr wrote: post #115
deepuj wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, IBM Domino is much more than a mail server. It along with Notes is the single biggest cause of loss of productivity for offices infected by it.

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...

Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'

#127

Post by reversethrust »

nailer wrote: post #40
dagw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope jobs will re-emerge onshore later on. If by "onshore" you mean China, then you'll probably get your wish. Otherwise, probably not.

I've worked with 10 Indian employees that could easily be replaced with a single competent westerner (of any descent whatsoever) for 1/3 the price. I suspect I'm not alone.

When I started working with colleagues in ISL (and, later, CDL), i would concur. But, dammit, the ones i worked with learned FAST. And they were smart. The guys in CDL seemed to work 24x7 - on their schedule and on the north american time schedule. Like..when do they sleep?

Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'

#128

Post by reversethrust »

For what it's worth, a colleague asked a coworker (in Austin) who works regularly with India STG staff. To the coworker in Austin, they aren't aware of any of their Indian STG contacts, nor their teams, being affected. At least not as per the article.

Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'

#129

Post by reversethrust »

pekru wrote: post #59
josefresco wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Let's say that again: as of 2013, there were still hundreds of mission-critical IBM internal applications running on physical hardware until I was given the project to transition them to virtual servers." Is this so shocking or even wrong ? I would expect a company with the history and size of IBM to have tons of "old" hardware/processes. In fact it's that history, perceived wisdom and entrenchment that I would assu…

Exactly. Cloud is not the silver bullet. But at the same time, there is not much merit in choosing to be a luddite and not use the capabilities of cloud where there's a genuine need. I feel IBM, to an extent is guilty of not pursuing things on the cloud front and is now paying for it.

As for the whole discussion about IBM's involvement with "cloud" - I guess it depends a bit on how you define it. AIX first started virtualization on a large scale years ago, didn't they? And since AIX 5, wasn't every AIX instance an LPAR? PowerVM / VMControl had the essential features of the cloud - virtualization, metering, billing, partition mobility, etc. It was just never marketed in the high volume, low margin way that the public cloud providers are marketing. But, I guess, even then, due to internal politics and protecting their teams, PowerVM and VMControl became like beasts. Software that was produced (E.g. SmartCloud), by edict, had to use it, and those additional layers became a nightmare.

So, I think it's wrong to say that IBM didn't pursue things on the cloud front. There was some work on it. But the execs - not the worker bees - certainly screwed that pooch. And it'll be the execs getting the bonuses for courageously reorganizing their departments too.

Re: IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe as 'slaughter' and 'massive'

#130

Post by dredmorbius »

TsomArp wrote: post #71
pekru wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, like you say, it is probably not the India and China people's fault, > their level of english is terrible Indians'/Chinese'

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 companies, as well as within companies (one, otherwise brilliant, co-worker had the specifically annoying verbal tic of pronouncing the letter 'R' as 'A', which given local acronym naming schemes was very frequently encountered.

I've also, of course, met (and worked with) foreigners of all stripes with flawless (and often charmingly accented) English.

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