>"IBM does not comment on rumours, even ridiculous or baseless ones," the company said in an email to Reuters.
... isn't that exactly what it is doing?
IBM says 'several thousand' layoffs on the way
21–30 of 107 posts
Re: IBM says 'several thousand' layoffs on the way
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think for an error of this magnitude some kind of apology would be in order. If he can't manage that he's lost a lot of credibility.
An error of what magnitude? IBM has not said exactly how many people will be laid off so we do not know what the magnitude of the error will be. Furthermore, they can certainly perform a 110K layoff by splitting it into multiple layoffs of thousands.
Response from IBM (via its Hong Kong office’s blog):
IBM does not comment on rumors or speculation. However, we’ll make an exception when the speculation is stupid. That’s the case here, where an industry gadfly is trying to make noise about how IBM is about to lay off 26 percent of its workforce. That’s over 100,000 people, which is totally ludicrous.
The fact is that IBM already announced, after 3Q earnings report, that the company would take a $600 million charge for restructuring. That’s several thousand people. Not 10,000, or 100,000. Moreover, IBM currently has job postings for more than 10,000 professionals worldwide, with more than half of them in growth areas such as cloud, analytics, security and mobile technologies. IBM’s new cloud leader, Senior Vice President Robert LeBlanc, told Fortune this week that IBM has plans to hire 1,000 cloud professionals.
A little perspective on IBM’s earnings is in order. The company still makes huge profit… $21 billion in operating pre-tax profit last year. And IBM’s “strategic imperatives” represent 27% ( and growing ) of the company’s total revenue… $25 billion in revenues, up 16 percent. We have high growth in a substantial portion of the portfolio, and those areas (CAMSS) have better-than-normal margins in areas that matter most to clients today — that’s the heart of the IBM transformation.
Re: IBM says 'several thousand' layoffs on the way
#23How many employees does IBM even have in the US anyway? Except for a few research or sales divisions, I'm sure very little is left.
IBM doesn't report its headcount in the US any longer, but in 2009 IBM had approximately 105,000 employees in the US, based on congressional testimony (via this article http://www.computerworld.com/article/2520399/it-outsourcing/... ).
IBM has 431,212 employees worldwide (according to their 2013 annual report).
Re: IBM says 'several thousand' layoffs on the way
#24So does that mean we can finally stop listening to Cringely altogether? I am an IBM employee and I can tell you a lot of my fellow IBMers had a really bad week-end because of his ridiculous claims. For context see previous discussion on the 110000 employee layoff that won't happen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8944637
I think for an error of this magnitude some kind of apology would be in order. If he can't manage that he's lost a lot of credibility.
I don't feel that an apology cuts it anymore. We have so many sources of complete garbage. Imagine if this was what caused the significant drop of the IBM stock price (on the 21st)
Could we create a blacklist of sources that just aren't credible that we can just filter them out? e.g. Sky News. Perhaps negative weighting won't work; perhaps we should add a credibility weighting for respected works (web sites, or authors?)
Re: IBM says 'several thousand' layoffs on the way
#25So does that mean we can finally stop listening to Cringely altogether? I am an IBM employee and I can tell you a lot of my fellow IBMers had a really bad week-end because of his ridiculous claims. For context see previous discussion on the 110000 employee layoff that won't happen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8944637
Just read Cringely's article, and think IBM's response takes just the right tone:
"IBM does not comment on rumors or speculation. However, we’ll make an exception when the speculation is stupid."
Re: IBM says 'several thousand' layoffs on the way
#26>"IBM does not comment on rumours, even ridiculous or baseless ones," the company said in an email to Reuters. ... isn't that exactly what it is doing?
"IBM does not comment on rumors or speculation. However, we’ll make an exception when the speculation is stupid."
Re: IBM says 'several thousand' layoffs on the way
#27I think IBM should stop selling the ultra crap software that is selling right now like Websphere commerce and all the crappy enterprisey stuff. They really need something good to change and if layoffs are for the better, it's probably worth trying. If the plan is to keep this stuff going, it's gonna be bad.
Yes the most interesting revelation in Cringely's rumor was that IBM made software.
Let's be honest: An big IT product is about 25 programmers and 25 diverse people (incl marketers, designers, accountants) working for 3-10 years. With this you make a GitHub, a Word, an IE. IBM could be owning the planet today. But no, they're in the business of hotels, golf, and conferences.
Re: IBM says 'several thousand' layoffs on the way
#28The correction is coming, and companies are starting to lay off people (like EBay doing "restructuring"). Some companies do global office "optimization" - i.e. completely closing offices in some countries/locations. Given that IBM commented on such a "baseless and ridiculous" claim puts a lot of foundation under it. Obviously not all the 100K at once. After all laying off people in Germany is completely different process than in CA. The fact that they point to open listings just shows that a lot of it will be sold under the sauce of "rebalancing" - lets layoff 10K there and hire the "best" 1K of them here. I've seen that an another legendary SV company (some of its former offices are occupied nowadays by a very "Like"-able company) I think IBM has big plan to close some regional offices, downsize/close some projects and to spin off some pieces with resulting IBM headcount expected being 100K less than today.
Re: IBM says 'several thousand' layoffs on the way
#29Cringely definitely tends to... exaggerate but I have to say, getting IBM to even ballpark the number of people they're cutting is quite a feat. Remember this is the company that doesn't break down its head count for "competitive reasons" and prefers to stagger cuts so they don't trigger WARN in various jurisdictions.
Re: IBM says 'several thousand' layoffs on the way
#30So does that mean we can finally stop listening to Cringely altogether? I am an IBM employee and I can tell you a lot of my fellow IBMers had a really bad week-end because of his ridiculous claims. For context see previous discussion on the 110000 employee layoff that won't happen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8944637
I don't think today's IBM ever planned to layoff 110k at once. Lay off 10k here, 10k there, call one a workforce restructuring, another "an innovation related rebalancing plan", blah blah blah. It seems highly unlikely to me that IBM would just up and lay off 110k workers. Ignoring any other issues, the political blowback and PR blowback they'd get from politicians would be huge right now. IBM doesn't want to get in…
[deleted]