Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S. • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by pjlegato » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:10 AM UTC

metaphorm wrote: post #100

gozur88 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, actually a company is its shareholders. Literally. Employees are the hired help.

shareholder capitalism is a noxious falsehood that has very unfortunately been enshrined in our current interpretation of the law. this should not be regarded as a baseline truth nor a desirable transitional state. it is a bad idea that we must not succumb to. companies are multi-faceted entities with many different stakeholders. the workers are a 100% necessary stakeholder and the company cannot operate without them…

Many factories are completely or almost automated now, especially in Japan. This trend will only grow larger in the future as robotics improves. Even the repair and maintenance of the robots will soon be done by other robots.

AI is already doing the same thing for many white collar jobs.

The company of the future will indeed operate without workers.

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

#232

Post by hga » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:10 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #216

SilasX wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And learn how to job search. There's surely a better job that guy could have found.

Other people have pointed out how rough the period around 2000 was but it's also worth looking at how similar things were the previous time that'd happened in the early 90s when the defense contractors laid off a ton of engineers as the Cold War died down. That meant that you had large numbers of people with similar backgrounds all on the job market, in the same areas at the same time, competing for a sharply reduced…

And that's wasn't the first Cold War related layoff period, we largely stopped fighting it in the '70s (roughly "Vietnam" through when the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave Carter a clue), and between that and the end of the Apollo program aerospace crashed and never returned to its old level.

My family hired an EE to do electrical engineering in ~1972 and he was thrilled to be able to get back to it after doing all sort of random service jobs including "cleaning toilets" (the latter might have been exaggerated to me to motivate working hard to get into college), I learned a whole lot from him.

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

#233

Post by sumoboy » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:12 AM UTC

coverband wrote: post #79

mathattack wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like IBM is in perpetual layoff mode. It's not that the ship is turning around - it's that it's grinding down into irrelevance. In a sense IBM is doing it the right way - returning the capital (via dividends and buybacks) and people (unfortunately via layoffs) back to the market to work on productive things in configurations that add value. Better to do this than to waste everyone's time and money. (Bu…

I respectfully disagree. I've been observing IBM expand in a couple of thriving sectors (e.g. infosec, cloud computing, healthcare, analytics) and grow by making smart purchases. At the same time, Warren Buffett has reportedly increased his IBM stake. If these are any indicators, they are actually becoming very relevant.

IBM is playing catch-up to all of these services mentioned as they continue to buy companies giving the impression of growth and sector leaders. They should ask there Watson computer how to be a competitive business.

Buffet buying IBM goes completely against his philosophy buying tech so he'll sugar coat it not to look completely stupid.

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

#234

Post by hga » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:17 AM UTC

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…

Aerospace engineers, dream destroyed with the fall of the Soviet Union and redundancies in the military-industrial complex throughout NATO powers.

Although they should have had warning because a worse crash of aerospace happened in the early '70s, see my earlier response: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=11222148

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

#235

Post by x5n1 » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:20 AM UTC

alayne wrote: post #68

komaromy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound like all that much for the CEO of an IBM-sized company.

17.9 million total compensation for 2014, 19.9 for 2015 http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-ceo-ginni-rometty-gets-a-...

Only? Poor CEO.

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

#236

Post by oldmanjay » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:21 AM UTC

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #126

mattzito wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The ongoing reaction would have been letting people go earlier as they stopped pursuing unworkable businesses sooner. Is that what you had in mind?

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

#237

Post by Gibbon1 » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:21 AM UTC

jwiley wrote: post #97

During the dot-com bust of the early 2000s, I was working at a super-market. One of the guys stocking shelves was a software engineer laid off by a large company after 40 years. The management at Winn Dixie put him stacking boxes in the freezer section...since they knew he needed the money and wouldn't quit. Maybe he deserved to get fired, maybe he didn't. The lesson to me that has been reinforced over my career in t…

I started trying to find summer jobs while in college 1981-1983. Totally totally failed until summer of 1984. I felt like such a loser and my parents could not understand how I kept getting turned down for jobs.

I don't think the valley really recovered until 1987-1988. Part of that was because the last of the manufacturing went to Asia. And also because the Japanese were trying to keep the Yen weak and the Reagan administration was trying to keep the dollar strong. This didn't bode well for the tech industry in the Bay Area.

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

#238

Post by fencepost » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:24 AM UTC

I saw some reports that a lot of those affected are ones who've been there for a long time (= older workers), along with comments along the lines of "last year I'd have gotten 25 weeks severance - now I'm going to get 4."

Makes you wonder whether any of those folks will now decide that the reduced severance payment isn't worth giving up the opportunity to sue.

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

#239

Post by Nutmog » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:24 AM UTC

reddytowns wrote: post #133

jacquesm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She.

Damn English and its lack of gender non-specific pronouns! Seriously, though... what is the implication that I am missing? What is the point of bringing up the CEO's pay? Should it be government mandated, is that what you all believe?

"He" used to be gender neutral [1]. If readers stop worrying about gender so much then it would still work. We tolerate it in old writing like the bible and little quotes of the form "He who ... shall ..."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neu...

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

#240

Post by praneshp » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:29 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #60

marcus_holmes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article IBM bought Softlayer and has only just launched BlueMix. I tried Bluemix and found it unoriginal and a cit crap. Not that the world of cloud services moves according to my preferences, but I'm not seeing it used anywhere else either. If IBM is "prominent" in cloud services it's from acquisitions. Whereas AWS pioneered the cloud industry. This is certainly "doing things right" in that it's pro…

> but I'm not seeing it used anywhere else either. Bluemix is a re-branded Cloud Foundry. IBM donates engineering to the Cloud Foundry Foundation. CF is used in a lot of places. Disclaimer: I work for Pivotal, the leading donor of engineering to Cloud Foundry. We have our own distribution of Cloud Foundry, PCF, that is a competitor to Bluemix.

Yes, but IBM somehow made CF, which is awesome to use, into a piece of shit offering with Bluemix. I hope their enterprise offering (if any) is better.