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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.

#341

Post by douche »

vacri wrote: post #205
licoricetic wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe those are different people

A venn diagram will provide all possible combinations of opinions, but there are definitely people out there who suggest 'he/she' or 'zhe' instead of 'they' because the latter 'sounds funny'

Zhe has got to be the stupidest proposal I've heard of. Let's invent a word using a letter that almost never leads non-loanword English words to solve a problem that only pedants and people who are eager to find sexist oppression in the innocuous are bothered by.

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

#342

Post by mcguire »

zenlikethat wrote: post #215
gozur88 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think it affects your job prospects when you refuse?

If they won't hire you because you won't disclose your salary, you don't want to work for that company anyway.

Problem: cannot find jobs.

Solution: don't want to work for them anyway.

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

#343

Post by spdy »

ransom1538 wrote: post #219
dredmorbius wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Regarding skill sets. I have only been in software 12 years or so, but I noticed a type of tech 'gamble'. Basically, when you decided to learn something in tech you are basically gambling that the tech will last. In 2007 many faced a simple decision: AS3 or iOS. Supposed you chose AS3. Then, worked on it from 2009-2012, quite profitably. Currently the AS3 job outlook is horrific, and all that knowledge is a waste. No…

I agree that switching from nuclear scientist to something else might be hard but with programming languages after a certain amount of years the gamble is gone.

The core concepts of every language are the same. If you acquired a certain amount of experience, switching is just looking for best practices in your new language. Of course it will take some time to ramp up but within a month you are somewhat productive within 3 months no one will see the difference.

Its all about problem solving.

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

#344

Post by freehunter »

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...

As someone who works at IBM currently: because they have the best technology in my area of expertise. Some of their tech in dying industries is sub-par, sure, but you're hard pressed to find a better security appliance than QRadar. Couple that with the many, many security acquisitions they've made over the last year or so, and it's easy to see why someone would go there and stay there for a few years. It's hard to say no when your coworker is Bruce Schneier, for example.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/02/resilient_sys...

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

#345

Post by OpenDrapery »

rdtsc wrote: post #31
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…

> 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…

Massive layoffs are not good for the people who remain at the company. It is a major drag on overall morale, and how does one who survives round one of layoffs ever have any piece of mind that s/he won't be next?

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

#346

Post by enjo »

epx wrote: post #161
ryandrake wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're forgetting what the early 2000's were like for software developers.

Had a friend that literally had no money for food in this time (2002, actually).

I entered the job market in 2002, it was absolutely brutal. It took a REALLY lucky set of circumstances to come together for me to find a job. That one job was it too. I was in Dallas while my wife was in PhD school and I had two interviews in 6 months.

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

#347

Post by jhallenworld »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #323
dredmorbius wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Technology jobs are very highly specialised. And I'm not just speaking of computer tech." I would argue that computer tech is kind of an exception. I can see a Nuclear or Aerospace Engineer having trouble adapting his knowledge and skills to other professions, since that knowledge is deeply tied to the domain, but a Perl (or C++/Java or whatever) hacker should't really have too many problems in transitioning to anot…

I agree. Actually it's interesting to see how IBM is trying very hard to stay relevant as far as programming languages in their products. If you look at the video in this "API Connect" demo, you can see support for microservices in Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, Node.js, Go, and Swift. As an old time C/C++ guy it's difficult to determine which of these are fads. Also no C# support, but maybe this will change with the opening of .net.

https://developer.ibm.com/apimanagement/2016/02/18/announcin...

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

#348

Post by icebraining »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #17
adventured wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the consequence of their bet everything on services approach while the global economy stalls out. Simultaneously they gutted the technology side of their company and vastly under-invested in R&D/innovation, instead choosing to focus on financial engineering to fake earnings per share growth. They should have been at the forefront of cloud services, with a business as large as what AWS is. Instead, they spent the…

The stock market doesn't reward investing in R&D because you can't benefit from it in three months.

I like how investors are chastised for both having valuations much about current earnings and for only thinking about the next three months.

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

#349

Post by mcguire »

beachy wrote: post #188
ImTalking wrote: post #53

I worked for IBM during the 80s at the height of IBM's power. It was the golden ticket. 400,000 employees and everyone was convinced it was going to hit $100B market cap. When I quit to form my own business, my 2nd line manager said "Why would anyone want to quit IBM?". Long time ago.

I worked at IBM in the 80s too, like my dad before me. The two things that struck me as unusual even then were that noone in the company has ever been laid off, and that there was widespread belief that the company really did have 2 or 3 generations of new product lines that they kept in storage, ready to release if the competition ever started to catch up.

I worked at IBM in the '90s and again in the early 2000s. (Yeah, I'm not bright.) I worked on three major projects (i.e. things that had newspaper articles at the time and Wikipedia entries today) and relatively minor one (cough, cough, AACS). None of the projects shipped. One had hard technical problems, but those paled in comparison to the management problems. In the final case, the entire division disappeared in the reorganization.

IBM has had no idea what it was doing since the '80s, at least.

Amusing note about the product lines in storage: the second project was using some very nice early PowerPC hardware for development machines (codenamed "sandlefoot"). Turns out that there was a warehouse full of them somewhere because they got as far as medium scale production and never shipped.

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

#350

Post by mcguire »

rayiner wrote: post #154
dredmorbius wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Should've seen the writing on the wall when it fell.

Too late by then.

There's a good documentary about this period called Falling Down, by the way.

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