Earlier quoted context omitted.
What advantage does that give the company?
Much lower salaries with no long-term liabilities?
Why do you think H1B employees are paid lower salaries? And what long-term liabilities are you referring to?
Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.
41–50 of 428 posts
Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.
#42Earlier 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…
A company is it's employees. If IBM still has cheese slicer designers in 2016, it's because they failed to train them. The discussion we're having here is because there seem to be no repercussions to their failure.
Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.
#43Earlier 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 see people repeat this but it's not true. The stock market heavily rewards investing in R&D if investors think the research is going somewhere. Biotech companies are a good example.
Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.
#44That is a good sign. It means the ship is slowly turning around. It sucks for the employees being laid off, no doubt. However they have to do this. There is no other way. They bet big on support and services in early 2000s. So they have lots of those employees. Could they all start to learn new things adapt to the new environment, yeah, some will but not everyone will. Heck, if they didn't lay off people, they'd stil…
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…
> It seems to me like IBM is in perpetual layoff mode.
Any large technology company has to be.
> It's that it's grinding down into irrelevance
Maybe? Who knows. They hung for 100 some years. As an entity they've done some things right for that to happen.
Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much lower salaries with no long-term liabilities?
Why do you think H1B employees are paid lower salaries? And what long-term liabilities are you referring to?
That's the stereotype. As a former H1B holder myself I can say that I never experienced it.
That said, if your employer sponsors you for a green card while you're on an H1B you are quite trapped in your job, and I wouldn't be surprised if people found their wages not rising as much as they would have otherwise.
Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.
#46Earlier 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…
A company is it's employees. If IBM still has cheese slicer designers in 2016, it's because they failed to train them. The discussion we're having here is because there seem to be no repercussions to their failure.
No, actually a company is its shareholders. Literally. Employees are the hired help.
Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.
#47Earlier 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…
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 huge amount of money during late 90s early to mid 2000s. It just doesn't anymore
Now we have to step into the realm of the possible. Would it have been possible for IBM to look at their services backlog and contract timeframes, churn/retention rates and a few years ago say, "Shit, these contracts don't work out from an economic perspective, and maybe we should start to attrition out these deals because they're not going to work out long term?"
Maybe someone did (in fact, I'm almost certain someone did somewhere). But I'd also bet that some execs somewhere decided to keep going, keep signing money-losing contracts, that everyone started to live a lie so that they can get promoted, keep their bonuses, etc.
And now that they've now decided it was a mistake- the company doesn't pay the price (reduced severance), it's the workers who do.
> We are posting on HN right. This startup land. Every 9 out of 10 startups will die. Are you holding them just as responsible? Or is there some implicit assumption that if you work for IBM then you'll be good till retirement.
So, I've had to lay people off at a startup. It's terrible. We went out of our way to take care of them, including offering long severance packages, and cutting salaries and bonuses at an exec level to mitigate the layoffs. It sucks, but that was our obligation.
And I do hold startups somewhat responsible, but its also a different scenario - early stage startups are a known risk.
The big point I want to highlight is that I believe employers have an obligation to look after their employees, and when as a corporation they made a bet that didnt' work out, or had a profitable business that is no longer profitable, the ethical obligation is on them to look after those employees.
> How about this, what would you do if you ran IBM and you ended up with 50000 employees trained to do something that just doesn't bring profit anymore?
Treat them with dignity. Pay them a lot of money based on their time of service. Recognize that we should see this as a failure as an organization. Never refer to it as a "good thing"
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.
Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.
#48That is a good sign. It means the ship is slowly turning around. It sucks for the employees being laid off, no doubt. However they have to do this. There is no other way. They bet big on support and services in early 2000s. So they have lots of those employees. Could they all start to learn new things adapt to the new environment, yeah, some will but not everyone will. Heck, if they didn't lay off people, they'd stil…
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 agree, IBM's revenues are down down down every year, and they "make up for it" by replacing long-term their first-world workforce with a cheaper offshore workforce (showing more profit on less revenue).
This is all financial engineering and next year---I predict---their revenue will be down again, but they will show still more profit.
Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that's illegal, and doing so en masse is going to spark Congressional hearings.
It is 100% illegal, but Disney got away with it so other big firms are following suit.
Disney initially 'got away with it' because they kept the whole thing at an arms length by outsourcing to Cognizant. "Oh that's what you did, hire H1B? Yeah that wasn't us... We just outsourced to Cognizant so you should ask them about what's going on".
Super shady, but it was a fleeting attempt at plausible deniability on behalf of Disney execs.
Re: Reports Coming in of Big IBM Layoffs Underway in the U.S.
#50That is a good sign. It means the ship is slowly turning around. It sucks for the employees being laid off, no doubt. However they have to do this. There is no other way. They bet big on support and services in early 2000s. So they have lots of those employees. Could they all start to learn new things adapt to the new environment, yeah, some will but not everyone will. Heck, if they didn't lay off people, they'd stil…
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…
IBM's strategy for some years now can be more or less summarized as "offshoring". That's one reason the layoffs are only going a little at a time in waves, because you can't offshore the whole company in one fell swoop. Instead they're trying to do a ship-of-Theseus type thing where they piece-by-piece replace all the American staff with cheaper offshore staff, hoping they can pull it off while the ownership and business stays (mostly) in place.