IBM fires small-town workers • Hacker News Board

Re: IBM fires small-town workers

#41

Post by gaius » Mon, Mar 03, 2014, 2:43 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #40

gaius wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No company hires just because. They have a plan and need people to execute it. If those people do their jobs well and still the company fails, then logically, you would keep the workers and replace the management. But it never seems to work like that.

Say that IBM had a plan that involved hiring 5000 pastry chefs. They did their jobs excellently, but it turned out that nobody wanted servers that baked doughnuts. Fire the management who came up with that stinker, or not, either way--but what good will come in keeping the 5000 pastry chefs?

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

Re: IBM fires small-town workers

#42

Post by jedmeyers » Mon, Mar 03, 2014, 3:36 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #39

mattdlondon wrote: post #16

I was previously an IBMer (not US based) until I left a couple of years ago, and I know someone very close to me who has just been offered redundancy from IBM (also not US based). I appreciate the company's responsibilities are to the shareholders, but their approach seems to be short-sighted. The culture in IBM seems to be if you are a sales person or a project manager you are the well-treated elite, and anyone else…

> The culture in IBM seems to be if you are a sales person or a project manager you are the well-treated elite, and anyone else (i.e. the researchers, the developers, designers, consultants - basically anyone who actually makes anything that IBM sells) can go fuck themselves and are treated as dispensable/replaceable assets. That's a somewhat-sensible philosophy for a services company/consultancy (whose brand-name is…

If the company does not care about the quality of those services then I guess they can do that. How long will the brand stay after that is a another question. I would not bet for long.

Re: IBM fires small-town workers

#43

Post by pesenti » Mon, Mar 03, 2014, 3:37 PM UTC

alexkus wrote: post #26

pesenti wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current CEO has been at IBM for 33 years while the previous one had been there for 39 years... So no, these CEO don't move on to the next company.

That's not quite the same thing. You could replace the IBM CEO every week for many years to come with someone who has been at the company for 30+ years.

I understand. But IBM CEOs are just not the "rotating CEO" type. For most (if not all) it was their last position before retiring.