Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 428 posts

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

#71

Post by daodedickinson »

belltaco wrote: post #65
product50 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably heresy. No one talks about the H-1B worker who got laid off - it is only about the ones who stay. Not sure if everyone in this thread is aware but if an H-1B worker is laid off, he/she gets only 30 days to find a new job. If he is not able to land a new gig within 30 days, they have to leave US for good. So I will not judge here based on a couple of FB comments.

There is actually no grace period. They can be legally picked up and put in deportation proceeding the minute they're fired and they start accruing illegal presence immediately.

What percentage of people that can be legally picked up get picked up?

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

#72

Post by daodedickinson »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #32

It seems untrue if an IBM spokesperson denied it. It would look really bad if their official spokesperson denied it and then the next day had to say the opposite.

Eh, maybe it's a "No layoffs... this week" Melissa Mayer joke.

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

#73

Post by lr4444lr »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #32

It seems untrue if an IBM spokesperson denied it. It would look really bad if their official spokesperson denied it and then the next day had to say the opposite.

Didn't that happen with Marissa Mayer's accidental leak and cover-up of the Yahoo layoffs a week early not too long ago?

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/01/19/marissa-mayer-taunt...

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

#74

Post by ImTalking »

rdtsc wrote: post #11

That 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…

The only good sign for corporations is organic growth. Amazon has it right.

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

#75

Post by PakG1 »

makecheck wrote: post #34
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…

Executive pay doesn’t seem to follow the high-risk-high-reward scenario; they keep the “high reward” but see apparently none of the “high risk”. A much more balanced system would be something like, for each executive: - Your base pay is $51 million. - If you FAIL at your task, YOU OWE THE COMPANY $50 million. - If you succeed, you receive an extra $20 million. If you choose to split $15 million of this reward with em…

- If you FAIL at your task, YOU OWE THE COMPANY $50 million.

No sane person would take a CEO job with that type of compensation clause. While the CEO bears responsibility, the world doesn't make it easy.

1. Today's stock market doesn't reward long-term disruptive thinking that isn't guaranteed to be a sure bet. Heck, and there are no sure bets anyway. The stock market rewards profits here and now that also extrapolate to good future profit trends. Why screw up a good thing to grab something unproven? That's why BlackBerry's stock was so high as the iPhone was coming out. CEOs are indirectly pressured to not take risks. If they do and they fail, they deserve to pay a huge penalty? Exactly what could Blockbuster have done with all of its investments into real estate and retail employees to win against the Internet? There is no scenario where they could have won without decimating everything the company used to do.

2. Black swan events are extremely unpredictable precisely because * nobody* sees them coming. If I ran an ice harvesting business, how could I have predicted the invention of freon? Once I learned about freon, how should I have responded with all of my investments made into labour and equipment for sawing ice out of frozen lakes? There aren't many situations where a win is easy if an entire industry gets destroyed because of some black swan event.

3. All of the above goes double when the new CEO is supposed to lead a turnaround. They negotiate their parachutes first so that they can focus 100% of their energy on saving the company instead of worrying about themselves. It's why on airplanes they explain to you to put your own oxygen mask on first and then help others. You can't help others if you yourself are in trouble. Not to mention, turnarounds are not fun. They're also paid for stress and the need to make often uncomfortable decisions where they must play the villain.

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

#76

Post by [deleted] »

makecheck wrote: post #34
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…

Executive pay doesn’t seem to follow the high-risk-high-reward scenario; they keep the “high reward” but see apparently none of the “high risk”. A much more balanced system would be something like, for each executive: - Your base pay is $51 million. - If you FAIL at your task, YOU OWE THE COMPANY $50 million. - If you succeed, you receive an extra $20 million. If you choose to split $15 million of this reward with em…

[deleted]

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

#77

Post by danso »

ReadEvalPost wrote: post #25
apo wrote: post #5

IBM layoff rumors have been around for awhile: http://www.cringely.com/2015/01/26/ibm-right-gadfly/ I'm not sure what to make of this one.

I'm unsure on the actual sizing but that wasn't exactly a rumor, that's when I was laid off. This was after a furlough and narrowly avoiding another layoff less than a year into my employment. Needless to say I'm glad I'm gone, even if it wasn't my choice.

How easy was it to find something new if you don't mind me asking?

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

#78

Post by makecheck »

ams6110 wrote: post #52
makecheck wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Executive pay doesn’t seem to follow the high-risk-high-reward scenario; they keep the “high reward” but see apparently none of the “high risk”. A much more balanced system would be something like, for each executive: - Your base pay is $51 million. - If you FAIL at your task, YOU OWE THE COMPANY $50 million. - If you succeed, you receive an extra $20 million. If you choose to split $15 million of this reward with em…

I do agree with the point that the executives often don't appear to suffer the pain of failure, but if the layoffs are of the scope mentioned, the number of jobs that could be saved with $50,000,000 is somewhere on the order of a rounding error.

Per executive. Assuming a generous $100k cost per employee, that’s still 500 jobs.

And really, I think saving 10 jobs or 5 jobs is still fine, if that were the number.

No single person can be so good at a job that it warrants sending hundreds more out the door. Any company that thinks this should try an experiment: fire the executive, ask any employee at all in the company to take over the job for 1/20th the salary and see if the outcome is measurably worse.

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

#79

Post by coverband »

mathattack wrote: post #28
rdtsc wrote: post #11

That 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 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.

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

#80

Post by mrbill »

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...

Probably also a lot of people who have been with the company for decades and expected to retire from there as well.
Post reply on HN