IBM Set for Record Layoff, 110,000 Jobs Eliminated
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@Dashrender said:
Wow... This could be a blow to the industry at large, we could see a fall in wages with this many people now in the market, depending on the positions.
Yes, although we don't know how many of those are IT people. IBM isn't an IT company, remember, they are a manufacturer. Mostly those will be manufacturing people. Only a very small number of IBM are in IT. When I was there we had about one IT person for every 500 manufacturing people (engineers, secretaries, factory workers, chemists, etc.)
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IBM's Response
IBM does not comment on rumors or speculation. However, we’ll make an exception when the speculation is stupid. That’s the case >here, where an industry gadfly is trying to make noise about how IBM is about to lay off 26 percent of its workforce. That’s over 100,000 >people, which is totally ludicrous.
The fact is that IBM already announced, after 3Q earnings report, that the company would take a $600 million charge for restructuring. >That’s several thousand people. Not 10,000, or 100,000. Moreover, IBM currently has job postings for more than 10,000 professionals >worldwide, with more than half of them in growth areas such as cloud, analytics, security and mobile technologies. IBM’s new cloud >leader, Senior Vice President Robert LeBlanc, told Fortune this week that IBM has plans to hire 1,000 cloud professionals.
A little perspective on IBM’s earnings is in order. The company still makes huge profit… $21 billion in operating pre-tax profit last year. >And IBM’s “strategic imperatives” represent 27% ( and growing ) of the company’s total revenue… $25 billion in revenues, up 16 percent. >We have high growth in a substantial portion of the portfolio, and those areas (CAMSS) have better-than-normal margins in areas that >matter most to clients today — that’s the heart of the IBM transformation.
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Yeah, IBM is trying to cover their tracks. The article warns of IBM's amazing power to mislead their customers before IBM even said that.
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Call it layoffs or not, if there are soon a lot less employees on the payroll, it was a layoff.
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If I'm not mistaken IBM is still one of the largest employers in the Binghamton and Poughkeepsie I wonder how this will affect those, already economically flailing, areas.
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@JaredBusch said:
Call it layoffs or not, if there are soon a lot less employees on the payroll, it was a layoff.
Yeah, a lot of smoke and mirrors to hide it, but sounds like the ship is sinking... and fast.
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@coliver said:
If I'm not mistaken IBM is still one of the largest employers in the Binghamton and Poughkeepsie I wonder how this will affect those, already economically flailing, areas.
I was at IBM Endicott (what you call Binghamton) and it was only 3,500 people before they shut down the facility. Was only a handful left after we left there. Pretty small employer by 2001, I would guess. Maybe 200 people tops, all in recycling - minimum wage style jobs. Metal reclamation. That was shut down long ago too, I believe.
Poughkeepsie and Fishkill, yes, still big. Headquarters is Armonk only minutes away from there. That is all the home base.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Wow... This could be a blow to the industry at large, we could see a fall in wages with this many people now in the market, depending on the positions.
Yes, although we don't know how many of those are IT people. IBM isn't an IT company, remember, they are a manufacturer. Mostly those will be manufacturing people. Only a very small number of IBM are in IT. When I was there we had about one IT person for every 500 manufacturing people (engineers, secretaries, factory workers, chemists, etc.)
WTF?
Global Services is probably the largest group of folks in IBM, they are pretty much all IT consultants. Rochester is almost all support folks for iSeries. Manufacturing was limited anyways in recent years, but most of their x86 stuff was built by contractors and such, like the plant down in Mexico that used to do x86 stuff. Semiconductor production was spun off to GlobalFoundry, continuing their dominance in the market almost everyone save Intel and Samsung have decided to exit. Even when they were in the x86 desktop market they let Lenovo do most of the work.
Don't know where you get your info, but it's way off.
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@PSX_Defector said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Wow... This could be a blow to the industry at large, we could see a fall in wages with this many people now in the market, depending on the positions.
Yes, although we don't know how many of those are IT people. IBM isn't an IT company, remember, they are a manufacturer. Mostly those will be manufacturing people. Only a very small number of IBM are in IT. When I was there we had about one IT person for every 500 manufacturing people (engineers, secretaries, factory workers, chemists, etc.)
WTF?
Global Services is probably the largest group of folks in IBM, they are pretty much all IT consultants. Rochester is almost all support folks for iSeries. Manufacturing was limited anyways in recent years, but most of their x86 stuff was built by contractors and such, like the plant down in Mexico that used to do x86 stuff. Semiconductor production was spun off to GlobalFoundry, continuing their dominance in the market almost everyone save Intel and Samsung have decided to exit. Even when they were in the x86 desktop market they let Lenovo do most of the work.
Don't know where you get your info, but it's way off.
I know it from working at IBM. Inside IBM IT is a backwater. Yes, IGS is huge, and incompetent. They are the bottom of the barrel when it comes to IT. Even IBM didn't use them. But even IGS is tons and tons of developers, PMs and other non-IT staff. The actual amount of IT, even in Rochester which is specifically an IT outsourcing site (it was the original Kodak outsource team) is small and only so much IT.
You can point to Rochester being focused on IT. But Rochester isn't an IBM home site. It's tiny compared to what it was in the 1980s when it did something important. Core IBM is Armonk and Poughkeepsie and their core is not IT. Software and hardware are their core staffing components.
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Lenovo didn't do a single bit of work for IBM. No idea where you got that idea. I was there during the spinoff. One day it was all IBM, then it was bought. Lenovo wasn't really involved before then.
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Well - there goes my stock...
Damn - Have had it since 1985 or so.. -
Yup, probably not a good time to sell.
