Perspectives On the Latest IBM Layoffs 135
An anonymous reader writes "After IBM reported disappointing Q1 earnings in March, to nobody's surprise, layoffs (RAs or 'Resource Actions' in IBM parlance) were announced two months later; June 12 seemed to be when most of the pink slips were handed out. While this is hardly a novel occurrence at IBM, this time the RA'd employee water cooler page is now open for everyone's inspection, and Cringely let loose with some predictable I-told-you-so's about financially oriented IBM senior management. Dan Burger at IT Jungle has a more numbers-oriented take on the latest round of layoffs."
IBM (Score:5, Interesting)
Indian Business Machines is based in Armonk - still?
Global IBM employment is clearly dropping but employment in India, for example, is rising, so is this a net global number or gross layoffs?
Of course they are hiring in India.
The IBM that used to be the leader in social reform and good corporate citizenship no longer exists.
That ended in the 90s.
In IBM’s big plans its customers are a necessary evil.
That is the case for EVERY big corp. See the: banking, airline, cell phone, cable TV industries for downright hostile attitudes towards customers. IBM isn't quite there - yet.
No IBM customer is asking the company to put fewer workers on their account.
That won't happen. Customers will just get more workers in India.
See people - business customers - why go through an American based services company when all they really do is resell Indian (and other third world countries) labor? Buy direct and save money! And you don't have to put up with the ex-ballplayer salesman who makes waaaayyy too much money just because he's over six foot, classically handsome and looks good in a suit.
Worked at IBM (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked there for 2 years. There were some interesting technical benefits however the sysadmin team was highly siloed. I counted 12 teams that had fingers on the servers we managed. The worst part was the cog in the machine treatment. Some manager you'd never seen before would come into the cube farm on Monday, and seemingly randomly tap 2 or 3 folks out. They'd have their desks cleaned out by Wednesday. Your manager would find you 3 or 4 jobs but they'd require a transfer to a different location. When my sysadmin job was outsourced to India (we had to train them before we left), my manager found Data Center building jobs in Kansas, web programming jobs locally, and contract support for a company in Boston. Fortunately that was a telecommute position. We had folks from New York, Boston (on site), New Jersey, Washington State, and me in Colorado. The team was so broken due to the lack of face to face interaction that folks would leave and new folks come in every few months. I finally left when management tapped our customer interface and she had 2 days to transfer all her knowledge to the replacement. I could deal with most of the cog in the machine stuff, but the '2 days and you're out' stuff was extremely stressful.
[John]
I'm glad I got out of there (Score:5, Interesting)
Whenever I read news about IBM, I'm glad I got out of that place. When I joined the company in the mid-90s, during Gerstner's reign, it was a great place to work, and a very successful company. There were plenty of problems, to be sure, and Gerstner laid off lots of employees, but the company was focused on the future and on building new and successful business. The employees were generally treated quite well, performance was amply rewarded, and education budgets were generous and easily accessible to ensure that technical employees continued developing their skills and the culture was one of mutual support to get things done. For large technology companies, I think the approach to employee continuing skill development is something of a bellwether for the company's future.
When Gerstner stepped down and Palmisano took over, however, the company began a long, gradual slide. It became cost-obsessed and quarterly earnings-focused. Some belt-tightening was appropriate during the dotcom bust, but that actually didn't hit IBM very hard. The problem was that Palmisano's leadership team had no idea how to create new business, the IBM services group that Gerstner started and used to revitalize the company was reaching a kind of natural saturation point, so Palmisano started slashing costs to prop up profit growth as revenue growth got harder to find. Even worse, the cost pressure began to change the culture of the company, creating more internal competition which began to turn ugly.
By the time I left in 2011, IBM had become a fairly unpleasant place to work. Global Services was the worst, for example utilization targets were routinely set so high that it was impossible to take vacation time without working overtime in order to make up for it, and cost controls had squeezed out all career development funding unless you could hide it in customer contracts. Software Group was struggling and had shifted more to focus on sales rather than development. IBM has always been primarily a sales company, backed by engineering, but shifting the balance too far towards sales is a way to boost short-term profits at the expense of long-term success. I personally got caught in that shift; my job was transformed underneath me from an architecture and development role to a technical sales support role. I even hear from my friends in R&D that they were also getting squeezed hard, with increasing pressure to abandon work on any ideas that couldn't be productized within a few months.
When I heard that Ginni Rometty was taking over for Palmisano last year I just shook my head. Rometty was a driving force in squeezing services employees with ever-increasing utilization targets and ever-tightening cost structures. IMO, IBM needs another visionary like Gerstner, not another jumped-up middle manager like Palmisano, but that's what they got in Rometty. She's a smart, talented, aggressive jumped-up middle manager, but still not what IBM needs, IMO.
I'm glad I left. I really should have done it a few years before I did.
Re:It's not the layoffs (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're still buying software or services from IBM, you deserve what you get, and vice-versa.
Why not do a bad job of it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not simply do a quick & dirty bad job of it? Prepare a few handouts, as well as, say, a quiz for the new replacements that's easy to fly through. Use that as the metric to tell the company that you've taught them what is needed, and that they are good to go. Then leave w/ the severence. The management is left w/ the impression that the offshored work force is equal to the job, and get the shock of their lives when things start disintegrating. After that, it's just a matter of time before the shit hits the fan, but by then, it's too late to take it out on the employees who've been let go.
That way, no need to really swallow one's pride - pull a fast one on both the employers, as well as the offshore workers, and then walk away w/ the severence. Let them figure out how to run things once you're gone.
Re:It's not the layoffs (Score:3, Interesting)
I see no moral problem with jobs moving to parts of the world that frankly need the money more. However, I think IBM's business problems will continue to grow because of this. If quarter by quarter you make choices to stem the pain this quarter for a net longterm loss of quality and reputation, you're circling the drain.
At this point I expect IBM to go the way of AT&T and Maytag: the name will survive, but that's about it. (Actually, in IBMs case, their mainframe business is unique and profitable, and someone will want that.)
Quality not really a factor (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been through supporting security for a lot of different customers as they transition in an out of my department at IBM, but I do have to say the last transition to India surprised even me. During my first meeting with the new team, two of the three individuals could not figure out why the Office2007.exe saved to their desktop would not install. I had to remind them that their laptops were linux not windows and then explain the difference. Note: Wine is not allowed and the approved installer isn't in that format. I could go on and on since a normal transfer takes two weeks and this one took more than three months.
Not really sure why the new team is allowed to perform at 4% complete every month, when we used to get hassled if it dropped below 95%.
I'm so glad I switched to a different role in the company. Would feel bad for the customer if they weren't a large investment company.