Top performers, top-skills, remote workers are in the crosshairs. we are told that we can replace them with workers in India. When did it become India Business Machines? This is going to hurt the clients more than anything else.
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I was let go back in 2007. The layoffs have not stopped since them. Most I knew are gone from India Business Machines now except for 1 or two who really know how to su-k up to management. One guy named Brent Wolfe has managed to avoid these layoffs and move anywhere he wants in the country due to knowing people high up. It's not what ya know, it's who ya blow.
Take solace this is not a layoff its a Right Sizing.That makes all the difference.Its the right thing to do.
Arvind moving jobs back to the homeland. Thanks Arv!!
Reduction plans in Budapest and Bratislava as well :(
I heard there are 300+ employees on the list
IBM Spain will lay off almost 60% of its workforce in 2024.
The incoming lay off is going to be unbelievable...
To the March 5 poster, until you are RA's will you know how it feels. Perhaps you don't need your job as much as others so when you get your walking papers it won't effect you badly. But for the people that need their jobs transparency would be appreciated.
I worked there as well, loved my job and people even more. The people I worked with was the reason I stayed. But I also saw the writing on the wall, that ship IS sinking, especially when HB resigned (or rumored he was pushed out). Headcount became a huge focus along with spend. They have been quietly laying off since April, is this to avoid WARN?
IBM does not play by the rules and the ones who get caught in the crossfire are the little people, that actually need their jobs.
Any job postings were 75% India based and US based remote workers was not encouraged. IBM = India Business Machines is a perfect acronym!
So, March 5 Poster, excuse my disagreement with your statement. Your just a number, hopefully your number isn't on the list anytime soon. Good Luck
This shows what Consulting division is competing with. IBM also hired aggressively during COVID, and IBM will most likely have to cut back.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/24/accenture_19000_layoffs/
All of the competitors have had the same problems in their channel organizations. It’s called Stacking and most channel reps know that it’s easier to farm the branch vs going out and actually engaging new customers. It’s common place, and almost every competitor has fixed it by going to named accounts. If the account is named, the channel doesn’t get credit, but rather the account team gets credit. This stops stacking but allows the partner to still engage if they are adding value. The channel as well as most sales reps are coin operated, and if they know they will not be paid for stacking, they will change their behavior rather quickly rather than waste time in non-paying engagements. Management has to be ruthless in enforcing this, but once they demonstrate that enforcement, behavior will definitely change. IBM’s problem is management doesn’t get paid to be ruthless, but rather gets paid to move the metal/sw/services, and if they have to pay several overlaying organizations, well that’s payrolls problem.
I’m not dissing the channel, just the endless layers of matrixed channel people inquiring about deals and adding no value. The partners can deal with the sellers directly
Given that the “channel” and their associated products (mostly scale out) do approx 4.5-5.0 billion per year, I would say the risk isn’t zero, but more like 4.5-5.0 billion. The only way to make the risk zero is to sell off the channel and its associated products. I don’t see IBM doing that, as scale out is part of IBM’s AI strategy
Anyone with “worldwide,” “global,” or “partner” needs to go. Massive savings and zero downside
More on the way wall street views layoffs and why they happen in the spring. NOTE this is in regard to Meta
Additionally, research shows that layoffs don’t actually save companies much money. Savings on salaries are mediated by severance expenses, not to mention the lost productivity and knowledge those workers take with them.
“What happens in the short term is the company bean counters say, ‘Well, if you get rid of this many people, you will save that much,’” said Erickson. “In the long run layoffs do hurt companies. Period.”
So why are Meta and other tech companies continuing to lay off employees?
One reason is that companies like Meta are chasing short-term stock gains. Investors have been calling for Meta to tighten its belt, and in this case, announcing layoffs paid off. The company’s stock jumped 7 percent on the latest layoff news, closing at its highest point in more than eight months.
“They like cost-cutting because the effects are clear and immediate, and employees are expensive, so cutting them cuts a lot of costs,” said Peter Cappelli, a professor of management and director of the Center for Human Resources at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “They also can’t see the drawbacks to cutting people, at least immediately — what happens to the work those people did, what are the knock-on effects on teams, turnover of others, etc.”
The wave needs to move faster!! Most restructurings happen in the spring so the costs of the restructuring can be recouped in the current year. IF IBM is going to make a major move, I would expect they will account for it at 1st q earnings, and implement over the remainder of 2023. The savings from the restructuring would then hit the books in 2024 making the results look better. No matter how you look at it, IBM is currently coming up short on their FCF and revenue growth per employee, and management is going to have to deal with it. Better sooner than later
The wave has started breaking.
I suspect the annual report employee number is overstated due to the rules of how annual reports must report their employee numbers. IBM stated on their analyst call that consulting has 10’s of thousands of employee turnover. If true, that would explain the larger 288k number. NOTE the CFO reported the 3900 folks impacted via the Kyndryl and Watson health spin off resulting in a 300 million 1st q charge represented 1.5% of IBM’s worldwide employee population. That equates to approx 260k which the CFO reiterated during the Q & A session. I don’t suspect the CFO made that statement lightly. The annual report overstates the current employee population, and I believe they are aiming for a 210-215k end of 2023 population. Yep IBM is still due a big reduction, but it’s most likely in the 12-15% range
IBM lays off old, experienced and expensive employees and hires young and cheap id--ts (well they are not all id--ts to be fair)... so at the end of the day the number of employees can rise while costs still go down. It is only a number game.
The latest (2022) IBM Annual Report states the following regarding the number of employees:
For the year ended December 31: 2022
IBM/wholly owned subsidiaries 288.3
Less-than-wholly owned subsidiaries 8.2
Complementary* 14.8
So looks like it is more than in 2021... Why does IBM keep on hiring? The layoffs are going to be bad.
Why are you people wasting your time calculating and debating figures on a company that just fabricates everything
So there is an update to the 210k per employee. IBM’s known headcount was 282k for 2021. IBM worked on managing that number down during 2022, and it appears they finished 2022 with 260k headcount. So we have to rework the numbers
282k goes against 2021 revenue of 57 billion Which equates to 202k per employee
260k goes against 2022 revenue of 60.5 billion Which equates to 232k per employee
2023 average estimated revenue of 62.75 billion is what Wall Street is expecting
Solving for 62.75 = 241k per employee at 260k employees
Solving for 62.75 = 275 k per employee = 228k headcount
Solving for 62.75 = 300k per employee = 209k headcount
They restated revenue after they backed out what they spun off to Kyndryl. Remember the deal happened in Nov, and until it was finished no one knew what was in, and what was out
IBM Revenue in 2020 was 73.6M.
Sorry but IBM has grown revenue
2020 = 55 billion
2021 = 57 billion
2022 = 60.5 billion
So if the 210k per employee hasn’t move, that means head count went up
@4rgp+1ltpXlA1 Ibm over hired ppl? At least not in Software. We have barely seen new faces in the las 3 years (quite the contrary, lots of attrition) . We go from hiring freeze to hiring freeze with no active hiring in between! If the revenue per head is down is because shrinking revenue and not headcount growth.
It all boils down to revenue per employee. Companies large and small have always used the metric of “if revenues grow at a certain percentage, you should grow at that same percentage. If revenues shrink, again you should shrink at the same percentage.” The reason big tech is laying off, is they hired way too many folks during COVID (think ultra low interest rates) and their revenue per employee went down considerably. They are now realizing borrowing costs have gone up from zero, and that means they need to start to optimize revenue per employee. NOTE IBM’s revenue per employee has barely budged over the last decade (210k), and it did not improve when Kyndryl was spun off due to excessive hiring. Management has finally realized they over hired, and they are about to manage back to 275-300k of revenue per employee. That means managing down by approx 15% if 275k is the target, and by 22% if 300k is the target.
For Canadian RA impacted, some hope if you want to fight the offer
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/chaudhri-2023-starts-off-with-bang-as-employee-awarded-27-months-of-wrongful-dismissal-damages
Data & AI org, to be more precise, Data Fabric and Cognos have been awful. Not understanding or even caring how modern data architecture works and marched on with their dated architecture and successfully convinced non-technical leadership decision makers they are so important. IBM should really consider cleaning the house in Data Fabric and Cognos orgs.
SWG group has been targeted... always is .. Data & AI is our execs fav org .. so guess which org will see most cuts ? Every time you hear from exec this is the best BU/org/team to work for... guess whats coming down the road...
Sweet - just 4 more weeks almost to the day + 4.5 months re-deployed will be 5.5 months internal job search with little responsibility + 1 month icing on the cake. Sweet.
Notifications March 30 Exit April 30
When did it become India Business Machines?
When they became smarter than you, fool.
Nothing personal to HR, or any organizations for that matter, HR operations has been very underwhelming... I understand this starts from the very top leadership and not individual HR staff - just like all the underwhelming operations under F&O et al. Please blame the short-sighted leadership for any wrong doing and not on each other.
Hello @2qgg - interesting information if true. Without getting so specific for it to be a personal risk, what is your source?
The target up here in the white north is about 15%, non tech teams have to put 20%, while tech teams have to contribute 10%. The lists are made and the final day of work will be around the beginning of April. Is unclear if notices will be given or simply paid. Anybody with a bad checkpoint in January is in the list and then some more. Luckily my lab (TOR) is being spared but be prepared if you are in another location.
Alot of people with access to the smoking g-ns will finally be on the other side of the equation. Let's hope some homegrown whistle blowers emerge.
The post by sog+1ltpXlA1 is what’s wrong with IBM. Math calculation issues aside, the assumption that all on-shore resources are NA (North America) based. Must have forgotten about the staff in the other 100+ countries.
Also, people forget about the thousands IBM has in the Philippines, Costa Rica and other low cost countries. India gets all the hate.
Looks like paid thumbs down in action here? LOL HR isn't happy when their own are fired but it seems that's happening! Thumbs won't help stop the massacre. Hopefully those in HR will reveal the secret evil plans of the executives... I'm sure we could see illegal age discrimination layoffs on a CEO global scale etc...
Openly said in one of our US offices (people on phone) that 25% of HR globally is about to be let go.
It would be great if we could only get insightful or helpful information here. Commentary (insults) from the peanut gallery about IBM or the people who choose to work there are just bothersome to parse through.
I have been working at IBM for decades and have seen a lot. I have had over 10 managers and all but 2 have been amazing. Those 2 were more personality conflicts. The higher-ups make decisions for the bottom line of the company, but the actual people, many managers and employees, are kind, hard-working people who are just trying to do a good job and support their families. We are always looking out for one another and that’s where this site should be helpful. We are not id--ts hanging on to the Titanic. Not in this thread so much, but the number of digs I have read on this site is astounding. What a waste of your time and ours.
I do think something is brewing based on conversations with coworkers. It does not surprise me and I’m always ready for this to happen because something DOES happen every year. It is not shocking. I do know my day will come when it’s my turn to be RAed or redeployed or collocated. Maybe it’s this week, month or year. I am amazed I have made it this long, honestly. I’m not stupid or ignorant for continuing to work here. I love my work and my team. That’s why I stay.
Any valid information, dates, etc is always welcome and appreciated. I assume it will be this month.
Most all of big tech currently doing the same. Get out of big tech if you can.
It's a Going-Out-of-Business Strategy. The execs don't care ... their personal goal is to abscond with as much money from the company as they can before the whole house of cards collapses.