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- CornrowWallace, on 10/12/2007, -1/+36I was one of this round being laid off. My second layoff from IBM since 2001.
The informal expectation among my team is that anyone is Global Services who hasn't lost their job by the end of 2007 is lucky.
And is therefore also unlucky, because they will be shouldering the workloads of three.
IBM sucks. It's a mouldering graveyard of despair. The only reason I put up with it (four years in total) was because of the liberal offsite worker program.
I could unofficially telecommute, which was great. Had it not been for that perq, I'd never have put up with it for more than a few strategic paychecks.
As someone said on the Cringely comments, they are trimming off all of the muscle and just leaving the fat. Now that I don't have to work there, fsck 'em.
Oh, and the Indians I trained to do my job are worse than worthless. Good luck getting a satisfactory result!
I do feel bad for all of the loyal workers who gave it their all and were betrayed for their loyalty. IBM upper management needs to go serve in Iraq. - Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+35"Basically because we double your work, for less money."
It's unfortunate that you also do a piss-poor job of it, at least in my experience. If you double our work but it takes four of you and the project is still crap, who wins? - charmaniac, on 10/12/2007, -4/+31Its just globalization. Didn't you get the memo from wall street that globalization is a good thing? Of course, they mean its good for wall street and the richest 1% of the population, but hey, at least its good for somebody.
P.S., the middle class is *****. - Vicissidude, on 10/12/2007, -13/+39"For two years Big Blue has been ramping up its operations in India and China with what I have been told is the ultimate goal of laying off at least one American worker for every overseas hire."
And Bill Gates says offshoring is not a zero-sum game. What a ***** lie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum - carpetbomberz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28My Dad did early retirement from IBM just before they dropped the bomb of announcing 25,000+ layoffs. In the years leading up to that big announcment, they were trying to bribe EVERYONE they could with early retirment buyouts. He was 53 years old then. And now years later they keep changing the dang medical benefits plans for the people who did retire with a real pension. Aetna was the worst thing that ever happened to IBM retirees. So the middle managers, consultants, etc. all get screwed on a scale never before seen. I always thought 25,000 was a large number. This blows my mind.
- fsnuffer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27" by specialk16 12 minutes ago
Basically because we double your work, for less money."
Basically you double the work and time required because we have to redo the work that we sent offshore. But that does not matter because my management is compensated to offshore work and are not measured on quality/rework - linuxmatt, on 10/12/2007, -7/+30This is a big deal. IBM ain't what it used to be for sure, but after this (if it comes true) you'll only be able to recognize it by dental records of its logo.
- nj10ii, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23@fsnuffer
That is so true, in my experience, and EVERYONE I have EVER talked to with any experience offshoring projects.
Has ANYONE EVER had success with offshoring IT work? Beyond having them copy already written code from a overspec'd design into a module, and sending it back? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+26100,000 new jobs in China awesome!
- oyourmom, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22Indian Business Machines -IBM
- urgentpenguin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20I'm working on one of their projects as a contractor. Managers are in a meeting about this offsite this week.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+26It's a good thing that Cringley is really *really* bad at predicting the future.
- lambsnavy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18I would like to think IBM is much smarter than Dell and Gateway who just about kissed off their good business customers over sending server support to India. I guess we will see.
- jzuilkowski, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16@joerao -
It has basis in reality, but it's not in their press releases.
I know folks that are in management there and +100,000 is a good number. - ishmal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13And our Caps Lock keys.
- zippy757, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14...I used to work for IBM. I called a very senior executive friend who is still at IBM:
...here are the facts as she/he told me:
1 - LEAN is an old project that has nothing to do with off-shoring. It's project that says 'we're soooo caught up in our IBM internally focused nickers, we need to stop, look at our work from a workflow perspective(not sure what that is) , and see if there is a smarter way to do things to be competitive'
2 - Correct # of US employees is more like 110K, with a large number of those on outsourcing contracts. The 100k layoff # is ridiculous. That would be virtually 100% of IBM.
3 - The layoffs are part of a 5K range employee reduction program in IBM Global Services US only division, because they didn't make their win targets, and need to remove about 5% of their costs. You either make your revenue, or remove costs. That's how IBM works.
4 - Jobs are going to other IBM Countries like Canada, Mexico, India, Russia, China, Japan, where they made their win targets. An almost equal number of positions will be created in those locations. Some US based teams are moving to other US based locations.
5 - Contractors, of which IBM has zillions, are included layoff counts.
6 - In general it's the bottom 5% of performance ranked employees, with some pockets of entire missions being ended mainly because people don't need things like Cobol, CICS or old support missions
7 - IBM already has over 40,000 employees in IBM/India. It's not 'off shoring' to IBM...it's moving between IBM divisions in different countries. IBM/India has been big for many years, way before the US heard of offshoring.
8 - The I in IBM stands for International....more than 50% of revenue is outside of US.
9 - IBM is moving resource to where the growth is. It's not in the US.
10 - inside tip he/she told me...there are over 5K open positions...but most of the effected employees don't fit skill requirements...i.e. legacy skills in old IBM operating systems dont fit with new Linux requirements...so you might want to apply if you have great skills
it's still very sad when this happens...there is no easy way to address it...but my friend indicated that over 20% of the employees find positions with other parts of IBM, with the remainder quickly finding positions in other companies because of their high quality standards and IBM professionalism. A small percentage have great issues finding new employment.
Why do people simple read ***** without checking for facts...this Cringly guy is a well known idiot...why PBS allows him to ride on their web site is an even stranger mystery.... - Proximity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13As an employee of this watching it unfold, I have to say I'm worried myself. I have shotgunned my resume everywhere. Coworkers around me are dropping off the map. This is no joke.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+21I for one welcome our new Jintao Dynasty Overlords
- isiah1, on 01/03/2008, -1/+13Big Blue = Big Screw
Whoever hasn't seen this coming is blind. I saw this coming when ABN Amro outsourced IT to ***** IBM. Steady and slowly, IBM brought on more overseas workers. The funny thing is, they have recently let most people begin working remotely at ABN (more than in the past).
Let's see how the economy is doing when the middle class cannot shop anymore.
***** the corporate world, beeoootttccchhhh! - an0nymous, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15This article seems AWFULLY well sourced.
- SyDIGG, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11or Insidious Business Methods = IBM
- etnu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Most people don't have the extra income to invest. 4 out of 5 americans live paycheck to paycheck.
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10In other news, upper management at IBM announced record performance bonuses. "I don't think a single board member, executive officer, or senior VP will have to go without a new yacht, mansion, and private jet this Christmas," said our anonymous source.
- locnguyen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12IBM = Incredibly Bad Management.
Maybe my firm can pick up some of their clients. - thescimitar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Actually, at least according to the World Factbook, the United States has the 53rd lowest unemployment rate in the world... out of a sample of about 200. That's not exactly stellar.
- StoneRolling, on 10/12/2007, -9/+18IBM Global Services is layoing off about 150.000 people over the next two years. LEAN is MEAN
- wolfkeeper, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11I used to work in a company that more or less did this between the UK and Canada, which is pretty much the same thing. Offshoring can work if you have enough cross-fertilisation of corporate values and move people backwards and forwards enough. If you just throw work over the wall, you're normally screwed, unless the offshore side is responsible for it working; but that's true anywhere at any time in any organisation irrespective of national boundaries.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13IBM kept track of the Jews in Auschwitz
- glucoseboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Really? I think the days of Job cuts = rise in stock are kind of passe. The market is more sophisticated now and would look more deeply into the implications if such a thing were announced.
a 42% reduction in your workforce, even if spread over two years is a huge undertaking and would likely result in significant disruption of IBM's key consulting business. - rhinohelix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I was among the 1300 surplused on Tuesday. While I don't think they are going to effectively do away with GS, I think that there is more offshoring in the works that will cull the herd further. We have a good team that was transitioned over when our original company went with IBM for desktop services outsourcing. Irony is that I was one of the only ones wanting to stay, as opposed to skate. I am just glad to be looking for work before the stampede. I see all of our remote work going overseas (India is losing headcount to China in some places) and those left in the States splitting what work is left of the ground. I could believe another 25% might go before the end of the year.
LEAN is a code word for "how do we fix our deal-making mistakes?" The big code phrase is "overdeliver". Don't do any more than the contract requires. If you help someone without a work order or go that extra mile, you are hurting the company and "overdelivering". When they have gotten rid of everything else which is extraneous to fulfilling the contract, they will start cutting people until they have the skeleton staff to meet the scaled down metric, staffed mostly by sub-skilled guys getting paid half-price and a couple people who know whats going on.
Our local IBM manager has no real clue and is eptiomized by the instance where he halted his mid-day golf game to scream at a tech for missing an appointment made up by a client to get his issue resolved fast. Very fine job managerial skill there. People like this will stay, and talented customer-service hands-on people will go. But the client's company will get what it pays for and as long as stock prices go up, no one but the people affected by the jog losses will care. I thought that IBM would fix the leaky ship our dept. had become. Instead, they made the ship into a sub and dived. Here's to a better job. - VaKo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9True, but unless IBM have a secret life extension program I doubt it's the same people running the company.
- ell0bo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I just finished a co-op with IBM about a year ago. I got to deal with some of the stuff their offshore people produced. The project I was working on was really cool, and I'm really disappointed that I haven't heard anything about it from IBM. I'm almost afraid they killed it because I always felt they didn't know what they had in front of them. The worst part though was the outsourced work that came in. It was like making a special order... you had to write up what you wanted, then send it out and wait about 3 or 4 weeks for a return. I can't complain too much about the code, other then the fact that they tended to pigeon hole it and when you wanted to do something a little different with their code, normally that required a lot of changes. There was one time where instead of rewriting what we got back for a new version of our system I just took 4 hours and wrote my own version, which was about half as many lines. I've never been too keen on sending out for code like that, something just gets lost in the translation all too often.
- Futurepower, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8It's not about outsourcing, it's incompetence. IBM is run by a technically ignorant CEO:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=233493&cid=18996891 - zhmic31, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11$2.50 an hour?- When did they get the raise that quadrupled their actual salary?
- YellowStar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Can we outsource our leaders while we are at it? I'm sure some highly competent, brilliant people from Singapore, India, or China would jump at the chance to run this nation for a fraction of what the current set of ninnies have cost us.
- digitalbryan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Ya, I can't stand those big corporate companies complaining about a lack of technical workers and wanting more H1B visas. It has nothing to do with a lack of tech workers and everything to do with cheap inefficient labor. I've worked at both EDS and Intel and it's the same everywhere. All the big corps are laying off competent local talent and hiring off shore (often incompetent) people at half the rate. Ever call Microsoft tech support? Who's on the phone? Can you understand one dang word the person is saying?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I wish my company would lay off people instead of ***** over the departments that do make money and not giving raises or bonuses for the year.
- joerao, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8IBM Stock as of today hit $103.00 a share and is at a 52week high. I haven't seen IBM stock this high since 2002.
- wixer, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11This isn't support, its Global Services, ie. Consulting.
- st1nkf1nger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I'm so glad I got out of IBMGS when I did.. (1 yr ago)
All you other IBMGSers should leave now before you are forced to.. - streak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The idea that the U.S. is becoming a services nation and, therefore, it's okay to offshore manufacturing, has been pablum to keep us polishing the brass on the Titanic. To be successful, services must be closely tied to manufacturing. The Internet is great, but it's no substitute for physical proximity. The more our services industry becomes isolated from manufacturing through offshoring, the faster it loses track of what's important, and so the faster it loses relevance and profitability. For years we've seen offshoring of manufacturing. Now, it seems, we shall witness the mass exodus of services, to parts of the world where they are needed most, where the services industry can maintain its relevance and profitability. Hello, U.S. economic meltdown.
- aliengoods, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8South Park, where the immigrants from the future come through the time portal and take the average hicks 'jerb'. So they all have massive, gay, butt-sex orgies.
- noisymime, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11@froggy57
Yeah, way to show what an open mind you have!
We had an Indian guy working in our (Australian) call centre who knew more than nearly anyone else there. But you should have heard the crap he had to put up with because of his accent. I hate poor offshore support as much as the next guy, but you have to treat each case on its merits. - notfred, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Back around '98 or so, IBM was offshoring OS driver support to India.
That actually made sense. This doesn't, if it's true. - zeous, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7The richest 1% of adults owned 40% of the world’s total assets in the year 2000. The richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of total assets. The bottom half of the world adult population owned 1% of global wealth. (Source: World Institute for Development Economics Research, The World Distribution of Household Wealth, 2006).
- bjornski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Apparently, profit.
The fact that now 100,000 people won't be able to afford a decent lifestyle anymore means nothing to next quarters profit margins.
You REALLY don't think these people are going to be getting replacement jobs that pay an equal amount or more, do you?
/would you like fries with that? - BlackAdderIII, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I agree - I'm all for people everywhere getting a fair crack of the whip, but that's not what this involves.
I've had to rip out and replace some pretty damned gutwrenching code from aggressively priced offshore shops - and when I say gutwrenching, I mean completely worthless except as some kind of Escher-like artwork.
I think it's unscrupulous of companies to use excessive globalisation of their professional programming workforce to serve the domestic market, but at the same time you don't like to piss and moan if someone else beats you by being cheaper - goes against my capitalist grain anyway. - joerao, on 10/12/2007, -14/+19The 150,000 number has no basis in reality. The only official annoucement was 1,300. Anything above and beyond that is only rumor.
- iSEPIC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You mean the $100,000.00 lunches? Oh, they promised steak, but never actually got to the food.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/01/lifestyle/luxury_lunch/index.htm - bmarko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5My transfer out of IGS is effective June 1st....I did that bec I saw this coming...but now my new group just told us that half of our jobs are going overseas. What the heck are they doing at IBM? You would think that when they sent the "help-less" desk to India and people stopped using it they would learn something. Or when EVERY manager that has a global resource complains that "it's just not working out" they would learn. I honestly think Sam just wants to inflate the stock price enough for that big yacht and he's out of there. Fire him now before the stock goes up. Punk ass.
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