IBM Says 'Couldn't Fire 150K US Workers If We Wanted To' 219
theodp writes "In an e-mail worthy of the Dilbert Hall of Fame, IBM execs responded to Robert X. Cringely's Project LEAN layoff rumors, reassuring employees by pointing out that they've already wiped out too many U.S. jobs to be able to lay off another 150,000. Big Blue's employment peaked around 1985, when it had about 405,000 workers who were acclimated to a long tradition of lifetime employment. IBM puts its current global workforce at 355,766, with a 'regular U.S. population' of less than 130,000."
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20
Not to mention reports from other IBMers here:
http://www.allianceibm.org/jobcutstatusandcomment
Also, consider that IBM's employee headcount doesn't include contractors. I don't know how much including them would effect the headcount, but it's certainly by a substantial amount.
Being an idiot doesn't necessarily preclude his occasionally being somewhere in the ballpark of the truth.
You Miss the Point: Hire Plus Fire (Score:2, Informative)
So, Cringely's scenario is entirely plausible. IBM could fire 150,000 Western employees and hire 130,000 Chinese and Indian employees. Certainly, most outsourcing work is in India. So, putting the core of Global Services in India makes economic sense.
I am a former IBM employee. When I was axed in a layoff in 2003, I had worked at IBM for about 2 years after just graduating from college. Upon receiving my pink slip, I visited the job fair at my old college and saw a big IBM table recruiting new employees. IBM was hiring and firing on the same day.
Re:Duh (Score:4, Informative)
I can easily see how they could dump that many combined regulars, long-term supplementals, and contractors.
In defense of Cringely (Score:5, Informative)
I worked at Nortel Networks, a company that had 105k - 110k employees in 2001. In the first 4 months of 2001 the company fired 27k people. In the rest of the 8 months of the year, they fired another 26k people. They fired even more in 2002. Overall, the company fired 57,000 people, over half the company.
IBM has 150k people to fire, and it can do so with ease. The "US" reference is irrelevant, since even 50,000 US workers would be a huge amount of people, but possible.
As for Cringely, he isn't a journalist. He's never claimed to be one, and his 9 years of weekly articles speaks to this. Cringely is a tech insider and writer who writes about interesting topics, and wrote this article not to report it, but in the hopes that IBM employees, and the publicity his articles garner, could help to prevent IBM from making a mistake. And he is right to do so - at Nortel the CEO wiped out half the company and walked away with a 9-figure compensation for inducing mass unemployment and wiping out billions of value and spinoff value when the tech sector of the TSE crashed.
The effects of 150k layoffs in the US would be very bad, and that's what he hopes to stop, because the way they do it is slow and steady, and if people don't figure it out ahead of time, they find out when it's too late. So in that respect, his article is very worthwhile and commendable.
As an IBMer... (Score:2, Informative)
Sadly, he did write that (Score:5, Informative)
Genuine quote from the great pundit: "When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing?"
I've read the article again, just in case there might be some subtle sarcasm I've missed before, but it looks as serious as it gets, if anyone asks me.
The whole list is framed between:
- "This week's column is about exploring the commonly observed problems that crop up with each new release. Maybe Microsoft should patch the patches once in a while. Here are a few of my gripes - most of them a result of excessive patching." which doesn't really sound like the start of a joke, and
- "And please, will the characters who "have never had a crash or blip" in 10 years of "heavy use" not contribute. I'm sick of these people. They're full of it." Which, again, would indicate that not only he's not joking, but he thinks that anyone who hasn't had those newbie problems is, in his own words, "full of it."
Speaking of which, the rest of the complaints sound... shall we say, computer illiterate. And that's putting it mildly. He sounds like the average Uncle Osric or Aunt Emma, who are terminally stumped as to why would their computer suddenly be sluggish or takes a while to connect on the network. It must be all those MS patches, really. Not like the kind of expert who fixes such things for fun, and/or knows exactly what worm was hogging the network.
Believe me, I've tried finding some trace of tongue-in-cheek irony there. I've hoped it would be an April 1st article. Nope.
But, hey, judge it for yourself. If you can detect some trace of sarcasm there, please tell me.
LEAN Methodology (Score:2, Informative)
He's deliberately scaremongering by using the term out of context to suggest that it is the title of a project that's synonymous with cutbacks, knowing that most people won't be aware that LEAN means something else entirely. Maybe he should read up on the LEAN methodology first before he starts worrying people by writing all this nonsense.
And here's the obligatory Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing [wikipedia.org]
Re:The dollar is dropping. (Score:2, Informative)
Today you can get a computer that will serve you much better than an olden typewriter, for half the cost.
I saw an old add for an electronic watch: the cheapest was about $50; today they are basically free.
You can get a TV for $70 bucks that's the same screen size but better colors, functions, and remote, whereas 20 years ago you would have a hard time even finding a crappy TV for under $400. Also consider that the $70 TV is more like a $20 TV in the inflation-adjusted dollars.
Today's stuff you are supposed to throw out and not repair. This is the price you pay for compact design and other cost-cutting measures such as automated or low-skill line production (seven layers of circuit boards can fit in one laptop what was formerly housed in a closet, though it's now hell to repair). Valve radios lasted decades (my uncle still listens to one) but costed 100 times the IC version of today (that fits in your pocket), I can repair my uncle's radio and I cannot even look at the circuit of mine, but that's the price you pay for low cost and portability.
Sorry to go off on a rant like that but the "good ol' day" people really piss me off, maybe because I remember my poor parents thinking about buying a washer or a TV or a hoover as a major investment.
Re:The dollar is dropping. (Score:2, Informative)
The crappy manual typewriter that I bought a few months ago cost me $100. (I'm planning to write a novel and annoy my neighbors from my balcony this summer.) So where are these $50 computers you're talking about? Are they as nice as my sexy black MacBook?
Sorry to go off on a rant like that but the "good ol' day" people really piss me off, maybe because I remember my poor parents thinking about buying a washer or a TV or a hoover as a major investment.
It used to be that some purchases were treated as a major investment as most people only had cash. So buying a washer, TV or vacuum cleaner was a big deal. These days you just charge it on your credit card since credit is so freely available and companies don't have to worry about making products for the long term future.
From an Ex-IBM employee (Score:4, Informative)
The F500 clients are "not pleased", because they have been struggling with communication and logistical issues for quite some time with the new overseas staff, because you simply cannot expect that a non-native English speaker with (most of the time) heavy accent can elaborate highly technical and complex issues. We have been rolling our eyes for months while listening to daily conference calls with our South American or Indian peers. It simply does not work. The clients are paying a high premium for "excellence" and get served an understaffed, underpaid and "not very motivated" workforce. A server goes down in NJ and there is no staff to physically reboot the machine. I have seen instances where the client has to wait 3 months, before someone was found for "on-site" support.
My US co-workers are naturally all pissed off. Contractors are let go without notice after almost a decade of service. Managers are trained to be naturally unemotional alpha-males with mostly poor people skills. Teams primarily consists of an equal number of computer-illiterate managers/techleads and technically skilled people who *do the job*. Sure, it's their right to lay off people, but the way it has been implemented has been traditionally poorly managed. After all a serial number is easier to let go than a human being. The published reports don't surprise me at all. I know plenty of ex-co-workers who have been let go (and rehired) a dozen times during my time at IBM. I am not disgruntled ex-employee, because I thought that the IBM way was the "way to go", because I never experienced any other work environment.
I worked for IBM for almost a decade and I didn't even realize how miserable I was until I started my new position. When I got home from my first day at my new (non-IBM) job, I was so (positively) overwhelmed that I uncontrollably sobbed. This is what 10 years of working with IBM have done to me.