IBM Cuts Thousands of Jobs, Cloud Classic Unit Hit Hard: Report (theregister.com) 49
IBM is laying off thousands of employees across the United States, with approximately 25% of staff at its Cloud Classic operation affected, The Register reports, citing a source. "Concrete numbers are being kept private," a source told the publication. "It is in the thousands."
Staff reductions have occurred in Raleigh, North Carolina; New York; Dallas, Texas; and California, the report said. Affected departments include consulting, corporate social responsibility, cloud infrastructure, sales, and internal systems teams. The report adds: With regard to IBM Cloud Classic -- the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) outfit offering built on IBM's 2013 acquisition of SoftLayer -- another source told us: "It's a resource action. I don't know how many people are in IaaS classic. They don't typically make that information easy to find. What I can say is that they have been making a lot of changes to shift employment to India as much as possible."
A third source, newly let go by Big Blue, said it was fair to characterize this a layoff. "Everyone I know that was affected, myself included, was simply offered a separation agreement," this individual said, estimating that 10 percent of the Cloud group (which is not the same as Cloud Classic) has been let go.
Staff reductions have occurred in Raleigh, North Carolina; New York; Dallas, Texas; and California, the report said. Affected departments include consulting, corporate social responsibility, cloud infrastructure, sales, and internal systems teams. The report adds: With regard to IBM Cloud Classic -- the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) outfit offering built on IBM's 2013 acquisition of SoftLayer -- another source told us: "It's a resource action. I don't know how many people are in IaaS classic. They don't typically make that information easy to find. What I can say is that they have been making a lot of changes to shift employment to India as much as possible."
A third source, newly let go by Big Blue, said it was fair to characterize this a layoff. "Everyone I know that was affected, myself included, was simply offered a separation agreement," this individual said, estimating that 10 percent of the Cloud group (which is not the same as Cloud Classic) has been let go.
Cloud Classic? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm guessing that Cloud Classic is their original product, that they reverted to after New Cloud [wikipedia.org] didn't take off?
Re: (Score:2)
No silver lining on that cloud.
Any golden parachutes?
Re:Cloud Classic? [No, just a cloudy history.] (Score:4, Informative)
Not a bad joke for the FP branch, but I had to look at the link to see that it was a marketing joke. Looks to me like that company hasn't forgotten how to sell stuff.
Which leads to a funny bit of history with personal links and anecdotes. IBM was once a company that never fired anyone (without a major and personal cause (like an up-skirt camera event))--but a big chunk of how IBM got through the Great Depression was by helping other companies fire their employees. When the economic times were bad many of IBM's employees were moved into sales and what they were selling were "smart and efficient" office machines to replace "excess" employees in other companies. (The normal way out of IBM was hitting the big 60, as I eventually did. (But (I think) I'm still capable of doing any of the work I ever did there...))
But is anyone else smelling smoke? Like crashing the economy won't be a wonderful sales opportunity for certain AI companies? Seems to me like we are approaching a situation where lots of employees will become excess... Many working for large corporate cancers that "discreetly" backed a certain YOB...
So for the personal bit. When I first worked for IBM some decades ago they had just had the first involuntary separations. Prior to that employees were always given an option to stay with Big Blue, but when the Lexington printer factory was sold/spun off (to form Lexmark) most of those employees were not given any such option. Quite a bit of concern within the company about the new precedent.
At the end of my career I think IBM had gone to a new place, but maybe someone can say more? (And this might be one of the few situations were anonymity is justified on the part of people who actually know the truth...) I think what I was witnessing (and even supporting with my final work in HR) was a fundamental restructuring of the IBM workforce. It used to be a company dominated by lifetime employees, but they were deliberately demolishing that idea. The new focus was on rapid onboarding and offboarding for short-term contract employees who would do the actual work while IBM was being "slimmed down" to a much smaller long-term staff of salespeople and managers of contract employees.
This news story seems to fit right into that road to devolution... And I'm glad I sold the IBM shares I received as a bonus many years ago. Even if the company doesn't implode or get merged into oblivion it just smells too funny now.
Re: (Score:3)
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The sign is that the clouds are now starting to dissolve.
It's all a hype. In the end you all need to do is to make sure you have control over your data.
Holding out for Cloud Zero. (Score:2)
"corporate social responsibility initiatives" (Score:5, Interesting)
Something called "corporate social responsibility initiatives" seems to be low hanging fruit for layoffs.
Re:"corporate social responsibility initiatives" (Score:5, Insightful)
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We have been learning just how prevalent this kind of HR policy shifts really are, as the administrations have changed. Yeah a lot to worry about indeed.
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It's pretty amazing how fast the transformation is hitting organizations.
"You mean I have to have skills?"
Re:"corporate social responsibility initiatives" (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Dow is anything to go by then "DEI" was good for business.
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe NVidia's AI success.
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If the Dow is anything to go by then "DEI" was good for business.
DEI was just camouflage. Inflationary deficit spending and uncontrolled borders in particular were GREAT for stock portfolios, and DEI just provided convenient "social justice" cover fire for both.
Profligate government spending sluiced right into high finance, a flood of new government jobs, and high paid NGO staffers - plus illegal immigration suppressed wages. Accordingly, a trillion or two was transferred from the "deplorable" working class into the pockets of the "educated" rich and to government depend
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India Business Machines (Score:4, Interesting)
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And after that, Russia and bears. Oh my!
I always hated that joke (Score:2)
It's not exactly true. What IBM had done is take a shitload of senior engineers and promote them to be managers in name only. Then when they wanted to fire them when they got kind of old and didn't want to get sued for age discrimination they disguised it as a mass firing of managers.
It's the kind of thing a bunch of old farts like us should be aware of and see
Make America Great Again! (Score:2, Troll)
Fire American workers and send jobs overseas!
Re:Make America Great Again! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Fire American workers and send jobs overseas!"
That's been happening for a long time. See also 'rightsizing' and 're-engineering'.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
If their business is taking a hit then all they have to do his have Trump do an infomercial for them at the whitehouse. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/e... [nbcnews.com]
Re: Make America Great Again! (Score:2, Interesting)
What a strange time to live in the US.
"Bring American manufacturing back!*"
"What? The rest of it? Eh whatever, ship it overseas."
*Mostly with robots, designed and maintained by foreign workers.
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If the plan works, there will be more jobs in the USA in the long run,
They'll be plenty of jobs picking lettuce and screwing phones together. Just what every white collar worker was actually aspiring to do all along.
Meanwhile, once protected by tariffs, everything you buy in this country will become as much of a bargain as American full-sized pickup trucks, which have enjoyed lavish tariff protection for decades.
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IBM has been doing this sort of thing for decades, it is hardly a recent trend.
Cloud Will Save You Money (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Cloud Will Save You Money (Score:2)
Re: Cloud Will Save You Money (Score:2)
why would anyone join IBM? (Score:3)
with all the layoffs, why would anyone join the company?
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IBM's next job advertisements won't be directed towards American Citizens.
The Want H-1B's. They want someone who:
1. Can't easily leave to work at another company without the risk of getting deported. (It is possible, the there is a lot of risk if the employee attempts it).
2. Works under employment-at-will so they can threaten job termination and be subject to deportation if they don't work the ridiculous hours they are demanding.
Finally, if they can't get H-1B visas in the US, they'll just open an office i
Re:why would anyone join IBM? (Score:4, Insightful)
IBM is a huge corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees and many business units. Many of these business units are doing just fine. For many employees, it's a good job for a good company, if they have a good boss. If they have a bad boss, all bets are off.
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IBM is a huge corporation ...
This is accurate. I worked under their umbrella for over 25 years. They had bought the company that owned our company... and over the course of 10 years or so assimilated us. I'm amazed I lasted so long there once layoffs were regular events more than once a year. Those that lasted were treated well but as the parent says, it's a big place.
With clouds it rains (Score:2)
Golden Age (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this part of the "Golden Age" that Trump and Elon declared multiple times just a month ago? I may be broke and jobless with no healthcare or hope of getting social security when I'm old but at least I know my neighbor got deported for having a tattoo and sleep safer knowing trans-women can't wear a dress in public.
It will go down how it always does at IBM (Score:4, Insightful)
No US manager will lose a job. Even if they lose all of their direct reports. Management will be saved!
As few foreign employees as possible will lose jobs and the vast majority of jobs lost will be to Americans. Even if some of the people in the to be closed area are H1-B holders, somehow IBM will find a way to save their (cheap) jobs while Americans hit the streets.
Best quote I ever heard about IBM was from a former co-worker. He said "You may find better elsewhere, but you'll never pay more!"
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If you use the term family loosely, I have a family connection to a US based manager at IBM. I guess he's been there for over 30 years and most of that time he's been in management. Based on talks with him some time ago, I'm sure this will go down how it always goes down at IBM
That's not how it went down during the 14 years I was at IBM. What usually happens is that they lay off all the long-tenure people, especially middle management. Execs are always fine, of course.
True (Score:2)
"Everything starts with the customer."
Lou Gerstner
I'm Shocked! (Score:3)
I'm surprised they didn't call it WebSphere Cloud!?!?!? That always worked! Wait, no it didn't.
For those who remember IBM history from 20 years ago, you will get the reference.
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I'm surprised they didn't call it WebSphere Cloud!?!?!? That always worked! Wait, no it didn't.
For those who remember IBM history from 20 years ago, you will get the reference.
Or, reaching back a bit farther, "Lotus Cloud" or "Tivoli Cloud".
IBM HCL == Shift Right One Letter (Score:2)
I've worked at so many places where after IBM somehow got in with their products, software, servers, or solutions because of some scummy backroom sales deals with someone who once was an IBMer that this just shows it's par-per-course for IBM >> HCL shift right the works workers also USA >> IND.
We're ripping out all IBM equipment and crappy software out of the enterprise environment because all of their products are just crap with even worse and incompetent offshored support that don't help or ev
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Removing Out of the Environment
SameTime
BigFix
WebSphere
P-Series Servers
X-Series Servers
Mainframe Z-OS
---
We've been doing the same at a very large enterprise. There's just no real value there and they are getting increasingly aggressive/desperate to wring fees out of what is left in the hope that there's no real will to move our stack to
Do they still have American employees? (Score:2)
I guess they are so large there's bound to be a few but still. and layoff still suck. Though I don't know why the fuck we let them call them layoffs. These are rifs. These jobs are gone gone gone.
rip softlayer (Score:2)
Classic Warning (Score:2)
If the product you're working on includes the word "Classic" in its name or is referred to internally as "Classic", you'd be wise to be looking for a job.
If there is a similar product in the company which doesn't have the word "Classic" associated with it, you'd be wise to immediately take all the PTO you can get and spend ten hours a day searching for a new job.
IBM (Score:2)
Is IBM still a thing? (Score:2)