IBM gets ready to push more UK and Irish bods overboard IBM has started a 45-day consultation on letting up to 270 people go from its UK and Ireland operations. Sources have told The Register that Big Blue is once more readying the axe for employees in Blighty, adding to rounds of layoffs that have seen over 6,000 workers sacked globally since 2009. An IBM spokesperson confirmed …
IBM used to create a 5-year-plan and keep it up to date, so they knew in advance what was going on and what to do about it.
But now they have fallen into the Wall Street disease, which thinks that knee-jerk reactions to three-month results are the right route to profit. Yes, but that's not a route to long-term profitability.
Bah, humbug.
Another one for my buzzword bingo list.
Seriously, do upper management have braindstorming sessions to come up with this nonsense? These phrases don't just appear their own, someone must dream them up inbetween snorting lines of coke and saying "Like totally new paradigm focus, ya?" a lot.
IBM are losing accounts hand over fist and failing to win new business.
What a great idea; get rid of the competent technical staff who actually provide the service to IBM's customers instead of thinning out the top-heavy executive layers who contribute very little IMHO.
This will only make the situation worse.
There won't be a problem finding 270 people to leave - almost all my colleagues are totally fed up and can't wait to go (me included).
It's common knowledge that the only way to get a decent pay rise in IBM is to leave and return. I've done it and I know plenty others who have too. (Of course, this tactic isn't unique to IBM).
The package will be offered across the whole division, and you will get to apply for it. Apparently they won't give you the package if they want to keep you. In reality, most people who apply are those who can easily walk into better jobs, and often they will be in the new job before the end of the notice period. The decision is based purely on meeting a target, so those disgruntled people who are worth far more than they are being paid will be those who leave. While they'll probably find the grass isn't a huge amount greener they'll be well compensated.
Meanwhile, spending restrictions will continue to be tightened, so that the absolutely critical £300 flight to get an expert to a customer has to go through several layers of approval, which takes just long enough for that £300 flight to become a £1200 flight. Works well for me as I often get to fly business but doesn't make a huge deal of economic sense.
IBM has some cracking products (and some crap too), but it's shit at promoting them properly, and as Rommety has said herself clients aren't treated as well as they should be. Pissing off the workforce even more's really not going to help that.
""There are parts of our business that are in transition or have been under-performing like elements of our Power X and storage product lines that showed disappointing performance in the first quarter. Here we’re going to take substantial actions.""
Just when we were thinking of placing a very large order for IBM Storage and Power X - time to look at the evaluation criteria again if IBM are so fickle !
IBM isn't interested in hardware. It sort of pretends it is, but as a former IBM hardware salesman I got very fed up with the lack of focus on that area of IBM's portfolio. System X has a very uncertain future, and IBM's heart isn't in storage either. Software and services all day!
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If your looking at IBM storage, your probably not looking at the Storage that is not performing well at IBM.
Your probably looking at either V7000 or XIV, both of which are doing quite well.
Don't know about P or X, but based on any other IBM rebalancing, it historically has not had a customer impact until products are going end of life.
If a product isn't strategic to IBM then it is likely to have some sort of impact to customers, either in terms of it ultimately lagging behind the competition in terms of functionality, or if IBM was to sell the system X business to Lenovo then it is unlikely to be a completely painless transition for existing customers!
Agree, I don't think it is fair to say IBM is not interested in storage. They have a great storage portfolio which has gotten much better over the past few years.... XIV, V7000, SVC, GPFS, all good products. They have acquired several storage companies, Diligent, Storwize, XIV, Texas Memory, Butterfly, etc.... They are actually probably not doing as well as they could be specifically because they are investing in storage and not just rebranding NetApp and LSI.
My guess is that number is net loss - lots of hires in Brazil in 2009/2010 and I am sure rafts of people onboarding in India.
Our group was dissolved in 2009 - replaced by folks in Brazil and India, my team moved around to various other teams, I went from being a middleware tech lead to a server team, kept asking my manager for work, or to be RA'd (Resrouce Actioned) - answer was always no to both. Most of my past team mates got RA'd. Finally after 6 months of sitting at home with nothing to do, I had a lawyer friend of a friend say constructive dismissal was out of the question, but a strongly worded letter to HR might get some action. Three weeks later I was gone with a package, told upper management were furious I had been shuffled to the wrong group. the week after I had a new job.
Actually it's 30 day consultation. IBM bend the rules - just like tax avoiders, they don't break them, they do break the spirit of the law. By splitting the groups arbitrarily they can make each parallel redundancy action into less than 100 so they can minimise the 'consultation'. Consultation should be about how to avoid redundancies but since our highly paid senior managers are just lapdogs for the US, the decisions have all been made. This is just a box-ticking exercise, our Employee Representatives have no influence. IBM has turned into an uncaring, one target ($20 revenue per share) driven company with no leadership or vision except for senior exec share options.
The 'Values', community action, mentoring and ubiquitous use of 'IBMers' as a term are all figleaves for a monolithic, ammoral corporation sucking the blood of the countries it works in. I am ashamed to work for them but can see no option at the moment.
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