back to article Now IBM turns redundo gun on its Digital Business Group

IBM is preparing a redundancy chute for the good folk working in its Digital Business Group (DBG), The Register can reveal. Employees in the unit received an email from company execs early last month seeking volunteers to leave the business with "an ex-gratia payment equivalent to statutory minimum redundancy terms". Despite …

  1. Bob Vistakin
    Facepalm

    Intense Bowel Movement

    From management to staff, as usual.

  2. HmmmYes

    Wow - the carrot is, err, minimum legal payment.

    Wow. Money certainly doesnt get much brains in ibms hr....

    Assuming ibm have competent staff still, id be pitching my services to the customer. There are going to need someone other than ibm to support their systems.

    1. I am the liquor

      It's the craziest thing I've heard all day. Clearly it won't persuade anyone to leave if they wanted to stay, so all they've ended up doing is paying off people who were going to leave anyway for free.

      I guess in a tight employment market there might be a case for wanting first pick of the alternative jobs, but IT work is a seller's market right now.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    more than 25,000 positions open worldwide in...

    ...low wage developing nations. Until local wages rise, in which case we'll move on, and eventually consider hiring lower order primates.

    1. Teiwaz

      Re: more than 25,000 positions open worldwide in...

      ...low wage developing nations. Until local wages rise, in which case we'll move on, and eventually consider hiring lower order primates.

      Sounds like they already have, in management.

      Non sales roles, huh?

      What exactly will they be getting this remaining elite sales and experienced staff to sell when they have naught but fresh faced cheap staff on the other side of the planet - Hope and dreams and fairy dust.

      Seen it many times, staff on the way out the door are too checked out to handover systems to the incoming bods very well and when the client is desperately trying to claw their systems back after a decade, the process is repeated. A shadow of knowledge is handed over, a shadow of a shadow is handed back, and the manuals haven't been kept up to date for seven years.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: more than 25,000 positions open worldwide in...

      "...low wage developing nations. Until local wages rise, in which case we'll move on, and eventually consider hiring lower order primates."

      I'd like to confirm that IBM DOES NOT have any intentions to hire lower order primates.

      We have found moving jobs to a country with lower wages is the first step, with the second step being moving jobs to lower wage country AND NOT HIRING ANYBODY. It's all the way over there * points *, no one will realise for a few years...

      Customer service? What do you mean? Our customers sign long contracts and once we've dismantled their IT they can't move back easily without an embarrassing increase in costs. If they had enough money to pay for that, they'd probably pay our extortionate project fees...maybe...if they think we'll deliver anything...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    25,000 open roles. Having trouble attracting talent? Can't IMAGINE why.

  5. IGnatius T Foobar

    India Business Machines?

    Weren't they a 20th century technology company or something?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anyone at IBM over 40 in non-exec role... TBG

    TBG = To Be made Gone in 2018

  7. YetAnotherJoeBlow

    What's the point?

    What's the point of going on IBM? The "innovation" comming out of Watson these days is shite. You got rid of your brain trust and replaced them with some MBA's. But hey look Ginni, you bought back all those shares so Aunt Shiela got her dividend check.

    The bright side is that IBM will be in the future textbooks at college - The story of an epic FAIL.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Watson all that IBM needs

    Ahh redundancies, never good makes you wonder who employed all those redundant people anyway.

    Didn't get the mood of the market right, are they on the list too?

  9. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Insider Business Machinery ... Up Against IT and Facing the Wall Street Firing Squads

    "We have reinvented our workforce and skills base during the last five years to lead in the emerging, high-value segments of the IT industry." .... IBM wonk

    Dare you care to share the identities of those emerging, high-value segments of the IT industry? Or would a simple misidentification spook informed markets and threaten a catastrophic collapse of stock price and options and consumers with customers and clients trading futures and virtual derivatives?

  10. Andy 97

    Maybe Watson is now running this business and has replaced the “meat bags”. Perhaps this is a live trial of AI running a business?

    I can’t imagine that anyone would communicate with other human beings in this way IRL.

    1. tfewster
      Joke

      Don't be ridiculous

      Watson is knowledgeable and capable of learning. Your mistake is in thinking IBM manglement are human beings.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More bullshit

    The 25,000 new hires are to do the work that 5,000 competent staff currently do. Unfortunately IBM and their ilk can't see that.

  12. steviebuk Silver badge

    Not long now then....

    ...before IBM goes bust. It stopped being the IBM of old years ago.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not long now then....

      It will probably take a while yet; $80bn revenue companies do not disappear overnight.

      Like many of the old tech giants they are struggling somewhat to embrace the new IT world.

      1. HmmmYes

        Re: Not long now then....

        *cough* Enron *cough* <Pick a bank ,any bank, 2007> *cough*

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not long now then....

          Not QUITE the same thing, but point taken.

          I still think that the story of the old tech giants has some time to run.

    2. LucreLout

      Re: Not long now then....

      It stopped being the IBM of old years ago.

      No offence intended to staff that have worked there in the interim, but I'm pretty sure that when I graduated 20 odd years ago IBM had already stopped being the IBM of old.

      1. GrumpyOF

        Re: Not long now then....

        I believe the "IBM of old" started disappearing round about 1984, under guidance of Cary, Opel and Akers

        it was going to be a 100 billion $ company by 1990!! I actually heard them say it when they visited us down South. Think it was Opel at the time.

        After their disastrous leadership they brought in an outsider (first time ever) and he started the merry-go--round of fire and hire that seems to have been IBM's mode of operation ever since. (other very large organisations seem to have copied them ad nauseum).

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IBM is a perfect example of a global business and the requirement for global trades/technology unions. One could also suggest that globalization without competent governmental regulation has caused this shift in the work force from the developed economies to the under developed economies. OPOTUS is against government regulation except when it suits to put pressure on wealthy potential donors.

  14. fishman

    Maximizing shareholder value

    Maximizing shareholder value includes minimizing executive compensation.

  15. Jay Lenovo
    Alien

    "To Serve Man"

    Companies go through layoffs. It happens... Only IBM swings the axe and boasts that 25 thousand positions need filled. What company cookbook are they reading?

  16. earl grey
    Devil

    BOHICA

    The beatings will continue until morale improves.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    8 years experience to 4 weeks handover

    My manager has just informed me that "they" said that I should be preparing a handover to someone in India.

    8 years of experience to be handed over in 4 weeks to someone in India (who has still not been hired)

    Still, as silly as the above sounds, the teleporter I have been working on in my spare room might now get finished...

  18. Tydfil

    Among the customer base are Defense Sector/Contractors. So the 'Defense Sector' is going to be happy with some moron in India/Egypt/Malaysia/China getting to know ANYTHING about their systems without filtering through 'on shore' hands first?? This company is unbelievable!! It seems to me that with the demise of TSS, IS, DBG (and others), sending the surviving elements of these groups to 'low cost' centres that IBM is not really serious about retaining customers. So, what is IBM (what is any company come to that) without customers.

    Ginny - you idiot! - where is the money coming from once you have robbed the company blind with your outrageous share 'purchase' (at $0:00) then sold that day at market value. In truth we all know the answer to that ..... you don't care because you'll be long gone with purse stuffed full of ill-gotten gain

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