
Over 50s?
Does 1.5% correspond to the percentage of over 50s in the IBM workforce?
IBM is the latest tech company to jump on the layoff bandwagon, with news it would reduce its workforce by around 3,900. The roughly 1.5 percent of IBM's 260,000 person headcount is not nearly as large a cut by number as Microsoft's latest reduction of 10,000, Amazon's 18,000, Salesforce's 8,000, nor Alphabet's 12,000. However …
This is why this announcement is probably the most surprising. The big cloud companies are doing their first ever layoffs which have largely been driven by over hiring, and are all still way bigger than they were 12 months ago. And they will probably be hiring again later this year. It feels like IBM has been doing this every couple of years for a long long time. There can't be many people left. And the fact they need to take constant course corrections suggests the strategy isn't working.
When I first joined IBM, some decades ago, they still claimed "Respect for the individual" as a core corporate belief. There were still procedures for raising and escalating issues, but the writing was on the wall. All of the corporate ethos evaporated. I eventually took early retirement when their latest rationalisation/improvement of the pension scheme left me in a situation where, had I stayed, I would have had to work several more years just to get back to the pension I was then entitled to.
Getting out was the best decision I ever made.
IMHO, "client-facing research and development" means stuff they can immediately sell to customers, not the basic research in physics, chemistry, materials science, and more, that IBM has been truly and rightfully famous for in the past. Again, IMHO, you don't win Nobel prizes for "client-facing research and development." Arvind is cutting everything he possibly can. He is a true penny-pincher. It will show in the reputation, respect, credibility, and results--and already is.
Interesting letters have been sent from TCI to Alphabet and Microsoft calling for these layoffs.
PDF of Alphabet letter from TCI's own website
I read it that techies are making too much money and need to be put back in their places, but I'll freely admit a bias as a member of the targeted group.
Discussion on ycombinator: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34501085
excerpt from user abeppu:
"I dunno that the Google vs Microsoft comparison _is_ compelling. Isn't the question not "how much do the employees cost" but "are they worth what they cost"? This is not my area, but it seems like measuring _profit_ per employee gets a crude measurement of whether in aggregate those employees are generating more value than their comp.
Grabbing stale numbers from yahoo finance,
MSFT: 221,000 employees, Net Income to common $69.79B => $3,157,918.55 / person
GOOG: 186,779 employees, Net Income to common $66.99B => $3,586,591.64 / person"
Article on m6n.io linking to similar letter to Microsoft: m6n.io
“ Interesting letters have been sent from TCI to Alphabet and Microsoft calling for these layoffs.
PDF of Alphabet letter from TCI's own website”
How to say “I am the worlds biggest cunt” without actually saying “I am the worlds biggest cunt”
Also this:
The canary in the coal mine was reduced advertising spend and revenue. Many tech companies are funded through advertising. So, for as long as that income stream was healthy (which was especially the case in the years leading up to COVID), so was expenditure on staffing. As advertising revenue decreased last year – in part due to fears over a global recession triggered by the pandemic – it was inevitable layoffs would follow.
From https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/why-big-tech-is-firing-employees-by-the-thousands-should-we-be-worried-123012600601_1.html
IMHO, "client-facing research and development" means stuff they can immediately sell to customers, not the basic research in physics, chemistry, materials science, and more, that IBM has been truly and rightfully famous for in the past. Again, IMHO, you don't win Nobel prizes for "client-facing research and development." Arvind is cutting everything he possibly can. He is a true penny-pincher. It will show in IBM's reputation, respect, credibility, and results--and already has.