back to article IBM talks up cost savings, including 'workforce rebalancing'

IBM is recasting its ambitions for annual run rate cost savings by upping the target by another $1 billion, and will pull multiple levers to get there – including a completion of the Weather Company’s asset and job cuts. The enterprise tech bellwether has just filed results for calendar Q4: revenue edged up four percent year- …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What does IBM do these days?

    Posting anon because I don't want to get ridiculed since this is a genuine question.

    I'm in my early 40s. When I was at uni, 20+ years ago, I was given several recommendations that I should seriously consider working for IBM. These recommendations were from people such as uni lecturers who had never even worked there. I never did, and went on to become a software engineer at relatively tiny companies by comparison. That said I enjoy what I do.

    Whenever I read stories about IBM - specifically from those who work(ed) there - it sounds like one horror story after another.

    My vague recollection from 20+ years ago is they were this massive company that had had success with PCs in the 2 decades prior. I know they had some heritage in the server department and was largely unaware of anything to do with their software ventures.

    When I look at them in 2024 I've no idea what they actually do. The stand out seems to be "consultancy" and it's hard to imagine anything other than they're still somehow riding on the wave of successes of the past. As per, "you don't get fired for buying (insert big company name here)". I can't imagine their consultancy services in the IT industry are significantly better than the - literally thousands of - other much smaller consultancies.

    So, WTF do they actually do? And out of interest did anyone enjoy working there?

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: What does IBM do these days?

      I've worked on a few projects with IBM over the years.

      First it involved going to their data centres - lots of servers with warning lights flashing as RAID was degraded. Nobody ever bothered to fix that.

      To make life more difficult, there weren't enough keyboards to go around all the servers (this was before RDP). If you left the server you were working on, someone would take your keyboard. As these were the old PS/2 keyboards, you'd then have to reboot to make another keyboard work.

      More recently, they wanted me to do some very specialised work. Just a few days. My PI only covers me to £1m. They wanted £2m. By the time we'd sorted that out (6 months), the remainder of the project had been abandoned.

      No, I don't know what they do any more either!

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: What does IBM do these days?

        They think up new euphemisms for firing people

        If the economy really tanks there will be a massive market as $1Tn FANG stocks all try to 'right-size', 'best-size' reduction-in-force', 'exterminate' (we dropped that one ed.) or 'rebalance human resources' - and IBM will be at the industry forefront of supplying these phrases

        1. TimMaher Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: “exterminate”

          Get the feeling that the editor used to work in Human Remains.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What does IBM do these days?

        As an ibmer I think I can tackle this question: it's not an easy nor a straightforward answer. IBM does lots of things and they have their hands in lots of different things. It also changes focus as time goes by and they're constantly trying to reinvent themselves (as they say). Lately, their focus is on cloud and AI. So everything seems to be about that, but the company also has their hands on loads of other things like admin, business services, software, networks, data centers, quantum, cyber security, and even mainframes.

        I'd also like to point out that the Consulting division just so happened to grow in size and scope all of a sudden, since IBM got rid of a huge technology services division that became Kyndryl, and what was left behind, (which is a bunch of random depts of all kinds of services) just fell under de Consulting branch. So yeah, doesn't really make much sense, but that is why Consulting has gained so much importance lately; because they've grown so much in size.

        So that's what IBM does these days.

        PS: a few years before the pandemic, most employees in the US were home-office. In other Geos, it varied greatly.

        But, the funny thing is that right up to the pandemic, most IBM campuses and offices were empty and they were really trying to get people to go back. Then the pandemic hit! Everyone was home office and happy. Now that's it's ended, they're really forcing everyone back to the office. But NOW they want to get rid of office space... neverending story! Grab your popcorn! Let's see what happens next in 2024!!

    2. jfollows

      Re: What does IBM do these days?

      I worked for IBM from 1984 to 2008 and - apart from the last year - it was a good company to work for. You were recognised as an IBM employee, and valued as such, and able to make a career through different interesting jobs. The balance was good between requirements of the company and remuneration and you weren't expected to do silly things which disrupted your personal life except in very unusual circumstances.

      After Sam Palmisano took over, it stopped being a good company to work for, the company took more from you and gave less, and wanted to pigeonhole you in a place where you might make money for IBM. So I found another job and left, best job-related decision of my life, I took a pay cut for a more interesting job.

      After I left - in the UK - IBM killed the pension scheme for those still employed, in a show of huge bad faith and going back on previous "committments" which turned out not to be.

      After a spell working on internal IT projects, I always worked in areas in which IBM sold things, and I was able to come up with solutions which met customers' needs in various areas. I made sure my customers were happy and would always want to come back to us. I simply don't see that sort of job satisfaction any more, and it's definitely not a "job for life" as it once was.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What does IBM do these days?

      They own a lot of software which is very good. I work for a relatively small company implementing some of it.

      They are very large and do a lot that you don’t read about. Keep the gears of the economy moving. It’s easy to be cynical, and I really am, but friends who work there who haven’t been forced out with gagging orders seem to thrive.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What does IBM do these days?

      Fire anyone over age 25?

    5. jmch Silver badge

      Re: What does IBM do these days?

      " WTF do they actually do?"

      No idea, but apparently enough for their customers to part with $17bn-ish in a quarter. Even with a mind-boggling level of waste and incompetence they still ought to be delivering some value (even if just by statistical accident)

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What does IBM do these days?

      They still have some interesting products; but they are hidden behind vast layers of bureaucrats. They have a datacentre near me; which used to be a thriving hub of people. Not so anymore - the data centre is still there but almost all the jobs all moved to India. The people left are in sales for the offshore lot. The only reason the hardware is still here is because some customers need the low latency location.

      Maximo is the one that most immediately comes to mind - and before anyone jumps in - yes, I've used a bunch of other asset management systems. Most of them are shiat, and alternative is to write your own and then have to deal with the support yourself. Something most corporations don't like doing because a stick to beat the externals with is "better" than hiring your own people and retaining them. Apparently.

      I am a sucker for IBM of old. O/S2 was amazing for it's time, if you had the hardware. Cost of ownership of course is undoubtedly why DOS/Win3.1 won out - the latter would usefully run on a toaster whereas O/S2 really needed something vaguely performant. And you'd already bought your PC which had Windows on it.

      Older IBM hardware is not only still around but still regarded as desirable in many quarters.

      Today they're just another Crapita, much of a muchness and nothing to differentiate themselves from any of the other boring IT consultancies apart from legacy (which gets fouled up more with every screwed up programme).

    7. GruntyMcPugh

      Re: What does IBM do these days?

      I worked for them until 2015, when I took Voluntary Redundancy. I had ten years under my belt at that point, after we were TUPEd to them in an outsourcing deal. So at that point, they did outsourcing, hosting, and still sold servers. They would project manage software development, and plan hardware installations, and entire lifecycle support. I think most of this stuff went to Kyndryl when they span that off.

      Since then? No idea what core IBM does. I just know working in a medium sized organisation now, there's nothing we'd buy from them. Back in the day, there was an AS/400 here, but IBM don't sell any hardware we'd be interested in buying now. The rest, AI and all that, seems too vague, and a luxury or vanity purchase. We haven't got that sort of disposable budget.

  2. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Rebalancing

    manager> Hey Steve we are adopting workforce rebalancing to increase productivity. Exciting times!

    steve> What does it mean?

    manager> Pack your stuff.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Watson.

    That would be the tool they tried to push their own internal teams to use, only for them to abandon the initiative because it was so dire.

    How do I know? - I was on one of the teams.

  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    FAIL

    "workforce rebalancing"

    So that's the new term these days at IBM ?

    I wonder when IBM is going to be "rebalanced" to the dustbin of history.

    'Cause I don't see it going anywhere else.

    1. Nifty

      Re: "workforce rebalancing"

      When you start seeing IBM flashlights for sale on Temu.

      1. Lurko

        Re: "workforce rebalancing"

        Will Ebay do?

        https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224862661934

  5. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Lurko

      Re: I guess analysts don't consider year-to-year inflation?

      That's a good call, and demonstrates IBM's lacklustre performance - but stock analysts have the memory of a goldfish (and that's still ten times longer than your average investor). In large part that's because for investors inflation and past performance is often less important than what they'd hope to get if they parked their money elsewhere, and that's always a forward looking choice.

      Regardless of lacklustre management at IBM (or DXC, or Boeing, or Ebay etc), the bet investors are taking is whether stock price and dividends will go up by more than their other options. If they think IBM's management are crap, but the stock itself is undervalued, it can still be a good buy so long as the buyer can trade out when the valuation improves.

      But looking at what IBM have delivered supports your view of weak growth - over the past five years, IBM stock is up 48%...woohoo! Except that the NASDAQ is up 116%. As you say, poor growth in inflation adjusted terms, but cruising along on the strength of the brand, current leadership have the mind set of PHBs everywhere: "If I cut costs enough, eventually we'll be profitable without selling anything". And of course, investors are currently absolute suckers for any company that even mentions AI, so the stock price has bounced on that alone.

  6. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

    WHy doesnt IBM just fire everyone and double the board members ?

  7. jmch Silver badge

    Real Estate...

    " "reflecting actions to optimize our real estate portfolio. "

    I guess that means getting rid of empty offices, after forcing the employees who worked there to move to larger, further away offices while cutting down on work from home options (i.e. constructive dismissal)

  8. trevorde Silver badge

    Quarterly events

    Resource Action

    Workforce Rebalancing

    Right-sizing

    Right-skilling

    Back to office

    Performance Review

  9. FuzzyTheBear
    Mushroom

    Just a feeling

    Red Hat is about to go the IBM way : closed.

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