IBM cutting several thousand jobs in latest layoffs

IBM this week began notifying several thousand employees that they will be laid off, according to sources familiar with the matter.  These Resource Action (RA) notifications tell staff that they have 30 days to find another position within the company or they will be let go, with a few months of severance pay. Most of those on …

[trevorde]

How is this even news?

IBM *hiring* in the USA, now that would be news.

[Snake]

Re: How is this even news?

Riddle me this: Who would *want* to work for IBM with the now-constant threat of RA's hanging over one's head??

[David 132]

Re: How is this even news?

What I want to know, and what the article doesn't mention, is - what's the average age of those being laid off, relative to the age of their peers?

I suspect this is IBM up to their infamous "dinobabies" tricks again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How is this even news?

Opportunities galore in Cloud/Infra in Indian Business Machines home country Bangalore Office.

Stock just happens to be traded on NYSE.

Same faux corporation as Chinese Shein, HQ’d in Singapore:

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Waiting for IBM to announce that they have 4294967295 employees, as a result of a fixed integer and a wrap-around error

[Gary Stewart]

"How will they dismember that last employee to get to 50%?"

I hear that top brass in Saudi Arabia have a solution to that problem.

[vtcodger]

And so it goes

Old tech companies never die, they just fade away.

[MachDiamond]

Bell labs

IBM is still big enough that what they might really needs is a "Bell Labs" think tank to find new products they can patent and sell at a profit.

Steve Jobs used a well-funded Apple R&D shop to get things that could be turned into amazing new products. Many weren't even new, but new ways to package something and slap a very intuitive UI on top to make it usable. Tim doesn't seem to be doing that. IBM still has the facilities to do it, for the moment. If they wait too long and are forced to liquidate too much stuff and hemorrhage too many good people, they'll be in hospice care and waiting to finally be pronounced deceased.

[Gene Cash]

Re: Bell labs

Are you serious?

The saddest thing about all this is IBM WAS the "Bell Labs" think tank of the planet. They invented the punch card, the disk drive, virtual memory, software that could run on more than one model of machine, the floppy disk, the original book size PC hard disk, magnetic tape, DRAM, printed barcodes... and that's 20 seconds of Googling.

IBM used to be THE well-funded R&D shop. When I was a kid, computers were called "IBM machines" like copiers used to be called "Xerox machines"

They already threw that all away.

They're already the zombie walking dead, and have been for about 10 years. They are much too far gone. They've lost all their genius technical long ago.

[Gary Stewart]

Re: Bell labs

While what you say is completely correct, you should not downplay the contributions of other outstanding research programs at Bell Labs, Xerox, and numerous university research programs. Another 20 seconds googling on each of these will give equally impressive results. Sadly as you say groundbreaking R&D has been mostly if not completely abandoned by corporations who somehow fail to recognize that these efforts were at the forefront of their commercial empires and profits. Equally sad is the current US regime's massive effort to extort or shut down multiple university's research efforts because "woke".

[jvf]

Re: Bell labs

AT&T shut down and sold the name to another financial holdings company. It's so sad. I remember how proud and excited I was to have engineers from THE Bell Labs borrow my lab to finish programming and configuring an AT&T phone system we had recently purchased. It was complicated back in the day with routing tables and other nonsense. When they were finished, our President called me into his office where they were all sitting around. This system was going to pay for itself after only a couple of months because our phone bill was so high. ""Since this was your idea, you get the honor of making the first call" he said. Ever the practical one and having the phone number memorized (no speed dial for me even today), I called CSA to check on a product we had them evaluating. Wonk, wonk, wonk, went the phone as I handed it to the closest red faced Bell Labs engineer. Turns out they hadn't figured we might want to call out of the country so the hadn't put any "foreign" area codes in the routing tables. Pretty funny, that.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Bell labs

"Are you serious?"

IBM used to have it and doesn't anymore. Apple used to have it and there's less and less evidence that they still do as time goes by. Many other companies have had the same thing happen as the accountants couldn't calculate a return on such innovation. Managers couldn't put the innovation on a calendar so they new exactly when to schedule the ad campaign. It was replaced by buying up smaller companies that were innovating and paying so much for them that the team members could retire and open a bar/coffee shop near their favorite ski slopes or golf course. I know a few people that have been through that cycle. The problem is that they wind up not innovating anymore and wind up so long out of the business that it's hard to catch up and nobody will hire them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bell labs

The highly motivated founders and innovators often retire or get driven out by bean counters that institutional investors demand. Then the vision and hunger leaks away. The founders cared about the products or service, the bean counters about money. A relative experienced the same with a small company, it was highly successful but as it grew, he said it's not exciting anymore, too much time taken on just running a business instead of working on the products. He didn't want it to grow more because of that but the other directors were interested in the money. Before he left, they were keeping enough cash aside to be able to pay all the staff a years salary in case of problems!

[jvf]

Re: Bell labs

In the late 80's, early 90's I ran the R&D lab for a small manuf. company (back when we still made sh*t in the US). I was working out a design problem for a new product with a colleague. Our illustrious entrepreneur president was an impatient chap and happened to strike up a conversation with an IBM engineer during a flight home. He brought the guy over to the factory to instantly solve our problem and instructed me to show him around the area and entertain him (which I did). After a couple of days he said to me "I don't know what Bob wants me to do, you're every bit as smart as the engineers we have at IBM". Suspicious of IBM's prowess even back then, I took it as a left handed compliment. A couple of days later, my colleague and I solved the problem and the product was a success.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Bell labs

Tim doesn't seem to be doing that.

He could have made facsimiles of this innovative and disruptive little trinket, the embodiment of Steve Jobs' design ethos

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/07/tim-cook-trump-gift/85555805007/

to be sold in Apple Stores - it could have been Apple's bigliest ever selling product.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bell labs

I'm not American but I think it's great that Trump is getting investment up at home. It's critical. The West cannot deliver cheap labour without reducing people's wealth and if it does not invest at home the innovation will end up overseas with the labour then what is left? All the media sneering at MAGA but what is wrong with that if you're American? I would like to see MUGA; Make UK Great Again. Any Brit that doesn't want that is not a Brit but a globalist that wants to destroy Britain to enable global technocracy, which in other words is dictatorship and feudalism.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Bell labs

Yes, I started work at a factory that employed about 1800 people. Raw materials in, finished products out.

Not long before I left, production was starting to go go overseas. The site is now warehousing space and a couple of fast food outlets.

[Gary Stewart]

Re: Bell labs

"I'm not American but I think it's great that Trump is getting investment up at home"

According to Trump, $12 trillion in investments with some countries "pledging" multiples of their yearly GDP. Anybody remember Foxxconn (2018)? So bolder of salt required. Not according to more believable sources. US manufacturing is down and it will take years to build the "promised" factories needed. Of course some of the investments he claims as his were started well before he became president, thus bolder of salt although I long ago got to the salt mine required phase. See Build Back America for further details.

Watch just about any interview with the MAGA faithful and you just might figure out why they strive mightily to accomplish low esteem. That they even believe Trump in the first place is a telling indicator.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bell labs

A few dis get built like some of Hyundai and Toyota’s.

Most are just running a distraction scam until Trump out of office Jan 2029 or neutered in next year mid-terms.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bell labs

Perhaps there needs to be a punitive ‘tarriff’ on jobs offshored ? Not just stuff imported.

There are a million stories of people fucked off with outsourcing, contract manufacturing, business process/‘back office’/support/technology offshoring.

If nothing else it takes money out of your local economy and tax base … with all of benefits going to the 0.1% and the unscrupulous Oligarchy above them.

VodafoneThree last week as a topical example.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/31/vodafonethree_to_offshore_uk_network/

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bell labs

That's smokescreen. Of course there will be exaggeration, businesses lying, credit taken for decisions already made. BUT! It is being pushed into the consciousness that if you move everything out you have simply swapped geogrphic locations of 3rd world with 1st world. "If" ordinary Americans come to realise in desperation to have everything they are positioning to have nothing. The desire for onshore manufacturing, innovation & jobs for the kids may endure beyond Trump.

What would you do? Let it all slip away, give up your flash car and nice home, scrape a living off the land, run away to the old 3rd world if they accept you?

[MachDiamond]

Re: Bell labs

"US manufacturing is down and it will take years to build the "promised" factories needed."

If those companies were being threatened with huge tariffs on imported items/materials, the promises might be a delaying tactic to ward off the tariffs until Mr Trump is out of office. There will also be generous government handouts for big companies to build a factory or distribution warehouse so a company can wind up getting a hefty discount on land/infrastructure that they can always flog off in 5-6 years at a fat profit, again, to just get beyond the current political administration's policies. Gaming the system, pure and simple. For the average Joe, there won't be a creation of well-paying jobs that will be around for the long term. If you are building a brand new factory, you will automate the crap out of it. A distribution warehouse has loads of minimum wage staff with some moderately paid managers and a couple of very well paid execs and the total taxable payroll won't add up to anywhere near the tax concessions some government mob gave them to site the project in that city. It can just as likely be a net loss for the area with long term liabilities.

[Snake]

Re: "It's critical"

"I'm not American but I think it's great that Trump is getting investment up at home."

What it is, is blatant dishonesty.

If they *really* had cared, all this time, for "American greatness" through innovation and investment, they wouldn't have allowed corporations to pull things like the Double Irish, which for example helped Apple to build a $162 billion cash reserves. Or IBM, etc. But yet the corporate dividends keep coming.

The "investment" will also contain "tax benefits" for corporations that "invest in America". In other words, public monies will go to the private sector to help support their business goals - the businesses get to use public infrastructure (roads, bridges, water, sewer, police coverage, etc) but, thanks to those tax breaks, the public gets to pay all of the increased overhead in maintaining those services. But yet the corporate dividends keep coming.

Those same corporations lobby, costing millions, for maintaining minimum wages, keeping downward pressure on the labor market's overall pay. But yet the corporate dividends keep coming.

Etc, etc, etc

...

The public (both U.S. and UK) have the best government corporate money can buy. And they keep voting for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bell labs

Lou Gerstner famously said 'good ideas don't come out of IBM research, they escape!'

I had the opportunity to work on a project with IBM research in the early 2000's. IBM research had developed large scale search and computing technology that could have made the company a direct competitor to Google. A couple years later IBM came up with its CAMSS strategy - cloud, analytics, mobile, social, security. I saw research work that could have made IBM great with each. That work never saw the light of day. CAMSS, like most IBM strategies was really marketing smoke and mirrors.

[Anonymous Coward]

How Sad -- Investment community take notice

There was a time not too long ago when IBM "services" business contributed a large portion of the corporations net income. Years of cost cutting, deliberately cheating on service contracts, mismanagement, and no investment in the division led to the loss of countless contracts and a steeply declining business. Eventually IBM spun off some of the business to form Kyndryl.

Remember Watson medical? Great idea. Great business potential. After a few short years IBM shut down the effort. It takes a DECADE(S) to bring medical innovations to market. Even the most agile startup needs many years of steady work, research, testing, and investment to produce results. IBM was too naive and impatient. It wanted instant gratification.

IBM Cloud? Another great idea. Another great business potential. Instead of designing a complete service and making serious investments to scale it out, IBM went cheap. They did the least possible and relied on their brand name, marketing, and salesmanship create the illusion their Cloud service was more than smoke and mirrors. In this news article we see IBM is dismantling that business.

Blockchain? The world is changing. Soon there will be government backed digital currencies. Soon there will be direct transsfers of funds between buyer and sellers, replacing the financial and credit card processing systems. Again IBM had the opportunity to be the leader. They had the technology, understood financial industry, had relatioships with all the major banks. After a couple short years IBM got impatient. Again they were expecting instant gratification

There is a pattern here. IBM has missed every technology change, lost every business opportunity in the last 20+ years.

In my opinion Arvind Krishna is the best CEO IBM has had since Lou Gerstner. The problem facing him and IBM is the fact IBM's leadership simply does not know how to run a business, Worse when it comes to starting a new business they are clueless. I sincerely hope Arvind is successful. Unfortunately he's dealing with very toxic and incompetent leadership in the management ranks of IBM. Intead of reading about more resource actions in the lower ranks of IBM, I'd like to see a serious effort to cut staff and hire better leaders at the director level and above. If this doesn't happen in a couple years IBM will be an insignificant part of the AI world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How Sad -- Investment community take notice

"IBM was too naive and impatient. It wanted instant gratification."

A consultancy mindset introduced into a manufacturing/innovation business because the institutional investors hoped it would deliver more profit. What it did was gut the business core differentiators.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How Sad -- Investment community take notice

It takes a very, very special leader to turn a business in IBM's position around. Getting the support of investors is the first hurdle of many. They can be patient "if" they believe there is something massive possible. Risk/reward ratio. Is Arvind the man? No idea, but it doesn't look like it. No matter how good at running the business he needs buckets of money. The world is turning; what will be either newly innovative or in demand while in short supply? Finding it requires market research, macro views, intellect, gut instinct, luck, inspiring leadership and risk taking in buckets. It's a win or lose everything bet.

[vtcodger]

Re: How Sad -- Investment community take notice

A couple of quibbles.

1, China has been playing with a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) for a decade. It hasn't been a disaster, but neither has the e-CNY been a rousing success. It's not Blockchain based BTW. More like a credit card operation as far as I can tell.

2. Blockchain is a technical success. But for the most part it remains a solution in search of a problem. Cryptocurrency? Its chief utilities looks to be untraceable financial transactions (Not necessarily a good thing) and rampant speculation.

Not clear that there would have been any financial benefit to IBM from investment in that arena.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How Sad -- Investment community take notice

Europe is working on a digital Euro. It could be a reality in a couple years. The financial world is changing and IBM won't be in the drivers seat this time.

[Judge Mental]

Re: How Sad -- Investment community take notice

Never, ever let the accountants run a business.

[James Anderson]

A different take.

IBM unloading an illusory “cloud” division which has been eating up the profits from its neglected mainframe division.

Sadly the profits from zOS and friends will now be ploughed into a Real Stupidity, sorry AI financial /dev/null.

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprised

I'm only surprised it lasted so long. They tried to sell that cloud to a corporation I worked for several years ago and I remember thinking that Amazon & Microsoft were ahead, why would I use IBM. It looks to me they're making similar mistakes with AI. If quantum doesn't come off that will have been another huge waste. Each time it doesn't work out will be extremely damaging to the rest of the business having sucked up investment. They also seem to want to be Accenture, maybe because being heavy on consultancy is an easier finance model to manage. It's a shame because they have produced some fantastic products and some of the research work is still excellent. I guess it is a lack of clear vision across CEOs.

[MrBanana]

Unsubscribe

Here we go again, this article appears every few months or so. Some detail changes to the numbers, locations, business units. But it's the same story - IBM are fucked. Customers of IBM - also fucked. Employees of IBM - fucked royally.

[IGnatius T Foobar !]

India Business Machines

Even if the jobs don't reappear in India, it's the American jobs that are being sacked, not the Indian jobs. At least they're not lying like Microsoft and claiming that AI took over those roles.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

IBM - Idiots, Boneheads, and Morons.