IBM warns staff across the business of fresh 45-day redundancy consultations IBMers are telling us of widespread job cuts taking place right across the entire organisation in the UK and wider mainland Europe with Big Blue disptching memos warning of a looming 45-day consultation process. Yesterday, The Reg revealed that IBM asked Global Business Services personnel to elect management and staff …
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They made me redundant twice
Condolences to those "affected" in their cowardly parlance..
But really, this is now their business model. Replace all Western staff with Indian staff on 3k a year, with high churn*
*this figure is from when I went to hyderabad in 2009 so probably wildly generous these days
Condolences to those "affected" in their cowardly parlance..
Condolences indeed.
Similar parlance is common in big orgs; few want to use the word 'redundancies'. My current lot uses the term 'restructuring'. In a previous life I remember redundancy announcement emails that literally
did not contain a single negative word.
I would much prefer them to tell it like it is.
UK teams/accounts are normally 30/70 with onshore and mostly offshore staff (takes around 4 odd offshore to do 1 onshore workload), however offshore staff are also being removed from UK accounts and put on growth hub. Growth hub allows the costs of that employee to be removed from the account to balance the books, and that employee sits on growth hub touting out their skills hoping an account picks them otherwise its bye bye IBM.
If I was considering outsourcing to IBM, I'd ask questions about how many UK staff will work on the account throughout the contract, and what value/tools will IBM bring to the party. The account I worked on had zero IBM tools provided, still using the same tools when we were part of the company we moved from many years ago! Don't be fooled IBM. NewCo is a Wipro re-incarnation. Don't invest in IBM shares, its a shambles and sham internally.
SO, the 'NEW' IBM mantra appears to be :-
We can do more with less, just give us a chance ..................................... PLEASE
Big Blue was once THE go to when you were looking to buy shares that will give a reasonable return and no risk
haven't actually GOT any shares of anyone, so my days of looking and checking are well gone, but how does this 'new' version of IBM stack up against the old version of Big Blue ?
We have three servers running IBM software, but we have to have a fourth server runing IBM BigFix and ILMT in order to produce reports for IBM, or their third party auditing company. The software is awful and complicated and flakey and needed some very intensive sessions to get the softwware installed and running.
We also need quarterly meeting to review our software estate, it is probably costing them more in licence mangement than we pay in licencing fees.
IBM are eating themselves. They will only have a value of the IP and patents in around 2 years and will be bought out by a Chinese company, likely Lenovo.They are stupid and lost the plot about 30 years ago, it is just surprising they have kept going this long.
No, they're just rubbish.
I was recently asked to advise them on something (I'm being deliberately vague). I disagreed with one of their steps. Their response was to ignore my advice as 'this is how we want to do it'.
Week later, I received a voicemail asking them to call as it had gone wrong. I've not bothering to return the call.
You know the lot at the top are floundering when the only way to maintain an obscene profit margin is to sack the very people needed to keep the company functioning. Not that they give a shit. Its all short term decisions made with the sole intention to pad their next bonus. I was really hoping the new guy would change that - its depressing to see him follow the same old worn out decisions.
Takes me back to the nineties and ICL (god rot their non-existent soul).
Twenty years working for the company as a data comms specialist. (Modems, LANs, WANs, ISDN, digital exchanges, etc.)
Having been made redundant in one division, on the last day of the ninety day notice I was offered a job in another division.
A year later that division had a 'clear out' and the axe fell again.
The last day? You've guessed it, Christmas Eve. "No need to come in before the 31st!"
The upside?
For the next successive ten years I sold my services as a freelance 'specialist' back to them at a significant mark up.
Good ole manglement, it's the same everywhere.
..(deliberately vague). I did a lot of work for them in the Middle East. Halfway through a large project I got an email telling me that I was being made redundant (long story kept short) and told to fly home to the UK immediately. Anyway, a few weeks after being kicked out of the company I get a phone call. The call was from the Program Manager of the project (the person who deemed I was surplus to requirements). He asked me if I would go back out, as a contractor on 3 times the rate I was getting when I worked for the company. It sounded like he was deep in the brown stuff. I told him I would call him back when I had time to think about it. I never returned the call and rejected all further calls from him.
I know it was childish, but it felt so, so good!
Another 26% of the IBM GTS UK staff allocated to customer accounts are being cut by May 2021 due to cost cutting. UK Customer contracts already suffering due to the 25% cut in May 2020. If you are thinking of outsourcing to IBM, dont, their products and services are poor, over priced and outdated. I would add in a clause in any contract with IBM to ensure UK staff are used, which each out perform offshore staff by a ratio of 1:3, therefore financially doesn't make sense too offshore. IBM are actually offering 6 months redundancy payment if you volunteer on this round, pure desperation to cut costs and headcount ahead of 'NewCo'.
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