Cringely has what now??? Re: "that Forbes made up?"
"Cringley has really good inside contacts at Big Blue. If he said 100,000, I'd guess he's got a sound basis for that number"
Seriously? Last year Cringely predicted that IBM was going to fire almost everybody in the US apart from sales and those working Federal deals by the end of the year. Nothing happened. And back in 2007, he predicted 100,000 layoffs; again, didn't happen. He didn't have a sound basis for those numbers then, and he doesn't now. If there's one thing that's abundantly clear to anybody paying attention, Cringely has no clue what is going on inside IBM.
And here's what his follow-up says: "They denied it, of course — not the workforce reduction but its size, saying there won’t be even close to 110,000 workers laid off". Look, if you predict "110,000 layoffs" and the actual number is the several thousand THAT IBM ALREADY ANNOUNCED you're not "right, but a little off on the number" -- which, incidentally is also what Cringely said in 2007 -- you're just plain WRONG. And hearing that envelopes in the mail is not exactly Oracle of Delphi levels of prediction!
Cringely isn't a gadfly; he's an idiot.
And yes, I know I'll get downvoted by the people for whom IBM is Evil Incarnate, regardless of how idiotic Cringely's third failed Doomsday prediction is.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
