Got RAd yesterday in CIO - Brazil
9 replies (most recent on top)
Not surprised as there quality of work was realy .........................
Don’t be surprised if IBM lays off a pile of folks this week and next. The timing/calendar is aligned, and 3rd q revenue has not gone up (we’re looking at you consulting division) as much as costs need to come down. China has already happened today and it was over 1000 heads (25% ?) The same will happen around the world using various excuses (RTO, PIP, outsourcing, spinoff, AI replacement, etc etc) IBM knows they are very overmanned and need to address it. SW division will be hit the hardest as AI can replace almost 50% of the headcount. Consulting will take the next big hit as repetitive tasks will be automated. Finally infrastructure will have to partner up on the low end of products as their profit margins can’t be squeezed any harder. The end result is IBM may be finally getting down to an enterprised sized business.
You are absolutely right. CIO is nothing but an unnecessary expense and a drain on the whole company. There are NO Data Centers inside IBM any more, so why the huge expense and and multiple layers of management who allegedly support the remote Data Center infrastructure ? Why keep so many CIO VPs, Directors, Senior managers, managers and the like when you can cut these Middlemen out and save a bundle ? Has any one in CIO looked into how much duplication of effort there is for the projects they work on ? A heck of a lot and the VPs, Directors, managers cover it all up in the name of DevOps, Security, Cloud and the like. After all, calling them out for duplication of effort means they will be on the next layoff list if they can't justify their positions, which should not really exist. CIO is nothing but an old boys and old girls network that have outlived it's usefulness.
The whole Infrastructure operation can be outsourced to a cheaper partner and Alvind saves more for his annual Christmas bonus. Why not use AI, it has all the benefits that IBM keeps talking about particularly automation ? And you then have a runbook on how to do the same thing elsewhere inside IBM too, and bring out more efficiency.
Same applies to Applications groups who have lots of unnecessary projects in the name of improving revenue which are wasteful and bring in ZERO revenue. Anyone done a cost benefit analysis of these projects recently ? It will never happen.
And, the same applies to the Strategy group under F&O - what extra work do they do to justify the headcount ? Nothing - you can hire a bunch of consultants for less money than it takes to feed and water this group of time wasters.
The bottom line - more cuts need to come to F&O and not just in Brazil but throughout the globe, particularly the US and India. There are NO sacred cows or bulls, except BS.
5qye Your observation of IBM is spot on. When IBM was all things to everyone they were approx 430k headcount. Since then they have at least 1/2’ed the size of the company (product and services wise) which would say they should be a 215k sized enterprise company. I suspect they also believe that, and that’s why you are seeing the continuing restructuring.
One could blame IBM's problems on Indian culture or something like that, but that would be too easy. IMHO, IBM's problems are much simpler...they've gotten rid of so much of their business over the years that they are now a much smaller company. As a smaller company, they can't cook the books and hide the dirty laundry nearly as much as they once did.
The bottom line is that IBM now has just three major lines of business...enterprise hardware, enterprise software and enterprise consulting. They used to operate dozens of development and manufacturing sites and hundreds of sales offices...that number of much, much smaller today. Employees are largely remote. How big a CIO operation does IBM really need at this point? (Remember that CIO is IBM's internal IT department.)
IBM only hosts the abysmal Indian vulture culture under the guise of India being less expensive than other countries. If it were a case of comparing apples to apples, Brazil and even Mexico resources offer better technical quality and support than India can ever provide. Why ? Because you get what you pay for, particularly when you engage cheap Indian technical support resources. If you pay peanuts, then you have to hire monkeys. So this is business as usual from the IBM India crooks and the CEO as usual. And the reason why the IBM CFO cooks the books.
Isn't there a good reason why IBM India is only a subsidiary ?
Not surprised at all, India is cheaper then Brazil now.
I'm really sorry to hear that. That is also a bit shocking because I was RAed from Marketing and Communications and the reason we were given is that our job in the U.S. no longer exists and is being moved overseas, to build a bigger presence in Brazil, Romania and India...So now they are laying off in those places? Good grief, it's all a ruse.
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Very sad and disappointed to read this, but not surprised by IBM CIO who does little but put proclamations of great achievements and fake news for his cronies on w3 Intranet. The writing in on the wall.