Thread regarding IBM layoffs

Watson Health RA's in progress this week. Not sure how many it will be but some data scientists and analysts have been notified already.

Keep guessing, some day you might be right

September is here.. Time for another round of cuts . Anyone hearing the end of the month or numbers ?

I was let go in the spring of 2007. All I can say, is there IS life after IBM. I landed on my feet in a much better company and don't have to worry about my job anymore. The job I'm in now is no stress, no being on call, no weekends or holidays. IBM is just a bad memory.

Get out while you can... The company does not cAre about the workers in the trenches.
Only execs make the $$

My prayers are with all of you going through this very difficult time.

Deepest condolences and best of luck to you all!

ITer

My prayers are with all of you going through this very difficult time.

Deepest condolences and best of luck to you all!

ITer

I was resourced 2019 and targeted with a 0 productivity January due to December surgery. Followed with a 72% February due to a on job injury. And average 78% productive last 8 years. Imagine that!! Such a reckless pattern and decline... The top needs to look in the mirror!

My 20 year anniversary was in Q1 of this year.
30 day notice - 90 day severance - 1 year health insurance subsidized at my current rate.
IBM seems more concerned with the separation agreement and meaningless lip-service and CYA than identifying underperforming workers for the RA.

The comments I have gotten from my co-workers who are surviving the culling are eye-opening.

Universally they recognize me as the most skilled person on the team they had to work with, and they can't believe that others are remaining while I'm being cut.

Personally I'm joining the happier-to-have-moved-on-crowd of retired / ex-IBMers.
Who wants to be Conan on the Wheel of Pain... the last one left doing all the work.

To all the customers who are going to suffer having to rely on my co-workers to get a response, specifically request those good engineers you know by name on your future support tickets, you'll find that the good ones are gone and you are left with the "Let's Make A Deal" zonk prize.

I have been “RA’d” as well, but it’s a relief actually. I get a severance while my next job is already lined up (I’m a spiritual man, so I must attribute what most people would call good luck to my God, Jehovah!) I worked as a consultant through 2019, then my manager decided to move a few of us, along with him, into a non-billable role to support a very lacking, flimsy, embarrassment of a Cloud IDaaS offering - so I figured I would not last there in 2020 mostly because I realized the realities of the kind of work I was being asked to do. Twice, I’ve been asked by potential future managers at IBM about my thoughts on the Cloud IDaaS platform, and both times I could not hide my opinion of just how poorly it’s strategy has been executed to-date. Amidst, COVID-19 I view this departure as a blessing: (1) IBM, as I mentioned, is giving me a good severance package, and (2) has extended my medical benefits as current costEd by 1 year, and COBRA by another year, and (3) work demands are still there for my line of work, but joining a smaller company allows me to make the money I want, at a cheaper bill rate for businesses or agencies that are impacted due to COVID-19.

Once a company experiences the illusion of a better bottom line that is created by a reduction in staff.
They are seduced by it over and over. They go for it, again and again, continuing to pile more work on those that are left in a never-ending downward spiral of decreasing numbers of people doing more work. A true restructure would include at least as many executives as worker bees and middle management.

Read: Robert X. Cringely - My first prediction for 2020 – IBM.
Watch youtube video: "The Decline of IBM"

Here is a summary of those two sources combined.

IBM is moving out of traditional managed hosting ('IT outsourcing') that is very much part of GTS. IBM is loosing money in GTS for many reasons (shrinking client base [in part due to past IBM bad decisions], lack of investment, lack of long term vision). This model is still viable because companies don't need just cloud 'services'. Companies need smart people to write software, configure, and run systems. Many companies are not staffed to do this job because good IT is hard, very hard.

GTS, and the rest of IBM, can't survive if IBM corporate leadership is focused primarily on quarterly financials/dividends and not investment towards technology excellence. A plant cannot thrive if you don't give it adequate water and light. GTS's cuts are a sign of corporate dyfunction, not just of changing market patterns.

Over the years IBM has sold off most of the core businesses that really mattered and were financially solid all in the name of quarterly 'gains'. This is short term thinking. Getting back to GAAP accounting would also force IBM to stop playing many of it's financial games.

IBM has become a company that buys and sells technologies, rather than inventing them. (Creating and selling patents is not a large enough core to support the employee base that IBM has.) IBM R&D funding has been slashed over the decades. IBM has forgotten why R&D is important. There is no perceivable long term technology vision outside of buzzwords like 'hybrid cloud'.

The Red Hat acquisition was/is the last chance IBM has. If IBM k–ls RH innovation culture, there are no other lifelines. To fix IBM start by lopping off most of the execs and put in Whitehurst and his RH team in charge.

Train all of GTS in OpenShift. Make it the core technology framework for IBM hosting/custom devops. Convert existing customers to OpenShift even if you have to charge less in conversion and initial licensing fees. This is strategic investment.

In short, do what Robert Cringely suggested, turn IBM into Red Hat. It was a 'Baby Bell', Southwestern Bell, that eventually took over the former parent AT&T. A similar action needs to occur for Red Hat and IBM.

There are still enough smart folks in IBM to save the company. But there is no substantial/meaningful feedback loop beyond a few polls/surveys within the company for the current execs to listen. There is no awareness at the exec level that they are decoupled from employees and actually need employee feedback to help drive success and to survive, and thrive.

@3tqxb+11JibZyK

Did mean 1,500 not 15K from RTP.... typo, sorry. Only location I heard over 10K was in India. But the exe who told us this was high enough he should know. But I do know that about half of the people we interface with are now gone. And that's across several business units across the US, EU and India. So it was a major move regardless of the number.

So sorry you were part of this... I have been there and was in another large Tech firm's "Resource Action" group last year is how I got to my current job. Best wishes.

@3tgsx+11JibZyK

I don't know how many were RA'ed (I'm one of them), but 90K is bold. I question your source and you if you want us to believe 15,000 were let go from RTP. Tell me it's a typo and you meant 1,500?

I know of layoffs in MSC and Cloud - new hires with 2 years and people with 30 plus years. Content Writer, Digital Strategist, First Line Manager, Product Owner. None are performance related; none are because of lack of work. This happened May 21 - 1 month's notice, 3 month severance, 1 year medical. I hear rumors that another RA is coming soon. Anyone else know if it is IBMers or contractors or which business units?

So, we are a major vendor to IBM and I was on a call this week where we were supposed to go over the next phase of a major project we are about to do for them.... and only 2 of the 8 or so IBM'ers joined the call.... after a few minutes of confusion the IBM Client Exec joins the call and let us know about the Resource Action that had just happened... those people and most of their teams were no longer with the company. The work is necessary for them to meet their obligations to a very major end client of theirs, so it has to happen, we're just going to have to put things on hold for a couple of weeks while they figure up who is now going to take it on. Then he said something he probably shouldn't have... he admitted it was part of about 90,000 FTE's being let go world wide. The group we were working with were in the Research Triangle in NC... about half of their building was included in that Resouce Action... which equals somewhere around 1,5000 people a colleague who used to work there told me. 90,000 - incredible!

Does anyone know about the apprenticeship program?

I was actually hoping to get a package as I plan on retiring on 6/30/20. Asked manager and he said "nothing is available for you in your situation";

It means they knew you were already planning to leave this year - they did not offer any of those individuals a package because they didn't need to. They also didn't offer any "special rewards" to people who they knew were leaving either via retirement or RA. Bottom line is you helped them meet their reduction target by informing them in advance of your plans to leave and they aren't sweetening the pot any for you.

So Arvind's first real act as CEO is to lay off thousands of employees in the middle of a pandemic. And here we thought he was a fresh new face with new and innovative ideas. He's just like all the others, they only have one move in their arsenal and that's to eliminate jobs. I thought CEO's were supposed to be smarter than that. If that's the only decision CEO's need to make then we all can have that job and unfortunately it's probably redundant and will be eliminated. Sorry, future is not bright at IBM.

The cuts in TSS (US) appear wide and deep. Employees affected in sales, sales support, project management, business development, offering development, service planning, service delivery support.

3QK TSS is being packaged and sold they will clean house at time of transition who ever goes by YE

GLA

Anyone in GTS/TSS get RAed? I was actually hoping to get a package as I plan on retiring on 6/30/20. Asked manager and he said "nothing is available for you in your situation"; whatever that means. Just curious if TSS got hit.

Big Blue blows again!

IBM= I blow managers

RA'd from the Public Cloud side here. I've heard 2 more of our team was hit but not confirmed Same deal at others on the 30/90 notice/severance along with other benefits. They mentioned in the team announcement today (private meetings were last week) that this isn't due to the pandemic but it's hard to believe that believe that. Anyhow, it felt inevitable that some people were going to get hit like this when they forced teams to take on new members for whatever reason last year. Good luck everyone

During past whenever there was a large number of positions cut, the WARN act required IBM to disclose
the total number of positions eliminated, position description and age. Does anyone know if this data is available for this innovative round of RAs?

Two good performing developers from 2016 graduating class, "millenials", on my team were let go.

The main discussion is on this thread

@OP+154KgwW3

or

thelayoff.com/t/154KgwW3

I'm in the RA club as of today, just like others have said. Last day June 22nd, same exact details as others. Of course, was told it's not performance based. Fwiw, I'm a 51yo female and was with IBM for 3 yrs.

June 22nd + 3 months. I think there's a theme emerging. Sorry to go. Would have retired soon anway.

24 years. On profitable contract with huge renewal at end of the year. 30 days with 90 days severence. I was always a 1 or 2+ rating. Last day June 22.

For new folks here: on the main page there is an "ACTIVE" button right above the first thread - you can use it to see what posts had recent replies. That's all from me. Anyhow, I hope this helps someone.

The main page is here /international-business-machines
or here:
https://www.thelayoff.com/international-business-machines

Number of US employees given 30 days notice today - 90 days of severance and 1 year of health benefits. Hit is on Development - Product - Services. Looks like it is across the board and in planning since the change at the top - not coronavirus driven.

30 day notice / 90 day Sev. New chapter ahead.

Just got RA from Finance and Operations. oddly, same as others, June 22 last day, 3 months severance.

30 day notice with 90 day severance? I guess thats reverse what they usually do.. .same amount of money.. but makes it sound like they were generous with severance. lol

Post ID: @OP+15409ktz

Just got the 30 day notice with 90 lump like others said.
WH is being sliced and diced.

They're VERY sorry though!

Well they were questioning the bad PR that would come from doing this during Covid.. especially since its not Covid related and is instead because of the new partnership... this was planned before Covid. Looks like in the end it didn't matter... shareholders over workers. I have heard that because of Covid they may give more than the usual (90 days notice + 1 Severance if you stay all 90 days). We will find out in a day.

What is expected notice (90 days?) and severance (1 mo?)?
So sorry for contractors who are given a week. That's so wrong.
This company is no longer the one I joined years ago.

This Thursday May 21, 2020 IBM is laying off almost the entire provider side of Watson Health... its going to be a pretty huge RA. Visiant is partnering with IBM and will be taking over that market Sorry folks....