Thread regarding IBM layoffs

Discrimination

Why doesn't IBM put technology or business operation centers in Africa to employ black people? Why doesn't IBM put technology or business operation centers in urban black communities or in urban inner cities like Detroit or Chicago or Philadelphia, Louisiana or Mississipi and hire capable African-Americans to staff them?

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Post ID: @OP+15rkcfek

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Your kidding right? Ibm has many facilities in Africa and Labs there for research also. My sister-in-law was an Ambassador in Africa and interfaced with IBM folks a lot. Driven by its emerging middle class, rapid urbanization and increased demand for key services such as healthcare, government, banking and communications, Africa presents a significant market opportunity for IBM. IBM has made significant investments in Africa’s future and the development of the continent’s economy. After nearly a century of playing a vital role in Africa’s development, IBM is now a part of the continent’s technological fabric, business and community.
As a technology leader, IBM helps to boost the capabilities of people in Africa and its institutions –including skills, technology infrastructure, governance and scientific research.Across the continent, IBM works with clients and partners to put in place the systems, infrastructures and processes to underpin the continent’s economic and social transformation.

IBM is also helping in the development of skills and academic curricula, the development of a business partner and independent software vendor (ISV) community, investment in pro-bono consulting with Corporate Service Corps (CSC) projects, investments in research and development, as well as the alignment of industry expertise against the needs of the market.

IBM believes Africa is a substantial market for IBM products and services, and an important source of employment talent. It supports hundreds of clients across the continent, including:
• Helping bank the unbanked in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Pioneering mobile banking across East and West Africa.
• Working with South Africa’s Metropolitan Health to launch the first commercial application of ‘Watson’ in Africa.
• Providing automated systems offering real time status of all business processes for Kenya Power.
• Managing Fidelity Bank Ghana’s technology infrastructure and services, helping to deliver advanced customer services and secure its reputation as a dynamic financial services institution in West Africa.

IBM in Africa at a glance
• 3X Global Delivery Centers (Morocco, South Africa and Egypt)
• Global Competency Center –Hardware (Egypt)
• Global Competency Center –Software (Egypt)
• 2X IBM Research Labs (South Africa and Kenya)
• 4 X Client Centers (South Africa, Kenya, Morocco and N—ria)
• Business Process Delivery Center (Egypt)
• 2X Technology Development Centers (Kenya and Egyp

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Post ID: @2ovr+15rkcfek

IBM does not care about race anymore... IBMers are all resources that can be disposed of any time.

IBM has no clue how many black, asian, white, etc... they have.

They will tell you otherwise though but it is just for show.

For sure, no matter what race you are, you will end up laid off.

Heads up and go find a better company to work for.

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Post ID: @2vhc+15rkcfek

Hey OP, here's one answer for you:

Now the 70-year-old former finance minister, IBM executive and International Monetary Fund
board member is being held hostage by a jihadist group on the edge of the Sahara.

Release Sought for Kidnapped Mali Opposition Leader –
https://www.wsj.com/articles/release-sought-for-kidnapped-mali-opposition-leader-11590845257
By: Joe Parkinson May 30, 2020 9:27 am ET

Four years ago, Mali opposition leader Soumaïla Cissé was posing with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the Democratic Party convention, part of an African delegation representing the continent’s most prominent democracy advocates.

Now the 70-year-old former finance minister, IBM executive and International Monetary Fund board member is being held hostage by a jihadist group on the edge of the Sahara. One of Mali’s most prominent public figures and a three-time presidential candidate, Mr. Cissé was snatched more than two months ago while campaigning for president in the villages outside his hometown of Timbuktu. His abduction is the latest potent symbol of the deteriorating security situation across much of the Sahel, the arid band that stretches across Africa just south of the Sahara.

Over the past year, jihadist violence has mushroomed. Almost 1,000 separate attacks were recorded in Mali, N—r and Burkina Faso, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and assembled by the Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies. In 2019, more than 900,000 people fled violence, most in Burkina Faso, the Africa Center reported.

The k–lings and kidnappings of recent months came amid what appeared to be the world’s only nonaggression pact between al Qaeda and Islamic State. They clash elsewhere in the world but go as far as collaborating on joint targets in West Africa, according to U.S. and West African intelligence officers. Now that brief detente has been shattered, and the two militant networks are fighting each other as well as carrying out attacks on civilians and governments distracted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Against the backdrop of this dynamic and complex security collapse, unidentified gunmen seized Mr. Cissé along with eight other people on March 25. The attackers opened fire, k–ling Mr. Cissé’s bodyguard and dragging the remaining passengers from their vehicles before spiriting eight of them away. The mayor of a neighboring town went looking for Mr. Cissé and was also abducted. Over the following days, all the kidnapped men except Mr. Cissé were released, according to government officials and Mr. Cissé’s family.

Mali’s government, which set up an emergency task force to negotiate Mr. Cissé’s release, says he was abducted in an area controlled by al Qaeda-linked militia named the Macina Liberation Front, although no group has claimed responsibility. Analysts say that he was almost certainly captured by an affiliate of al Qaeda, which often takes a long time before claiming abductions. “We have seen Western aid workers, tourists and even diplomats kidnapped in this region. But this is an active politician,” said Jacob Zenn, an analyst at the Jamestown Foundation. “It is something unprecedented.”

As security declined in the Sahel, the former colonial power in the region, France, intervened to push back the militants, with intelligence and logistical support from the U.S. In 2013, French forces ousted jihadists who had seized the north of Mali, but the militants regrouped and metastasized, capitalizing on intercommunal conflicts to recruit and expand their sway into the central part of the country. Now the patchwork of militant factions operating in Mali can broadly be broken into two: Those allied with al Qaeda in a coalition called Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, which includes the Macina Liberation Front, and those fighting under the banner of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.

Membership of the groups and their factions has ebbed and flowed according to battlefield successes and defections of key commanders. Mali’s government says it is doing everything in its power to bring Mr. Cissé home. “This isn’t easy. Soumaïla Cisse has become the most prominent hostage in the history of hostage-taking in the Sahel,” said Adam Thiam, an aide to Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. Other officials said they are trying to remain discreet about releasing details for fear of complicating negotiations and raising the price of securing Mr. Cissé’s return. International pressure is mounting. The United Nations Security Council in April called for Mr. Cissé’s “swift liberation.”

Last week, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the U.S. civil rights leader, urged the Malian government to “redouble their efforts” to ensure Mr. Cissé’s release.

Mr. Cissé’s family says the government has refused to provide them details of the negotiations and speculates that those in power feel little incentive to retrieve a political rival. His son, Bocar Cissé, said in an interview that it remains unclear who took his father and what their intention is. “We have had no proof of life, no claim by any group and no demand for money or for prisoners. Nothing,” he said.

Some analysts said Mr. Cissé could prove a valuable pawn for JNIM's broader strategy to wait out foreign forces deployed in Mali. JNIM has said it would consider the Malian government’s offer of talks only on the condition that foreign forces leave the country.

Malian authorities have insisted that those forces should stay. France has some 5,000 troops based across the Sahel, and the U.N. peacekeeping force has more than 11,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Mali alone. U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper is conducting a world-wide review of troop commitments, in keeping with the Trump administration’s strategic tilt away from dispersed actions against terror groups and toward great-power competition with China and Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron has appealed to President Trump not to cut off U.S. military support for French forces fighting Islamist militants in Africa.

Friends and former colleagues of Mr. Cissé say that he has been targeted before but had always managed to escape. In one incident during the military coup of 2012, armed soldiers burst into his compound, forcing him to vault over a back wall and run for cover. He then waded into the N—r River and submerged himself, breathing through a reed for more than an hour until night fell. He managed to flee the country and returned a year later when he ran for president and finished second.

“My message to his captors is to communicate and let us know who they are and what their demands are and to please release him,” said his son, Bocar. “His wife misses him, his family miss him, his party members and the Malian people also miss him.”

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Post ID: @1tpk+15rkcfek

I think the real question here is - why doesn’t the OP stop race baiting? To answer your questions, race-baiter - the reason IBM doesn’t open offices in the locations you mentioned have nothing to do with people’s skin color. Go educate yourself rather than come here and bloviate.

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Post ID: @1qtl+15rkcfek

IBM does have a GBS office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana which does hire a large number of African Americans.

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Post ID: @gse+15rkcfek

You're joking right? You know how many IBM centers there are in Africa? They can't ramp them up fast enough because Chinese labor has become too expensive.

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Post ID: @lws+15rkcfek

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