The global markets teams got a mid day town hall invite by head of NA for January 4 and a follow up town hall by their industry GMs an hour after that. This is not normal. I’m suspecting we’ll find out very soon after if we’re staying or leaving.
24 replies (most recent on top)
"...I am not surprised... business as usual at IBM... every year we are one step closer to become JUST and ONLY a mainframe company. ..."
May not be a bad thing... once the world wakes up and realizes the magnituded computer messes that distributed and open source have fostered...
I am not surprised... business as usual at IBM... every year we are one step closer to become JUST and ONLY a mainframe company.
It’s the semi-annual musical chairs reorg accompanied by some number of RA’s. SSDD.... why is anyone surprised?
@3tup are you kidding? A lot of people see this coming. The layoffs in Europe are just a preview of what’s happening here.
Starting to think this is going to be a big nothing. Obviously portions of F&O and CIO need to go along with GTS to create NewCo. Likely they’ll load NewCo up with Global Markets as they are useless to GBS and redundant with the Marketplace concept in C&CS. I find it really hard to believe that someone didn’t see this coming.
@3ctd+18t2kzOo - who/what is this referencing?
GBS This is your future
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3646191-ibm-acquires-norwegian-cloud-services-provider-to-turbocharge-hybrid-cloud
20 plus years of doing nothing and paid well to do it. TY IBM. id–ts.
Circus shifting rings. Only in town for a short time.
@1fhy,
Agreed. PM's, leads, incident managers and internal compliance need to go.
Is the call just for global market, client executives or all sales, including software hybrid cloud? Haven’t seen anything in GTS.
One big difference is that when Gerstner took control, ibm had a lot of good technology/products the customers wanted. These days there is almost nothing except the mainframes and some RH products/services. After the dust of streamlining has settled, the question will be "now what". Perhaps after throwing away bloated layers of VPs, the company can get a break from the toxic and dysfunctional environment, and some fresh ideas can take root. Yeah, only time will tell.
We have seen this movie before. When Gerstner took over we had 13 layers of management with a large percentage of managers and band 10 and above doing essentially overlap work (nothing). Gerstner drove the management level to 7 and streamlined IBM into a services powerhouse at the expense of IBM’s manufacturing powerhouse. He refocused and reprioritized IBM. Now AK is doing the same thing He is restructuring IBM, and that means dumping management levels, streamlining overlapping work groups, and refocusing IBM into something that IBM can focus on. Will it work? Only time will tell, but just streamlining heads who are nonproductive can only help the bottom line. It took Gerstner approx a year to get IBM stabilized and moving in the right direction. My guess is AK will take approx the same amount of time Gerstner hired in April, layoffs in sept 60k layoffs, with restructuring happing for the next year. AK became CEO in April, with layoffs happening may thru Dec. If AK is following the Gerstner plan, restructuring should be happening in Parallel (due to his previous experience as an IBM’er already) so we should expect streamlining over the 1st q. He is moving at a very fast rate just like Gerstner. I expect the same under AK
Cut level after level of managers then lay into the team leaders and project managers . The bloated ranks need hammered hard , many do nothing .
Is GTS safe?
With everyone working from home , all the chart making staffers having nothing to do . Keep cutting , tons of people who don't to anything but make charts or hold meetings .
They are just collapsing teams. Layoffs will come after that. GTS will do the same.
With Zoom, layoff efficiency is going off the roof! How many can you fit in a single Zoom meeting ? 100 ? 500 ? So many chopped heads at the same time. Reminds me about mass marriages Korean style.
If it was a layoff call you wouldn’t get the courtesy of call titled 2021 kick off, you would get an HR rep inviting you to a call and/or a meeting with your flm
They’re probably announcing the org change and individuals impacted will get calls from FLM shortly afterwards.
What do you mean IA accounts gone? Can you share a bit more?
IMHO, RA will be notified by your FLM. Not GM.. and you sure town hall only invited global market? Meaning client executive? what about software, power, storage
When is the townhall and how long
I see no reason for Global Markets to remain 'as is'. The whole concept of the Integrated Accounts IA's are gone.
Good Luck!