Thread regarding IBM layoffs

Band 8 24 years age 63

The Register reporter looking to contact any recently redeployed employees (or former employees due to the redeployment) --

https://www.reddit.com/r/IBM/comments/ztk5y7/ibm_redeployments_info/

Reporter for The Register here. If you've been affected by a redeployment and want to discuss the situation confidentially, please feel free to email me tclaburn (at) theregister (dot) com.

This is what they did a Watson Health. The redeployment will eventually become an RA and you will be offered 3 months severance. If you are 40+ and believe this is a case of age discrimination just hold on until the end, don't sign the severance agreement, and lawyer up. IBM continues to settle these cases out of court. Get this info to all IBMers. Do not be afraid to take them on!

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/29/ibm_allegedly_hid_watson_health/

I don’t think anyone will argue that IBM is continuing to reduce its USA and Europe headcount for cheaper labor in 3rd world countries. This is what happens when labor rates in 3rd world countries are running at 1/3 or less of 1st world labor rates. So you are in your late 50’s or early 60’s and IBM redeploys you. Who is going to move vs just accepting retirement (maybe 10-15%) of the population impacted. It’s IBM implementing the GTS service model which emphasizes offshoring as much as they can. Kyndryl had to disclose this model before they were spun off. USA on shore head count at Kyndryl is running at 8% even though Kyndryl HQ’ed in the USA. NOTE IBM will have to settle for a greater percentage than 8%, given that IBM has manufacturing sites within 1st world countries (make it where you sell it). IBM saw that the 8% Kyndryl model worked, and has pulled the trigger on it. Expect more redeployments in the near future as it lowers IBM’s payroll by 2/3rds for every employee impacted. NOTE this is most likely the last redeploy to happen due to IBM running out of retirement eligible employee targets in the USA and Europe. IBM’s goal is 80-85% headcount to be offshored.

As IBM planned, those who are retirement eligible who are also being notified that they are getting redeployed are opting to just retire rather than accept the redeployment. Another stealth RA.

I generally concur - but I don't see the timeline for systems ending Q1 2023 as

1. You can milk shelved or gutted (if not also ones moved to sustaining) for a long time. Indeed at least one product I'm aware of has an "acceptable 15% YoY" decline in revenue counted as "making numbers"

2. The current "redeployment" which is prob 20% actual redeployment (% of people vs actual open job count) and 80% RA will consume Q1. I fully expect that - Q1 fully contains redeployment/RAs to contain the

3. Only exceptions may be individual products "sold" - though they'll be harder to sell since nearly all of systems (except Z and Cloud) is gutted. So it's too late to sell any gutted projects for the most part (can't even half promise devs to new owner).

Personally I was hoping my product (suite) would get sold to Lenovo or DDN vs being gutted. I'm "redeployed" but not sure if that's better or not .

So I agree but

1. stretch "systems is largely dead" timeline out on a 1-4 year decay curve
2. redeployments will be contained (if even just written off) in Q1
3. Anything faster violates Arvinds statements that he's not reducing head count.

IBM has an exceedingly high turnover rate in consulting (self admitted 10’s of thousands per year). This isn’t unique to IBM, but is a persistent problem within most consulting firms. Job hopping is the way to get a raise at consulting firms. With consulting division having over 50% of the employees at IBM (approx 160k), and having a high turnover rate, IBM has zero need to implement redundancy plans unless they are withdrawing from specific marketplaces. SW division (approx 60k) has exceeding low turnover rates due to specific skill sets (industry product knowledge) needed per product. YES if you have specific skills that are in demand (LINUX being one) then the world is your oyster, but IBM will most likely match or exceed any offer presented. They can’t afford to lose your skills. Thus SW division doesn’t need to implement redundancy plans. Lastly Infrastructure division comes into focus. While skills are still needed (especially enterprise wise) there is an overlap and commodity aspect within infrastructure. How many designers and architects are needed to make enterprise vs scale out products. What do you do with products that have become commodities (storage and intel cloud) How do you fund IBM products (power) that have to compete with commodity products (intel). The answer was given to you by HP last week. You cut (if you are withdrawing from a market) or make folks redundant over time so you can keep your margins up over a shrinking customer base. It’s not a pretty process, but it’s an effective process especially if the redundant folks land in divisions that are hiring. All in all I expect this systems redundancy to be well on its way by end of year, with the possibility of a marketplace withdrawal (intel cloud, power and storage manufacturing, and weather) by end of first q. IBM is positioning infrastructure division to be “performance only” and that will shrink infrastructure division dramatically.

My view is that almost everything in Systems is going "Cat C" (former company term: "Sustaining") A lot of stuff already has - though apriori to contractors (meaning easy cut) whereas now it seems skeleton crews to bug fix.

The only "investment" I've seen in anything I'm "close to" (read generally aware of) is to re-allocate core staff to the Cloud portion/integrations - to at least not be lacking.

I'd generally disagree that the "hiring managers" have been told to not hire "redeployments" - the main point here is that this group is the ONLY way for the non frozen internal/external postings to hire - and the only things open are vetted critical.

As far as them getting the dregs ( per "who are you going to give up? Right. Your lowest") as the sheer volume of redeployments far exceeds the usual percentage of "needs growth".

But with the sheer volume of redeployments vs the (relative) paucity of openings - it will be a buyers/hirers market for sure.

I'm still "confused" though as in my sphere (not websphere!) my product and all surrounding are hardware agnostic - truly independent products.

On the other hand my upper line on a small group chat on a visit said he/she could re-establish and maintain market leadership on several of our products - with some money. Not a cr-p ton of money either. Just basic ongoing investment. But the "no money for anybody".

So why not sell off products? I think all of systems is too big and muddy for any one purchase - but would at least maintain some future confidence in enterprise customers that somebody (else) had their back. I think ala-carte would be perceived as capitulation and be taken by concern by enterprise customers.

So middle ground - "Cat C"/Sustaining at minimal staffing levels to ride them into the grave. Fits too. Most products - what - 5 year support requirements. Fits.

I ( @1hrz+1jKeIhZF) stand corrected. The "ton of open jobs" I was promised filters down to about 30 open 9/8-9 positions. Last I looked maybe 400 or so overall available doing anything at any band. Even if that can expand a tad with a 7-8 picking up a 9 - still not a whole lot of openings.

Filter to dev (say vs QA, pre-sales, etc) and maybe 10 .

Now my 2nd line had to give up roughly half her IC reports (don't know about managers/STSM et al) and that's the bottom of the Systems tree. So for the bottom of the Systems "tree" that would be a considerable multiple of the open positions.

No wonder they didn't pre-match folks to open positions - here they can say "wow this is great - you can make sure you get a great match" rather than, well, yeah, what we know, implicit RA for most.

More chatter on the redeployments, which appear to be largely targeting Systems --

https://www.reddit.com/r/IBM/comments/yy47y2/redeployment/

Systems and “infrastructure” are interchangeable. Infrastructure = Systems, IaaS, TSS, and asset recovery. IGF can absorb asset recovery. You can divide Infrastructure into Enterprise engagements (500-1000 customers) and everything else (4000-5000 customers) The Enterprise customers generate approx 85% of IBM’s revenue, yet only use 20% of the total headcount. As such the bean counters have decided to realign around that equation. Enterprise infrastructure will be absorbed into consulting and offered as an IBM all inclusive. (Yep it’s a monopoly cash cow and generates profits that center around IBM’s new Hybrid cloud strategy) (consulting, and SW modernization) The remaining part of Infrastructure is still profitable, but doesn’t feed IBM’s hybrid cloud strategy. The engagements are too small and require too much head count to generate the profit margins that IBM requires. THUS IBM will partner it off and farm the licenses/IP revenue that it generates. There are only a few companies that could absorb baby infrastructure. They have to be a large buyer of components, have a channel and services arm, and need to fill a void that Intel offerings don’t fill (performance offerings anyone) Timing will dictate how IBM spins them off, but remember IBM will be willing to trade baby infrastructure revenue (approx 5 - 6 billion a year) for a reduced headcount and technology investment. Partnership and IP revenue farming is the future for non-enterprise infrastructure as that’s what the bean counters have decided. Given the current business environment (strong dollar, high interest rates, and higher cost employee replacement costs) it’s not a matter of “if”, but when. IBM usually likes to restructure their revenue reporting around end of quarters so let the timing speculations begin.

Is this their ploy 1) not to make it public and report to media that IBM is going through layoffs 2) avoid giving the 60 days severance that they’re supposed to give vs. 30 days severance. They keep using all these brilliant angles…. Pretty pretty clever.

Noting past forced "back to the office" - for development at least - only cared for at any development tagged site.

Now that is at the Corporate HR level search - which just looks for "workplace code" violations (WFH, Seated, Doesn't need Seat) and gets on management to address that - again checking just that code.

Now a particular job/manager? May have more specific desires. But mine? Project is staffed (and works well) across the US and GEOs - so boss didn't care I was the only one in the particular area and thus whether I went in or not (and most of the team in groups still only met once or twice a week).

So from Corp will check for the "Seated" code but any given manager/project may require more.

Jobs other than Dev have frequently been far more restrictive.

Some (mine) systems software is hardware agnostic - and could have been moved wholesale to "Software" formally. But since storage related - still kept Systems. That probably makes sense from a marketing/sales perspective. It also probably would make sense for this (mine et al) to get sold off with the reset.

Seems so far (?) about a 10% re-deployment in my area.

Notice? there is no "notice" to post. Ric in All hands said "there will be re-deployments" and then my 2nd line called to discuss in person directly (nice of him/her). And then I immediately started getting "next step" emails.

To that last poster - to add - remember to "not freak" and to make sure your next job doesn't have any cr---y aspects - in particular ones you're trying to flee or are oppressed by. This is YOUR change - don't blow it by panicing and jumping into another cr---y position.

Try for that band promotion as part of the switch (internal or external) as that's often a part of any switch anyway.

Negotiate for more vacation than their default - and esp at IBM (and others) get it in writing.

Not as catastrophic as many think. First though: "Band 9 with 7 years. Systems. yesterday."

The "better" companies I've worked for in the past redeployed instead of layoffs/RAs when other companies were massively cutting. That was good for business - to apply good staff (as at minimum defined as not sucky enough to lay off when others were) to necessary focus areas. That was good for employees - not laid off.

There are a ton of open positions in Cloud, CIO, elsewhere, and the opportunity to find your best fit is in general a good thing. Indeed a few months ago a redeployment planned on the team lead continuing even though the team was moved to another GEO. What was a di-k move against him - steal your team and ask you to manage it across GEOs. Here they haven't stuck you/I with anything specifically.

Whether you find something you like or not - hard to say. I'm a pretty low level systems guy - so how much of that is in Cloud? Maybe only performance side?

That said - since I/you now have to update resume to search and be searched internally - and apply for and go after jobs - why not also look outside as well? Might also get a raise! So while I had been just below the threshold of looking outside - this certainly pushes me over. I'll be looking hard both inside and outside.

Were you chosen because you suck - or are considered sucky - as a roadmap to layoff?
I don't think so.

• - Sure - don't think for a second your manager (or 2nd line who probably had "the number") is letting their top talent go - so yeah, but at this point:
• - I think anybody on a PIP would probably be or on RA at this point AND
• - No manager would likely want anybody on a PiP
• - I'd doubt any manager would give a PiP to anybody "pre-borderline" for one - as it'd be a di-k move, they're getting rid of you already (problem solved), and you may do great in a better/different environment (perhaps just needing a manager change!)
• - The focus area products NEED people and this is the ONLY way to get them

For me - in Systems - so what yours in fact?

My friends in Software (systems/software meet under Tom R) say they've heard nothing about redeployments in software (so have you) and that they/Cloud in particular is hiring like crazy.

That generally makes sense as most new stuff (esp of what's left!) is Cloud oriented - so prune (/"ice") - to staff Cloud.

Well that's both my historical (non IBM) experience - and my hopes.

Now - my plan? My internal resume basically doesn't exist. But I'm not quite ready to update it. Why?

If you're looking outside - what's the best thing (esp after just a few years off the market)?

• - Search all companies and jobs for anything remotely related to what you do or would like to do
• - What are current skills asked for? Particularly the new ones?
• - What skills do you have that need updating (say ... lock free programming may be "newish" to even a skilled device driver guy).
• - Take those lists and both study, study, study
• - At some "crossover point" start applying with the new / "target new" experience

Last (and only 2nd in my life I was RA'd (not for perf anytime)) my day was study/study/study. Probably as hard as when in University. And I was quizzed on the new stuff (as really should be expected - it's what you're going for).

If you're not on LinkedIn - get on it and get a detailed bio and such there. I get relatively well qualified solicitations every other week (nichy experience). I also suggest "Premium" on a monthly basis until re-positioned. Nice benefits - esp seeing who searched for and viewed your profile.

Now with all the FaceCrook and other RIFs/RAs you also need to distinguish yourself. My experience is nichy so it's a bit easier.

Job Site HR BOTS will reject you if what they state is "required" isn't correspondingly answered on the application (even years of whatever - always state the minimum "required"). My current job was Bot rejected due to that (put 7 vs 10 years on something). No vetting. Got the job from a side handoff AND had to re-apply under a different e-mail address as manager couldn't re-open my application. Yes. It's that bad. Particularly external - and particularly with the external pressure of current industry cuts. In some ways this may be better internal as IBM isn't hiring externally - so no external resume pool flooding.

Myself?

• - Today and Thanksgiving week
• - - Going through Job Recommendation tool (you'll get links sent!) to see how it works
• - - Going through Cloud and CIO Jobs (manual search) to get a feel for what's out there
• - - Going through LinkedIn and tell all the past several month's solicitations "I'm now seeking" to get them contacting me back (which - will get the resume ask in short order)
• - November end
• - - Goal of Job Recommendation Tool updated (primarily internal resume)
• - - Goal of resume for LinkedIn solicited contacts

While there is "no time limit" as is with RA - I got the feeling they want folks to be diligently working on finding their new position. And - hey - the early bird will get the better positions.

While I'm not happy - in particular was planning on retiring in a few years - It's been a part of my 40 year career a few times and is just part of the industry. So I'll switch - though as noted - will be looking both inside and out given the force.

Notice that this is coming right after IBM is forcing everyone back to the office. The "redeployment" opportunities (if any) will be in different geographical locations and the condition will be that you report to the office there. A way to layoff under the radar.

You are watching the elimination of the infrastructure division. Approx 2/3’s of it will be gone by Summer. SW and consulting will absorb those left standing.

joined ibm less than 2 years ago and now redeployed along with other folks in my team. manager said has nothing to do with performance but dont know what do believe after reading some responses. time to dust that cv i guess

Band 8. 36 years service. No time limit was given to find yourself a new job. I was a top performer. This is clearly IBM's way to lay off older employees. Clearly, a move to try to avoid severance pay and bad PR. Pretty sad. I was going to retire next year anyway.
Will see how this plays out...

your gone - there isnt any role for you - RA without the payout as others have said

I did hear an exec say CIO will be fading AIX servers. Looks like the gears are starting to move a tad bit faster.

I guess I'm a bit out of touch, but is AIX going away completely? I thought there were still quite a few customers out there and a roadmap for future stuff. Is IBM letting this technology fade away by attrition?

Also bear in mind that the "new job" may be in a different geography, so this could also be construed as a crafty "Relocation" initiative ... again, without any severance. "Hey we didn't layoff John. We found him a new job in Raleigh. It's not our fault that he didn't want to move from Austin. That's on him!"

I would agree system guys are getting crushed, but I believe it’s because IBM has changed strategy. When IBM adopted the Redhat strategy, you have to remember the RedHat strategy was/is HW agnostic. IBM is trying very hard to adapt it to mainframe, but honestly they don’t care about the HW anymore. SW has to run on something, and IBM views it as a cost of doing business Pick your HW, IBM doesn’t care so long as you modernize your SW with them, and sign up for their consulting

All of AIX development was “redeployed” in August.

another form of RA. systems guys getting crushed now. ibm is failing hard

HR or management will say that this is not an RA.
However this is an RA without any severance package.
They will tell you to apply for other positions but HR told management not to hire anyone with the Redeployment Notice.

I hate to tell you this but this is another type of RA.

Management will be providing a list of internal openings that where we are encouraged to apply. Management is supposed to help us with placement, but no specific job or timeframe was given. This was repeatedly emphasized this was not an RA and no “you must find a new job by “x”” was given.

What does "Redeployment" mean? Is it the same as RA?

What location were you in and where do they want you to go? How many days to decide? What happens if you say no?

These tactics are such bs. Sorry to hear it!

Can you post the notice in here? Please take off personal information from it. Thanks

May I ask what you were redeployed to?

Same. Systems Band 8. 25+ years.