Senior leaders being asked to identify final list for a July round in Consulting Americas this week
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Most of the great Sales people at IBM are gone. They were the ones that had real relationships with customers. They have been replaced by younglings just out of college.
Great job Gavin Belson!
you are 110% right. Too many of the Partners and Managers are clueless particularly the ones from our favorite geography, India. Friends keep promoting friends and neighbors - am I right, Alvind ? They know little or nothing about running the business profitably but they are a protected species (per Alvind) and short of them losing a mega-million dollar deal, they collect their paychecks for doing the bare minimum of work. And DEI is apparently the law of their land, so they do little or nothing but get promoted on the Partner track. That game needs to stop... it's pay for performance or don't let the door hit you on the way out. If AI can do a better job than third world crooks, why not showcase it?
... IBM trying to bring its WW sales engine to grow the revenue of the acquired company
... IBM thinks it can scale to exploit the opportunity in the acquired companies, but it clearly cannot.
because all the good salespeople left because of commissions thefts and the rest were laid off?
@v3 you’re right about IBM trying to bring its WW sales engine to grow the revenue of the acquired company. And it’s a good strategy. However, it’s certainly not true to say the software acquisition strategy has worked well. The software revenue has been declining in real terms despite acquisitions and (substantial) price rises. IBM thinks it can scale to exploit the opportunity in the acquired companies, but it clearly cannot.
@v3 Innovation by Acquisition. CA was built on this model, so nothing new, but very sad.
@nq IBM isn’t innovative anymore! They buy the innovation at a fair to quasi overvalued price. So how can they make money? They buy companies who are not widely dispersed so have a great product, but limited market share. What IBM brings to the table is worldwide distribution and marketing. Yep it’s worth a lot, and IBM exploits that via their consulting engagements (get the word and the product out there). You can sell a lot when your consultant says “this product is the best thing since sliced bread” There is also a tangential effect in purchasing innovation, and that is the retirement of the legacy products that are being replaced. It’s a two for, and IBM has exploited this strategy quite well since they purchased Redhat. So yes there is not a lot of growth to this strategy, BUT the adder of cost take out to the initial marketing efforts makes it quite profitable. ALSO remember cost takeout is two pronged 1. Retirement of the legacy products 2. AI replacing all of the support costs This strategy will easily run 10 years
It is about time... hopefully many partners will get the boot... too many of those, and most of them are totally useless!
But but but Trashi Corp 🤣🤣🤣
@k9 They've gone from being a trusted advisor to a staff augmentation firm. The people that could respond to the RFP's are gone, HR has been replaced with a broken robot, and everything that actually made people proud to be part of the organization is gone.
Great analysis. But IBM cannot be considered an innovative company any more, since they buy innovation through acquisitions. After a few years, these acquisitions are ditched and it is then "rinse and repeat" all over again. Where's the growth through such a strategy ?
IBM will not exit consulting, BUT they could easily shrink the division by 1/2. (eg 150k headcount going to 75k). Why do I say this? IBM has decided to focus almost exclusively on their enterprise offerings (mainframe (90%) and big power (niche engagements). Everything else as far as IBM is concerned is not worth the fight as margins are too thin. So how does consulting shrink? There are two ways.
- Focus on all things Enterprise. Exit all things Intel IBM’s last 20 SW purchases reinforce that this strategy is well underway.
- Let AI replace most of the back office consulting support personnel. Again IBM’s own internal actions support this strategy and is well underway (replaced HR, automated SW modernization, bought a pile of Enterprise SW modernization vs developing it in house, retired most of IBM’s internal cloud efforts and replaced them with partnerships).
IBM’s head count worldwide last year dropped 12k (282 to 270) even though they made several major purchases. That says legacy headcount is going down faster than innovative head count is growing. That process is only accelerating, and 2025 headcount reductions to date have already exceeded 2024’s headcount reduction. As IBM expands the AI efforts we are only going to see consulting headcount go down faster and actually start to focus on the support personnel.
I wish IBM would just close down the consulting division.
@ca I work with teams that consist of multiple associate partners and typically a couple of partners, one or two of these teams every single month, and for the last several months I am aware of just one senior partner who has left IBM, and possibly as a retirement as he was around 60 years old. Do you have any further detail you can share? I'm in Canada so perhaps your information applies to the US but not Canada? To be clear a lot of these people that I work with are not earning their ridiculous high pay and I would love to see many of them gone.
pick me ! pick me !!!!!
yeah, are these senior jobs being transferred to our favorite geo, India ? How will that work ? Has someone built contingencies into this layoff plan ?
@ca it is about cheaper labor; any questions?
@bw+1jy7wbjp4 Yes. Associate Partners, Partners, and Senior Partners in Consulting have been hit very hard by RA this year. Sadly seems like ones who really sell and deliver to clients hit the hardest. Meanwhile the bean counter administrator ones remain.
@OP, do these lists include Partners, Associate Partners, Directors and Senior Managers too ??
Otherwise, it's just a waste of time to just after the small fry - the managers always get the low hanging fruit, but the ones who do do nothing and have big mouths at the meetings get away with their big salaries and perks. Time to make some changes particularly in Raleigh.
Layoffs should also hit the Cloud DEs and even the Senior VP Of Consulting who is doing nothing but is in the job as Alvind's buddy and chum. Nepotism rules at AI (All Indians) IBM. And they need to do the same things in Krabanaugh's F&O organization, particualrly CIO wasters. It's all for a good cause - Alvind's $100 milllion bonus for 2026 ...And the $320 stock price !
May the corporate gods bless me with a layoff so I can fight my legal battle and get some proper severance
So like the 3rd or 4th one so far this year at least.