Thread regarding IBM layoffs

Any management team that ruins a once bellwether tech company should be eliminated by shareholders at the earliest opportunity. They should be given time to pack their belongings and exit, and should be denied their pension.

IBM's many layers of management are expensive and simply impossible to justify after 21 quarters of decline despite billions in (inherited) revenue, and 400000 people. There is no place at IBM for politicians who have no ideas, no prospects, no ability to create, no talent to sell, and shame of all - no handle on technology.

These individuals fatten themselves by buying time to retirement. They have taken home thick paychecks over the years, and if they started early enough to participate in a pension plan then they will fight tooth and nail to retire with pension. To justify their existence they will wrestle with others like them for control of the spoils created by generations of hard-working and meritorious folks who made IBM.

IBM management strategy "experts" pay heed: many of your management team excelled once at technology and were promoted to authority without a shred of an idea of how to develop a business plan, or defend an idea in public. They cling together for protection and now they fight like dogs. Shame also on management schools for graduating any humans who have to rely on cost savings by naying projects and personnel to justify their own existence.

Shareholders will reckon with the stark reality that ultimately it is man not machine that fails a company. With Ginni's blessing IBM management is riding the cash flow they inherited and will hang on for dear life to the bitter end unless stopped. The alternative for these people is the real world but, shudder, that would mean competing with talented people who grow businesses.

It is disgraceful what is happening at IBM, just disgraceful.

The online market is growing and IBM remains on the sidelines as a infrastructure provider spinning their wheels and watching the big boys take bites out of every one of the strategic initiatives. In the meanwhile opportunities the size of Walmart are redefining their businesses. Is IBM allocating its resources and revenue stream to enabling these businesses? Where is this published? Everyone hears about how well the competition is doing. Ask about IBM and some manager-type shoots down the question with some vague response which sounds at once pompous and oddly elitist - but those days are over.

So besides supplying infrastructure that is facing serious competition, what is IBM doing to encourage companies to transform from bricks-and-mortar? Why not put its huge community of managers to work to make this happen instead of engaging in destructive internal dog fighting?

Yes, the stock options idea below is a good way to test if managers are even worthy of owning portfolios - any sane person can do that. Contributing innovatively at this difficult time in IBMs history is what is missing.

Any non-technical, non-producing, managers or seniors should be long gone by now. Any remaining ones are politically connected and are dragging the ship down with them. They can easily be identified as very vocal to the point of shrill - the signal they are approaching their personal breaking points. Why they remained this far is a mystery of the human condition. Objectively they contribute nothing at this critical juncture that will decide the fate of an American icon.

Ginni has made an evolutionary change. She should be careful to avoid faux pas chopper rides. She is wise to take a long hard look at her chain of command and show the door to anyone who is not making her strategic initiatives a success. Otherwise, she should graciously step aside for someone who can. It is too late to turn back and now the show must go on. Given the potential of the initiatives in health care and financial, and the sheer magnitude of the target enterprise market, one must conclude the chain of command below Ginni has regressed to its pre-Gerstner days and is floundering in a quagmire of internal bickering and political grandstanding. This is reflected by IBM stock which is now labelled a value stock and trading in a narrow band for a long time.

Ginni should take a page out of Sima Qian's book: "Sun Tzu then ordered the execution of the king's two favored concubines". IBMs chain-of-command needs a jolt to get creative and prove their worth. The stock options idea is underpinned by merit and not abuse of power and will retrace the paths of the geniuses that made IBM great. This is way beyond a cohort.

If like OP suggests some line managers are inept and biding their time to retirement then Ginni should let all line managers demonstrate they are better than the employees they let go - for the next five years pay them in stock options instead of money. The good ones will make the strategic initiatives a success and will get to stay for more money.

The emperor has no clothes!

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/27/is-management-really-to-blame-for-ibms-woes.aspx

Ginni and co. had F I V E years and 4 0 0 0 0 0 people to work with - how much longer is Sam's quixotic plan to be the scapegoat?

Management will make or break any business. The fake manager will find creative reasons to bide their time to retirement, and they will jettison the sails and gangplank the crew to save their own skins. The genuine manager will G-R-O-W the business.

Effective now: Ginni and co. should cull those managers without a consistent five-year record of growing the business. No surprise that after five years of decline Ginni and co. will find themselves on a hectic fire-and-hire spree. A talented management team will steer the ship back to relevance and Ginni will earn her place in history alongside a no-nonsense Margaret Thatcher who was tough but fair.

NB: (manager: anyone in a position of authority)

The IBM label is threatened by an old-boys network that is scrambling in desperation to remain at whatever cost.

"To whomever much is given, of him will much be required; and to whom much was entrusted, of him more will be asked."

You know who you are. Do the right thing. This is no time to jeopardize thousands upon thousands of families.

From the annals of group/corporation/organizations those who cannibalize itself just to look good on their facade will ceast to exist.. So IBM is doing perfectly good and is on the correct path of destruction and one day it will be just an article of wikipedia of how great it ONCE WAS

I concur and it saddens me on "understating performance for comical reasons", most of my colleagues are highly technical, the top on their domain… and I noticed the "7 level downline balancing and re-alignment" a year ago on the restructuring per se and ignored the red flag (that those incompetent managers was just shifted on a different dept) and my colleagues was just RA’d one by one because of stupid reasons and they don't admit because of age and was just given 30/90 or die

Looking back most of them was doing 110+% utilization minimum/month which is not sustainable and has been covering all of the grunt work (when we brought it up and highlighted from the beginning of our project that those resources they roostered based on our GAP analysis was like heaven and earth).

And the most hateful thing was those incompetent managers are sooooo good on risk management that it is way past immoral when it was passed to us... I shouted WTF I was the one getting angry on behalf of them and they just accepted it like a beaten dog!!!

I'm not from US and I am 20 yrs younger from my colleagues located at US, EU and UK so pardon on those strange english grammar and those western culture I don't seem to understand the "just for profit".

So the moonshot will be like a 10^ negative number to infinity when all those very good technical people on those who were left on those divisions doing the grunt work is already this demoralized.

This happens in all corporations all the time: "subverting careers to avoid a threat"