Just so long as they don't fuck up z/Series, z/OS and DB2. IBM are just as bad a services company as anyone else. Peerless as a technology company though. It's getting damned hard to figure out what they are up to these days.
IBM slices heavy axe through staff in the US
IBM axed a wedge of workers today across the US as part of an "aggressive" shakeup of its business. Big Blue was due to lay off some staff at its Global Technology Services (GTS) wing in America back in January. That headcount chop was postponed, with the cuts being pushed back to this week and with more than GTS workers …
COMMENTS
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Friday 4th March 2016 21:46 GMT Fungus Bob
"the mainframe was and is to this day, IBM's best product."
No, that would be the automatic sequence calculator
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/assets_c/2011/06/automatic-sequence-calculator-ibm-thumb-615x569-54311.jpg
Not sure if the sailor was standard equipment, tho...
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Friday 4th March 2016 11:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: You wot mate?
Jup. That has pretty much been the strategy, fire the people who actually understand the technical side of Things.
Also much easier as a Manager with a non technical education, to bully a 22 year old 'Young professional' with a bachelor in business administration who's main skills are excell on user level, and being active on social media.
// Jesper
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Wednesday 2nd March 2016 22:56 GMT John 104
Effing H1B
Nothing against foreign talent, but when talented people are axed and visa holders get to keep their jobs, only for less pay, I get really pissy. Just wish there was something that could be done about it. However, the laws are made by elected officials. Officials are elected by way of back room pay offs by the companies who hire the H1B folks in the first place. So not much hope.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 10:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Effing H1B
As someone who has been both an IBMer and a customer, the problem for IBM is that many of their solutions are VERY expensive. Some of the IBM solutions are VERY good, but not all of them.
This has enabled other IT service companies to provide expensive solutions to customers in competition to IBM.
Unfortunately, IBM management think the solution is to stop developing VERY good solutions and instead just driving down the costs of their existing solutions in the hope that they will become more competitive. It has sort of worked (see financial results) but the short term gains are at the expense of the long term future of the business. In the meantime, their competitors continue to develop better products...
i.e. for cloud (IBM's next big thing...), what does IBM offer to distinguish them from AWS/Azure/a big hosting provider like Rackspace or Sungard? OK, what does IBM offer other than a significantly more expensive solution AND immaturity in the cloud space...
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 12:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Effing H1B
what does IBM offer to distinguish them from AWS/Azure/a big hosting provider like Rackspace or Sungard?
Nothing. But Gini will be getting a big bonus (c$13.3m of options for 2015) on the back of all the sackings, and because those are locked in for a few years, she has to keep the company in business and solvent to reap her rewards - but longer term growth beyond her options vesting date doesn't matter. Cue sackings, high prices, and reduced investment in long term growth products.
Regarding people like Rackspace, they've got a mere $3bn market cap. All Gini and her overpaid greedster C-suite colleagues need to do is tweak the IBM dividend down a bit, or up the IBM debt mountain (net debt around $46bn) and they can buy them without a thought. Then its a case of cut staff, cut development, increase prices, and report the results as "growth". When they've hollowed out whoever they acquire, it is a case of rinse and repeat. Wall Street don't care, they take a cut each time an acquisition goes through, and so long as the Federal Reserve keep printing money, the share price might keep going up as part of the state+corporate Ponzi that passes for wealth creation these days.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 20:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Effing H1B
Exactly. He was mixing some categories... AWS/Azure are similar... Rackspace partners with the cloud providers (hyperscale, like AWS/Azure) and provides managed services.... I'm sure Sungard has a service, but really on the cloud radar.... IBM is trying to compete with the hyperscalers, but it is unlikely to work. They should probably take the Rackspace route.
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Sunday 6th March 2016 23:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Effing H1B
A little late responding, but regarding the hosting/cloud categories:
- AWS is largely new solutions/develop from scratch to give you availability, but is the clear leader for cloud hosting in terms of a mature, rich feature set.
- Azure is the MS friendly cloud option. Not as mature or feature rich as AWS, but continuing to deploy
- Rackspace/Sungard give mature, scalable hosting packages that are likely to compete in the Enterprise space that IBM is targeting. Sure IBM could buy them, but they have already brought Softlayer and buying another hosting company to provide data centres (IBM might already have a few...) or staff to layoff (cynical but true...) may give your share options a few more years to mature, but little else.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 09:35 GMT Mark 85
Re: Effing H1B
There's also the bit about "long-term employees" getting the axe. A lot of companies dump employees beyond a certain number of years because the pay and benefits cost the company profit. In the very short term it works. The loss of experienced people who know the systems, etc. will always come back to bite the company later.
And yeah.. the H1B is just a means of boosting short term profits. No loyalty, no reason to go the extra mile for the company. A pox on this.
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Saturday 5th March 2016 16:42 GMT a_yank_lurker
Re: Effing H1B
@Mark 85 - I am one of the more junior programmers in my group with my current employer. With any large code base and system there are plenty of moving parts that take a long time to fully learn. The long-termers are invaluable as they know how the moving parts interrelate and often why is done that way in the dark ages.
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Wednesday 2nd March 2016 23:14 GMT Malcolm Weir
Just a footnote about H-1B workers: it may be that a reason that contributes to why an individual with an H-1B doesn't get the chop is that, by definition, they have a limited shelf life: when the visa expires, they're gone. So bean counters may have included H-1B workers in the calculations, but left them off the mass firing because they'll be gone in a few anyway, and doing it this way avoids paying severance / having them on staff for 90 days.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 06:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
yes but
Its a double edge sword though. When its tough to get rid of bad employees you tend to see higher unemployment rates as employers become gun shy about hiring and employers do things like requiring detailed transcripts of high school grades for an employee with two decades of work experience. Compare some of the unemployment rates in continental Europe with the US. You may have less job security for any one particular job but its often far easier to get another job.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 12:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
because there's no-one local available who can do the specific job
The US has in round numbers 8m unemployed, 6m involuntarily part time workers, 3m discouraged or marginally attached workers, and in total 94m adults not in the labour force.
I'd suggest that if there's no locals to do the job, its either because the employer either isn't trying very hard, or because they are knowingly failing to pay a credible salary, or not offering training to do the job.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 19:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Just a footnote about H-1B workers: it may be that a reason that contributes to why an individual with an H-1B doesn't get the chop is that, by definition, they have a limited shelf life: when the visa expires, they're gone
Yes, then they hire a new crop of temporary workers who've already been trained in newer technologies and save money by starting them out at lowest wage.
In the olden days, companies would have seen the value of retraining long-term employees to use the new technologies, but those days have long gone.
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Wednesday 2nd March 2016 23:27 GMT cjcox
IBM is just being IBM, no surprise
IBM is *not* the company most people think it is. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite of their propaganda. Very sad.
With that said, they patent everything (including junk). They are well armed for a patent Wold War... and the patents give them the ability to acquire pretty much anyone they want for whatever price they want. And while there have been glimmers of hope with many junk patents getting thrown out as they are used by smaller companies, one has to wonder if big blue's pockets are deep enough to silence the parties that would dare take a close look at their patents even if under dispute.
Anyone I know that was "good" has long left IBM and I can honestly say, IBM doesn't care at all.
So.. in a way I guess I'm saying "Who cares?" Let IBM continue to be IBM... seems to be working really well for them. :)
... building a smarter planet through attrition...
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 20:01 GMT Mpeler
Re: IBM is just being IBM, no surprise
Anyone remember the "good" old days when IBM meant "I've Been Moved"?
I had a former colleague who was on the fast-track at IBM, whose manager came to him on a Friday and asked if he'd be able to move to another place (state) as part of a promotion.
He replied that he'd like to talk it over with his wife (sounds reasonable to me.....).
The manager then said he could pack his desk, as opposed to packing his bags.
This was about 45-50 years ago, so some things haven't changed. Sometimes I think "The HP Way" was more marketing than reality, although it was MUCH better when Bill and Dave were around.
Too bad no-one cares about "corporate knowledge" anymore. Could be why most corporations are tanking. Seems we "wrinklies" do have skills and knowledge worth keeping.
And the highly-paid "management consultants" out of Dolittle & co. fresh out of school have a bit to learn. Who knew?
In any case, all the best to those who have been cast aside and adrift, and to those left behind who will have to divvy up the extra work, whilst waiting for the next round.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 05:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
the only end of IBM I see is the AIX and Power servers. From what I can see, these are being neglected, the quality of support these past few years is awful, and that includes field service who can't fix stuff after repeated visits per numerous anecdotes from folks I know.
a/c because, well, just because.
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Friday 4th March 2016 11:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Well, POWER does still kick butt, and much of the good local support people are still here (We still throw a party for the gang here once a year). But the business model for POWER is changing.
And as an IBM customer, I agree that support is a shadow of what it once were. We are throwing out IBM products, not cause the product isn't great.. but cause the support sucks. We had a WW IBM VP here as a part of his tour of europe. Our story to him was.. we are dropping this storage product.. why.. the support isn't good enough.. it sucks.. you moved it to OUTSOURCING COUNTRY X.. and now the support sucks. Sorry, and no we won't be buying the new product Y, cause we don't trust your support anymore.
AC... cause I used to Work there.
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Friday 4th March 2016 21:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Yeah, I used to work in IBM systems. Your complaint came up time after time. The customers were all essentially saying the same thing, we like the products and your support is awful. These are the root problems:
1) People think when they are speaking with an IBM VP that they are speaking with someone in charge of something. Usually that is not the case. IBM has an army of VPs and all of them are, at best, sitting around a table of 20 people when things are decided. They may not be in the loop at all.
2) Systems group doesn't own their own support. They are Global Services' internally customer. Global Services is... well, you know. When Systems group gets this bevy of complaints about support, they take them to the VP in charge of services and no action seems to take place.
3) Outsourcing/Offshoring. That has undoubtedly caused a lot of the support issues for the reasons offshoring outsourcing doesn't work in general (skill gaps, bureaucracy run amok, language barriers, just the inherent difficulty of passing a complex problem from one person to the next). You cannot even say that this offshoring thing isn't working well at IBM though.
4) Just general attrition and people caring less. A lot of the talent has left, one way or another, and the morale is pretty low. If someone thinks IBM is the greatest company in the world they are going to do a much better job than if they think they are getting hosed by IBM. In aggregate, morale makes a huge difference. The military understands the role morale plays and they can shoot people who try to leave... why IBM doesn't get it is beyond me. There is just a focus on financials at IBM and not the same focus on delighting the customer.
A lot of these issues are the same at any big company, not really specific to IBM. The major difference is morale. You need employees who are motivated enough to work around things, simplify things, push stuff through the operational nonsense to get it done. It would be nice if companies wouldn't set up the operational nonsense in the first place but it is never going to happen because some operational VP sees risk everywhere which needs to be documented and handled. No one ever considers the risk of not getting anything done or getting it done so slowly that you lose in the market.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 07:21 GMT niksgarage
So sad
I started work at IBM when they were nearly ten times bigger than their nearest rivals, who were DEC. I left them more than ten years ago, and even at that time, I had dodged the axe a few times to last that long. I have been happier, have been better paid since and I have found the freedom to focus on what I am interested in. Please can those people who are fearful of their jobs going have the confidence to take the money and run, go work for somewhere else where your skills and experience will put you in good stead. IBM is a great place to be from.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 20:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: So sad
Haha, "IBM is a great place to have worked" is what someone told me when I originally was hired by IBM (implication being that it is not a great place to work).
There are definitely some downsides about IBM, constant layoffs, low salaries, idiots become managers (IBM), constant reshuffling of the deck.... I will say that I like and miss how process driven IBM is... people might complain about that, but I miss the organization.
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