Thread regarding IBM layoffs

@3pxn+1qHFRfbV

Eat sh-t you corporate simp

get these people who are part time working at home ,back to the office.Stop the BS. If you dont want to come to work GTFO

I'm the guy who posted @2tro. I do not defend IBM's management practices, nor do I deny the effects of those management practices on the employee base and the business. My only point is that it is very, very late in the game to change what is going on in a way that is going to satisfy a lot of employees.

The present-day IBM has two basic problems. It is not an entrepreneurial company, and it is running out of options. Corporate decisions are made top-down by a very small "elite" group if you will (senior executives, IBM Fellows, DE, STSM). Investments are made and technical directions are chosen based on their recommendations. You could do everything you could to maintain the stable of race horses (talented employees), but without good decisions from that bunch of elites it will just fall apart anyway. As has been observed many times, great ideas come from the rank and file employees all the time, but they are rarely if ever implemented.

Over the years, IBM sold or spun off division after division to maintain its stock value and ability to deliver dividends to the stockholders (shareholder primacy). Networking, display devices, printing and input devices, strategic outsourcing, multiple iterations of software and services. As has been noted by others, the Consulting group might have been on the chopping block if it had a different financial picture. Lots of offerings that IBM might have been able to monetize in the past are now commoditized.

In the end, IBM is destined to be a much smaller company than it once was. They've sold lots of stuff off, so they can't be anything else. For those people who are "important" to the business (you know who you are), the company will bend over backwards to take care of you. It happens all the time. You'll get to work from home, your boat on the water or your lakefront cabin. But for everybody else, you will be wrung through the proverbial wringer, including being told to RTO or get out. You may disagree with the policy, and you can bi--h about it in a dozen different ways on how your way is better. They don't care. IBM is not an entrepreneurial company, and most employees aren't the ones making corporate decisions.

@2tro might be the one who pitched RTO as a solution.

“Listen, I know that using unqualified labor, nonsensical policies, inferior materials, and unappealing designs to cut costs sounds like a weird way to improve our results, but I promise if we try it enough times it will work.”

@2tro. Sorry, but I think you have it backwards. Instead of utilizing tactics that can weed out non-performers, let’s eliminate one of the few positive factors of IBM employment that will only further drive better qualified talent away.

You have an amazing inability to absorb the fact that repeated cycles of the same activity have not produced success, yet you defend the actions that many have pointed out, currently and historically, do not yield a better employee base. I get it, OTHER missteps have created and contributed to the current situation, but compounding those errors with more just confirms that management has no clue. Kinda like thinking that the really good employees will be willing to RTO and all the dead weight is gonna go find other jobs instead. Ugh.

The RTO by Consulting screams of years of sheer mismanagement within the Consulting unit! Arvind and Jim Kavanaugh have shamelessly duped investors since the Kyndryl spinout, painting a false picture of Consulting's profitability. The only reason Consulting wasn't spun off with Kyndryl was its pathetic finances that would've sunk Kyndryl. SEC, are you even paying attention? Consulting, a workforce heavyweight at over 70% of IBM's total headcount, is a labor-intensive mess, with most employees in low-cost countries like India, distant from customers. Consultants in the US and Europe struggle for billable work, and John Granger is running out of time! Cutting Americans with RTO in 1Q is the only lifeline for Consulting in 2024. Europe is a disaster, but let's conveniently target US employees because, hey, they lack contracts and protections for a quick ROI! IBM Consulting's tax havens in Ireland and Singapore solution integration hubs – without them, zero profits! What a game! Labeling 130,000+ employees as "cost center" resources, cooking the labour rates, violating transfer pricing rules left and right – it's downright illegal! IBMers hear about the over/under of the centers, over a billion- dollar over-recovery each of the last three years. IBM pumps up revenue with acquisitions, masking the grim reality of a dying commodity business. Arvind and Jim are crossing their fingers that Red Hat, Watsonx, and Quantum will bail them out, so they can dump Consulting and vanish without a trace.

More proof RTO has no positives, only negatives
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/24/return-to-office-mandates-company-performance/

@2zqz With all due respect...your post shows a stunning lack of historical perspective. It's not your fault, but your litany of complaints have been repeated ad nauseum for almost 40 years. Tens of thousands of very talented engineers, programmers, sales staff, system administrators, project managers and anyone else who have been canned over the years have said the very same thing you are. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of journalists in the business and IT industries have observed the effects on talent that you noticed, and they have mentioned it in countless journal articles and postings on very visible websites.

IBM is doing what it is doing because that's probably all it can do at this point. By many accounts it is short on cash, it is short on ideas, it is short on working room and to be blunt it is short on time. It could have done a lot of things differently over the years, but it didn't and that's where things stand today. It's a much smaller company that even after 40 years STILL must remove surplus staff (that's what they called us in my time). You'd think the company could find ways to use that talent, but they didn't and so the surplus has to go. Those that remain will be working in the office (at least some of the time).

Yeah, the enterprise has declined...it's been happening for many, many years.

IBM is doing what it’s doing….really? I had no idea that it was…doing. LOL. Excuse makers ignoring the reality that by trying to ‘trim down’ they are actively driving away existing talent (some dead weight as well, no delusions) and scaring away new talent that it needs in the future.

Nobody is arguing that that are following through, it’s the why and to what benefit that people are questioning. The old school guard of behinds in seats and “because I said so” is obviously vocal here and painfully ignorant of labor and talent trends for the fields being affected.

So go ahead and keep making excuses as to why the master can call the shots until the decline of the enterprise becomes apparent because quality personnel are no longer on the payroll.

Old IBMer here...these moves run in cycles, and there are dynamics in play that most employees will never see. When IBM started remote work all those years ago, IBM had a huge excess of real estate. There were hundreds of data centers, tens of thousands of square feet of raised floor space, acres of desks and chairs...you get the picture. As IBM got rid of the surplus (all those RAs), they sold off that real estate and consolidated what they had left into a smaller number of sites.

Fast forward to today...new management does the opposite move. They have a lot less real estate than they had before, and probably a desire to keep that commercial real estate occupied. They are trying to be a leaner and meaner company, and they are trying to do the trendy things with respect to collaboration and working together and such...so RTO for everyone.

In a few years, the cycle will begin again.

@1ohj Companies often trim their budgets by consolidating office locations. They've done that for decades, so when your small home office is closed by IBM, you should expect to move your home office chair to a larger and less convenient IBM office. If you can't agree to move your chair, then don't work at IBM.

@1ohj - At the end of the day, efficient or not, IBM is doing what it is doing. It is demanding that you return to office. Now, the question is what are YOU going to do about it? The only true option under your control is to walk away from IBM. And, if you can't walk away, all you can do is complain but to what end. IBM does not care that you are complaining and may quit. They actually want that! Because of this "take-it-or-leave-it" dynamic, IBM has the upper hand in this relationship. That's also why it was referred to as the master by the other poster.

@1fjy - But what if you were hired specifically as remote and now this? What is being demanded is not what was communicated nor expected. How does this help efficiency if none of your reports are co-located with you nor anyone else in your management chain? Not to mention the negative impact to stated “environmental goals” putting that many more commuters into action. Don’t dress this up as BAU, be honest. IBM was a pioneer in remote work, THAT was BAU. Are are you a Cxx in here to drum up support for this?

@1zkm No I was not being sarcastic. Unless you are retired or otherwise freed from a job, you have a master, and that master is either your employer or your customers. (Even if you are retired, you still have a master if you are a typical married man).

It has nothing to do with a lack of self-respect. It's realism.

You knew what you signed up for when you went to work for IBM. It's d-mb to complain when the master tells you what you already expected would happen.

@1sds+1qHFRfbV

Consultants, yes the ones who are actually billing (green dollars) have been the target of layoffs for the past 10+ years… it is about time to get rid of the people that are useless and only cost money to IBM… we all know who they are!

RTO orders hit CIO/F&O today as well

@1wls Consultants on client sites (or who at least are known to clients) are considered "critical resources", and are in general non-expendable (they bring in green dollar money). But there are a lot of people at IBM who sit in the shadows, raking in lots of cash. They put together lots of presentations and spreadsheets, and sometimes they don't even do that. A lot of them are managers, and they work at home. Yeah, they call into conference calls and web meetings and act important and relevant, but they really are expendable and everybody knows it.

For a long time in the US, the unstated workplace custom was that you had to show up to get paid. Even idle workers were often tolerated, but at the very least they were expected to show up to their official place of work, be visible to management, and be ready to accept tasks that might be assigned to them. It is only in recent years that remote work became such an entitlement.

Most employees won't like to hear it, but if they work more than 50 miles from an IBM office and cannot make it into the office for at least a few days a week, then they are probably expendable.

That's not even close to being in true in Consulting. Clients are all over the country. People support more than one client. Client projects end after a year or less in many cases and people go to a different client.

Too many people at IBM think this is still 1981 and that most IBMers are going to some plant to sc--w together mainframes as their job.

This is how Arvind and his execs are making decisions now. It is an autocratic management style. The autocratic management style allows managers to make decisions extremely fast, but employees hate working under it. It’s also one of the most ineffective management styles: underdeveloped employees feel overwhelmed — they won’t get any help — and the most skilled employees can’t let their talents shine in such a rigid environment. Everyone’s professional growth is stunted.

Another problem with autocratic managers is that they don’t try to convince their employees to buy into their vision. Instead, they force them to do it. Even though coercion might work in the short-term, it won’t last in the long-term. No one likes to be controlled. And if people don’t know why they’re supporting the company’s vision, morale will plummet, leading to low-quality work and a high turnover rate.

It is old school draconian style management.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/22/opinions/remote-work-jobs-bergen/index.html

@1bum I had a team located in NYC, Ohio, Florida, California Tell me how return to office makes a difference? We accomplished all with conference calls, screen sharing information, etc

@1bum I hope your post was intended as sarcasm. If so, please be aware that it comes across a little muddy. If not sarcasm, I would like you to know and hopefully take to heart the fact that I am thoroughly disgusted by people so lacking in self-respect that they unironically subscribe to the notion of having a master.

@1hfq Realistically, this is a way to get rid of people who are considered expendable. Those who are considered critical resources (absolutely necessary to the business, like somebody important and known to clients) will be "accommodated", even if that means them working at home. Most employees will not get this accommodation, so those people can either RTO as ordered or leave the company. It's the same as it always was.

Most employees won't like to hear it, but if they work more than 50 miles from an IBM office and cannot make it into the office for at least a few days a week, then they are probably expendable.

So if I live more than 50 miles away from an IBM office, are they really going to make it a "condition of my employment" to relocate?? Or is it just a bluff?

Talking on Webex is not the same and will never convey the same information as in-person meetings and hallway conversations. If your masters tell you to jump, you ask 'how high'? So get your butts into the office and quit complaining.

For IBM Consulting, it is only managers... For SWG (Software Group) it is everybody RTO... so, what are they bi--hing about?

Glad to hear that all managers have to be in the office. May be some will quit, we need less management, not more. Now, let's see what IBM does when all these managers are gone... will they hire kids out of school to come in as managers? No, degree required to work at IBM... lol!

This is all BS as usual... most people going to the office will still be working/collaborating with people that are not in that office. So, the face-to-face (smell my breath) is just BS!

There are not enough space in the IBM offices anyway to have the whole company go back to the office, even 3 days a week.

Original post on the same topic here: @OP+1qByqQhE