I know this been asked many many times before, but why is it that IBM top executives not put on a PIP when they do not meet revenue goals? In the global markets, if you do not meet the mandated minimum percentage of your full year quota, you are put on a PIP. It used to be that these quotas were set by some obscure team in Brazil. These quotas were crazy
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Every generation needs to find their own ways in life. If generation Z thinks they deserve to be executives, then they are welcome to try being executives. Some will succeed, and some will fail. But at least they'll have the chance to try.
I come from Generation X...a generation where more people went to college than ever before. Not only does Gen X think they (we) are smarter, more knowledgeable and more humble than future generations, but they feel the same way regarding the generations that came before them! There's nothing new under the sun...this has all happened before, and it will happen again.
"Personally, I think future generations will turn away from at least some of the financialization" - You have got to be joking - so called future generations think that they should become Executives after 6 months on the job! The future belongs to those who are willing to learn, humble, and actually knowledgeable, not someone who has read 4 articles on google and thinks they know everything about everything - which basically summarizes the entire generation Z!
You gotta love the older Star Trek shows and movies (TNG and original series). The writers weren't so "woke", and they had a very different take on humanity's future than what we see today.
"The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves, and the rest of humanity..." -Captain Picard, from "Star Trek, First Contact"
RE: @2yqh+1sH2dSnA
And have the executive positions subject to RAs and PIPs in the US been completely eliminated, or just moved to low cost, Third world countries who generally achieve nothing but put out a lot of hot air on their insignificant achievements ? After all, if you are simply ending the year with the same number of executives worldwide, and claim some miniscule cost savings as Kavanaugh does in his quarterly financial engineering reports, it is a waste of time and effort. What is the rationale for keeping such jobs ? Surely AI can do better if you claim it is the future of work and capable of replacing executive positions. Investors and shareholders will demand better and improved results.
It's called capitalism.
Personally, I think future generations will turn away from at least some of the financialization. There's nothing in it for them, and the idea that the world's wealth flows to a bunch of insiders front-running transactions is offensive on many levels.
This will have many effects on our own society here in the US (and to be honest all of the western world), because our societal interaction depends so much on money, at every level and every institution. It's what happens when money is all you care about in life.
It’s just one more example of the financialization of everything in the American economy: home loans, car loans, healthcare, education, entertainment, funeral homes.
You name it, the finance industry has a way to turn everything into a cash flow for investors.
IBM has been RAing and PIPing Band D and C executives like mad for the last year. It's just done quietly.
It might help allay your frustration (albeit at the increase of your disgust) if you accept the idea that IBM is managed more as a hedge fund than as any sort of high-tech business. A hedge fund by definition is an investment vehicle with pooled funds that is managed to outperform average market returns.
This describes IBM to a tee, from its management to its owners (share and bondholders). Bits and pieces of IBM are bought and sold every day just like other hedge funds. The employees of IBM are not there to write software, or build computers or anything like that. They are there to MAKE MONEY for the management and the owners, and in the end MONEY is all they care about.
You and I may have great ideas on how to make better computers or write better software or be better service providers to the customers, but to a large part of IBM's management and pretty much ALL of IBM's owners the only thing that matters at the end of the day is whether or not their stock holdings go up or down. That is what happens when money is all you care about. They follow the dictates of Milton Friedman (shareholder primacy).
Don't look for this s***show to last forever. Even hedge funds have a limited lifespan. IBM is running out of both money and time. The interesting question is when will investors lose interest?
@1eij - first of all, corporate entities like Fidelity, Vanguard, Blackrock etc. will never demand change from the CEO or any corporate board unless it is in their interests i.e. there is profit in it for them. There aren't interested in change for the benefit or welfare of employees, just the corporate entities. Yup, it's selfish and we know that. So, one needs to develop a healthy cynicism that these entities are only looking out for themselves, not IBM employees. If I got that wrong, please correct me.
@1urk - check on the ages of people who were on the board when Ginn was running the show.
How can you expect that anyone who is 80+ years old to have the same business smarts and reflexes as they did when they were 50 ?
Ginni was 63 when she left.
Arvin is 62.
1sln You are incorrect IBM exec’s own less than 1% of the outstanding shares of IBM Multiple Corporate entities like Vanguard and Fidelity own the vast majority of IBM. To get change the corporate entities will need to demand change
@1cih+1sH2dSnA - that will never happen simply because the CEO and the crooks running the corporation hold a majority of the corporation shares so they do as they please.
@xgh. I get it. I know executives have much higher level objectives than the sales team on the ground. I know all about this from MBA school. But at the end of the day, IBM has to grow revenue at a healthy clip to remain viable as a company. For too long now, we have seen Sam, Ginni, and Arvind try to turn this big ship around. At least two out of those three should have been ousted by the board much sooner given their bumbling attempts to grow revenue. Also Sam and Ginni and the board at the time were focused much more on earnings per share rather than revenue growth. But that is life and people in power are allowed more chances to succeed. Happens at other companies too where they get a long time to prove their strategies are working. Not just IBM. Meanwhile lives are destroyed for the people on the ground who are let go and those who remain are extremely unhappy and stressed out
Shareholders get to vote on the board every year. Until shareholders hold the board to a higher definition of growth, I don't see much happening.
What do I mean by “a higher definition”
IBM should subtract off inflation out of the revenue results posted by IBM. For the last two quarters IBM’s revenue has not grown if inflation is subtracted out. The results are not growth, but rather just caretaking. In the words of Dana Carvey playing Ross Perot “a monkey could do that” If you want to see real results, hold the board to zero bonuses for any exec who delivers revenue growth below inflations growth. That will change behavior because you cant save your way to prosperity (Pip’s, layoffs, spinoffs, etc etc), but actually have to grow the company.
to post @xjh+1sH2dSnA
AK has stacked the deck in his favor just like his predecessor Rometty did with the IBM board of directors when she was CEO and Chairperson. Nothing has changed, the game remains the same and the age of the on the board is a little younger, but not by a lot. How can you expect that anyone who is 80+ years old to have the same business smarts and reflexes as they did when they were 50 ? And why do you bribe the IBM board members with big IBM share handouts to vote the way you want them to vote on your oversized bonus that is not deserved, AK ? Rometty cheated all over the placed and got away with it, particularly her oversized and undeserved bonuses. She failed with her results yet got a huge bonus for the failures. In what universe does that happen ? Only in IBM's metaverse. She should have been fired for cause, pure and simple in the way she ran the company, particularly Watson Health. Why buy the junk outfit called the Weather Channel and keep the incompetent Bob Lord on for so many years to manage the DEI luggage while getting little or no money or value out of it ? AK has no backbone when it comes to firing people like Lord for doing nothing, or hiring his (AK's) former cronies like MA into Consulting. Does it make the business better or worse ? When you have a weak IBM board and you stack the deck with losers, anything goes and the business falls apart. If you are implementing cuts for the rest of the company, these should apply to ex-CEOs and Chairpersons also if they are not bringing revenue. It should be pay for performance for all the senior management, not pay for warming the chair as AK and his senior VPs do currently. Merely jetting off to some lovefest in Bangalore or Bratislava should not be the order of the day, as these senior VPs and managers do, and then write about what a great time it was for them on the w3 intranet. And a day or two later, the pink slips arrive. Nor should there be off site meetings for managers if the business cannot afford the cost - why should you have expensive off site meetings when you have all the technology like Webex and Zoom at your finger tips ? Let your fingers to the walking. Why have so many layers of managers, partners and associate partners just reporting to one another and not one of them even having any contact with the customer, understanding the customer's pain points and most important, fixing those pain points ? It's just pass the buck and preserve the status quo at IBM for the top dinosaur management. The IBM India culture has yet to change but the PIPs and layoffs need to start at the top since senior VPs, Directors and managers in the US are directly responsible for poor performance, failure to achieve goals and the loss of shareholder value in the company. No amount of hand waving, conferences, lovefests, talking about AI and posturing changes this. You should apply the same AI rules fairly to all the senior VP and Director jobs and if you can eliminate them, then do so - they rake in the most money and do the least work and have the least impact of the customer. Most of these senior management people like F&O are dinosaurs and obsolete - you can eliminate the jobs completely and not even waste a moment thinking of moving them to India. Consider how many holidays IBM India gets and what their work turnout is ; you will realize that they can mostly be replaced by good AI if the pop eyed RT was diligent enough to do that instead of dancing on stage like a frog in boiling water. But nothing changes, does it, AK ?
just like all governments no accountability and walks away with millions in the bank.
tax system just another form of mafia TBH
it's simple really
they are in power and you are not
and investor/parasite only cares if it gets money now
It's fraud and illegal
Nope, not in marketing...actually just a multi-decade techie who has seen it all. "Cook the books" is a matter of perspective. You and I may see it that way, but management types just see it as a means to an end.
@xjh you must be in marketing you could have simply said they just cook the books and never miss a bonus
How do you know that they are not?
The idea of "PIPs" may have been invented for the rank-and-file employees, but it would be a grave mistake to think that top executives aren't measured and put on their own improvement plans. Those people have stated metrics that they are expected to meet, and their compensation is adjusted when they don't meet those metrics. The big difference between them and you is that there isn't some faceless bureaucrat somewhere who decides your fate. For top executives, it's AK or someone up there directly deciding how much they get. For AK himself, the board of directors determines what he'll get.
Also consider that the goals (and therefore measured metrics) of top executives are not always relatable to the immediate goals of rank-and-file employees. For example, a regular salesman might have a sales quota that they are expected to meet. Fair enough, but the yearly goal for a top-line executive might be something more grand and nebulous, like "increase license renewal revenue for all database products by 10%" or something like that.
For the salesman, their only remedy to performance issues is simple enough...they have to sell more. But for that executive, they have different ways to address that same problem. Pushing the salespeople to sell more license renewals is one way, but they can also repackage or bundle things or add incentives or something like that. (Cough, cough, "Cloud Paks". Or maybe retitle products to start with "AI".)