I just had a meeting with my manager who told me that another round of layoff will happen and I’ll be part of it. WTF!!! This company doesn’t value its employees. I’m feeling frustrated and mad
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Quotas make 0 sense. When your quota exceeds the revenue of the customer and they can’t get IGF financing. Yeah BS way to run a business and they just keep doing the executive shuffle.
Until costs (4-5% growth) come in under projected revenue growth (1-2% growth) RA’s are inevitable. IBM continues to have the age old legacy problem of stagnate revenue grow, but continuing cost escalation due to inflation. Even though the new lines of business (Hybrid cloud, Redhat, etc etc) are growing revenue, it’s just not fast enough vs the shrink of legacy, plus inflation. The real solution is trimming non-revenue/non-customer facing legacy overhead (mostly management, but some staff/bean counters too), but IBM has always been incapable of executing that plan. That’s the problem with promoting from within. Old ideas refuse to die or quickly re-emerge, while new ideas are quickly cast aside, or never even entertained. AK has had his chance in the batters box and basically struck out due to being too timid in his approach to restructuring IBM. It’s time to bring in some outside “new” thinking and aggressively complete the restructuring of IBM. NOTE this means IBM will have to shrink to complete the restructuring.
I can’t imagine how much IBM spends in litigating all of these wrongful dismissals (RAs). Would be cheaper to PIP I suppose. I can’t get over how LinkedIn was buzzing in April-July with RAed folks and now IBM is posting significantly that they are now hiring. Classy.
I was RA'd in July, notice was given to me in June. IBM has been "quietly" laying off since the beginning of Q2. There are some decent managers left that give a damn about the employees left. When your top finance guys sells his shares, there's your sign. If you were lucky enough to get a severance count your blessings. The ship is sinking and those left will be given nothing.
Unfortunately the lion share of IBMs revenue still comes from several hundred accounts and comes from the big deals like ELAs. They have been concerned about that for many years now and have tried different market reorganizations to change that. The National Market created in early 2022 was one such attempt and the sales teams are saddled with unreasonable quotas set by so called experts like teams in Brazil. This year they created dedicated business partner teams but are still dependent on the big deals with large enterprise accounts.
@5fch+1om3pwBB Money market comparison is a good one. Only thing IBM had going for it last decade was 5% dividend. That was attractive when interest rates were 0%. Now you can get 5-6% on a CD with no risk.
This is just old IBM behavior continuing along. Remember most fortune 1000 accounts have deep established relationships (people buy from people they like). Essentially IBM exec’s (Rob Thomas and his executive team) plug in friends and family to established fortune 1000 accounts and the plug ins are expected to grow the established relationships with current IBM offers with no impact on business. Does this work? Usually yes, when you have an established team who can introduce the newbies and nurture them along. The down side of this IBM behavior is due to constant cuts, there isn’t much nurturing along anymore as the teams have been cut down to skeleton crews. As such the newbies have to break existing long term relationships and that impacts buying behavior. This is yet another example of IBM exec’s living in the past, and not acknowledging what the present really looks like. IBM has to deliver value to their fortune 1000 customers to keep buying moving along, but the newbies are having a very very hard time explaining why the current IBM offerings are delivering value and they can’t rely on relationship to get the sale over the finish line.
Can we just get rid of Rob Thomas? The guy is clearly in over his head and has no clue what he’s doing.
I agree with a previous post that IBM will not invest where there is slow growth. Such is probably the case for a lot of the National Market and Industry Market and is why RAs are occurring in those markets. The unfortunate reality is the Rob Thomas orchestrated market reorg in early 2022 forced most people to be assigned to those markets along with eliminating the client rep/exec, software client leader, and software technology architect roles.
So sorry to hear that you are on the RA list. It must be a difficult and unbearable time, so hope you are doing all of the things to focus on your mental health and next step in your career. It does and will get better.
I know this is going to sound harsh, but this is the “new” IBM go to market model. The overall status quo for IBM is revenue growth at the rate of inflation. (approx 3%-4% ) 3% - 4% growth isn’t acceptable to Wall Street or the stock holders (they can get 5% with a money market) Thus if you are in a part of IBM that is growing slower, you most likely are on the target list. IBM will continue to trim until their revenue growth rate approaches 5 - 6%. When and where that will occur, is in the hands of the CEO. Right now it appears like the go forward plan is “all in on mainframe and it’s supporting components” Why? SW and services have to run on something, and IBM has chosen mainframe as their preferred HW (note it being IBM’s monopoly most likely made the decision easy). Everything else that is non-mainframe focused will be scrutinized, and low growth revenue pieces will be eliminated. I suspect the 6% growth rate will find support in the 200-210k headcount range.
I would love to see Rob Thomas work as a sales rep in the National Market for 1 year. He would be a total failure
That is what I suspected with the top talent being let go in the National Market. I did work in the Financial Services market before I retired but I remember thinking this whole reorg endorsed by Rob Thomas in 2022 was total bs. Some people were placed in the National Market with accounts who historically rarely purchased from IBM. On the other hand, some people were placed in lucrative markets like Financial Services who were slackers, The fact that they are doing RAs in the National market tells me that IBM is struggling finding revenue with these accounts. Good luck with your job search. I hope you find something.
The RA didn't catch me off guard at all – our Industry market team has bid farewell to some top-notch talent this year. This is total BS
Another sad thing about this is I have had two managers I worked for at IBM who left because they were tired of telling their employees they were on the RA list. They just got tired of the endless cycle year after year quarter after quarter. One of them works at a major competitor at a major cloud hyperscaler.
If what you posted was factual - I would consider this as a blessing in disguise cause managers are not supposed to disclose this information till the RA is supposed to begin. Most managers wont go against this policy from HR for legal reasons although you can easily notice some behavioral changes when it comes to assignments meetings which should indicate the obvious if you are able to catch the vibe. Start applying asap
my last day was yesterday with IBM. I was ra'ed on Aug 1st. My coach told me there is more RA coming in next month. feels better to be out of IBM.
Conspiracy theorists suggest the "informal advance notice" is to get people to find jobs and leave so they don't have to pay the extra month nor "severance"
Come in @21gm, cut this person slack vs questioning his/her intellect. Finding out you are being layed off hurts terribly. If you can only be hypercritical, then go take your negativity someone else.
Are you just figuring this out now that you were RA’d? Based on that level of intellect it’s a wonder you survived that long lol
Seems strange that your manager is sharing this unofficially with you. Typically this is pretty confidential until it actually happens. I would use the extra heads up to immediately start your job search. I am guessing there will be additional people impacted in the National Market when the official RAs occur. It is sad because I know some very talented people in the National Market who were placed there in early 2022. I was fortunate to retire on my own earlier this year from IBM but my heart goes out to you.
@OP+1om3pwBB
Be real and Look at it this way how .the f@ck did you make it this far
Not surprising. Getting customer business in the National Market is tough
Not surprised by RA, but rather by manager offering heads up. It’s not an official 30 day notice. Having an official notice today, would make the last day Sept 30, just in time for quarter end.
This is pretty typical behavior for IBM. Give 30 days notice (end of august) on a quarter end boundary (end of sept). IBM has had more than its fair share of reductions at the end of August extending into the beginning of Sept. Given IBM’s revenue, they continue to have to streamline as they are over manned. Current headcount is in the 250-260k range with the ideal given 62 billion being closer to 210-220k range. If IBM wanted to be leading bleeding edge the number would be 185-195k range. It’s all about revenue/profit per employee, and IBM’s numbers are no where close to ideal. Trying to get to a leading/bleeding edge profile is just not in the cards given IBM’s current organizational structure. (too many chiefs/non-customer facing employees and not enough workers/customer facing employees)
This seems unusual for IBM to provide heads up like that. Any details as to when RA is happening? Usually, they like to wrap them up by quarter end.
IBM don't know what they till it's gone. When I was RA originally they gave me 2 month notice because of a project. Client postpone the project for a month then in a panic to get my notice extended for 6 months.
Layoff Rob Thomas and solve a lot of IBM problems.
I don't know why you all want to continue working for IBM. IBM has the worst pay and benefits across the entire tech sector. On top of that, you have to worry about RAs constantly, so why?
Same story, different verse for IBM for the last 15-20 years. Sr Management does not know how to grow, only slash and burn.
Of you're 9ver 40 ge5 a lawyer to explore filing for an age discrimination lawsuit, assuming you don't sign any exit agreement etc.
Figures. I knew Rob Thomas was full of it when he said IBM is investing in the National market with a goal of 100,000 new clients but never heard a concrete timeline on that.
I just receive a phone call from my manager about the next RA.
Just a quick update as I'm the OP. My role is ATL in the national market
Do you mind sharing role/division?
I hope the managers, executives, HR, that are involved in RAs get what is coming to them someday. Either in this life or the afterlife.
As well you should. But(secks) don't take out your frustration here: get on your networking game. There are still opportunities in the tech sector, but the market won't stay prosperous forever. In some ways you may look back a year from now and be happy it happened when it did.