Thread regarding IBM layoffs

@13s When you see their LinkedIn profiles and they were in leadership positions (plural) for less then 2 years only to be “promoted” or moved to another leadership position tells you all you need to know about what is going on there

@291
@291 The leadership and management are ultra focused on their own well-being and self-interest to worry about these “small” issues. Remember, they are also getting FIRED from IBM tomorrow, which is probably something many of them did not ever expect happening to themselves in a million years. They have been scrambling very hard for position and best option for their derailed careers.

Most likely, we will just continue using the IBM systems with no changes until everything gets sorted out. But trust your leaders! They always put your best interests before their own!

@26r Pretty frustrating that, with Anderon starting tomorrow, Outlook, Slack, Teams, you name it! - none of our accounts still aren’t set up. None of them.

These aren’t nice-to-haves they’re basic infrastructure. People can’t be expected to hit the ground running when leadership hasn’t even made sure they can communicate. How are we suppose to work? We are just going to sit there in new offices in Zen and stare at each other across the tables.

If leadership can’t get the basics sorted before Day 1, they’re not setting the team up for success they’re creating completely avoidable chaos from the start.

@OP This whole things has been an absolute cluster fu-k and clearly we aren’t being told whole truth

@1q9
It is disgusting to watch the same leaders keep driving this site and programs into the ground until it finally crashes and burns, and then they just move them to another area to do the same thing again. Somehow, the people responsible are never held accountable. They just keep getting recycled and given another opportunity to repeat the same failures. There is zero accountability here only musical chairs, with the same people simply changing positions.

What really stood out to me looking around the room is that I love how all of Huiming’s Albany mafia were very noticeably absent and had been conveniently moved to safe places just months prior to the Anderon announcement. His core group of supporters and favorites were inexplicably moved to different areas, and even irrelevant, brand-new teams were magically created out of thin air with no discernible logic for their purpose to exist in the first place. It is striking how many of the individuals closely aligned with Huiming’s leadership circle were moved into seemingly secure positions only months before the Anderon announcement. In retrospect, the personnel movements leading up to the Anderon announcement look considerably less random than they appeared at the time.

It only makes sense now in hindsight. And then there are the leaders and managers they wanted to get rid of, who were jettisoned to Anderon and many of whom were demoted and are no longer managers over there.

It’s plain as day to see now, but at the time, these reorganizational like movements seemed sporadic, random, and completely nonsensical, other than the fact that it was the usual suspects were the ones being moved around.

If you ever needed hard evidence of how the Albany site is actually run, there it is. Very hard to ignore or defend.

@20h
It was painfully cringeworthy, amateurish, and downright childish when they started talking about potential customers. But sure anything is possible in the magical fantasyland of make-believe, where imaginary customers are apparently just as good as real ones.

Lunch time now but I am sitting here thinking about the all-hands today (9/28 at 9:00 a.m. EST) and it was, at best, underwhelming. I left the meeting with more questions than answers and, frankly, without a particularly strong sense of confidence in the direction or clarity of the situation and of the leadership. The messaging felt somewhat vague, and I’m not sure the discussion adequately addressed the issues people are actually trying to understand.

I’m curious how others interpreted it. What was your overall impression, and what conclusions if any did you come away with?

@13s
How the he-l is this guy still in a leadership position? The number of times he has been named “Director” has to be some kind of world record. Yet somehow, despite all those titles, almost nothing of lasting significance ever seems to come out of his organizations. He hasn’t delivered anything of major note, and project after project and team after team seem to fizzle into nothing.

Yet somehow he keeps getting recycled into another leadership role, given another title, and handed another organization to run. At some point, the lack of meaningful results has to become impossible to ignore. I’m not saying he should be fired, but keeping him in leadership is getting increasingly difficult to justify based on the results. He should have been moved out of leadership years ago. At this point, it’s not overdue—it’s absurdly overdue.

@12b I was at that meeting. It did not go well

@12b+1m2n6pjeq

Hemnath becomes director 15 times already no? Still cannot do this right. He is good at politics I guess because actual leadership and hitting milestones commitments and accomplishments is just not his thing

@12b
What do you expect from any of the Albany leadership at this point? They’ve been in leadership positions for more than a decade and still seem completely clueless and lost when it comes to handling situations like this. After a decade of this regime, Albany really has very little to show for it. They have fumbled and bungled nearly every major situation, and the Anderon launch is no exception. It has been completely embarrassing. It has really exposed their raw weaknesses, lack of capability, and sheer ineptitude across the entire Albany leadership team.

It’s becoming painfully apparent that many of our leaders were never equipped for leadership in the first place. The way this entire situation has been handled is a pretty remarkable demonstration of that.

@em Exactly. It feels like an incredibly poorly handled and orchestrated launch from every angle, and honestly, it’s been that way for some time now. The communication has been terrible, nobody seems to have the same information, and leadership appears to be scrambling to figure out their own situation while everyone else is left hanging.

At today’s all-hands with Hemnath addressing the Anderon situation… holy he-l, that was rough. He kept saying, “We’ll figure it out,” but as someone pointed out during that same meeting, you’re saying “we’ll figure it out” while simultaneously launching this company next week. That’s not good and pretty damn alarming disconnect.

The whole thing just feels incredibly unprepared, and I’m really worried this is going to be a disaster. The whole thing has been handled incredibly poorly.

@kb the oct 1st date is indicating that ibm is considering as part of their RA strategy

@OP, Oct. 1 is a pretty interesting start date for Anderon. It’s the rumored layoff date for a lot of people on PIPs, and it’s also reportedly the layoff date for the Red Hat folks. I think there’s one other group with an rumored Oct. 1 as their final day as well.

So if all of this lines up, Anderon really may just be a fancy-pants layoff mechanism for IBM.

It will be very interesting to see how long the leadership like Mukesh stay on before magically returning to ibm

@gb i don’t like that language, but agree he is a bad apple

@gd then why are they kicking them all out ibm?

@g0 quantum is like the one thing there they are focusing on so it seemed those were ones with most job security (for now)

@fz fu-k Huiming he’s got no morals or values

@fz no he kept all his favorites at ibm and laid off the resr from IBM to Anderon

@fp is huiming going to anderon?

@c8
I find Huiming’s behavior to be quite deceptive and unprofessional.

Communication is really very bad. Nobody really know what is happening and no one can explain clearly. Leadership is basically not existing. Everyone morale is very low and people are very discouraged. Whole situation is very terrible. They treat us very poorly, like we are not important at all.

@e2 exactly I give this venture 2 years tops

Do anderon people lose their ibm RSUs? Asking for a friend.

IBM Albany is using this in lieu of a layoff. They’re essentially just throwing undesirable trash out of IBM into Anderon.

It’s a shell company with the sole purpose of getting $1b from the US GOVERNMENT.

A headcount reduction of 70-100 people doesn't move the needle for IBM.

This is being done for one purpose - to create more quantum hyper and pump the stock price. The reality is that useful quantum computing is 30+ years away if it EVER even happens.

THIS is why there haven't been any layoffs in '26. This spin-off and the headcount that moves with it ARE the layoffs - at least from a financial perspective. IBM loses the headcount and gets the savings without having to directly payout severance and the US Government bankrolls half of it!