Thread regarding IBM layoffs

@zv The research leaders are also dishonorable and lack integrity

I spent decades doing software development at IBM. My question is: are you a slimy weasel? If you are not and you genuinely want to practice the craft, the answer is a hard NO; you will be ground to dust. If you are a slimy weasel, you need to introspect: on a scale of 1 (bad) to 5 (great) how skilled are you in (a) eye gouging (b) gonad kicking (c) back stabbing? You need some pretty high scores to proceed. One thing helps your cause a lot: if you get psychopathic or sociopathic pleasure from delivering arbitrary unwarranted pain to people like me, who really did want to practice the craft and build great software, add a couple of points to your score. If are a slimy weasel but can't award yourself a high enough score, also a hard NO; once again, you are a stepping stone for someone else. But, if you did give yourself a high score, I feel that you should join our Hunger Games. Even with your self evaluation giving you a high score and your willingness to join the game and beat down people like me, there are a bizarre number of random setbacks that defy intellectual analysis which can thwart your career growth path. That would just be your bad luck.

@sx you’re actually lucky that one of our Research execs treated you that poorly, saving you from a career mistake. IBM Research has become a development sweatshop micromanaged by leaders whose ego is 40x larger than their IQ. (They’re not exactly the village id--t, but they are titans of arrogance.)

Research began a steep nosedive in 1992. And the thing is that it is still in a nosedive. That’s a long way to fall.

Many of the people that Research leadership has by action or neglect driven away over the last 20 years are now very senior key players at IBM competitors. There’s a repeated pattern of people blossoming and growing to significant heights when they leave IBM Research. And many of them are happier and more fulfilled in their new lives too. During my 34 years there, IBM Research routinely clipped Researchers’ wings to keep them as dependent nestlings and away from independent flight.

@sx You have not a chance, if you are not Indian.

@sx are you talking about Jay G?

@jb not too long ago, I aggressively lobby to get into IBM research knowing that the CIO under Matt Loathsome and his wicked toadies such as Jill&Jay were burning the CIO to the ground to collect the insurance money. But IBM Research had been relatively untouched - with smart and energized engineers and doctoral researchers everywhere. I wanted in!

I have a doctorate and a better publication history than 99% of everyone there but it proved impossible to get in the door. One exec I met with tried to shame me for being "unqualified" - she just assumed - and when I pointed out just a few of my recent achievements she quickly dropped off of Teams and couldn't be reached again. She refused to meet again because I put a face to her lie.

I had assumed IBM Research was safe from Arvind's mo--s tations as he came from there. But it wasn't. In the next year every single person I knew or admired at IBM Research was eliminated. Every single one.

At IBM, Only the useless survive.

@ht wise choice. Good luck on your journey

@c6 IBM Research is smoke and mirrors

Thanks everyone. Your comments are helpful and I've decided against IBM. It sounds pretty bad. Even the more positive comments don't sound so good. And no offense to anyone but I don't want to work for a company where most of my coworkers have low morale. Fortunately I have other options that I think are better. Good luck to all of you. Thank you again!

@OP IBM is a total dump. If you like working for a bunch of re--rds like Matt Loathsome and Joanne the Walrus in the CIO, go ahead, it's your funeral. The CEO Alvind is a total mother trucker who ships jobs to India and plays head games with the media to show that he so brilliant, but he is as d-mb as they get. If he was so smart how come the second quarter results were BS? IBM is a dead company walking.

@ek you don’t?

@e7 people with 30+ years at IBM start their workday before 7:00 AM

@e7 people with 30+ years start the day before 7:00 am.

People working for 35 - 40 years at IBM today leave the company before 4 pm, if you like that environment accept the offer.

As you’re seeing from the responses, it’s not an exaggeration for effect.

There are some good suggestions and observations in the comments — I would add, IBM is huge and there are doubtless some pockets left where you could have a good multi-year run, especially just starting out. The IBM name does still have some cachet among employers who don’t know any better. (I have a former boss who is now reasonably high up at Microsoft. When I told him I had gotten hired at IBM, he paused and replied, “Well… if that’s what you have decided you want from your career right now, then I wish you well.” I didn’t understand the response then — now I do.

One insight into the culture: last year, layoffs (RA’s) hit our team and a very talented teammate was laid off. In a meeting a week or two later, I made reference to the fact that the work would take longer since we had no expertise in ‘x’ anymore since [teammate] was laid off. My manager almost screeched, “Oh my God you can’t say that out loud you can’t say anyone was laid off you can only say they are not here anymore and it’s better if you don’t even say that!” That really struck me as dehumanizing — people can just vanish, 1984-style, and the culture is that we corporate doobies just soldier on and don’t even give our fallen comrades the dignity of acknowledging the loss, or — importantly— that IBM management did an intentional thing, and the resulting loss of expertise was self-inflicted. It just seems mentally ill to me. But that’s the culture.

So yeah — still some good opportunities in the right locations, but don’t think you’re going to build a career here. Come in with your eyes open and adjust trajectory according to what you find.

@e2 you have clearly been to Albany!

To get ahead at IBM, you must lick your boss's an us. And likely his/her/their/what ever boss's an us too. So you gotta ask yourself...

Ibm doesn't innovate from within. The best they can do is buy technology from a smaller company. Oil service companies do the same thing. Ibm doesn't lead in anything. The lawsuits about age discrimination speaks volumes about the board in the same way it does about META when 10 % of ad revenue comes from outright scam advertising and they are ok with that.

Do not do it. It will degrade your mind and body quickly. A picture is worth a thousand words. IBM hires based on race, s-x, looks etc and not on skills. For example this person went from cold calling people who had no interest in hearing from IBM to being an IBM "sales manager" in under a year. Imagine this as your manager. This is the "new" IBM sales mgr they covet. To become and IBM manager used to take 5+ years of exceptional skills and results. Dress appropriately and professionally and stop looking at yourself all day on your phone and posting pictures like this of yourself on the internet to 6B strangers. No thank you. As someone who saw the greatness of IBM in the early 80s, it literally makes me sick to see the dumpster fire it has become. https://lnkd.in/p/gjKpexcC

It is a paycheck… the question is how long can you hope to keep that paycheck coming… unfortunately, it is not up to you, you have no control over anything at IBM.

Good luck!

As in all things in life the correct answer is “it depends”.
ÌBM is incredibly inward focused and if what they offered you a job for isn’t in IBM’s strategic future then you might be better to pass. On the other hand if they offered you a job that is mainframe, design, or quantum related (two things that IBM has a near monopoly on, and one where their toolset gives them competitive advantage) then you most likely should accept.
Ask yourself this question
“What innovation since 2000 has IBM brought forth to the marketplace that you can name
Outside of mainframe, design, and quantum the answer is closer to nada.
Intel servers (missed it)
Cloud (missed it)
AI (developed it, then let it die on the vine)
E-commerce (missed it)
Internet search (missed it)
Linux (bought it)
Etc etc etc
IBM does not innovate anymore, but rather buys it.
So what does that mean? It means that anywhere IBM doesn’t have a competitive advantage, they are slowly removing themselves from the marketplace. This isn’t good, or bad. It’s just where they are in their go to market strategy and how they view their customers

IBM on your resume for 1-3 years will fool most new employers. That's the only way to use a "career" at IBM. If you are involved in hardware or software development, I can't speak to that. But if your job depends on skilled use of the written English language, you will be disappointed by the combination of AI and "English as a second language" when it comes to communications. It's probably better than no job ... but not by much.

Accept the offer, knowing that all you will be doing is hustling for your next role at IBM or another one outside of the company as soon as Day One starts. If you are the kind of person who can shift your skills, manage up, and engage customers, you will be okay. Keep eyes open and ears to the ground.

If you are early talent, good place to acquire experience, learn from people and move on.

Unfortunately they have large clients and will not run out of payroll any time soon

Pros and cons!

Several replies have touched on this issue, but I think it is useful to place it within a longer historical context.

During the 1980s, IBM was widely regarded as one of the premier technology companies in the world. Its management and leadership were considered exceptionally strong, and other companies frequently sought to emulate IBM’s organizational practices, technical capabilities, and corporate culture.

That trajectory began to change considerably around 1992–1993. A new generation of managers and executives increasingly assumed positions of authority, and the organization began to benefit from the institutional reputation and accumulated credibility established by their predecessors. This created a form of organizational inertia: the strength of the IBM brand could mask an underlying deterioration in managerial quality for a considerable period of time.

A subsequent 2nd wave of more gradual decline appears to have emerged in the following decades, particularly within management and leadership pipelines. I do not intend to frame this as a political argument, but rather as a notable shift in organizational development and talent-management practices. One particularly noticeable shift occurred during the 2010s, as IBM increasingly relied on various employment-based visa programs and international talent pipelines. Whether or not this relationship was causal, the period coincided with what I perceived as a noticeable change in the composition and quality of portions of the management organization.

This became a self-reinforcing issue. As successive generations of managers advanced through the organization, they increasingly promoted and elevated individuals from networks and backgrounds similar to their own. Over time, this can produce a form of institutional path dependence in which managerial selection becomes less about independent evaluation of performance and more about reproducing established networks and organizational norms.

There is also an interesting historical irony here. A lot of these developments occurred during the period when diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives were receiving substantial institutional emphasis. In retrospect, however, it is reasonable to question whether the resulting practices always produced the broad-based diversity of perspectives and experiences that those initiatives were intended to encourage. Ironically these DEI systems began to be leveraged and misused in manners that the programs themselves were intended to counter.

This is ultimately led to IBM’s current organizational state: not as the consequence of a single decision, individual, or policy, but as the cumulative result of several decades of changes in leadership selection, managerial development, organizational incentives, and institutional culture. The reputation built by earlier generations of IBM leadership was extraordinarily durable; however, reputational capital can persist long after the underlying organizational conditions that created it have changed.

IBM is bottom of the barrel now. It has definitely declined over the years but you could always find a nice team to grow your career. I did.

And I had a very good career until the Jill and Jay took over. They work for Matt Loathsome. They both lack a human soul between them and think their sociopathy makes them "hard nosed". They surround themselves with useless Yes Men. Jay controls the "vision" for w3 which is pretty much whatever he says it is, based on his Trump-like gut and sugar won't melt in his mouth before you find a dagger in your back. He will gaslight you to death.

IBM is run by a monster and the only people left in charge are monsters. They lack all talent or creativity. This is not a company you want to work for. There is not a single good place to work now that IBM Research has also been gutted. You've been warned - if you choose IBM, what happens next is in you.

@bd You will find yourself stalled with regards to development, no real carreer opportunity chances and a strange culture where it really depends who asks what to who.
I have been here for several years now and the most of it has happened yet.
Be prepare to not get recognized, find people who mask behind all kind of processes which aren't even consistent and you will have to comply with those. I really would not recommend this place when you have other possible choices to go after.

What has been mentioned elswehere here too pretty much paints the picture. Political toxic sh.thole. Some people go great on such culture, but when you are integer, willing and positive oriented, they will make sure to consume all your energy.
I have never seen such an inefficient and non-behaving environment before. And I have been active working in several companies for over 35 years. This is the worst. (my personal experience and opinion). It is all non-sustainable in many aspects.

If you are a fresh gad, have no other offers and are looking for some experience then go for it for 2/3 years and then join a high growth employer. Peak IBM was the 1980s and since then it has been slowly declining. I forecast no real (post inflation) growth in the coming years, flat compensation and a further sell off of parts of the group with probably just mainframe & mainframe software remaining under the IBM brand. Eventually the legacy customer base for mainframe will make the transition elsewhere and the company will finally die.

As far as culture, innovation, work/ life balance, technology leadership, employee morale. Just to name a few . It doesn’t get much lower. It is so mismanaged. So top heavy with bad leaders. The ship is going down faster every year. I spent 18 years there. I would not recommend it unless you are a fresh grad and looking for experience to put on your resume.

It is not the place people outside think it is. It’s been coasting on an image cultivated in the 1980s and it’s very much no longer the place to be. In general too it’s no longer prestigious

IBM is best described as a shithole's shithole. Go ahead and accept the offer if you like that kind of thing,