Thread regarding IBM layoffs

@t3 IBM Management is a protection racket. It has been since the LEAN days and before, and always will be. It's a dark art they have perfected over decades. The rest of us are just cannon fodder. Granted, there are a few honest managers in the food chain but sworn to secrecy on these things. For those of you that struggle with it, take care of your mental health. It's a job, not a life.

Improved version:

In the last 12 months, I'm aware of at least five U.S.-based executives, ranging from Director to VP level, who have been debanded. Most recently, my current manager was moved from Director (executive) to B10, which became apparent when he no longer had an assistant listed in Bluepages. Last year, a former manager of mine, who was a VP, was also moved to B10 and appears to have been encouraged to pursue a different role.

From what I've seen, there has been a clear effort to reduce management costs, primarily by increasing required direct span of control. In my organization, the expectation seems to be at least 10 direct reports, not 15 as some have suggested. I'm referring to direct reports only, not matrix relationships.

That said, there are managers and there are Managers (the lowercase and uppercase are intentional). At least in my reporting line, and speaking as a first-line manager myself, we genuinely try to treat people fairly and maintain transparency with our teams. While the recent layoffs have been difficult, they have often been handled in a way that encourages voluntary exits where possible, with local HR teams working directly with employees to secure enhanced severance packages.

@1wq why deband executives when you can wipe them off the corporate org chart permanently (PIP preferred ) and save the money for Alvind's New Year bonus? That sounds like the IBM way.

They are changing how many direct reports a first line manager. It is moving from 5 directs minimum to 15 directs. This is reducing the number of first line managers. The managers who no longer have direct reports are becoming individual contributors. If they don't RA or PIP a manager/executive they tend to move them to individual contributors and deband them.

@1t5. India over the next 1-2 years is about to experience what NA and Northern Europe have experienced for the last 10 years. Jobs being replaced by cheaper alternatives (eg automation due to AI getting more sophisticated). I expect IBM worldwide headcount to approach 200k by the end of 2027. Yep it’s going to hurt

@1t5 why was this downvoted? Many managers involved in breaking the news of impending layoffs report having sleepless nights. I am sure so do not but it seems like a reasonable post from someone doing her job.

I was in Bangalore again last month. Because I have been to India about ten times and familiar with the traffic situation (read: add 2+ hours for Bangalore traffic) I had ample time to chat with the concierge they sent to greet me at the airport. I get this isn’t something we do when our foreign colleagues visit our offices in the USA.
I noticed the complete lack of stress from this guy even though I went there to talk about cutting half of his team.
He unintentionally told me when I asked the secret: the USA is only one of his clients. After he left me at the hotel (another guy was there to greet me) he went back to the airport for a South Korean delegation.
The only thing I can say is the world is changing in ways we can’t change explain and some regions and people are experiencing the change very differently.
Imagine 1/2 of your team getting cut and not fazed by it. I had to spend weeks massaging the message just for my mental health. I’m sorry for the rant but laying people off is hard.

@1fs agreed you can’t just get rid of huming. What’s waiting behind him is just as bad maybe worse. You need to clean house and get rid of huming and all his acolytes

@m6 they should have gotten rid of him years ago. Glad to see Mukesh gone thought - it’s a start.

@nk you said it 110% right. It's the wonderful game of playing deckchairs on the IBM Titanic but it must never include any management or the whole thing falls apart like a chain of dominoes. Once one goes down, the whole lot fall down one by one. That is why corrupt IBM management props it's corrupt managers, particularly the older ones who know all the corporate secrets. After all, why would they need their names and misdeeds splattered over newspapers in lawsuits? LOL !

@qj when will the management exodus begin to India ? It should make a lot of heads in the ivory towers of Armonk and Raleigh start to tremble in fear. Dump the lot of self serving and self righteous executive vermin particularly in the F&O organization. Nothing but trash comes out from that sanctimonious sewer. Client Zero indeed.

@rh - Here's the thing though. There is no workforce more vulnerable to being replaced than India's. AI is not yet at the level of a senior engineer. But there is no doubt whatsoever that it can do the job of all these Indians with fake degrees sitting in tech campuses in Bangalore, Pune, etc. cranking out garbage code, and it can do it even cheaper. As a bonus, you don't have to hire any lower castes to serve the AI tea while it generates the same slop. I have a feeling that the India orgs have already replaced a sizable percentage of their devs with AI and are just lying to the Americans about their headcount (or keeping friends/family on the payroll while they sit around running other scams pretending to do the work AI is doing).

The next step is to move management to India. Then we will see if the remaining Americans have use. And if they will do the needful. Or if they will instead keep arguing about their immigrants and pronouns.

@nk Albany is the ultimate example of management and leadership protection racket. Look at 7nm: a monumental failure that we are often instructed not to discuss or mention in meetings, yet some of the very same people built their careers on it and received major awards and promotions along the way. For a catastrophic failure that they ask us not mention and to forget about. Fast-forward through five or six reorganizations in three to four years, and the same Albany mafia continues to protect its own while individual contributors pay the price. At IBM, apparently, you can fail upward indefinitely as long as you’re part of the right clique.

There is one aspect to this question that should be noted. When the organization hires an individual who is happy and content to do the job he or she was hired for (sw developer, sales, support, ...) and does a good job for years and maybe even find other roles and continues to do well, no one is particularly associated with this individual. When someone is named a manager, there are these network links created and everyone knows which clique made this change possible.

When you RA and individual contributor, even with years of service, no one is looking across the table and asking "how did we make this mistake?" But, if you RA a manager, there can be do doubt that doing so changes the pecking order at the cool kids table in the high school cafeteria. Those network links mentioned above can make you look great and they can make you look terrible. There are usually more aggregate losers than winners in the great game played at the various levels of IBM management. So the default position is: let's not RA managers at this time.

In one case, there is absolutely no consequence to anyone who might influence the list of people being RAed. In the other case, there is every possibility that someone other than the person being RAed could lose influence or control. And, even if you win this time, this is not a good precedent.

@m3 The overworked, under-appreciated worker bees have PPSD (PowerPoint Stress Disorder). LOL

@hc Huiming created that work environment and atmosphere there.

@hv Frankly, there's a whole lot more riffraff among the managers, themselves, than among their overworked, underappreciated worker bees.

Because if you get rid of managers there will be no one to RA the riffraff.

It’s because management protects management. Management makes the decision to fire management.
It’s just like a political Congress. The people that make the rules will never make rules against themselves. No matter who it hurts.

Because they are part of a Mafia...

The magic ratio is 1 Manager to every 5 Bob licenses.

In my experience the workers created the PowerPoints and management presented them. I was a creator and was RAed. I guess my PowerPoints su-ked. LOL

@g9 a lot of those managers and senior managers in Albany have no business being managers at all. Simply terrible and this why Albany never really does anything of worth and is always in a weird bad place

@f9 in Albany they mostly have six

My manager has 20 people working for him. You'd have to layoff a lot of his people before he would go.

Simple math.

Yet another sign of IBM becoming an Indian company providing commodity IT services.

We were 300 years colonized by British "Empire" and certainly know how to properly execute when necessary, that is why we have Indian people now as CEO's in almost all large technology companies.

They are typically protected and safe from RAs. A lot of them are nepo-like favorites too so usually spared while the guy who really should be the manager or even 2nd line gets the axe

Becuase of extremely toxic, corrupt chaalaki and jugaad culture.