Thread regarding IBM layoffs

I was RA’d this round and I couldn’t be happier, I get gardening leave and look for a job, IBM was not a fun place to work.

Your local manager was told to get rid of X amount of regular full time employees.

It's trolling if they bomb every single thread with their pet topic. If they weren't trolling and genuinely interested in discussion of the topic, they would start and foster a thread.

To: @OP+15mVHt2N

To the trolls out there, save your H1/visa comments for Twitter please.

Why?? Nothing wrong in commenting on H1B. IBM is clearly dumping US workforce and moving jobs
to India apart from hiring H1B's. The criteria to hire an H1B worker is if the company is not finding local people with the required skill sets, not to replace a local worker with a cheaper alternative and
that too train that person.

Why do you have a problem with the trolls?

As a FLM myself, i was not involved In selecting. Also on managers training that occurred days before RA day, I discovered that FLM’s that had to lay-off people also could be told the day before themselves that they are to be gone.

To address your point, no, not all FLM’s are involved in the process.

My response is the same as the last several. It absolutely was your immediate manager who ranks and stacks you for layoff. I've heard from so many people RA'd that their manager told them it was out of their control, not them that made the decision. I can only think it's some form of human nature where they are trying to save face by saying it was not them, but that mysterious man behind the curtain who chose you for layoff.

So, when you have your final meeting with your FLM, it is them you can thank. It's not some shadowy figure up the chain who pulled your name out of a (red?) hat.

Not only are you on an RA list if you tried to apply for a gig in another, more prosperous unit you can't... because you are flagged.... a walking zombie for 3 months and 1 month pay severance to for your tenure

Redhat had an offer in hand of 160per share when IBM upped the antee. So yes IBM over paid, but only by approx 15% of what the market valued Redhat at. The true cost of Redhat should have been in the 20-22 billion range. (approx 5x of revenue). IBM did the math, and realized they could extract 33-22 = 11 billion from the Mainframe market via keeping it in play for 5 more years. Thus the deal. IBM will keep the Redhatters at the expense of the IBM long termers Why. Redhatters are cheaper, younger, and have a different attitude. The purchase of Redhat was to change course/strategy, and that also implies changing attitudes Expect more legacy IBM’ers to go as time moves on. AK called the play a year ago, and IBM is now just implementing it.

Yes, it is exactly as the OP described. Your FLM is the one who ultimately made the call on you being on the list and in which order your team members were let go. She/He will probably deny having any control over who got cut on their team, but this is clearly not the case. They pick who, they rank who first and send it up the line. The only thing they do not control is how many at a given time get hit.

They might be asked to submit say five names, ranked in order of least needed for the team, and if it later comes back saying they need to cut only three, then it's the first three on the list. And so on.

As is often the case here, the managers up the chain don't likely know (or care) who you are or what you do, so it's the lower level managers who make the call on who is most expendable.

IBM over paid for RedHat by a factor of at least 10x what RedHat is actually worth. IBM has to layoff half of IBM employees to make up for this major 34 Billion dollar f—up/mistake. The RedHat employees are safe for one year from acquisition. After that, IBM will gut RedHat to its core. Expect continuous layoffs over the next 1.5 years all while IBM replaces experienced employees with cheap workers.

For the groups I’ve been in, it is as you described. Mgrs asked for names, names sent up the line somewhere, names come back down in RA. Most recent RA names were submitted late last year. March was supposed to be the timeframe. We know what happened there. It was delayed two months to May. I’ve heard names are now being decided for next round. No clue what their planned date is this time yet.

I suggest you go check out watching IBM on facebook. There are some topics there where some ex mgrs are commenting on how they did/were told to do RAs.