Real Honest and Blunt Questions about Anderon, the quantum wafer foundry

So the Anderon split from ibm has been announced for October 1st and new announcements and employee contracts are coming out.

Setting aside the painfully obvious point that this is a "quantum wafer foundry" with no real foundry that it owns or controls outright and that the Albany site itself can barely classify as a fully operational fab.

We need to ask ourselves honestly why?

Why is IBM really splitting off 70-100 people to form this new company?
Why create Anderon at all in the first place?
Why not just keep it all internal to IBM?

The publicity stated comments and justification - that this is a way to attract customers who wouldn't work directly with IBM - doesn't hold up. Those same customers know Anderon is strongly affiliated, owned and controlled by IBM, so the same logic of avoid working with IBM would apply to Anderon as well.
Why would a competitor hand over its most sensitive fabrication data to an IBM-affiliated company when IBM is competing against them directly?

Flip it around: why would IBM let its competitive-advantage IP flow into Anderon, where it could end up supporting competitors' builds? Anderon is taking a capability that gives IBM an edge and potentially turning it into shared infrastructure. So basically the publicly stated purpose for creating Anderon is a bold face lie.

Is this really just cost savings. Getting 70-100 employees off IBM's books and payroll? As one past comment put it: "it's just a layoff with extra steps."

Call it a spinoff, a joint venture, or a strategic carve out - it still smells exactly like a layoff wearing a lab coat.

This isn't a spinoff, it's a witness protection program for headcount. It’s a glorified layoff from ibm hidden and tucked in in a way ibm doesn’t have to classify it as such

IBM didn't build a competitor. It built an alibi.

Somewhere a strategy consultant got paid seven figures to rename 'layoff' as 'ecosystem expansion.

Bottom line: the publicly stated rationale doesn't add up to a coherent business case.

IBM’s public statements regarding this are just simply ridiculous. Do they actually believe their own words coming out of their mouths. Those saying it should be remembered and held accountable for rest of their careers.

Our leaders are using their usual flimsy internal justifications publicly to explain this. And it appears many who are not indoctrinated in the Albany culture are seeing right through the thin veil and rolling holes into it.

Make it make sense!

#Accountability #Culture #EmployeeRelations #Layoff #Spinoff

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21 replies (most recent on top)

@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!

Thread regarding IBM layoffs

Real Honest and Blunt Questions about Anderon, the quantum wafer foundry

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