Thread regarding IBM layoffs

@eq+1m4g8pqtn and @k8+1m4g8pqtn this former Senior Manager mentioned in @eq+1m4g8pqtn post who could answer what the Anderon team goals for the year are, has now become Foundry Baseline Technology Leader. The reality is that he has been demoted to a first line manager. They are just coming up with new titles as they go along, no? What foundry are we talking about here, boss? Albany site is not a foundry. Calling it a foundry is playing fast and loose with terminology, exactly like @y5+1m4g8pqtn pointed out. First there should be an actual foundry, then only you can have a Foundry Baseline Technology Leader. Otherwise, what exactly this title is supposed to mean? Are they just allowed to make up their own title names over there? He is only one in the semiconductor world with this title.

@xa Please contact Jeron Kusters at Deloitte to voice concerns.

The panel was utterly pointless. You are correct. Hemnath had no credible ground to stand on- he is not remotely close to an expert in this area and should have never been asked or invited. The rest simply rehashed bottlenecks an entire trillion-dollar industry has understood for years. In fact I am sure I saw the topic discussed in panel format five years back at ECTC or some other conference. So no originality. No solutions, no actionable ideas, no leadership just stating the obvious. The irony is that even if someone had proposed a viable solution, nobody on that panel appeared capable of driving its implementation. It was a self-congratulatory look-at-me exercise in empty rhetoric by people who had no business positioning themselves as authorities on the subject. Patting each other on the back and enjoying the smell of each other’s farts.

@10q

Just in time for his panel talk! Yes this time next year they will invent a new director title in random name generator for him. He is a politician too like Mukesh. Maybe the biggest and best one at it. They all are up in Albany. They always stay arms length away from decisions and create plausible deniability so they can bail out when things inevitably goes sideways on their poor decisions and leadership. They surround and insulate themselves with yes men favorites to retain their power. Albany is the game of thrones.

@rs
He just posted that he’s been named a director yet again with new title or area. How many times is this now? They have to be running out of departments! At some point, repeatedly recycling the same people into director roles stops looking like career progression and starts looking like a symptom of a deeply dysfunctional workplace. It indicates a very broken leadership culture rather than a healthy organization. You can’t make this stuff up. It’s comical. Are they just making department and titles up as they go along?

@OP
He’s playing fast and loose with terminology here, just like he does internally. Claiming that 11,000 wafers have gone into “products” sounds impressive, but what exactly does that mean? Are these 11,000 qualified wafer builds, or simply wafers processed over time? Over what period of time? Were they commercially shipped products, customer prototypes, or experimental research hardware? Those are very different things.

In semiconductors, there is a world of difference between processing wafers, qualifying a manufacturing process, integrating devices into research systems, and achieving repeatable, commercially viable production. How many qualified wafer builds? Over how many years? What yields? What reliability data? What commercial shipments?

The bigger problem is that he seems to be taking the internal IBM playbook of carefully worded half-truths and corporate white lies and applying it to an external audience. That might fly internally, where everyone knows how to interpret the messaging, but it is a risky and potentially dangerous approach when speaking publicly to customers, partners, and investors who expect precise, defensible claims. Credibility is much harder to recover once people start questioning whether the numbers mean what they are being led to believe. Playing a dangerous game.

Impressive-sounding numbers and loosely defined terminology are not substitutes for demonstrated manufacturing maturity.

@xa LOL it is disrespectful to the community

@wg The people who invited him must also take responsibility and accountability for this. He was invited because IBM has money. The audacity that he thinks he has the credentials to weigh in on such a topic is astonishing. A guy who has never worked a single day under the pressure of a manufacturing environment is going to be giving advice supply chain. It’s down right offensive. Have some self awareness.

@rs Inside of IBM he is also very famous for talking in circles and always changing his position or never giving a firm definitive response on important topics even when asked directly to make clear. Very wishy-washy answers. He never give any clear concise answer and make any concrete statements on anything even when ask for a direct response. Very frustrating for his direct reports and teams under him.

Tell me the location of the rebel base...

Anderon!

@r7
I saw that Hemnath J is also going to be on a panel discussing semiconductor supply chain. WTF -why is he even invited? He has absolutely no business to be discussing this topic. Albany barely has enough tools to keep operations limping along and scrapping by, let alone make any meaningful contribution to the national or global semiconductor supply chain. The site has virtually no footprint or influence in the broader supply chain, so his inclusion on a panel discussing the subject is difficult to justify.

Internally, he has also made some of the most basic, fundamental supply and logistics mistakes imaginable. Multiple people explicitly warned him that his specific initiatives wouldn’t work, yet he forced them ahead and implemented them anyway. Then, a year later, the initiative quietly disappears from the conversation, and the data is either buried or conveniently forgotten. But when people finally pushes to see the actual results, lo and behold, it wasn’t even remotely close to successful. Data speaks for itself. He clearly doesn’t know his a-s from his elbow when it comes to this subject matter. And has never worked a single day in true manufacturing.

Please someone going ask him some tough questions. Knock this fake facade off.

Well, he gets another shot at it this Wednesday at SEMICON West. On the bright side, it honestly can’t get much worse, so there’s nowhere to go but up! 😂

No one knows what is going on because Anderon was created only to secure government funding. The government wants equity or IP in order to give funding for quantum. For example: https://www.wsj.com/tech/u-s-gets-minority-stakes-in-d-wave-rigetti-quantinuum-in-300-million-chips-act-funding-deal-a7bad600 Anderon is the manner in which the government can get equity and get out of date quantum IP from IBM. Pushing people off the IBM payroll is just a side benefit.

@eb LOL YIKES! are there like 5 people who attended? Not much interest for launch of new company, no?

@bp
It’s far worse internally than you know or could even imagine. The level of disorganization and chaos is almost unbelievable, and frankly, the lack of professionalism is staggering.

It’s literally the company’s first week, and multiple people have already announced they’re leaving. Some people were announcing their departures on day one! Managers don’t seem to know what they’re doing, there are no clearly defined goals or objectives, and there is virtually no accountability.

In one team meeting, a manager who was previously a senior manager at IBM but was subsequently demoted was asked directly what the team’s goals were for the year and couldn’t provide an answer. How is that even remotely acceptable? How can someone be responsible for managing a team without being able to articulate its objectives for the year?

It’s completely unacceptable. The entire situation reflects a fundamental failure of leadership, organization, and accountability.

The scene at 2:47 where he had to start clapping after his own statement to signal the audience to start clapping for him was wild.

@bp three years of potential employment doesn’t sound so bad given how bad it felt at the Albany site , the feeling you can be gone anytime

I was having very low expectations and feeling like this was going to be a catastrophic failure for IBM and Anderon based how the transition was going but seeing Mukesh actually talk and his thoughts I am sure of it now. This is almost comical. I give this 3 years or to when all the government money drys up until this goes belly up.

He looks like a clown who got his ill fitting and rumpled clothes at Walmart Mumbai.

@OP Mukesh should never have risen to the rank of VP and GM at IBM, let alone CEO of Anderon. This talk alone suggests that he is neither ready nor adequately equipped for the role, and does little to inspire confidence in Anderon’s future. He is a prime example of how the system within IBM really works: the politicians rise to the top.