The CEO will never get laid off because she hand picked the board of directors. If some of the major shareholders revolt or create a massive sell off of IBM stock it may tank. Maybe after losing another 40% of its stock value the shareholders might wake up and do something about this useless team of paper pushers in management.
Until then, anyone over 40 and producing revenue or ideas will be targeted
for an RA and replaced by a young inexperienced kid.
In reference to -2sim's post, here's information regarding IBM's Summit program for those who might not be aware --
https://www.ibm.com/employment/summit/
Whomever inherits IBM next will have to deal with the thick incompetent layer of nepotism at the highest levels of the organization. They have a funny way of getting promotions and surviving layoffs regardless of lawsuits and abysmal performance.
@Dallas Summits "video" comments that was hilarious. Really embarrassing situation with Summits
Female CEO's can not be fired, no matter what. Look at yahoo, they let Marissa Mayer tank the company while everybody watched and shook their head, breach after breach.
They can't fire each other for fear any one of them would leak the secrets of the Ponzi scheme they've had going for so long...then they would all go up in smoke. They are golden handcuffed to each other int their self enrichment schemes on the backs of the American Workers and Customers.
Yes, I agree comparing a Wal-mart to an IBM is the wrong comparison. IBM builds or at least used to build products that are sold at very high margins... for example DB2 or MQ, the margins are at least 80%... What is the margin of Walmart selling a bottle of Heinz ketchup? A few percents?
Both MQ and DB2 are a Billion dollars business each...
@1ekg, comparing Wal-mart revenue to IBM's revenue is the wrong comparison. IBM always claims to be in the high value business, IBM's margins are way higher that Walmarts... If IBM really wants to make more it will have to increase revenues... just getting away by cutting costs (laying off employees) can only work so long... though IBM still has a long runway to cut costs.
Revenue is deceiving - If you look at a graph of IBM's Historical Revenue over the last 20 years vs. IBM's Historical Net Income, % Net is a much smaller declining slope than Revenue, which tells me they are ditching lower-profit areas consistently. Really, when you think of it revenue isn't a good measure to go by (ex. Walmart makes +$500B a year but only gets to keep a tiny fraction of that which is common in lower-profit industries like retail. Take a look at Facebook's wiki for a good example of profit vs. total revenue).
I like looking at various musings on macrotrends for big companies:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/net-income
Now, IBM is definitely giving all the warning signs of a sinking ship. But massive corporations have far too much power to simply die off peacefully. Each and every time, as a last resort they will pull a "Lou Gerstner" (1993, +80K layoffs in 1 year) and start over. Why?.. Because people with lots of money always win. It's the little guys on the ground that get pushed face first into the mud.
IBM will keep on cutting costs... they still have plenty of runway so they far far away from running out of cash... and someday, maybe, a smarter CEO will show up and truly save the company.
"You will never see the stock tank."
But what happens when they run out of cash ...
"to buy back stock and keep the price from completely tanking."
With continuously decreasing revenues, it's only a matter of time.
You will never see the stock tank. Remember IBMhas enough cash to buy back stock and keep the price from completely tanking. The major shareholders know this, so a "revolt" will simply never happen.
They probably won't sell until one of these next quarterly calls goes VERY badly. Generalizing here: IBM is mostly held by people who don't move their money around much.
Palmisano said: .. "You can't do what we're doing in a cloud."
Oops. I guess he meant that IBM could not do it, but everyone else could and would instead.
Sam Palmisano left IBM a ticking time bomb. Even Steve Ballmer knew to invest in cloud back in 2010, when IBM's then CEO said the following:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/palmisano-outlines-ibms-2015-roadmap-earnings-to-double-consumerization-mocked/
Ballmer:
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2203672/microsoft-s-ballmer---for-the-cloud--we-re-all-in-.html
...not saying Ginni is innocent, she's definitely made some big mistakes but IBM has been financial-engineering for decades. Sam made IBM "look" like it was great, when really they hadn't innovated anything useful in decades. It was only a matter of time, before reality caught up.
So very true. The young summits have no idea other than to show there sh-- and rub up against managers of the opposite s-x to get there job done. Visit the DALLAS TX office and wear a video. You will flip your lid
Ginni will retire right after the RH acquisition. Trust me, she wants to be able to gloat over it, but leave the fallout of the acquisition to the next CEO. When everything falls apart and nothing works with the acquisition she will blame the next CEO... something like: I handed him a great deal an he f—ked it up! By the way, the next CEO will be Martin Schroeter... and this is scary as hell because he is a total id--t!