IBM laying off thousands, seeking “flexibility” during COVID-19 crisis:
Both Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and IBM this week announced significant cost-cutting measures, including pay cuts and significant job losses.
IBM announced its layoffs late Thursday. In a statement, the company said the "highly competitive marketplace requires flexibility to constantly remix high-value skills," which in this case means deciding you no longer place a high value on the skills a significant number of employees bring to the socially distanced table.
[...] The company's CEO, Arvind Krishna, has been with the company for decades but only stepped into the top seat in April, saying at the time he was focused on building up the parts of the company that support cloud computing and artificial intelligence and was willing to move away from the rest.
IBM did not specify how many positions were being cut, but both The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News report thousands of employees were affected in five states: California, New York, North Carolina, Missouri, and Pennsylvania.
[...] IBM said in a statement it would offer subsidized medical coverage to affected employees for the next 12 months.
HPE also announced its cost-cutting plans on Thursday as part of its more recent quarterly earnings report. The company will cut some salaries through at least October 31, with executives seeing pay cuts of 20 to 25 percent.
[...] Although the company expects to conduct layoffs, company leadership did not specify which divisions or how many jobs are at stake. For now, the company said it is "working through the details in the next couple months" to determine what makes sense for the business.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 25 2020, @01:09AM (7 children)
Don't they lay off 10k employees every 1-2 years?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday May 25 2020, @01:55AM (6 children)
Layoffs have been regular occurrences, going back to 1993 [washingtonpost.com]
That is, when they aren't getting rid of people with "Spin off" companies [wsj.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @02:22AM (5 children)
I remember IBM in the 1990s. I was in college and some guy cheated off me. The guy got expelled and then immediately got hired by IBM. That's right. IBM hired a guy with no degree who was expelled from college for cheating. And I'm the unemployable one according to the shit fucking morons here on Soystain Shitnews. Turns out I never should have finished my education because there sure as fucking shit is absolutely nothing in your world for me.
Fuck your dead mascot MDC, and fuck you motherfuckers, all of you.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @02:44AM (3 children)
It sounds like every company dodged a land mine by not hiring your punk ass.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @02:55AM (2 children)
That's right. Blame the victim. It's all my fault for not being a lying cheating scumbag like your golden boy who cheated off me because I had the highest grades in the class. It's my own fault for learning to code and doing the assignments honestly.
I can be sure all you motherfuckers lied and cheated your way through life at the expense of designated victims like me who did all your work for you and received nothing but scorn in return.
Well, you can choke on a cock and fucking die, sunshine.
Fuck MDC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @05:42AM
Kindegarten not back yet?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Monday May 25 2020, @09:01AM
I believe MDC went through a helluva lotta shit, and he rolled with the punches until he was ground to a pulp.
The system has some serious flaws, rewarding incompetence, penalizing pride of workmanship, valuing short term over long term returns. It's not what you know, it's who you know. How to kiss ass.
I find the group here on SN to be, by and large, a good sampling of extremely dedicated working professionals. If they did not give a damm about the techie side of things, they would not be here. They would be out doing the Corporate ass kiss.
We are the type who will do this, even with no pay. Look at MDC. I know that having a passion for doing this kind of technical work is often undervalued at the corporate level, where there are many more profitable means of generating income than technical expertise.
A lot of scientific types were not "successful" in the financial sense. Matter of fact many are ostracized for being scientifically inclined. From grade school up. We even just ran a story about some kid who got an old hand calculator to connect to the internet.
Had he excelled in sports or marketing, he would have been exalted, not served a DMCA.
I fail to see how our law makers can say STEM with a straight face, when their pens do the opposite.
Don't lump us in with those who see little value in technology. You are preaching to the choir here.
We've all seen it, and many of us have experienced it.
We are more like a musician who will play his art, whether or not anyone else listens or appreciates.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @02:04PM
You seem to be salty.... but have you considered that your attitude is part of the problem? I know first hand it's easy to be rejected because of bullshit, but you should consider their loss, not yours.
As for 1990s in college? That's a fucking long time ago. Like 30 years ago. People born then, grew up, finished college and worked for IBM and maybe even got a layoff already, and you are still salty?? So you are in you are probably in your early 50s or late 40s and still .... ? You should do something with your remaining years or there will be nothing left. That's on you. Being salty doesn't improve your QOL.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @01:26AM
IBM = Indian Business Machines - solves the social distancing inside IBM quite nicely, with a good amount of miles between the business executives and the workers.
Because you don't need natural intelligence in the cloud if you have an artificial one; and besides, who defines what intelligence is if not the business administration?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Monday May 25 2020, @01:44AM (1 child)
Watcha wanna bet 90% of those are over 50 years old, and American. IBM has a reputation for shedding experienced (read: expensive) worker bees, they've been doing it for at least 10 years now.
Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @02:38AM
I worked for IBM in the LVG2 days in the 90s. We had yearly layoffs based on the rigged results of the employee ratings. IBM was a strange place back then, lots of us hired out of university in their early 20s, and quite a few in their 50s and 60s. Very few in their 30s and 40s.
But I remember one guy who was dropped, he was like 35 or so. Older people with knowledge tended to be itching to become contractors for better pay.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @01:47AM
Don't worry, HP and IBM will still continue to advertise a job opening for every layoff, to give everyone the false impression that jobs exist when they obviously don't. Nobody is hiring during the Great Lockdown, and everybody knows it. That doesn't stop deceitful recruiters from continuing to recruit for jobs that don't exist. After all, recruiters need to do something to justify their own paychecks while working from home, and they still have a phone and a laptop and a stack of resumes from losers who will never find work. It's so easy to dial that phone and spread false hope for a living when being a lying recruiter asshole.
Oh and anybody who can't find a job, well it must be their own fault. They must be idiots or socially inept or just plain unemployable. We blame the victims in our fraudulent economy who just couldn't measure up to fill those fake jobs that never existed.
It's a shame that fake jobs board operator Michael David Crawford didn't live long enough to see our COVID-19 times. He would eagerly have helped HP and IBM by listing their fake jobs on his fake jobs board right before he should have died of COVID-19.
Fuck MDC
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @02:41AM (2 children)
Companies behaving like that reap what they sow: you can either demand loyalty from your employees when you have it tough and repay them with said loyalty when they have it tough, or you can be dicks about it. In the latter case, however, you cannot complain about how your employees are not 'loyal' to you or 'leave you for the next job that pays a fraction more'.
Workers have been wising up to these things and come to realize this, thus we have been seeing an uptick in what are are derogatorily called 'job hoppers', or more realistically phrased, woke employees.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @03:19AM
Job hopping during COVID-19 is woke behavior? You mean so very woke that you might as well just kill yourself. Enjoy living off ramen until you die because nobody is hiring woke idiots when nobody is hiring.
Don't you miss the days when Michael David Crawford was alive to feed you soggy bullshit about available jobs?
Fuck MDC
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Monday May 25 2020, @03:51AM
Employers routinely consider job history in screening candidates. If an employer needs or prefers a stable employee in a slot and an applicant has been job hopping their entire career, that resume is more likely to wind up on the "Thank you, we'll be in touch" stack. That's not complaining, it is pragmatism.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @03:56PM
Ceterum autem censeo systemd esse delendam
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @05:20PM (1 child)
The world holds its breath, waiting, hoping, that Lennart Pottering will be on the layoff list.
I'm sure Microsoft will snatch him right up, so no harm will come to him.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:09PM
What makes you think he is not stealthily on Microsoft payroll?
Remember this guy Stephen Elop?
The people who rely on government handouts and refuse to work should be kicked out of congress.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @09:08PM (2 children)
Are you enjoying COVID-19, Boomers? I hope you are, because your political response to the pandemic has completely destroyed the economy. Did we really need a Great Recession in 2008 caused by you, and a Great Lockdown in 2020 caused by you? Are you proud of yourselves for creating an economic depression even worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s? Are you proud of yourselves, Boomers? Your legacy will be economic ruin for all. You don't care as long as you Boomers continue to receive your pensions. You Boomers don't have jobs. You Boomers don't create jobs. You Boomers don't do anything for anyone ever. You Boomers are utterly worthless parasites. You don't care about anybody except yourselves. Everybody except you is forced at gunpoint to wear a facemask while you Boomers sit in your giant mansions laughing and waiting to die when you will be buried with your fortunes so nobody will ever touch your precious money.
Boomers did COVID-19.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @10:00PM (1 child)
So the boomers know how to get politicians to do what fits their interests.
Instead of complaining on random boards, Gen Xers and Millennials should step up and be heard. For god's sake, Gen Xers are hitting fifty and haven't much influence.
Once we "reopen", there's going to be a bunch of 25-55 year olds standing before the wreckage of their lives. Are we going to let the political discourse continue to be dominated by Twitter influencers or hard discussions on how to improve our material well-being?
A large part of the country is faced with more pressing issues than whether a man can play in women's sport because gender is only a social construct.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:11PM
THEY ARE !
On random boards.
The people who rely on government handouts and refuse to work should be kicked out of congress.