IBMer: ‘It’s bad, it’s really bad. It is a sad day for IBM.’
Reports began hitting the Internet this morning that IBM began a wave of firings that could impact one-third of its United States-based workforce.
Last month the company announced it was laying off its U.S. Global Technologies Services department. Now, according to social media advocacy group WatchingIBM, the new round of cuts is hitting Strategic Technical Services, Global Services Parts Operations, the Cloud Division and other departments.
“Workers are also reporting work is being moved offshore to Hungary and Brazil,” WatchingIBM said.
IBM ended 2015 with around 378,000 global employees, although a country-by-country breakdown isn’t available.
IEEE Spectrum spoke to a New Jersey-based employee about the situation. From that report, the staffer said: “It is bad, really bad. It’s a mass layoff today. It’s a sad day for IBM. People are being told not to talk about it. I was told by a manager in getting the news, who was reading off of a script, that one-third of the U.S. workforce is being ‘rebalanced,’ which is what they call it. They are giving us 90-days paid working notice, one-month severance and $2,500 in money for retraining. … They will frame it as a skill set change. But we think it’s more about jobs going to India and other places.”
The Register got this comment from a company spokesperson: “IBM is aggressively transforming its business to lead in a new era of cognitive and cloud computing. This includes remixing skills to meet client requirements. To this end, IBM hired more than 70,000 professionals in 2015, many in these key skills areas, and currently has more than 25,000 open positions.”
