They’ve been doing it for so long I’m surprised they have any jobs left to axe.
Sam Palmisano skinned IBM then too a knife to its belly and gutted it. All in the name of his “Roadmap 2010” which was a plan to double the share price by 2015.
So basically the pharaoh said “fuck it, we need a new pyramid. Get the whips out and all worker carcasses are to be dump on the left please”.
Meh. After I finished my stint at Big Blue, they outsourced my entire midrange (UNIX) team which supported a large Australian bank to a foreign provider.
2 years later I had recruitment consultants calling me multiple times a week to get me to "come back" to IBM as the offshoring had been a disaster for the customer. And this was despite of me having a lifetime IBM ban for flipping off my manager's manager on the way out.
I always thought that IBM was a declining giant. I just looked up their share price and it has done strikingly well over the past 2 years. Their revenue has also been growing, albeit slowly. Maybe capitalizing on the AI buzz?
Their share price growth is only a result of share buy backs. They’ve fired tens of thousands of employees and used the cost savings to buy their own stock back, enriching executives, especially their CEO, whose pay increased 23% from 2022 to 2023 to $20.4M. (And IBM didn’t even meet their own internal revenue goal). Are the execs doing what’s best for the company’s long term prospects or what’s best for the shorter term shareholders holder?
Share buybacks enrich all shareholders, it just happens that executives get paid in stock and/or are awarded compensation triggered by meeting certain stock prices. This is all for the benefit of shareholders.
Dividends enrich all shareholders as well and at a lower tax rate (15% vs 20%). So why do share buy backs? Because that increases share price and helps execs hit stock price targets which trigger more options, while dividends decrease share price.
As a shareholder, I usually do not want dividends. If a share buyback increases the stock price, then I don’t have to pay any tax. If a dividend is given to me, then I have to pay tax…but why would I want to pay tax now if I am just going to buy more shares with the post tax dividend money?
Also, federal US capital gains tax rate is 20% only for those earning $518k+ per year if single and $583k+ of married filing joint. Otherwise, capital gains tax rate is the same 15% as qualified dividends.
share price matters to a shareholder in the short term, but doesn't come close to telling the whole story. IBM is not performing well.
In 1990, IBM's market cap was $27B and Microsoft's was $5B.
In 1999, IBM's was just under $100B and Microsoft's was just under $400B.
For the last decade+, IBM has hovered (rather wildly) around $160B, while Microsoft has grown from $250B (post dot com crash) to $2,500B.
so yes, IBM really has been a declining giant relative to their market share in the strong technology sector
IBM selling off more and more businesses might be "the right move" for shareholders and props up the share prices, but it shrinks the overall business and in terms of value creation (where wealth comes from) indicates a shortage at IBM
Honest A, an investor and/or the financial market does not care what the similarities or differences are between companies, but how investments in those companies do. Microsoft and IBM were major players in the personal computer business, and subsequently both have had a heavy presence in enterprises and data centers. IBM is gone from personal computers, although Microsoft's products probably figure heavily in IBM's consulting.
could easily compare IBM with other companies; google didn't have a presence prior to 2000, Apple pre 2000 and post iphone are entirely different businesses, nothing else came to my mind. Amazon? they were around in early days of the dot com (1994!) but I'm not really that familiar with where they stood back around 2000 and didn't want to sample apples and oranges. IBM's other competitors like Digital disappeared, but not because IBM gobbled up their share.
IBM compared to itself has not grown. Other companies have grown, through survivorship bias if no other reason.
At the beginning of the comparison period, IBM was also pretty heavy into products. For example, in the late 80s and even into the early 90s, the market for PCs was broken up into IBM PCs and compatibles. IBM was the PC.
IBM invented many of the technologies that went into the early PCs but pissed away their lead with every single one until we find ourselves today where they no longer manufacture anything that can be found in a modern PC as far as I can tell.
This kind of relative comparison is the correct analysis.
Companies with 100B+ market cap don't die away. They just fail to continue to innovate and stay relevant - thus robbing their shareholders of even more returns.
This is why companies like sears were considered failures despite lasting for 100 years. Somewhere along the line they lost the plot and forgot how to stay relevant.
IBM has largely retreated from consumer facing ventures but it's still a behemoth.
From the start of its Wikipedia page:
> IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries, having held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business for 29 consecutive years from 1993 to 2021.
I know that in semiconductors they're still doing bleeding edge R&D which they then try to license to foundries.
Their mainframe business is still doing quite well too.
And I'm sure they're active in many other niches that I know little about.
Kyndryl was spun out of IBM a while back. My cynical take is that the “IBM GS” brand was so toxic this was the only way to continue to sell those billable hours.
> Nobody has (still) never been fired for hiring IBM.
I'm pretty sure I came pretty damn close the one and only time I opted for IBM Cloud (which was called "Bluemix" back then). In fairness, running a PostgreSQL DB in a container wasn't the brightest idea on my part, and it was also my fault for not having backups in place, but when Bluemix ate our entire prod DB, and the multiple-weeks-long back-and-forth with IBM's support only yielded something along the lines of "whoops, that sucks, good luck building a new DB instance from scratch", we rather quickly jumped ship to AWS and never looked back.
I'm sure IBM Cloud is better these days, though it was a bit telling that during my brief time working for IBM my primary job was to build customers' stuff on AWS instead of IBM Cloud. Go figure.
Bluemix wasn’t really IBM Cloud. It was what turned out to be ill-advised backing of Cloud Foundry but a lot of companies did that with a certain degree of public ridicule falling on those who didn’t fall in line.
There’s a lot of ass coverage involved. Someone came in temporarily, was given a certain title, hired IBM, left shortly afterwards. People shift, staff turn over, and before anyone knew what happened nobody knows who said what.
And they say we don't have ageism in the industry... :
"As with prior layoffs, or "resource actions" to use IBM's euphemism, we're told those affected are substantially in the 50-55 age bracket with 20-24 years of seniority.
"It seems exclusively people in L7 and L8 and L9 bands, at the top of the band in payment structure," the insider said.""
I've always thought the term "resource" was dehumanizing, but at least on its own it could be interpreted positively, but "resource actions" is just upsetting
RA’ing people at the top of their band means that they’ve topped out skill-wise. These aren’t senior people; it’s people who will never get promoted past 7 or 8 (which are quite junior) but have been accruing comp adjustments for a long time. Most teams will lay off a 7 that is getting paid more than a 9 by virtue of being at the company for 20 years.
Maybe this is true skill-wise, but there is also productivity to consider. I knew a band 9, who was definitely not going to be promoted STSM (band 10), but was extremely productive. I'm sure he was paid well, better than most band 10s.
Band 10 and above include good soft-skills, people who can persuade the industry and organization, give TED talks, etc.
I never saw any significant compensation increase by staying in the company at the same level. A long tenure at level 7 will have a very stagnant compensation and much lower than a newly hired level 7 and lower than 9.
If the goal is to save money, isn’t it reasonable to axe the most senior people which are probably also paid more than junior ones? And I’m not saying it’s a smart strategy, it’s probably idiotic. Just saying it’s not really ageist.
The cost/productivity balance is supposed to have been considered for hiring and promotion; when a layoff predominately targets a specific division or pay level it means the strategy leading up to that point had been wrong.
Have another thoughts re-reading your comment this morning.
> when a layoff predominately targets a specific division or pay level it means the strategy leading up to that point had been wrong.
This is fair but isn’t also this what we want? Like if you run a company, if you realize that mistakes were made, isn’t it reasonable to expect a correction? And by “what we want” I mean the admitting a mistake and correcting it.
Oh I’m not arguing against that. And as I said, I don’t think it’s a smart way of running things. I’m just saying that it may not be an age thing but simply a money thing. That’s all.
I’ll say this again because people are downvoting as if I’m trying to defend this practice: I think it’s stupid.
Now, what I’m pushing against is this idea that it is “ageist”. I’m no native speaker but ageist is defined as
> a bias against individuals and groups based on their age
Now if I decide to fire everyone who’s making more than 500k at a company and it just so happens that those people are all above a certain age I don’t think that’s ageist. It’s certainly stupid and I think I made it clear. It’s a money driven decision, which is also stupid.
I just think it’s important of accuse people of the right thing if you want to accuse them of something. That’s all I’m saying.
But again, the fuck do I know. I don’t work in corporate, don’t play the stupid ladder game, will never get a promotion. I’m just here sharing a random thought on the bizarre business world you people live in.
Oh I’m sure they’ll end up hiring again. And I’m also sure C-suite comps won’t go down. I just don’t think it’s a crusade against old people. It’s just that old people have more experience and demand higher pay. But I mean, if one wants to argue that it’s ageist to fire them then I can make the same stupid argument that it’s ageist for them to be paid more than younger people.
And it’s clearly a stupid argument because there are other factors and not just age.
So how does this work? Asian Americans are vastly over represented relative to their population in higher education. This "implies" they've been receiving special treatment or favoritism?
Pretty much; might or might not; "suggest" may be a better word. It means there may be something to check into.
What OTHER advantages, disadvantages, preparation levels, etc. are working for and/or against that group?
Can those factors account for the differential?
What is the groups' actual relative performance in the situation (i.e., do they tend to perform at|above|below the level to which they have risen, e.g., legacy college admissions with "Gentleman's Cs" are performing below)?
And so forth.
The point is that statistical disparities are not conclusive, but are most often indicative of some kind of structural favoritism, like smoke to fire. Not always, and you can always cherry-pick some counter-example, but the default assumption is that it merits investigation.
Saving a buck, being a traitor, and sacrificing quality all at the same time. Workers should both unionize and boycott any company that behaves that way.
Unless it’s substantial, never sign an NDA or arbitration agreement for severance. You’re better off keeping your options open if it’s something like one or two month’s salary.
If you signed a contract, they could pursue legal action. Whether they would or not is a different question, but the possibility of legal action from someone with such deep pockets would give most people pause.
IBM and execs are full of shit and say that because they want other company execs to buy their AI products. They will lay people off because they cost money. No other reason.
> As with prior layoffs, or "resource actions" to use IBM's euphemism, we're told those affected are substantially in the 50-55 age bracket with 20-24 years of seniority.
> Despite numerous past and ongoing age discrimination lawsuits, IBM maintains it does not systematically discriminate on the basis of age.
Lawsuits of this sort are a little ridiculous. If you work at a company that pays people more just for being older, then you shouldn't be surprised when the "more experienced" people are the first to get laid off.
IBM today is mostly a service provider - with those in the 50+ age bracket being "kicked out" there will be at least 2 groups:
(1)The ones with skills "to keep the lights on" for these services - those will be hired back as "consultants" - let's hope at twice the daily rate they worked before if they want to continue to work.
(2) The others - for them, the tax payers will pick up some of the balance, but generally, it will be dire for them to find new ways to continue.
Overall, age discrimination is a topic on which most companies and the public are mostly in denial while trying to please everybody else or demonstrate how inclusive they are.
Within many industries you will be excluded "quietly" during the selection for up to mid-level jobs when you are 50+ - quietly, because companies know that such discrimination openly could result in reputational or potential legal challenges.
On exec jobs, it is even more ludicrous - people who are much older than the candidates, block (competent) 50+ candidates based on their age to become their peers.
At the same time, often these companies also do not promote staff above a certain age e.g. when taking on new responsibilities that gets all others promoted (aka substantial pay rise / cost). As a result, while in a few countries here in Europe, 50+ workforce will have more holidays or pension contributions, the salaries of 50+ high achievers might be lower than younger staff in comparable roles. Give the above, some swallow that pill, but those that can afford leave (independent of age the old saying: good people leave, wood stays). Might not apply to most of the 50+ workforce, others might just have better employment contracts (historically), e.g. in the German car factories you have people on payroll with the company, some as contractors through 3rd party, and at the end of the food chain some with a low paid contract for work and labour with a body shop - all doing the same work at very different pay for the workers. In such setups, getting rid of the older workers might result in a higher bonus for top management, achieving KPIs for middle management, and certainly in high consultancy fees for restructuring advice from McKinsey e.a at daily rates per (senior) consultant at about the monthly salary of the worker made redundant - after these "cost" making younger or older workforce redundant becomes a marginal difference.
Overall, from what I've seen, where competence is key and valued, age and other things will not be used to discriminate the best candidates or staff. I've seen 70+ old engineers being hired by top-names for their knowledge, experience and achievements.
With aging societies in many western countries, TMK, in about 5 years the majority of the workforce will be 50+ in most of them.
In the west, during the last 40 years we have shifted from "engineering pride" to prioritising financial markets vs innovations & products. This has certainly created many activities, tasks /jobs particularly in large orgs, that will become "redundant" when the music stops or when some of these orgs fade away due to lack of product, market, leadership or competencies.
We need to look into how our "established" companies stay or become competitive and innovative again with their products and services in a global environment short / mid and long term vs. making most of their money on financial markets. Such companies don't need to care about the age of their staff - they care about skills and competencies.
With the baby boomers leaving the job market, low-birth groups / demographic change of those entering the job market plus technology advances there is now a chance that this puts pressure on companies (and employees) to re-invent themselves.
It's crazy that anyone could believe a corporation cares about anything other than profits.
If IBM actually had the ages of their employees available to the system that did the layoffs, then that would be age based discrimination. But I'd be willing to bet that wasn't a factor.
If you start with a pool of people with large salaries, and look for people not adding at least that much value to the business, you are going to find people who have that salary for reasons other than merit.
The discrimination, if any, was in their favor until the business couldn't afford to discriminate in their favor.
Discrimination doesn't have to be so explicit. Saying "I'm going to fire everyone over 50" is obviously discrimination, but so is "I'm going to fire everyone near the top of the salary range for their job family". It has the same impact, but it's discrimination is cloaked behind a layer of misdirection. The law isn't so blind
Depends on the company, but even in ones that do, it's usually new hires are paid on the higher end of the band.
That means a junior engineer hired yesterday makes more than a junior engineer hired two years ago, but it doesn't mean that the junior engineer hired yesterday makes more than the staff engineer hired a decade ago
They’ve been doing it for so long I’m surprised they have any jobs left to axe.
Sam Palmisano skinned IBM then too a knife to its belly and gutted it. All in the name of his “Roadmap 2010” which was a plan to double the share price by 2015.
So basically the pharaoh said “fuck it, we need a new pyramid. Get the whips out and all worker carcasses are to be dump on the left please”.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/05/30/why-ibm...
Edit: roadmap 2010 not 2015
Followed by Ginni Rometty who continued the trend through to 2020. She was named the runner up worst CEO of 2014 by The Motley Fool:
• https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/13/the-worst-...
And was responsible for "22 consecutive quarters of revenue decline between 2012 and the summer of 2017":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginni_Rometty#Industry_recepti...
Not a place of growth for anything other than financial engineering. :(
I mean she was terrible but in her defense Palmisano tossed her a hospital pass and walked away with $250M into the mega-rich sunset.
The quality of work coming from the offshored teams was significantly worse and the cost to the end customer certainly didn’t get reduced accordingly.
She had years to right that ship though, rather than continue the slide. :(
Meh. After I finished my stint at Big Blue, they outsourced my entire midrange (UNIX) team which supported a large Australian bank to a foreign provider.
2 years later I had recruitment consultants calling me multiple times a week to get me to "come back" to IBM as the offshoring had been a disaster for the customer. And this was despite of me having a lifetime IBM ban for flipping off my manager's manager on the way out.
No way, no time, no thank you, no how.
The rumors of bans were always circulating when I worked at IBM. I never heard that at any other company. It's bizarre.
Perhaps few other companies has (ex)employees who feel the need to flip their superiors the bird?
NDA's don't matter. There are ways to leak the information anonymously.
It's illegal in the US: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...
And the fact that it’s under NDA makes IBM look even more shitty.
I always thought that IBM was a declining giant. I just looked up their share price and it has done strikingly well over the past 2 years. Their revenue has also been growing, albeit slowly. Maybe capitalizing on the AI buzz?
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/IBM/
Their share price growth is only a result of share buy backs. They’ve fired tens of thousands of employees and used the cost savings to buy their own stock back, enriching executives, especially their CEO, whose pay increased 23% from 2022 to 2023 to $20.4M. (And IBM didn’t even meet their own internal revenue goal). Are the execs doing what’s best for the company’s long term prospects or what’s best for the shorter term shareholders holder?
* https://ycharts.com/companies/IBM/stock_buyback * https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/03/15/ibm_ceo_pay_jumps...
Share buybacks enrich all shareholders, it just happens that executives get paid in stock and/or are awarded compensation triggered by meeting certain stock prices. This is all for the benefit of shareholders.
Dividends enrich all shareholders as well and at a lower tax rate (15% vs 20%). So why do share buy backs? Because that increases share price and helps execs hit stock price targets which trigger more options, while dividends decrease share price.
As a shareholder, I usually do not want dividends. If a share buyback increases the stock price, then I don’t have to pay any tax. If a dividend is given to me, then I have to pay tax…but why would I want to pay tax now if I am just going to buy more shares with the post tax dividend money?
Also, federal US capital gains tax rate is 20% only for those earning $518k+ per year if single and $583k+ of married filing joint. Otherwise, capital gains tax rate is the same 15% as qualified dividends.
share price matters to a shareholder in the short term, but doesn't come close to telling the whole story. IBM is not performing well.
In 1990, IBM's market cap was $27B and Microsoft's was $5B.
In 1999, IBM's was just under $100B and Microsoft's was just under $400B.
For the last decade+, IBM has hovered (rather wildly) around $160B, while Microsoft has grown from $250B (post dot com crash) to $2,500B.
so yes, IBM really has been a declining giant relative to their market share in the strong technology sector
IBM selling off more and more businesses might be "the right move" for shareholders and props up the share prices, but it shrinks the overall business and in terms of value creation (where wealth comes from) indicates a shortage at IBM
Honest Q, why compare MS to IBM?
MS has (mostly) products and licensing, and as far as I understand, IBM has consulting and licenses. Pretty different in this day/age.
Honest A, an investor and/or the financial market does not care what the similarities or differences are between companies, but how investments in those companies do. Microsoft and IBM were major players in the personal computer business, and subsequently both have had a heavy presence in enterprises and data centers. IBM is gone from personal computers, although Microsoft's products probably figure heavily in IBM's consulting.
could easily compare IBM with other companies; google didn't have a presence prior to 2000, Apple pre 2000 and post iphone are entirely different businesses, nothing else came to my mind. Amazon? they were around in early days of the dot com (1994!) but I'm not really that familiar with where they stood back around 2000 and didn't want to sample apples and oranges. IBM's other competitors like Digital disappeared, but not because IBM gobbled up their share.
IBM compared to itself has not grown. Other companies have grown, through survivorship bias if no other reason.
At the beginning of the comparison period, IBM was also pretty heavy into products. For example, in the late 80s and even into the early 90s, the market for PCs was broken up into IBM PCs and compatibles. IBM was the PC.
IBM invented many of the technologies that went into the early PCs but pissed away their lead with every single one until we find ourselves today where they no longer manufacture anything that can be found in a modern PC as far as I can tell.
IBM has products too: the Rational tools. Anyone who's used them knows they're amazing pieces of software engineering. /s
This kind of relative comparison is the correct analysis.
Companies with 100B+ market cap don't die away. They just fail to continue to innovate and stay relevant - thus robbing their shareholders of even more returns.
This is why companies like sears were considered failures despite lasting for 100 years. Somewhere along the line they lost the plot and forgot how to stay relevant.
IBM has largely retreated from consumer facing ventures but it's still a behemoth.
From the start of its Wikipedia page:
> IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries, having held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business for 29 consecutive years from 1993 to 2021.
I know that in semiconductors they're still doing bleeding edge R&D which they then try to license to foundries. Their mainframe business is still doing quite well too.
And I'm sure they're active in many other niches that I know little about.
They have an absolutely massive consulting/services business (~ $20B/year run rate.)
Kyndryl was spun out of IBM a while back. My cynical take is that the “IBM GS” brand was so toxic this was the only way to continue to sell those billable hours.
Kyndryl was the infrastructure services group (then known as GTS). Consulting is still part of IBM (formerly known as GBS).
I asked previous IBM leaders about this oddity. Basicaly boiled up to financial engineering
Nobody has (still) ever been fired for hiring IBM.
They have a very strong brand in traditional corporate industries, which have an endless demand for IBM services.
If someone in my organization buys IBM, I will fire them.
That said, I’m confident that they know better.
I bet your org is not the IBM target market.
> Nobody has (still) never been fired for hiring IBM.
I'm pretty sure I came pretty damn close the one and only time I opted for IBM Cloud (which was called "Bluemix" back then). In fairness, running a PostgreSQL DB in a container wasn't the brightest idea on my part, and it was also my fault for not having backups in place, but when Bluemix ate our entire prod DB, and the multiple-weeks-long back-and-forth with IBM's support only yielded something along the lines of "whoops, that sucks, good luck building a new DB instance from scratch", we rather quickly jumped ship to AWS and never looked back.
I'm sure IBM Cloud is better these days, though it was a bit telling that during my brief time working for IBM my primary job was to build customers' stuff on AWS instead of IBM Cloud. Go figure.
Bluemix wasn’t really IBM Cloud. It was what turned out to be ill-advised backing of Cloud Foundry but a lot of companies did that with a certain degree of public ridicule falling on those who didn’t fall in line.
And yet, you haven't been fired
Whomever hired IBM to build this mess should have been fired
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system
There’s a lot of ass coverage involved. Someone came in temporarily, was given a certain title, hired IBM, left shortly afterwards. People shift, staff turn over, and before anyone knew what happened nobody knows who said what.
And they say we don't have ageism in the industry... :
"As with prior layoffs, or "resource actions" to use IBM's euphemism, we're told those affected are substantially in the 50-55 age bracket with 20-24 years of seniority.
"It seems exclusively people in L7 and L8 and L9 bands, at the top of the band in payment structure," the insider said.""
> resource actions
I've always thought the term "resource" was dehumanizing, but at least on its own it could be interpreted positively, but "resource actions" is just upsetting
“Livestock culling”
I’m sure they’ll find more meat to grind.
Maybe Skynet starts when IBM tries that shit on Watson? ;)
RA’ing people at the top of their band means that they’ve topped out skill-wise. These aren’t senior people; it’s people who will never get promoted past 7 or 8 (which are quite junior) but have been accruing comp adjustments for a long time. Most teams will lay off a 7 that is getting paid more than a 9 by virtue of being at the company for 20 years.
Maybe this is true skill-wise, but there is also productivity to consider. I knew a band 9, who was definitely not going to be promoted STSM (band 10), but was extremely productive. I'm sure he was paid well, better than most band 10s.
Band 10 and above include good soft-skills, people who can persuade the industry and organization, give TED talks, etc.
Do you think it’s a good idea for employees to voluntarily ask for pay cuts so that they are on the low end of the pay scale for a job grade?
Better to look for another job where you think you might not be as disposable, even if at lower pay.
I never saw any significant compensation increase by staying in the company at the same level. A long tenure at level 7 will have a very stagnant compensation and much lower than a newly hired level 7 and lower than 9.
If the goal is to save money, isn’t it reasonable to axe the most senior people which are probably also paid more than junior ones? And I’m not saying it’s a smart strategy, it’s probably idiotic. Just saying it’s not really ageist.
The cost/productivity balance is supposed to have been considered for hiring and promotion; when a layoff predominately targets a specific division or pay level it means the strategy leading up to that point had been wrong.
Have another thoughts re-reading your comment this morning.
> when a layoff predominately targets a specific division or pay level it means the strategy leading up to that point had been wrong.
This is fair but isn’t also this what we want? Like if you run a company, if you realize that mistakes were made, isn’t it reasonable to expect a correction? And by “what we want” I mean the admitting a mistake and correcting it.
Oh I’m not arguing against that. And as I said, I don’t think it’s a smart way of running things. I’m just saying that it may not be an age thing but simply a money thing. That’s all.
Perhaps not in principal, but in practical terms it ends up being "ageist."
I’ll say this again because people are downvoting as if I’m trying to defend this practice: I think it’s stupid.
Now, what I’m pushing against is this idea that it is “ageist”. I’m no native speaker but ageist is defined as
> a bias against individuals and groups based on their age
Now if I decide to fire everyone who’s making more than 500k at a company and it just so happens that those people are all above a certain age I don’t think that’s ageist. It’s certainly stupid and I think I made it clear. It’s a money driven decision, which is also stupid.
I just think it’s important of accuse people of the right thing if you want to accuse them of something. That’s all I’m saying.
But again, the fuck do I know. I don’t work in corporate, don’t play the stupid ladder game, will never get a promotion. I’m just here sharing a random thought on the bizarre business world you people live in.
In most of these corporations, the people making the most are older.
They don't have a habit of hiring young rockstars with insane salaries (because these people wouldn't fit the culture).
That's how Google Cloud did it.
Yeah, it is, unless you can make the case that IBM doesn't need all those leaders any more.
What will happen is that they rehire, and rehire young.
Oh I’m sure they’ll end up hiring again. And I’m also sure C-suite comps won’t go down. I just don’t think it’s a crusade against old people. It’s just that old people have more experience and demand higher pay. But I mean, if one wants to argue that it’s ageist to fire them then I can make the same stupid argument that it’s ageist for them to be paid more than younger people.
And it’s clearly a stupid argument because there are other factors and not just age.
I think your argument is reasonable. Having done two tours at IBM, they only see numbers (and not productivity ones).
Disparate outcomes do not imply disparate treatment
> As with prior layoffs
When all of your outcomes result in same treatment of the same group of individuals, there just might be a little fire to that smoke.
"Might" is a delightfully cop out word. Anything "might" be true.
I read that “might” sarcastically.
It was very sarcastic.
Disparate outcomes do not conclusively determine disparate treatment
Disparate outcomes most definitely imply disparate treatment, at least enough to merit further investigation
So how does this work? Asian Americans are vastly over represented relative to their population in higher education. This "implies" they've been receiving special treatment or favoritism?
Pretty much; might or might not; "suggest" may be a better word. It means there may be something to check into.
What OTHER advantages, disadvantages, preparation levels, etc. are working for and/or against that group?
Can those factors account for the differential?
What is the groups' actual relative performance in the situation (i.e., do they tend to perform at|above|below the level to which they have risen, e.g., legacy college admissions with "Gentleman's Cs" are performing below)?
And so forth.
The point is that statistical disparities are not conclusive, but are most often indicative of some kind of structural favoritism, like smoke to fire. Not always, and you can always cherry-pick some counter-example, but the default assumption is that it merits investigation.
With the fed rate cuts, IBM will probably be hiring back those same folks
As per article, they are firing in US and still hiring in India
Saving a buck, being a traitor, and sacrificing quality all at the same time. Workers should both unionize and boycott any company that behaves that way.
Why would you sign an NDA when beeing fired? So you het some severance pay?
No NDA, no severance payment...
I thought this was outlawed at least in the states: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/success/severance-agreements-...
Yup. Cash for silence
Unless it’s substantial, never sign an NDA or arbitration agreement for severance. You’re better off keeping your options open if it’s something like one or two month’s salary.
Can the NDA be invalidated after the cash has been delivered?
If you signed a contract, they could pursue legal action. Whether they would or not is a different question, but the possibility of legal action from someone with such deep pockets would give most people pause.
Depends on the laws of the state in which you were hired.
On what basis?
Are these the jobs axed by AI? Would seem to make sense, since the CEO said they were going to replace 5800 jobs with AI.
IBM and execs are full of shit and say that because they want other company execs to buy their AI products. They will lay people off because they cost money. No other reason.
I know. Seeing the hype reach and rattle executives is always kind of funny.
That’s the same thing. AI is cheaper, hence you lay people off because they cost more.
When IBM lays people off they just demand the team do the same work with fewer people.
Source: an IBMer who got out
Please. Back in April they gutted my team of people working on Ansible automations.
My (tech savvy) mum talked about the "automation" buzzword which allegedly reduced demand for Indian tech workers.
Is there an authoritative source about jobs lost to AI? Tired of the FUD.
why is this news ? they do it twice a year.
they have way too many employees, and it will take them a decade of such cuts to "rightsize"
> As with prior layoffs, or "resource actions" to use IBM's euphemism, we're told those affected are substantially in the 50-55 age bracket with 20-24 years of seniority.
> Despite numerous past and ongoing age discrimination lawsuits, IBM maintains it does not systematically discriminate on the basis of age.
Lawsuits of this sort are a little ridiculous. If you work at a company that pays people more just for being older, then you shouldn't be surprised when the "more experienced" people are the first to get laid off.
IBM today is mostly a service provider - with those in the 50+ age bracket being "kicked out" there will be at least 2 groups:
(1)The ones with skills "to keep the lights on" for these services - those will be hired back as "consultants" - let's hope at twice the daily rate they worked before if they want to continue to work.
(2) The others - for them, the tax payers will pick up some of the balance, but generally, it will be dire for them to find new ways to continue.
Overall, age discrimination is a topic on which most companies and the public are mostly in denial while trying to please everybody else or demonstrate how inclusive they are.
Within many industries you will be excluded "quietly" during the selection for up to mid-level jobs when you are 50+ - quietly, because companies know that such discrimination openly could result in reputational or potential legal challenges.
On exec jobs, it is even more ludicrous - people who are much older than the candidates, block (competent) 50+ candidates based on their age to become their peers.
At the same time, often these companies also do not promote staff above a certain age e.g. when taking on new responsibilities that gets all others promoted (aka substantial pay rise / cost). As a result, while in a few countries here in Europe, 50+ workforce will have more holidays or pension contributions, the salaries of 50+ high achievers might be lower than younger staff in comparable roles. Give the above, some swallow that pill, but those that can afford leave (independent of age the old saying: good people leave, wood stays). Might not apply to most of the 50+ workforce, others might just have better employment contracts (historically), e.g. in the German car factories you have people on payroll with the company, some as contractors through 3rd party, and at the end of the food chain some with a low paid contract for work and labour with a body shop - all doing the same work at very different pay for the workers. In such setups, getting rid of the older workers might result in a higher bonus for top management, achieving KPIs for middle management, and certainly in high consultancy fees for restructuring advice from McKinsey e.a at daily rates per (senior) consultant at about the monthly salary of the worker made redundant - after these "cost" making younger or older workforce redundant becomes a marginal difference.
Overall, from what I've seen, where competence is key and valued, age and other things will not be used to discriminate the best candidates or staff. I've seen 70+ old engineers being hired by top-names for their knowledge, experience and achievements.
With aging societies in many western countries, TMK, in about 5 years the majority of the workforce will be 50+ in most of them.
In the west, during the last 40 years we have shifted from "engineering pride" to prioritising financial markets vs innovations & products. This has certainly created many activities, tasks /jobs particularly in large orgs, that will become "redundant" when the music stops or when some of these orgs fade away due to lack of product, market, leadership or competencies.
We need to look into how our "established" companies stay or become competitive and innovative again with their products and services in a global environment short / mid and long term vs. making most of their money on financial markets. Such companies don't need to care about the age of their staff - they care about skills and competencies.
With the baby boomers leaving the job market, low-birth groups / demographic change of those entering the job market plus technology advances there is now a chance that this puts pressure on companies (and employees) to re-invent themselves.
I disagree, it is not the victim's fault they were discriminated against
It's crazy that anyone could believe a corporation cares about anything other than profits.
If IBM actually had the ages of their employees available to the system that did the layoffs, then that would be age based discrimination. But I'd be willing to bet that wasn't a factor.
If you start with a pool of people with large salaries, and look for people not adding at least that much value to the business, you are going to find people who have that salary for reasons other than merit.
The discrimination, if any, was in their favor until the business couldn't afford to discriminate in their favor.
Discrimination doesn't have to be so explicit. Saying "I'm going to fire everyone over 50" is obviously discrimination, but so is "I'm going to fire everyone near the top of the salary range for their job family". It has the same impact, but it's discrimination is cloaked behind a layer of misdirection. The law isn't so blind
Isn’t it generally true that new hires get paid more than existing employees?
Depends on the company, but even in ones that do, it's usually new hires are paid on the higher end of the band.
That means a junior engineer hired yesterday makes more than a junior engineer hired two years ago, but it doesn't mean that the junior engineer hired yesterday makes more than the staff engineer hired a decade ago