So does that mean we can finally stop listening to Cringely altogether? I am an IBM employee and I can tell you a lot of my fellow IBMers had a really bad week-end because of his ridiculous claims.<p>For context see previous discussion on the 110000 employee layoff that won't happen: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8944637" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8944637</a>
I've known more than a few IBMers over the years associated with IBM Almaden and other places. Many of those on contract/part time/etc, kept their heads down. Many full timers, the same thing.<p>Cringley may or may not be right on the magnitude of the numbers, but the one thing he is right about is IBM is purely governed by pleasing Wall Street above all else.<p>The IBM that existed when I was growing up and seeded more than a couple of the early founding staff of the UC Santa Cruz Computer Engineering staff (Patrick Mantey and Glen Langdon -- my advisor to name two), is <i>WAY</i> different than the IBM of today.<p>IBM is a shadow of itself, there are still interesting groups, but even the research arms are being hit hard by genuflecting to wall street.
I think IBM should stop selling the ultra crap software that is selling right now like Websphere commerce and all the crappy enterprisey stuff. They really need something good to change and if layoffs are for the better, it's probably worth trying. If the plan is to keep this stuff going, it's gonna be bad.
The correction is coming, and companies are starting to lay off people (like EBay doing "restructuring"). Some companies do global office "optimization" - i.e. completely closing offices in some countries/locations. Given that IBM commented on such a "baseless and ridiculous" claim puts a lot of foundation under it. Obviously not all the 100K at once. After all laying off people in Germany is completely different process than in CA. The fact that they point to open listings just shows that a lot of it will be sold under the sauce of "rebalancing" - lets layoff 10K there and hire the "best" 1K of them here. I've seen that an another legendary SV company (some of its former offices are occupied nowadays by a very "Like"-able company) I think IBM has big plan to close some regional offices, downsize/close some projects and to spin off some pieces with resulting IBM headcount expected being 100K less than today.
Cringely definitely tends to... exaggerate but I have to say, getting IBM to even ballpark the number of people they're cutting is quite a feat. Remember this is the company that doesn't break down its head count for "competitive reasons" and prefers to stagger cuts so they don't trigger WARN in various jurisdictions.
>"IBM does not comment on rumours, even ridiculous or baseless ones," the company said in an email to Reuters.<p>... isn't that exactly what it is doing?
TechCrunch has a source saying 43,000 over the next year -- ie, 11,000 per quarter (scroll to bottom): <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/26/sources-say-ibm-planning-on-laying-off-12000-over-next-year/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/26/sources-say-ibm-planning-on...</a>
Project Chrome? It's hard to fathom that a tech company would name their layoff program after a competitor's technology. That just strains credulity. If that part is true, it's a sign of bad things in the company.