IBM announces plan to hire 25K ahead of Trump meeting

Besides IBM&#x27;s Ginni Rometty, the list of tech execs due to meet the President-elect today includes Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Facebook COO Sheryl Sanddberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, Oracle CEO Safra Catz and Cisco Systems CEO Chuck Robbins. [1]<p>List of &quot;invited, but not going&quot;: Uber CEO Travis Kalanick (currently out of the country), Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. [2]<p>Announced a few minutes ago however is that Travis Kalanick and SpaceX&#x27;s Elon Musk are due to become members of the Presidential advisory council. [3]<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;report-top-tech-executives-larry-page-tim-cook-sheryl-sandberg-to-attend-summit-at-trump-tower&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;report-top-tech-executives-larry...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.recode.net&#x2F;2016&#x2F;12&#x2F;10&#x2F;13908492&#x2F;trump-tech-summit-tim-cook-apple-larry-page-google-sheryl-sandberg-facebook-nadella-microsoft" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.recode.net&#x2F;2016&#x2F;12&#x2F;10&#x2F;13908492&#x2F;trump-tech-summit-...</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;us-usa-trump-forum-idUSKBN1431KU" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;us-usa-trump-forum-idUSKBN143...</a>

<i>&quot;CEO Ginni Rometty announced that the new jobs will come over the span of four years&quot;</i><p>That&#x27;s roughly 6000 per year. I&#x27;m curious what the definition of &quot;new jobs&quot; is. Since they have 300,000+ employees, I would think they already hire 6000+ a year just to cover natural turnover.

The conclusion of the article:<p>&gt; Rometty, the sole Silicon Valley leader on the advisory<p>&gt; council, may be trying to show Trump that IBM is working<p>&gt; to keep jobs inside the country.<p>Is directly at odds with the implications of the CEO&#x27;s words in the same article (emphasis added):<p>&gt; We are hiring because the nature of work is evolving –<p>&gt; <i>and that is also why so many of these jobs remain hard to fill</i><p>That reads a lot like the language used by $everyone to convince legislators that more H1B visas are required.<p>In addition, I saw nothing in the statement that indicated the hiring would be in the US, or of US citizens.

Wtf is &quot;new collar&quot;? Some bullshit IBM-talk for hiring back the 20k skilled workers they fired earlier this year for less money&#x2F;benefits?

IBM is a Silicon Valley company? I thought they were headquartered in some combination of Armonk, NY and whatever country has the cheapest workers that week.

Given Trump&#x27;s propensity to publicly denounce individual organisations, including threats of withdrawing government business, it&#x27;s hardly surprising that companies are now lining up to court Trump&#x27;s favour in the same vein as Carrier. The only thing that does surprise is just how quickly companies are adapting to the new game and lining up to present King Trump some kind of offering.<p>The most recent Economist cover story provides some interesting perspective on this <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;leaders&#x2F;21711314-president-elect-has-new-approach-dealing-corporate-america-it-not-all-good" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;leaders&#x2F;21711314-president-ele...</a>

What does the term &quot;new collar&quot; mean? I understand the distinction between blue and white, but i don&#x27;t get what could be new

I don&#x27;t trust this at all. IBM promised to create jobs in my town (Columbia, MO) in order to receive tax credits, and after they received those tax credits, they cut their workforce. The city has since suspended those tax credits. I&#x27;m not sure if it was intentional or not, but I see this as nothing more than a facade to gain leverage with Trump.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.columbiatribune.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;ibm-s-columbia-employment-numbers-drop-again&#x2F;article_6b5f6867-dd99-5c44-b401-cc4ec7e2d7dd.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.columbiatribune.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;ibm-s-columbia-emp...</a>

To give some perspective on IBM&#x27;s contracting relationship with the various agencies of the US government, here is a broad search: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usaspending.gov&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;AdvancedSearch.aspx?sub=y&amp;ST=C,G,L,O&amp;FY=2017,2016,2015,2014,2013,2012,2011,2010,2009,2008&amp;A=0&amp;SS=USA&amp;RN=international%20business%20machine" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usaspending.gov&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;AdvancedSearch.aspx?sub=y&amp;...</a>

Quick question:<p>What is IBM doing and selling nowadays? Did they become a consultancy or something?<p>They have 300k employees. That&#x27;s a lot for a company I thought was dying.

Note that it&#x27;s the announcement that&#x27;s &quot;ahead of the meeting,&quot; not the actual hiring.

You mean the same company that this year, laid off over 20,000 positions? Get the hell out IBM, you&#x27;re acting like a bunch of sycophants.<p>P.S. Bluemix is bad and you should feel bad.<p>EDIT: I normally try to approach my commenting with a rational calm way, but I can&#x27;t, not with I.B-fucking.-M.

I think the &quot;ahead of Trump meeting&quot; makes what is effectively almost a tech story into a political one.