Company spokesman James Keller said the actions in Dresden "are a part of the overall measures the company has been taking to realign our cost structure to be more competitive. Each site is managing its efforts locally and labor costs are a key component for Fab 1," the formal name for the Dresden plant. The cuts there are to reduce the workforce by about 20 percent, he said.
As to the U.S. voluntary buyout, Keller said, "Fab 10 (East Fishkill) and other sites are in the final stages of evaluating the results of our cost-saving efforts, including the voluntary separation program, and will determine if any other actions are still required for us to achieve our goals." ...
GlobalFoundries has three plants in the U.S., one of them being the East Fishkill site that it acquired from IBM Corp. in July, along with a plant near Burlington, Vermont The third is a new facility in Malta, Saratoga County, which GlobalFoundries built and then put into production in 2011.
Amazon Web Services just did much the same thing to the multibillion-dollar business of corporate computing by going after the legacy customers of companies like IBM, Oracle and Microsoft. ...
Among the most notable, there was a 47-pound data storage device that A.W.S. would ship to a customer, and for $200 would suck down 50 terabytes of data, incidentally converting it from an older system to a more modern one. There was a service called Database Migration, which takes data in proprietary systems and converts their schema to open-source products. ...
Previously, old-guard enterprise companies dismissed A.W.S. and cloud computing, then grudgingly ceded them a place for start-ups and new applications. But with about three-quarters of information technology spending going to maintaining legacy systems, they could afford to.
Wednesday, Amazon went after the rest of their business.
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Cons:
Advice to Management: Restore employee morale, i.e. stop cutting and start spending, so they might restore client morale. You need both of those groups on board to bring back growth. The stock will not tick up until Wall St sees consistent top line growth, regardless of what is going on with EPS/profit.
Pros: Flexibility to work from home for some positions. Good medical/dental/vision benefits. IBM discounts. Name recognition.
Cons: Some managers at IBM are not competent enough for the job. A lot of employees get promoted based on who they know and not what they know. I have seen so many colleagues get passed up on promotions because the person that was hired knew someone at the top.
Executives and directors are constantly recommending kids and friends to jobs and they get hired, even if they may not be the best fit for the job. A lot of college graduates of IBMer parents can get hired easily even if they are not the best fit.
College kids are getting hired into IBM and they make a lot more money than IBMers who have been at the company for 20 years, and then the college kids leave within 2 - 3 years.
In my group, the managers would gossip about other employees and during PBC (annual review) time, those employees who kissed the most butt got the best ratings. If you don't brag about yourself and complain about not getting a high rating, you won't get one. Also, you just need to threaten to leave the company and you will get a high rating, you may not get more money, but you will get a high rating.
Managers are not proactive with the best employees in terms of praise, they react out of fear. Why should you threaten to leave before you get attention? The best people who are humble and do good work get passed over for other loud mouth, over confident people who complain and threaten to leave the company if they don't get a raise and a high performance rating.
Don't even bother looking for another position internally because you can't move between the different business groups (consulting to marketing or services to software sales, etc); there is a cap on the budget and most groups can only hire internally within the group, so if you are looking to get another job, it better be in your current business org or you can't move to another job.
The PBC (annual review) process is a joke (as explained above). You will only get a top rating if you are friends with your manager, you kissed a lot of butt during the year, you complain about not getting enough money and recognition and you complain about how hard you worked during the year.
Some of the top managers/executives just don't have time for you, everyone is just too busy. My manager would cancel our monthly status meetings at the last minute and not offer to reschedule, so we never talked unless he had something urgent or wanted me to do something for him.
Good people who do a good job are taken advantage of and expected to do more work than everyone else while the complainers don't get as much work. If you are marked as a "low performer", your manager won't tell you until the end of the year and by that time, it's too late to improve your performance and once you are named as a "low performer", your days are numbered and you are on the list to be asked to leave IBM once it comes time for a round of layoffs. It doesn't matter how much you improve, once you are a low performer, you will always be seen as this.
I was a manager at one point during my career and I disagreed with this policy, it's so disgusting. I hated every bit of the performance process and wanted to praise all my employees for working hard and I was always forced to name 2 - 3 of the lowest performers on my team even though everyone on the team was strong. How disgusting and horrible, what a way to make people feel good, right?
I enjoyed a lot of colleagues I worked with, but I had to be careful of the people who gossiped or was looking to backstab you to make themselves look good. Keep your personal life away from work because people will use it against you to say that you are not committed to work, especially if you have some personal issues you are dealing with.
IBM boasts getting a mentor but the top executives and managers are all too busy to mentor you. During my time at IBM, I had multiple mentors and at some point in time, they just got too busy and they didn't want to take a few minutes to talk; they would have their secretaries cancel the meetings and never respond to emails.
Oh and people at IBM don't respond to emails; you have to call them if you need something.
Expect to be invited to long meetings that are pointless and drag on and on. IBMers love to talk and hear themselves talk, so get ready to be invited to meetings where people just talk to talk, no goal or mission. Always request information about the meeting to make sure you need to join, otherwise most meetings are just a waste of time or people sitting on the phone sharing gossip.
I loved working at IBM at first but over the years, it is getting worse and worse and if IBM keeps hiring incompetent people, it will keep going downhill.
Advice to Management: If you have a strong team, there doesn't have to be low performers. Give employees more praise and listen to feedback. Stop hiring your friends and family for positions, hire the best person for the job based on experience instead of hiring your friends.
Pros: When you are given time (which isn't much at all) to learn, you can learn valuable tools for your various work assignments.
Cons: Over the course of my 14 years there, the morale just plummeted. Spent the last three years every quarter waiting on a lay-off cycle. In order to keep your job you have to compete against your coworkers, so teaming is a foreign concept.
Advice to Management: The PBC tool is a JOKE. You all know what we're getting as a rating LONG before we submit results. Stop torturing us all year long and taking time away from our jobs to spend time giving you information you already know anyway.
Pros: IBM leads the world in patents every year. IBM does all kinds of interesting and meaningful work to help the world. IBM has extensive opportunities to grow, travel and see the world, work with clients, etc. You can work remotely in most cases, compensation is okay (average for the tech industry, above average if you compare to other industries), etc.
Cons: You will work yourself to death at IBM — thanks to the ability to work remotely and the global nature of IBM. The expectation is that everyone in any kind of leadership position works 24x7, responding to customer issues, questions from the field, questions from people in other countries, etc., at all hours of the day, every day of the week. Everyone does this if they hope to even "keep up" let alone get ahead. The only folks that do not do this are the lowest performers or individual contributors that are "in a rut" and basically just coasting along.
Advice to Management: You are working yourselves to death, and your employees are following suit. You need to stop emailing and asking for things at night and on the weekends, and you need to tell your people to stop doing this too. You have to stop scheduling meetings at all hours of the day, etc. as this just trickles down and hurts everyone in the organization.
Everyone I know is burned out and literally working several hours extra every night just to stay on top of email, as they spend the entire day on calls, with clients, etc. Last, there are many, MANY employees who just straight up abuse IBM's travel policy and go from customer to customer, country to country, doing nothing but having pointless meetings as an excuse to build up miles, hotel points, status and travel the world.
Pros: Good people to work with, great working atmosphere, nice starting job for experience.
Cons: Company lies regarding career development and salary growth. Let me warn you, once you enter with your base salary it will NEVER, EVER change. They will tell you any excuse (freeze, low profit, etc.) and in the meantime they will suck all your experience and skills. My advise, if you are an average Joe, fresher—join to learn some minor experience and leave after one year. If instead you are a senior, ask for high expectations as they will never change that later; if they refuse it is because they were already lying at you and are trying to scam seniors for low budget for low position works.
Advice to Management: Stop giving false promises (regarding career growth) when later you simply jump out to other departments. Anyway, I know you won't do it because you are instructed to lie as to keep your employees.
Pros: Good online training system; big name; good on resume.
Cons: People are lacking of professionalism here; do things very random. Even partner level are super disorganized. Most employees speak Cantonese as their daily business language, even though there are non-Canton speakers in the same meeting and English is supposed to be the "official language". Some managers don't like employees to have their own thoughts; they prefer to have robots than intelligent human being. "Don't ask questions, just do it as I said" regularly heard from some managers. Very bad culture if you come from a western background.
Advice to Management: Learn to respect your staff.
Pros: IBM has built a 100 plus year tradition on the ability to re-invent itself with new products and services and continuing to provide excellent customer service to its clients. This is a strong asset on behalf of IBM. By providing strong resources and tools, IBM allows its team players to open up creatively and take chances. Compensation options are strong and work-life balance is excellent. The options to stay connected in every aspect of work is also available but not mandatory.
Cons: The culture and energy is strong. With strong and diverse client relationships, there are many pressures for delivery of top solutions. Stress can get high at times.
Advice to Management: Continue to provide strong training programs and listen to new ideas to continue to grow the business.
Pros: Once you settle down you can flexibly manage your time. Virtual relationship with your manager Work independently. You work for top class clients in major cities across the world. Promotion process is straight forward; you get promoted once you meet and document the predefined requirements. It does everything you can imagine. A lot of smart hard working consultants who always delivers what is promised.
Cons: Top heavy. Too much overheads for non profitable internal works. GBS and few other divisions feed other nonsense divisions. Slow to market and new technology demand due to its size and decision making hierarchy. Inversely undiverse. One lump sum 401k match at the end of the year—if you leave before year end you lose a year's worth 401k. (I am not making this up). You have no control over your raise; you get what they decide. Bonus is a joke. Too many org changes and moving corporate goals
Pros: Lot of big empty offices. Getting to work with great people who revolutionised computer science Many people end up getting paid for nothing.
Cons: It's like hug aircraft carrier almost out of supplies, sailing to somewhere it thinks is land. Captain is making decisions based on the gauges and dials which are broken and only really smart engineers know what needs to be fixed. But they are never being asked so they are taking out the lifeboats and leaving the ship.
Advice to Management: Its decisions are made top down, and way down in the bottom people have really lost confidence. Most probably, people in the middle tier are faking the numbers for upper management (like Volkswagen did for EPA). If good people are leaving the company or group/team is not doing well; start the restructuring from the top. If only people in the top are punished for not achieving something they can bring in growth or even keep doing what IBM is good at.
Pros: IBM offers a large selection of web-based training. It is also nice to have the option to work from home.
Cons: No matter how highly you are rated or how many years you work, do not think for one minute that your job is secure. A large number of my peers and I were just laid off, so they can move our work to India and pay a fraction of our salaries. If you are laid off before the end of the year, you get screwed out of the company matching 401k funds. No respect or value to employees is shown. In fact, IBM will not release any information on how many jobs are outsourced per year, but the number of U S employees is definitely going down. Finally, there are too many layers of management. If they want to save money, this would be a good place to start.
Advice to Management: Understand that employees are more than just numbers. When our jobs are eliminated, it has big impacts for many of us. For example, I have a special needs child who requires expensive therapy sessions. Without a job, it is hard to pay for these. Become a human being and understand this! Will WATSON end up having an Indian or Chinese accent?
http://www.endicottalliance.org/thedisintegrationofemploymentinIBM.htm To all Alliance supporters, send and share the above link to the article "The disintegration of employment in IBM" far and wide. Put it on your FaceBook page; send it to newspapers; send it with comments to your political reps and send it to your co-workers. Help break the secrecy of IBM job cuts. Put some pressure on IBM. -Alliance-
Dear IBM family, Our collective hearts are breaking as we learn of the current brutal RA's that follow the devastating RA's of the past, and the horrific RA's of the future. I have been following the recent comments on the withholding of accrued and earned vacation pay. In the USA, the laws vary by state. I have several chronic medical conditions which I have had for over a decade.
In July of 2013, I went on short term disability, and long term permanent disability in December of 2013. At the time I requested my accrued and earned vacation pay. My manager threatened to hold my accrued and earned vacation pay, until I signed not one but two disability agreements holding IBM harmless. I informed my manager and HR that this was unethical, immoral, a business controls and Sarbanes Oxley violation.
I also informed her, that though my attorney was on vacation, I was sure this was illegal. I never heard from her, though HR did reply that my manager made a mistake. I did not sign anything. My manager sent my vacation pay to my home via regular snail mail. She did not even have the courtesy to overnight it; despite knowing full well of my huge out of pocket medical expenses that continue to skyrocket year on year.
Dear IBM family nothing with the RA's and abhorrent behavior of IBM management will change...unless we stand together with the good people of Alliance@IBM, who have been staunchly supporting us for years. Please join! -Respectfully, Deb Kelly proud Alliance@IBM member-
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