A memo went out this week to managers in IBM’s U.S. Integrated Technology Services division requiring that future use of additional sub-contract (1099) workers must be approved in advance by a director or vice president. This includes coverage for sick days and vacations, not to mention inevitable customer emergencies. The memo further required that the renewal of any ongoing 1099 contracts include an across-the-board 10 percent reduction in labor rates to IBM. While this may not sound like news, inside ITS it has great meaning since the company has already been cut to the bone. There are, for example, reportedly two remaining IBM experts on HP-UX, HP’s version of Unix. Yet IBM supports customer running HP-UX. What happens when those systems go down? Nothing without first getting an IBM VP out of bed.
But wait, there’s more! Last week IBM reported earnings. Sales were down but profits were up and the stock rose as a result, but why? Quarter after quarter with the exception of one over the last two years, IBM’s sales go down yet profits go up taking the stock with it. This can’t go on forever. Efficiency is a wonderful thing, but continually dropping sales is a deadly trend. Yet still the stock goes up. That’s what former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan back in the 1990s called “irrational exuberance.” I say it is Wall Street happily accepting the idea that IBM is eating itself and has decided to eventually die.
Funny, we didn’t used to reward decisions like that.
Expressions like “conventional wisdom,” the “wisdom of crowds” and even “the market has already factored that news into the price” refer to our ability as a society to accept and even embrace bad news without necessarily even knowing it is bad. IBM’s sales being down quarter after quarter is bad news no matter what happens with profits.
The real story of what’s going on here is easy to understand if you just read the comments from any of my recent IBM columns. IBM is cutting costs to maintain profits in declining markets at the expense of customer service. Throw-in regular repurchases of shares and IBM management can keep playing this game of earnings-per-share for another decade against a dwindling pot of shares. Wall Street has to know this, but the important news here is that Wall Street doesn’t care.
This news — in this case the news behind the news — is already factored into Wall Street’s expectations. Alas, it isn’t factored into the expectations of IBM’s own employees, however, who have been deliberately kept in the dark by management.
A good friend of mine keeps telling me about a seminal moment in the history of his company when they decided to make a strategic move into a new industry, deliberately sacrificing much of the old company to make that happen. The new business required capital — capital that could only come from milking horribly the old business. And so that’s what they did, but only after months of meetings to explain the plan and help employees working in parts of the business that were due to be sacrificed to understand why things were happening the way they were. Those sacrificed were also reassured that they’d do well with new owners as various business units were profitably divested. Management cared enough to make that happen.
IBM is doing the same thing — in this case I think sacrificing its hardware business for software and software services — but IBM isn’t asking for buy-in from anyone: the rank and file aren’t being told what’s happening or why.
IBM management either can’t be bothered to explain the truth to its employees or maybe they feel the overall company would be hurt by a dose of corporate honesty. But honesty is the best corporate policy, so I can only conclude IBM simply doesn’t give a damn about its people.
If there’s a secret to what’s happening here, a key bit of information that helps make sense of it all, it’s this: It used to be that almost nobody got rich working at IBM, but that has recently changed — for some. IBM salaries were always good and perks were great, but unless your name was Watson you didn’t retire from IBM big rich. But that was then. Sam Palmisano, who pretty much created this current debacle as IBM CEO, retired with a reported $160 million. You can bet current IBM CEO Ginni Rometty aims to do the same or better.
Vampires have taken control of IBM and Wall Street not only doesn’t care, it is rewarding such behavior by bidding-up the stock. What’s happened here is the rise of trading at the expense of investing. Traders care about the price, not the company. They may not even know what the company does, simply because management decisions and policies won’t likely have any direct effect over the seconds, minutes, or hours these traders are holding the stock.
In one sense it would be stupid for IBM management not to recognize this and behave exactly as they are doing. They’ve been dealt a crappy hand by cascading bad decisions from executives now long gone. I get that. What I don’t get is IBM management’s determination to lie to employees or at least keep them in the dark about the Big Picture.
These are no longer employees, just food.
No, Bob, the employees are not food, they’re fertilizer.
Bob, IBM’s “requiring that future use of additional sub-contract (1099) workers must be approved in advance by a director or vice president. This includes coverage for sick days and vacations, not to mention inevitable customer emergencies”. Yep, been there and done that with IBM. I was an IBMer for over 25 years, got progressively ill and was promptly RAed as soon as I was healthy enough to return to work. Then I came back a few years later as a W-2 contractor and still suffered illness and my contract was terminated this year before the USA RA wave.
If IBM can predict illness or disease with their “smarter planet” then they might have something going. Is their iron man Watson working on it?? Until then they just have no compassion for employees or contractors with medical issues or problems.
I’d say they don’t have compassion for ANYBODY who works for them.
I hope a big crisis come soon to sweep those ADM men out of IBM. IBM near future is dark and deep. The ADMers are forcing profit keeping our salaries going down year by year.
Excellent post. When is your IBM book coming out?
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
I think all U.S. corporations are going to become like this in the coming decades. IBM just happens to be in the vanguard.
Your friends company was sacrificing one business to invest in a new business. The big difference with IBM is they are not really investing in anything new. As the company shrinks there will be nothing to pick up the load. All that profit is going into stock buybacks, executive compensation, etc. None of it is going into any business, today’s business or a future business.
Didn’t I just see that IBM announced a new, less expensive mainframe to run all the legacy code?
It’s a plain old insider gutting, every C-level employee is hitting the safe going to the bathroom and coming back. I think we can go so far as to say there IS no IBM there, anymore. just like RCA and Philips TVs, Polaroid cameras, and pick-your-toolmaker, somebody overseas on whatever island was above water Tuesday is cranking out tinny, creepy stuff and has licensed a formerly big name to put on the front. the execs of the formerly big names shuttle between offsites and high-level review meetings, and wouldn’t know when to spit if they ever got tied up, tossed in a car trunk, and taken to a manufacturing plant for a walk-around.
Nothing new, not isolated to IBM. Stock used to be a way of investing in a company, now stock is just another casino game.
The whole company is big o’ mess. Apparently not happy with 2Q results, more draconian cost cutting and hand wringing has ensued.
So, lets see if shedding thousand of employees off the US payroll actually helps 2013.
Bob,
As many others have asked, why is IBM circling the drain so fascinating to you? I guess we are all interested in what killed the dinosaurs. Maybe there are lessons here for the youngsters.
The stock market is a strange thing. You are probably right, it is speculation and brinkmanship that is keeping the stock up. When the first of the smart money leaves, IBM’s stock price will crash, and crash fast in today’s electronically traded world. I think it could be one day from big dumb and happy to on the skids.
Not that the C level team will be on the street selling pencils. The financial lives of hardworking people are being played with like tiddly winks, and that is sad.
I don’t typically chase readers but every time I write an IBM column I get a big spike. What this tells me is that there is sincere (even frantic in some quarters) interest in this topic. It’s just a train wreck to me and I can’t look away. With each new data point I think what’s obvious to me will become obvious to everyone, yet it doesn’t seem to work that way. I’ll dial-back on IBM, I guess, but insiders keep calling me…
Bob, Please don’t dial back. We need your independent voice, observations and questions. Much like the ones that are coming out in WSJ, Bloomberg, and SeekingAlpha.
Forbes too, has had some biting commentaries on IBM of late. Keep up the good work Bob!
No, please don’t dial back on IBM. It’s an interesting case study, if nothing else. I think IBM’s story says a lot about US corporations in the 21st-century, in general.
And it is a very fun train wreck to watch.
It’s not much fun to watch if you’re an employee, Paul.
Yes, because it’s the workers that are being run over by the train, not people like Ginni Rommetty.
Bob – don’t dial back!!! As others have said – those of us still here on the inside of IBM need voices like yours to get the message out that this once great company is rapidly spiralling down the toilet. If folks actually read the 2Q2013 earnings report as opposed to just reading some of the puff pieces in the media the scales should fall from their eyes as their realise the numbers are truly appalling. As a long time insider I expect IBM will have another near-death experience within the next few years – maybe it’ll pull out the other side – sadly though a lot of honest hard working IBMers will lose their jobs and financial security in the process.
DO NOT DIAL BACK BOB!!! Lord knows, God knows, we need to hear honest opinions regarding IBM and other companies. This financial engineering is VERY close to killing IBM’s revenue in a big way. When THAT is recognized, as well as the deplorable morale of the employees, by the market, the stock will plummet and there will be a changing of the guards similar to the changing of the guards from Akers to Gerstner, but for different reasons, but the RESULTS will be the same. May we see some real divine intervention to get IBM back on a more honest, growth and investment and EMPLOYEE beneficial track and away from this TOXIC financial engineering nonsense….
Bob please keep writing about IBM. Your blog is one of the few places where anyone does any critical thinking about IBMs strategy. Internally there is almost no mention of the 2015 roadmap, IBMers come here to get the real story.
I also think the bigger picture is important, a once great American company destroying itself.
Holy Sacred Cow! Don’t dial back, your coverage of this topic is the best and perhaps the only in depth coverage of this once mighty company going down.
I hate to keep stating the obvious, but Capitalism Sucks!
No, human nature sucks, in the modern world at least. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This applies to almost everyone in a position of power — CEOs, politicians, bureaucrats, economists, media bosses, etc.
Human nature was developed in a long period of primitive life styles. It simply cannot cope in the modern world. Well, it could if people based their actions on reality, instead of beliefs and self interest. Fat chance of that ever happening.
True. Capitalism, like Communism and science, is a tool, or even a social meme. Not inherently evil. But any tool in the wrong hands magnifies those hands’ ability to do evil.
No, Capitalism does not suck. BAD LEADERSHIP sucks.
Let’s consider the definition of capitalism:
“An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market. ”
I don’t believe IBM’s current business model is one of sound capitalism, since it does not seem they are reinvesting. The decisions made in the last few years have been in support of the 2015 Roadmap, which commits to $20/EPS with seemingly little regard for reinvestment and growth.
It’s not that capitalism sucks, it would work reasonably well with men and women of morals, integrity, HONESTY, professionalism, accountability, credibility etc. But, we don’t have that now, we have what they call “Crony Capitalism and Government”, which have men and women as leaders that are NOT of high morals, ethics, honesty, integrity, professionalism, accountability, credibility etc. These are NOT leaders at all. They tend to be all for themselves and those like them, greedy, pompous, callous, entitled, political etc. etc. What a shame.
That is what IBM does to people. It makes us feel like ‘everyone’ in today’s world is greedy, pompous, immoral, etc. The best example for me was an agile workshop I attended in IBM a few weeks ago. Classic contradictory statements made by the presenters were ‘Agile encourages honesty and courage – be courageous – of course if an IBM partner asks you to remove your Kanban wall, you will have to’ – how on earth is that courageous in any way shape or form? It’s not even a prime minister or whatever, just an IBM partner damn it! How much more cowardly can IBMers possible be! Another one was ‘The estimation and planning was already done for a Waterfall project and we re-used that for Agile, so you don’t need Agile planning to be Agile’. That is the most ridiculously stupid thing I have ever heard. Being part of IBM does not give you license to say stupid things and pass it around because you have a brand name backing you. My brain was totally deep-fried by the end of that discussion. IBM culture and Agile are exactly opposites of each other. Stop trying to retrofit Agile into a poisonous ranking system which is from your grandmother’s era. In fact, try preaching Agile to any management person higher than a Partner and you will find how violently opposed they will be to honesty, integrity, openness, courage, respect, etc. This company is slowly dying and rotting. Working here is like being part of a body part that is gangrenous.
Capitalism is a good base because it matches our base instincts.
It’s like recognizing that we, as humans are basically animals… but we aspire to being more than just animals.
Companies on the other hand are run by CEO’s and boards responsible solely to investors who themselves are run by CEO’s and boards.. by the time you get to anyone motivated to be better than an animal there’s no real influence. This is becoming more and more common.
I’m going to agree with that statement. At least capitalism as it is practiced in the U.S. sucks. I think people get swept away in what they were taught in primary school about capitalism – that it rewards those who work hard. That really isn’t how it works and everyone hardworking American should have learned that by now. This is particularly true when those with $$ and decision-making power continue to ship jobs overseas to exploit cheap labor in developing countries.
Anyone remember when Japan started exporting compact cars to the U.S. back in the 60’s and automakers here ran to Congress to lobby for tariffs to protect the U.S. auto industry? They got those tariffs. But a couple decades later when they started shipping auto manufacturing first to Canada and then to Mexico and beyond, what did Congress do to protrect the American auto worker? Nothing. Anybody seen a picture of Detroit lately. The American auto industry, just like the steel industry, the television manufacturing industry and many others are all the proof you need that capitalism does not work for that guy on the factory floor. It works real well however for about 1% of America.
“The American auto industry, just like the steel industry, the television manufacturing industry and many others are all the proof you need that capitalism does not work for that guy on the factory floor. It works real well however for about 1% of America.” Americans are simultaneously employees and consumers. As consumers they vote for government policies that enable them to purchase things cheaply. If we instituted protectionist policies the quality of American products would go down while the cost goes up. As others have said, the problem isn’t capitalism so much as a specific company, IBM, choosing to close itself down in such a way that they can blame it on expensive labor. The real problem may be that we just don’t need as much custom software as we think we need. Perhaps the custom software that IBM provides will be replaced by generalized cloud services from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.
Greed sucks, and now is dominate!!!!
Please don’t dial back. There’s very few places were we get the truth on IBM.
Martin, yes, IBM has announced yet another new mainframe but the trend of having a large mainframe (i.e., zEC12) and the smaller mainframe (zBC12) has been ongoing for over a decade and probably longer.
Neither of these current mainframes are to chase only the legacy business but to attempt to grab the Linux and cloud marketplaces by providing cost efficient consolidated server environments.
IBM’s customers are still running many legacy applications on the mainframes with the associated high profit margins but also are running Linux workloads with much lower profit margins.
While I disagree how IBM management is sucking the stockholders dry of their assets the mainframe is alive and well and servincing new markets.
IBM is investing but hasn’t been successful. On the organic side, IBM has one of the biggest patent portfolio. But the IP hasn’t translated into top line growth. Recent major organic efforts have been very disappointing: SmartCloud and Pure. Amazon winning at CIA? Even internal assessments said EC2 was superior to SmartCloud in terms of capabilities and price. At a product line management and technical leadership summit in Raleigh, Mr. Robert Leblanc called Pure his biggest flop. On the inorganic side, most acquired business failed to live up to unrealistic expectation. First, business plans must have “synergy revenue” to justify the premium required to outbid other suitors. Cognos once grew over 100% and it was still not good enough. Secondly, acquired capabilities often die a death of IBM complex process, financial controls and legal paranoia. A company wide task force had to be formed in order to save the SaaS roadmap 2015.
p.s. Robert, look for an email from me to bob@cringely.com
Gasp, you mean we spent $2B for Softlayer even though it only has $400M revenue was a bad decision?
Oh, That’s right they have 20K customers that we can foist unneeded IBM crap on and charge them for it.
Impressive revenue model!
Anyone remember the last cloud acquisition of Corio which became Applications on Demand? Swept it under the rug. Move along, nothing to see here.
Odd..those numbers are eerily similar to the numbers for HP’s acquisition of Autonomy. Not precisely, but about the same % of overpayment and the same order of magnitude. I don’t think HP is quite circling the toilet the way IBM is, but it’s certainly in a leaky sink itself.
I’m a retiree and heard trumpeting of the number of patents each year. The problem IBM has had since the Palmisano is believing that patent quantity has any relevance to quality. Many of the patents would likely be disallowed if challenged in court. In addition IBM has severe problems in actually utilizing those patents in products in the current risk adverse environment. Until IBM can get those patents into new and improved products they are really nothing more than Wall Street marketing hype.
Regarding the patent portfolio.
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An IBM CEO once joked — “good ideas do not come out of IBM research, they escape.” We can’t blame the gifted people who work in IBM research. The problem is IBM is managed by sales people. They simply do not understand or would appreciate a new idea for a product or service. They see things only in terms of what they can sell.
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Guess what? IBM is selling less every quarter. There is nothing in the product pipeline that would stir up a lot of new business. When you have nothing substantial in your product pipeline then you have to retain your existing customers and business. IBM isn’t doing this.
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Customers are an excellent source of information and ideas for new products and services. Guess what? IBM is not listening to them. IBM’s increasingly bad service is dominating their conversation with the customer.
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It is sad. IBM is truly managing by the numbers. Number of patents. Earnings per share. Increasing profit from existing businesses. Make those numbers better. Ignore the other numbers that warn you of future problems.
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It is sad.
If only IBM Research was as productive as they were 20 years ago – these days it’s just nothing more than a numbers game with little more than paper ideas being patented. The research @ IBM has all but disappeared with all the cuts to the labs. and continuous mismanagement. Seems the only “growth” division at IBM is Marketing (the Dept. Of Lies and Propaganda) – they after all have to “try” and peddle ice to the Eskimos and very skeptical and wary Eskimos at that…………..But it is interesting to notice that Band 10 and higher level employees have just been moved around and reassigned since the July 12 cuts, but few if any layoffs to them. Seen that in lots of places in IBM – the clueless and do nothing management just divide and hide, but the productive employees get poor reviews and the axe. At some point, you get what’s coming to you Big Blue Thought Retards – payback !
You are hitting the nail on the head from an outsider looking in. Most people come to work not knowing if they will have a job in the near future – morale in the toilet.
Pleaae don’t dial back on your assesments of IBM, you speak what some of us feel. Shit on the rank and file , reap the rewards they have afforded you – that has been the motto since four fingered Lou ran off with our pension. Our own fault though, we sit and take it and wait for the next blow, hoping its not a direct hit.
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!
Bob, Lord knows, God knows, your commentary hits the nail on the head. This is a very sad story at IBM…My sympathy goes out to all the honest, decent, high morale, righteous, hard working and professional IBMers who have been laid off by the many thousands over many recent years in the US and other countries due to NO fault of their own. All in order to make profit numbers for Wall Street and keep the stock elevated. This financial process/engineering model is just about out of gas, based on how the revenue keeps getting worse and worse and worse.
Once one gets their head around the fact that IBM has decided to become Wall Street’s bitch rather than actually making new things that businesses want to buy, everything makes sense. As long as the EPS hits the target, Wall Street doesn’t care what happens long term. That’s the fundamental problem. No one cares about the long term any more nor do they care about how the results are achieved. The stock market is full of folks who want to be rich this quarter, not 10 years from now. Those in the know will ditch their stock and walk away with millions. The only time people will care is when it all finally blows up (Enron, Mortgage/banking melt down are good examples). The current mode of operation is simply not sustainable over the long term.
The only thing that matters is EPS. $20 EPS for 2015.
The hardware people at IBM, at least the ones I know, realize full well that hardware is a dying cash cow business at IBM. They are intelligent people, and besides management has said exactly that, in addition to selling PC business, Printer business, Disk drive business, etc etc.
That, and squeezing the employees started under Gerstner who was dealing with the absolutely idiotic management of John Akers and some of his predecessors.
Watching Ginni give her “new values” pitch to employees. I suddenly had a flashback, she looked and sounded like a female version of Max Headroom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYdpOjletnc
What does this mean to IBM’s customers?
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A large number of the people in the USA doing support and managing projects are contractors. In many parts of the world IBM’s customers get ‘okay’ service from its global centers (India, etc). In the USA the service is not so good because it is in the middle of the night in India. The best people don’t work that shift. This cost cutting action will shift more work off shore, and sadly it won’t be done as well.
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I want to be clear and fair here. There are many great people working in India. The USA perception of their support is really a factor of time zones. Lets be honest — if I was working the graveyard shift my work probably wouldn’t be as good. If IBM served its USA customers from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, or even Ireland the time zones would be closer, people would be more awake and more alert, and …
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As IBM squeezes its budgets and people, the work has to go somewhere. It goes to the cheaper labor and things suffer. In the end the customer is the biggest loser. They don’t get a price break when IBM swaps bodies on their account and projects.
LeBlanc was right about Pure being a big flop. I left IBM a couple years ago after watching the leadership morph into a bunch of MBA cronies who spent most of their time building spreadsheets of the next wave of layoffs. It was rather sickening. But the flop of Pure can be traced back to how this sad leadership gang viewed I/T skills (or lack thereof.) Since they had no technical skills to speak of, and surely didn’t understand the technology of the day, they never understood what it takes to be a good I/T practitioner with the ability to support commercial customer portfolios in a meaningful and value-based fashion. Their thought has been for quite some time ‘we can just pull any schmoe off the sidewalk, give them a two week cursory training class, and they will be just fine for the job.’ Unfortunately you know how that ends. With Pure, they are trying to sell appliances that ‘run themselves’ and to you customer, ‘you can just get rid of your expensive technical folks LIKE WE DID. Doing so will save you lots of money, ha, ha, ha.’ Thankfully most savvy customer understand the value a strong technical I/T team brings to the table and how critical they are to the business. This brings me to something I learned recently from a business partner. A company bought some IBM gear and to reward them, IBM gave them a PURE machine. Customer didn’t want it but IBM insisted. What happened? That PURE machine is sitting in the corner, powered off. Customer’s angle ‘I have the technology I want and the team in place to support it, I don’t want your appliance that YOU say will save my world and my bottom line.’ Therein lies the PURE flop and my guess is this same dynamic is occurring in many shops across the land.
Bob, as you usual you are spot on ! Can’t wait for the crash to happen soon enough…can you say 1 – 3 – 9 ? and illustrate that please on a Powerpoint slideshow to fawning comments from India and elsewhere ??
I’ve been seeing that 1-3-9 nonsense in various emails. What the heck is it?
On a separate note, this how dead-serious lay offs are so that ‘numbers’ are made. Certain areas of the business need more employees. Some of the RA’d people have those skills. Upper human resource personnel in GBS WOULD NOT REMOVE THEIR NAMES FROM THE LIST. They had to laid off and then if they wanted to, reapply externally. This how toxic IBM has become.
The decision wasn’t even coming from those high level HR execs in GBS (I could name names but I won’t) it was coming from above them – Armonk.
So, many important decisions are made by a VERY few people in IBM, and no one underneath that precious few stand up and says No.
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“…1-3-9 nonsense… What the heck is it?” Upon googling it, I would guess it’s either an exponential series based on “3” or maybe a biblical reference. IBM’s problems have been growing exponentially and they don’t have a prayer.
1-3-9 is basically a bunch of slogans and stories:
The slogans are thus: All IBM’ers have:
ONE Purpose – To delight the customer
THREE Values – Dedication to every client’s success; Innovation that matters; Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.
NINE Practices – Put the client first; Envision future; Share expertise; Restlessly reinvent; Dare to create new ideas; Treasure wild ducks; Think-prepare-rehearse; Unite to to get it done now; Show personal interest
Then to inspire IBM’ers, there’s a bunch of apparently submitted stories that demonstrate the above values. Most of these stories are reminiscent of melodramas you find in Reader’s Digest or TV shows. They all begin like: “John Smith was a 37-year old IBM’er having coffee on a rainy Monday morning when he got a phone call…” or “For the last twenty years, Mary Jacobs has believed in one thing – there was a solution to (some) problem”.
Then the stories go on to tell tales about how there was this time when an IBM team saved lives in a hurricane, how a client was in deep shit and IBM team saved the day, how US Postal Service still lives because of IBM, how IBM is helping the DEA wage war against drugs, how IBM teams are making a difference from rainforests in Borneo to primitive cultures in Africa. etc etc.
Vampires may have taken control of IBM but their tales are definitely not being chronicled by Bram Stoker or Anne Rice.
A real pity those 1 -3 – 9 stories don’t talk about all the failures and losses of some good multi-million dollar projects thanks to the ineptitude of those Executive PMs in GBS, GTS and elsewhere in IBM. Wall Street does “get it” get on some level that Ginni and her “extreme leverage” management can’t sustain the lies and BS that are provided gratis by “money boy” Loughridge every time he opens his mouth. That’s why the stock price hasn’t been doing the wild thing and pushing $200+ after the Q2 2013 results announcements. But hope springs eternal in the breasts of the inept, corrupt, idiotic and foolhardy. BTW, Ginni’s been selling her stock on the quiet since the beginning of 2013, so that does speak volumes of her confidence and faith in IBM as chief executive of the company. Goldman Sachs may yet have the last laugh on their recent assessment too -it’s probably closer to the truth that they know. Good ‘ol Sam Palmisano ran off with as much money and treasure as he could carry with him……..and he’s not even in the grave yet ! But yet he returns to ask for more blood, sacrifice and perks (can’t ignore those !)………….maybe he should go after wild ducks next ??? It would make for slimmer pickings and be more appropriate to a “vampyre-emeritus”.
I don’t fault any company from focusing on its losses. But, a good sell point for IBM is 200. I anticipate IBM will be stuck between 200 and 205 until is drops dramatically. Investors likely have until 2015 to dump their shares. A company like IBM will not commit numbers that it cannot make. And it will do anything, including firing every last employee, to make those 2015 numbers. After that, well… We’ll see. The apocalypse or rapture isn’t out of the question for IBM. If you are religious, I wouldn’t think the execs will be heading north though, but the people pounding out the products and doing everything they can to do the right thing will be saved.
‘The people pounding out the products and doing everything they can to do the right thing will be saved.”
What an interesting hallucination.
Tell it to these guys: https://www.endicottalliance.org/jobcutsreports.php
Right you are Bill. the 2015 numbers are not unattainable. BUT, they might come only with extreme action by IBM management, including massive and crippling layoffs. Mark my words, though, IBM will do ANYTHING, including wrecking its prospects, to make the 2015 numbers. Then I predict Ginni and the rest of her cohort will ride off into the sunset with their just rewards and let somebody else pick up the pieces.
How about a big/medium sized potential client put up a project for bid, and invite IBM in and give them a full grilling to expose how incompetent IBM is? Perhaps if the sales side got some pushback, this might effect change.
Amazon did
Excellent essays on IBM as always. For me, a former IBMer from the Akers train wreck through a business partner, the most telling failure of IBM of late is when it lost the contract to build and maintain a data center in Texas. WTF? A data center is what IBM SHOULD DO WELL, above anything else. Servers, big racks, complex connections, wiring and careful management. They COULD NOT DO EVEN THAT which for IBM is like a stock trader not being able to find which city Wall Street is in. Incredible. Add to that the other service losses such as Amgen, Service Master, AstraZeneca, Disney among others and you have a firm that has lost the vision of old Watson Sr. and Jr. It is a train wreck yes, but an incredible statement on American management and the IT industry in general.
Outstanding article Bob. It’s nice to see someone take off the kid gloves and really deliver a punch. Your article rings true to those caught up in the latest RA Road Map 2015 debacle.
IBM seems to be a bit of a hobby horse but I’d like Bob to post similar analyses of Apple and Google’s financials?
You’re objective and you rock but I am requesting similar posts about tech companies… Even Nokia?
Thanks
Martin
What IBM is doing is only a symptom of a much bigger problem, a very sick world economy. Could IBM have gotten away with treating employees this badly in the 50s or 60s? When the economy is booming, companies compete for the best talent. In a stagnant economy, companies use college educated people as receptionists. Employees become “human resources” instead of people. They’re a comoditized raw material, purchased at the lowest price.
Think.
Hey Bob, the last five posts are out of order:
July 28, 2013 at 12:15 pm
July 29, 2013 at 6:46 am
July 29, 2013 at 10:43 am
July 27, 2013 at 11:10 pm
July 28, 2013 at 4:32 am
This type of problem, and others, never happened 1997 to 2012. Something changed this year, and although there have been significant improvements, we are not quite back to the previous level of perfection where everything just worked so well we all took it for granted.
OK it looks like new posts are just being listed above the last two posts on the page instead of below them.
As an newly Xed IBM employee that got caught up in the last wave of ‘moneyball” this month, I appreciate your words and your watch. It stopped being about people a long time ago, the thing I wonder is why customers are not screaming? Just like you said about Wall Street not caring about the actual vampire strategy, until customers stop buying services and products, why would anything change? If I give my dog a bone whenever she does something I don’t approve of (cut people = increase stock price), she will just keep doing the negative behavior – thus goes IBM. Thanks for your continued rants. Keep them coming. (Just a side note – the one thing I loved about IBM over my 18 years with them was the people. They were the greatest asset the company had. With people being sold off every quarter, after Ginni reaches her 2015 $$ targets, it will be very interesting….)
Well, anyone who has been to the 1-3-9 site should listen to that short video where Ginny mentions using the new and improved mantras to “save the company”. So she must know that things could be fast moving to a “tipping point”….heard some interesting stuff about things about STG and time off, but that’s another story……
Bob, this is all interesting, but a little repetitive. I’d like to know what customers are doing. Or rather, if everything is so bad WHY DO THEY HAVE CUSTOMERS LEFT?
Also, is there something new being invested in? It’s not really gutting the company if the dying parts are being milked to invest in something that has a brighter future. I guess I’m saying I’d like more balanced coverage, rather than just following the sad state of US employment.
“invest in something that has a brighter future” I think Bob’s point and that of others responding, is that they are cutting costs to pay dividends to stock holders and pay management. Nothing is being reinvested in the future of the company.
I was part of the last round of RAs after working for 12 years with IBM. I held different roles within IBM as I was always on the lookout for new challenges. My PBCs were mostly 2+ and a few 2s but I felt I was supposed to be getting many 1 but politics were in play. I accepted that. But last year, I got sick. I had to be spend many days at ICU. I recovered but had to change my life style. I had to avoid long travels and middle of the night crit sits to avoid any extremes on my blood pressure. Due to this, I was tagged as an underperformer and got a 3 on my PBC. When I heard of the plan to execute an RA earlier this year, I knew for sure I will be part of it. And surely, they did.
As I have said, I held many roles in IBM and was explosed to different technologies both from organic development and from acquired companies. I thought that would be a value to IBM and will give me another chance to recover from my health issues i suffered last year. I guess I was naive.
If I can advice any young new graduate who is considering working for IBM, please do not apply. You can learn more and have security from other companies. Look for other companies where they value employees.
As for the investors who are looking forward to 20 EPS, even if IBM reaches that EPS, what will happen next? How much cost cutting can this company take?
“…what will happen next…” What’s to stop them from firing everyone and selling the land, buildings, and equipment to others; then hiring a cpa to count the money and file the last return? 20 EPS in one quarter when they sell their remaining stock and 0 EPS the next.
Thank you for this article. There was a time, a few years back, when there were employees at IBM who felt entitled. Those employees have either accepted reality or are gone. The recent “strategy” under Rometty is unlike anything I have seen. Certainly, in a large organization, there are always a couple of low hanging fruit that can be cut. But today, at IBM, that no longer exists. Corporate mandates are coming down and managers are forced to break the least important thing. PhD researchers are cut. Brilliant engineers are being cut. Every employee reporting to a first line manager is subject to get cut, and there is nothing that he or she can do about it. The strategy is clear, fire employees in the US/Europe and grow in China and India and eventually Africa. But, there is a big problem. China and India don’t have the depth of knowledge to create industrial strength products. Just look at the research and innovation produced from these countries — a lot lack of academic integrity and plagiarism. While they are ambitious and “smart” they lack expertise and innovation. To make it worse, when a top notch employee gets up to speed (speaking generally) in China or India, they jump ship and move to another company to make more money. Many IBM employees in these countries complain about working conditions and salary.
The IBM strategy is extremely risky. Cringely has made a number of points in his articles that are accurate. The bottom line is when employees are not properly compensated/rewarded for work and they have no job security, no significant benefits, they will do the absolute minimum to get by or move on. This has been observed in many cases within IBM. Very good, dedicated people have had their hearts ripped out. When the next headhunter comes along with an offer, many of the top-notch people will leave.
From what I can tell, the top execs don’t care. Rometty doesn’t care, or doesn’t know. It is a huge mess. There are still some of the smartest people in industry working at IBM. But, they will be gone in the next five years because of retirement and there isn’t anyone to replace them. They are hanging around to finish their career. At that point, IBM will turn to China and India. They will realize that they have essentially become a start-up with unqualified smart college hires. The brand will quickly disintegrate. Good luck running a critical business on software designed by inexperienced programmers and engineers. While a person may be good at math, science, and school, the real world is VERY different and chaotic.
I predict we’ll see banks, insurance companies, governments, etc jump ship from IBM and the stock will drop dramatically. A company is only as good as its people. IBM once knew that, but… It has forgotten this. The result will be an interesting case study. Any IBM employee who isn’t ready to jump ship tomorrow is ignorant. I wish this company the best. But, I fear the worse. Good luck IBM. We all have to take a positive view. When IBM fails, other companies need to learn from their mistakes. Engineering employees are the key to success. Executives are a dime a dozen.
I gave my heart and soul to IBM for 13 years and they ripped my heart out in 2012. I am one of those dedicated bright people you mention with over 20 years of IT experience that IBM didn’t value. When I received that call from an exec telling me that my skillset was no longer needed, I felt that dagger very painfully in my heart. I actually said to him, “Do you realize how busy I am, how much work I have to do? My team needs me.” He was oblivious to what I did on a daily basis. He had no idea how much my first line valued me. He didn’t know that he was leaving my team in a terrible position. I’m sure he didn’t read all of my reviews that stated what a top performer I was, how much I always went above and beyond, and how appreciated I was. I am obviously still very bitter because I planned to retire with IBM and they kicked me out the door. I also watched this happen to many other bright dedicated people that leaves you shaking your head as to why IBM could let them go. I am so saddened at what this company has turned into. I would never recommend to any college graduate that they consider working for IBM. It is nothing of the company it used to be. Employees are dispensable in this company, even the great ones.
I was there years ago with more than 12 years too. I work at a competitor who is changing the game. Based on our success, I’ve already cost IBM more than the remaining years of my salary to 30 years of service and 25 years of pension. They should have just paid me that as part of the RA to stay out of the industry. Too bad. Now I am well paid, great company, etc…
extremely well said – you are spot on.
A whole team of worker bees were let go in the US effective 7/31. Their jobs moved to Costa Rica.
The ENTIRE management chain was left intact. NOT ONE manager was laid off. It’s been said many times that the company is top heavy with management and executives. So, we have managers left in their jobs that manage 2-3 people.
The company is doing a slow implode.
Where is Ginny? She’s like Waldo.
Yep, pretty much all of GBS management survived the last round of cuts, even those who were moved around (can you say “playing musical chairs on the deck of the sinking Titanic” ??) no longer have ANY direct reports. What are they doing ?? nothing other than “talking business” and running to meetings, collecting big paychecks, but there are few new business deals……and Ginni fiddles on !
Let me add some interesting point here:
I was told by still current people inside the company (at least within my former place) people have been hired not only to fill the already left workplaces but to maximize the current numbers. There is no extension of the buildings in sight but there have been layoffs already been performed, also within the experts of some areas, because of their high income (compared to the US pays those incomes are miniatures). PBC 3 people are often let go, the management is just looking for a reason doing so, including the bad mood the fluctuation is very high. When I visited the place after 4 months I didn’t recognize 75-80% of the people. Also I was told, that some were escorted out; such never happened except for a few times during the ~15 years I have spent there.
But back to the point of new hires: The place got so full, that right now not one, but there are two people are sitting at one desk. (a plain desk is around 120 cm wide) No cost-planning for the extension of the buildings either; they let jobs flow in from all the areas where they could get jobs from, even it’s 0,2 FTE jobs, the main thing is to aquire as much as possible. Why is this dangerous and a warning sign? The PBC has lost it’s last values, now it’s not about the people anymore (like it ever was), it is just a paper, a reason to let you go. Also, because of these fluctuations there are almost none, who can teach the new hires for the job, as lay-offs mostly affect those countries, where the jobs have been flowing in from. This means enormous pressure on the new people, highly strict rules, no space for self-improvement nor any future vision. Quality of the work of course none, it’s impossible to provide any quality under such circumstances, making failure easily possible.
Considering the fact, that so many new people have been hired it means, that my former place is trying to survive. This wouldn’t be a huge surprise, but would mean the closure of one of the IDC-s. I think the signs speak for themselves. I have been told, that there have been a layoff of 1900 people within Delivery just within the UK only. All the people I used to work with and spend endless times with are almost all outside IBM (at least my British colleagues). And I am not even sure how many got rid off from SWG. And the end of these lay-offs? Nowhere to be seen…
Just been made aware of your website. Us ex-IBMers as we are now have exactly the same experience. And we thought it was just IBM in the USA wanted to shut down the UK arm!! All us onsite support engineers and some of our immediate managers have all been sold to another IT company in December 2012, and yet we are doing the same jobs now as contractors. Creative accounting methinks if this is some way of cutting costs.
Will the captain go down with the ship?
“…we are doing the same jobs now as contractors…” Perhaps that saves IBM money since contractors are responsible for their own benefits?
All you frustrated CEO’s with a better idea. Your hindsight is exceptional. I remember when it was fashionable to support our execs. Bitching and complaining is the new normal. If IBM leadership is so bad and you have a better way, leave and become a huge success.
Met an Ex-IBMer’s spouse on travel. IBMer was promoted and transferred and let go in cuts in a matter of months. So they appear to be frantically spinning whoever is left inside and ejecting to meet cut targets. Meanwhile, are they likely to spin off SPSS or tank it with them?
Just got the news that IBM is requiring mandatory 1 week furloughs at the end of August/beginning of September with 33% pay. If you take vacation instead of furlough you get 0 pay. Just another last gasp of a dying company.
Your comment about ditching hardware in favor of software and services is funny because IBM software is some of the worst in the industry. The only thing they have that is worth a crap is their large scale storage systems and, of course, they have to competition in the mainframe market. As far as services, nobody with half a brain would consult with a company that doesn’t even know hoe to keep it’s own house in order.
Why would anyone take vacation over furlough; either way they are off from work son why turn down the 33% pay? Also, aren’t they misusing the term “vacation” since vacations are fully paid? If you’re not paid it’s called “laid off”.
BREAKING NEWS… IBM STG, ISC divisions furloughing workers for 1 week – choice of last week of August or first week of September – 33% of pay for furloughed week – mandatory for those divisions. Who knows what other divisions will follow?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report-ibm-to-furlough-most-of-its-u-s-hardware-staff-in-late-august/
The ironic thing is they are only doing this for the US employees, employees in other countries on the same project are not going to be forced to furlough days. I don’t know if IBM can make their 2015 numbers as the competent workers continue to leave.
G’day,
I’ve enjoyed reading the article and your comments and thought I’d add something from our perspective. I had a brief stint at IBM in 2006 and enjoyed it very much. Management seemed to have a tight grip of the reigns and we all felt loved. I went somewhere else and re-joined early 2012 and haven’t things changed!
This company brags that it saved AU$1M by not providing Tea and Coffee at head office, does this happen anywhere else? By my estimate, it cost IBM AU$20M in lost productivity owing to the employee resentment it fostered…..prove me wrong. I’m sure the Accountants know best.
This company terminates contractors by simply sending them an email and gives no consideration to whether or not their contract is actually still current. This is, at best immoral and, at worst illegal. I heard a story of a UK IBMer who wanted to move down here. IBM offered him a 12 month contract and, after he’d shipped his wife, kids and all they owned to their new home, his contract was terminated….before it had started.
This company will very soon no longer be able to employ anyone, the industry here is fairly small and the word is getting around. The once revered IBM name is now toxic. Many contractors ( & FTEs) have lost their jobs in recent months. So enthusiastic were the layoffs that IBM actually fired critical people who were key to some very important projects. IBM acknowledged their error when the financial penalties associated with not delivering the projects on time were pointed out to them and the key employees were “unfired”. This company doesn’t seem to have a process for firing people effectively.
This company has treated it customers with such contempt and relations have become so poisonous with some of them that IBM is having legal battles with some large Australian companies. Other customers have not resorted to legal action but, rather, have opted for the good old fashioned “pack up your shit and GTF outta here”. lol
My time left with IBM is short and I’m saddened by what I see going on inside big blue, thanks for providing a forum to vent.
It’s a shame IBM has lost it’s way. Back in the day, IBM was a great company to work for in the 80’s and 90’s. I know, I was there. Like tigers eat their young, IBM has adopted the same account management strategy of the Titanic. Those remaining at their posts are dedicated and trapped employees or kids. Those dedicated IBM employees are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. IBM most knowledgeable and talented remain on deck singing, look what they’ve done to IBM, Mom. Look what they’ve done to the …’ Older IBMers are trapped and work 12 to 14 hour days to keep their jobs. These folks are running the engine and keeping the lights on. Running, for who? Management’s Golden Parachutes. In any job, you miss the people not the job. When you joined IBM back in my day, it was a career, not just a job. Those were the days. Great leadership and a clear path created by competent technical engineers staff. IBM crushed the competition.
Now IBM is a shell, and hiring practices are lose one old techie and replace it with two college kids that know nothing and bring nothing to the party.
It’s really sad.
Bob, your comment:
“IBM simply doesn’t give a damn about its people.” Hits the nail on the head. I am a former IBMer of 20 years and this company has sunk to it lowest. I never would have imagined IBM treating its people the way they do. Horrible. IBM’s greed to drive up the EPS and stock price has left its employees and customers behind.
Even at the emerging markets they refuse to pay benefits, people are treated like sh**. In Latin America you’re just a number and if your country rate increase then you’re toasted to a chinese. God IBM is outsourcing the outsource!! Really! Argentina and Brazil fares are high so move them to central america, india and china is just too complicated as they don’t stay too much to suffer. I’ve heard people that was RA’ed and got a proposal to stay as contractor to get paid 40% less! Come on this company has lost its way, no wonder why competition is killing it!
I guess I am somewhat mystified by the surprise at all this. I bailed as AT&T sold its IT into slavery in ’94, went government, got a nice pension and a seat on the sidelines. I’m here because I’m researching the process, about to start at Microsoft. But contrary to what some of you think, IBM in the old days was not a good provider. As a customer I watched them manipulate VSAM to try and destroy BMC, spent lots of time training with Amdahl, ask about inter-system communications at the DB2 roll-out and got told ‘if god wanted man to have distributed processing he would have put brains in his elbows’. In 1998 I converted my state agency to Oracle on Solaris, and my elbows worked just fine.
In IBM Australia they are asking employees (at least in my line of business) to ‘please’ start portioning their leave across the quarters. This isn’t an edict as it’s pretty much against the workplace laws, but I can see them making a big deal about it. We already cannot carry more than a couple of days into the next year. They ask for your leave plans at the start of the calendar year and then during the year start this stupid process of please take leave before end Q2, etc. With rostered oncall in small teams I’ve done support over Christmas and NY for two out of the last three years (and you do get called).
As a long term employee things are grim. I’m at the coalface in a support/implementation area. I really don’t know, understand or (now) care what is going on. There were a lot of lazy/stupid people who worked in IBM, and most of these people (and some very valuable staff who pushed for it) have been made redundant. We are as a local saying goes “Down to the bones of our arse” – a lot of teams are struggling to meet SLA’s. Other than the Global Delivery guys in India/China, most people now are technically competent and able to motivate themselves to do their jobs well. The GD guys are poorly trained, lack common sense, lazy and inept. They pretty much want the Aussie guys to do the heavy lifting for them. They often act without thought causing customer outages by doing reckless/thoughtless things.
What I see daily is emails about this person and that person being made Exec for blah, blah. They have hundreds of initiatives running for this and that – which I could care less about as I just want to do my job (which I do well). The layers of management are huge and there are lots of ‘managers’ who don’t manage anyone (in fact with a lot of them I wonder what they do). I see a corporation in crisis (I’ve been there before elsewhere when the place almost went under). It’s bad and we are being lead by clowns. I wonder how long IBM can survive in this mode.
Wow what a torrent of discontent! I am an Australian ex IBM employee (IT Architect). I put up my hand for redundancy, but was surprised and happy, when my request was met. Having recently attained the IBM “Expert” certification level in architecture and PBC1, 2 and 2+ ratings for most of my career I was left wondering what IBM Management actually values in their employees. IBM is definitely suffering from absurd levels of cost cutting, and from the sociopaths and psychopaths have risen to the top levels of management. It is their greed and lack of moral conscience that is surely causing this discontent.
Every comment here is dead-on …. IBM truly doesn’t give a damn about their employees.
I constantly get the highest rating possible from the company I am on a SOW to (Statement Of Work) – and my reward from IBM is 2’s and 3’s. There’s always some excuse. Now they tell me I have to move around from project to project to get a good rating…. but my contractor has retained me on my current project for 5 years now, while letting other IBM’ers go, as I was their top performer. Now I hear those others are getting 2+ ratings… because they’ve moved around. What a joke.
Bob, PLEASE do not dial it back. If anything, this story needs to be out front to the American public. Contact Lou Dobbs or someone with a wide media platform and do an in-depth expose’ on IBM practices, and outsourcing in general. This particular telecom company recently announced another wave of layoffs and replaced the production support and ST people with folks from India that don’t even know how to use vi (unix editor) – or can’t even echo an env var from the cmd prompt. I meant I’m not sure many of them every saw a computer in their life before a few weeks ago……… and then every time I turn on the news I hear how “companies need to look overseas because there aren’t enough skilled and qualified IT professionals in the US to fill their needs”….. well what about all the hundreds of thousands of VERY skilled and capable folks working at WalMart now because they’ve been layed off and their jobs shipped to India?????
I’m willing to bet a year’s salary that a huge chunk of the Obamacare website development and/or testing was done in India……….. first thing that came to mind when it began to crash. I know because I see it every day.
IBM is indeed eating itself from the inside all with just one aim in mind the already mentioned $20 EPS for 2015. It’s a target that they are likely to miss, but will chase it with a manic passion even if it means taking IBM to the point of ‘no return’. Skills are being eroded at an ever increasing rate (a pattern that has been on-going for more than 10 years now), with education continually slammed. The end result is a dumbed down technical workforce that is now less capable of supporting customers. Shipping to poor level skill areas, where language is a HUGE issue, so much so that now conference calls are no longer the preferred – by IBM tech teams – it is now eMail or messaging. The top level execs are ‘raping’ the company for ‘more of the same’ that Sam P walked away with …… $127 million. The profits are only showing as ‘up’ because they are eating the flesh from within, but that flesh is getting nearer and nearer to the bone. My fear is that an irreversible disaster is about to strike IBM, a company that used to be a proud institution where care for the employee mattered
Welcome to reality of capitalism, that is imposed so happily to third-world ever since WW2 ended. It is just that you, normal American people, finally meet it. Yes, only 1% of people will strive, rest 99% will eat dust. And that 1% is wrong, immoral and rotten to the core. IBM is coming to its end for last ten years… It is just only now became obvious.
Modern capitalistic system is also coming to its end. Because it, just like IBM, eaten itself from inside so that 1% of people can get their constant “growth”. And unless whole capitalistic system finds another fish to eat (which is unlikely, because there isn’t any in the world any more), sh*t is about to hit the fan… not just for IBM… for everybody, everywhere.
Current situation pretty much replicates situation in Roman Empire in 200 A.D. We all know what followed…
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I stumbled upon this thread and read all the comments with enlightening despair.
I worked for IBM as a student for a year in 1988 and returned to OS390 / z/OS in 1997. I work for a major financial company in Germany and lament regularly with my peers about the lack of and quality of replacements.
The assembler gurus are now retiring – so the company bans the use of assembler. My (COBOL) generation is practically (at 50) too old to be effectively replaced – the generation of 30 somethings, raised on dedicated PCs, which have been hired to do application programming work know no assembler (z/OS or otherwise), refuse to look at COBOL, create dire JCL, have no concept of parallel processing, optimised coding and mainframe programming generally can, however, philosphise for hours on end with anyone who cares to listen, on how to create a perfect solution, but are not capable of programming a simple prototype, and are usually highly unmotivated as mainframe developers and wish to move on, as quickly as possible, to other, hip, IT areas.
After many discussions, we concluded that IBMs overly strict licensing policy was part of the problem – the younger generation expects to be able to download and trial operating systems, programming languages etc. for free. IBM expects entities to pay (extortionent) prices in order to have access to (effectively from the point of view of a younger generation) a more than outdated, boring piece of kit.
Furthermore, the company where I work is being monkey-hammered by IBMs z/OS pricing policy. Great efforts are currently being made to spread the MSU batch load, in order to reduce the MSU peak and, in the department where I am active, we have pioneered the integration of LINUX based systems which remove the loads from the z/OS machines completely.
Neither I nor my colleagues could understand why IBM didn’t offer simple systems to a new generation, in order for at least a few of them to gain interest. Neither could we understand IBM’s hard stance on pricing which is, effectively, driving the enterprise to migrate to different hard and software.
And then came Snowden’s NSA revelations.
With respect to this blog, IBM is, of course, pressing the last blood out of the stone with no regard for the long term good of the company. They are relentlessly milking the blue-chip companies but to such an extent, that the source will dry up.
Assuming I, as one of the youngest z/OS application developers, make it healthily to early retirement, then in seven years there will be no-one, in a company of 500+ developers, with the skills to maintain the z/OS applications which are supporting over 400 banks. There is (hardly) anyone filling the ranks of those about to retire.
The enterprises are already pared to the bone, and will be unable to hire and train so many effective replacements.
When I consider the options and the time frame, I can only come to the conclusion. Excretion and wildy spinning fan.
Well, management have already told us, 2nd Qtr was a total disaster, so get ready for another round of RA’s.
Meanwhile, we are working our absolute butt off, and feel we are getting absolutely nowhere, like a mouse on a wheel, round and round we go. There simply are not enough staff, to satisfy demand.
It has gotten to the point, where you are trying to do 3 crucial things on customer machines, at the same time. Meanwhile, the CEO goes on and on about cloud, while their mainstream clients, go bellyup in disgust with service levels and SLA’s.
They are sacrificing a multi-billion dollar company on vaporised water!
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