Probably not as bad as Cringley said, but even half is a massacre
As the person who posted this "Don't consider it impossible
Posted Saturday 5th May 2007 00:57 GMT " said, I also generally don't make it a habit of posting anonymously on sites... but after spending my adult life so far at IBM (the entire time, in IGS), since before I could even vote, I also need to hide my identity in this case.
I have a very hard time believing that 100k jobs could be offshored, outsourced, or outright eliminated in the next 7 months. But I do think that it's going to be way worse than IBM is making it out to be. They wouldn't have an incredibly scary acronym (LEAN) all ready to go if it was only 1,300 jobs on the line. 1,300 is nothing to a company with 350,000. I'd venture to say that half of the people I've worked with in a significant capacity over the years have already received pink slips. Luckily, so far no one I currently work directly with has.
IGS is undoubtedly bloated, and undoubtedly mismanaged. Our contract bidding process is a joke. There's no sense of direction. And (for IBM as a whole) Sammyboy just keeps selling off divisions, for good and bad reasons. It's hard to have faith in a company like that. Yet we still do. Sure, we go to work every day, we make fun of the company, make fun of how badly organized it is - but whether we've been there 5, 10, 20, or 45 years none of us have ever seriously considered voluntarily leaving.
With employees that dedicated despite being in constant fear of their jobs - and I'm certainly not saying everyone is dedicated, but there is a large amount... and in what company do you ever find only dedicated employees - how do you then toss out the employees? More to the point, how do you manage to screw up so badly when your employees are trying so hard?
I've never figured out the answers to these questions... and I would be almost surprised if am not laid off fairly soon, as my current project was canceled a couple weeks ago... but I still love the company, still love being an IBM employee, and still will not voluntarily leave.