From what I understand; They are getting rid of employees in low performing areas and hiring in growth areas like CAMMS (cloud, analytics, mobile, social, and security) and Watson.
If you are a bona fide revenue- and profit-machine rock star, IBM makes it rain for you, because you're drenching them in a Biblical deluge. Beyond that, the compensation cliff drops steeply indeed, though it really is no different than many other companies, and arguably substantively better than the people engaging in "share the scraps"-style employment Robert Reich characterized recently. In the darkest weeks of Apple, I've read of worse treatment of employees in some departments. No company is immune to human nature, especially a company under more pressure than it is used to. I've seen better, I've seen worse; IBM gets buckets of ink no matter what it does so all perceptions are magnified, and it takes time to percolate to the reality.
A lot of comments I've read around the Net from RA'd IBM'ers alluded to an enormous executive management push last year to get employees retrained into the CAMS (Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, Security and Social) areas, but that didn't seem to really have much uptake. So I wonder if this RA is a doubling down by the executive team on the focus into CAMS, with the intent that the focus will turn out to be similar to the tectonic turnaround shift Gerstner made to embrace services (the attendant employment losses at the time were bitterly criticized).
fwiw, they did a great job taking care of me and some other heavy hitters while I was there. Regular bonuses, very very nice salaries, and it was predictable. I worked on products though, not services, and our product made money.
honestly, I don't know what 400,000 IBMers work on. Every company of a certain size and age does layoffs. You could ask the same question of Apple or Microsoft and at some point Google too.
If you are at that level you could become an IBM Distinguished Engineer. Basically at IBM you don't have to move to business to make it to a very high level. You can remain an engineer and keep doing the work you like and are best at. We were acquired. Founders earned millions. One of them still works for IBM as a DE.
Why not transfer employees from the unperformant areas to trending ones?
I see this with our US had office too; they let people go when a project ends and then rehire them two weeks later in another department. Whereas in the UK office staff are shifted around to fill needs.
They want to cut some fat and they have a lot of fat to cut. Many of these people have skills that are outdated and they have not kept up with the times. Are you going to take someone from a hardware group and just throw them into a software position? A handful might be able to make the move but most are going to be useless.
