Your old pal Deep Throat here again. I’d like to explain the title to this short memo, and a hot topic for me personally.
Recently IBM posted this:
"In 2020, the company achieved its goal of hiring 2,000 veterans, 11 months in advance of plan."
This is IBM speaking out of both sides of it's mouth, and the reason for this short post.
After the election of 2016, Rometty wanted to prove to the new administration that she was going to deliver jobs for Americans. (Her na--d political ambition is a whole other story). You may recall she sat next to Trump at one of his Job/Tech summits. It was shortly after this that IBM put out the following statement:
“WASHINGTON, March 17, 2017/PRNewswire/ --IBM (NYSE: IBM), America's largest technology employer, today announced it will hire 2,000 U.S. veterans over the next four years. These positions are part of the company's broader pledge to hire 25,000 U.S. workers through 2020, and many are "new collar jobs" that do not always require a four-year college degree.”
“"The men and women who have served in our country's armed forces have unique talents and skill sets that make them a natural fit for some of the technology industry's most exciting fields," said Diane Gherson, IBM's Senior Vice President of Human Resources.“
You might be saying, what’s wrong with this DT? Of course nothing is wrong with this. All this is well and good. Companies make announcements like this all the time. However, few companies publicly beat the drum that they will hire a very specific target of employees over a very specific period of time, while in the same moment laying off members of the very group they claim to support.
Let me prove my point.
Within a few months of IBM putting out this statement, I received a ST ping from a friend of mine down in the trenches. A Band 10, a highly experienced sales person who informed me they were being laid off. We know this is happening all the time, but you have one guess what 10’s previous job was before coming to IBM. Yup, that's correct; a veteran. A Marine to be specific. (10 pointed out to me that I shouldn’t really say an “ex-Marine,” as, “Once you're a Marine, you’re always a Marine.” Who am I to disagree).
Anyway, it was the utter hypocrisy of Rometty stating that IBM would specifically support a sector of the US population, while on the other hand she was laying off members of that sector, that quite literally had me seeing red. And no, 10 wasn’t able to find another position inside IBM.
Then it happened a second time.
This time an exec, a D, informed me they were being laid off. And like 10, D was a Marine. In fact D had been an OFFICER in the Corp.
I would have thought this is EXACTLY the experienced leadership we would want to keep around in IBM (assuming of course they are capable), in particular as we’re claiming to support veterans. After all IBM says we need them. Gherson (CHRO through 2020) again:
“Veterans bring a disciplined work ethic as well as strong collaboration and communications skills acquired through their military service, all capabilities that IBM values highly."
Apparently not.
Then the statement from earlier this year:
“In 2020, the company achieved its goal of hiring 2,000 veterans, 11 months in advance of plan.”
There are a couple of other instances which came to my attention, but I don’t need to gild the lily. You get my point.
Yes, this is only a handful of people I am aware of, not the thousands of vets that IBM has employed over the years, but it doesn’t take much imagination to understand that with thousands laid off in the US, many veterans were laid off too. We know IBM has laid off ~40,000 in the US since 2012 (and replaced less than half), and given the percentages (~8% of adult workers in the US are veterans), then IBM has laid off far more veterans than it CLAIMS to have hired. I have no doubt veterans are laid off in 2021.
Until Krishna, (who I have explained is a thoroughly decent man) fixes this duplicitous poison inside IBM (in particular from Finance and HR), and is SEEN to fix it, IBM will continue to lose the moral high ground, and will forever be incapable of passing it’s own Business Conduct Guidelines, where supposedly, “Trust Comes First.” (BCG 2021).
Until next time
DT
PS. I intended to cover Watson Health, not as a “product” but as an image maker for Rometty to use towards a political career (which is why she kept talking about it), but I was so pi---d off after writing this, I decided to hit the Scotch. So that will have to wait.