Post here your most incredulous example of executive position in IBM which has limited or no impact on IBM's growth trajectory yet somehow remains entrenched in IBM-Lore as a relevant and essential part of the machine. Examples can include those who are WFAWBO (work from anywhere but an office); those who have "robust team" of 5 direct reports (including their Admin) who they never meet; those who spend more time on LinkedIn than W3; and those who seal clap great leader style every time an SVP holds a meaningless 'oldies-but-goodies" townhall. Let the fun begin!
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@k8 I started working at IBM in 1993 as a supplemental, changing to regular a couple of years later. IBM at that time was bloated, with TOO MUCH of everything. Too many data centers. Too many internal mainframe installs. Too much staff. Too many administrators. Callup hierarchies (remember Callup?) with 10 layers of management before you hit regular employees.
Gerstner continued firing people like his predecessor Akers...he had to, IBM was bleeding money. He got rid of divisions that weren't performing. The difference between then and now was that IBM could monetize services, and monetize it did...for a time. But now in the present day, IBM has run out of room. It has sold off almost all its divisions, leaving only mainframes and software. The mainframes and software are based on a 1960s architecture, which is good enough for now...but competition isn't standing still.
It's hard to imagine how IBM could be saved at this point.
Started April Fools Day 4-1-93 when the G Man Lou Gerstner came in and THOUGHT he had a culture problem that needed to be destroyed, visibly and violently. He knew nothing about IT and computers and had never been in a data ctr etc. I bet the first time he heard "...but Lou we cannot do that as that would violate the 3 Basic Beliefs we have held as bonds for decades..." he went ballistic. Then he had to satisfy Wall St and did massive layoffs. Then he started the "fuzzy math and financial engineering" and broke the pension promises hyped during recruiting" etc etc. So for over 30 years IBM has been adrift and wandering in the woods once WINTEL took over for compute and Cisco networking and EMC storage and then AWS/MSFT/Google for cloud more recently. Almost 200 acquisitions since 2000. IBM no longer has customer relationships, everything is a transaction. IBM no longer has people that know what customers want (used to be called Offering Mgrs who knew very little) and now called Product Mgrs (who also know very little). As a returning IBMer I was stunned to see how WOKE IBM became. You have many people who just spew WOKE opinions in Slack all day and do nothing else. It is so blatant the recruiting and hiring being done seeking young, female, offshore, non male non white people. Being a white male over 35 at IBM is a very hostile place to be. I saw Slack channels dedicated to women only. I saw mtgs and trainings be setup for women only. When I asked a trusted lady why this is, she sighed and said ..."well I also do not like how males are excluded at IBM but some females feel "safer and more comfortable" in female only things". That was the day I decided to leave. Imagine if males (God forbid white makes over 35) started to have their own channels and mtgs?! IBM is toast like that leaking toilet. It still kind of works but reeks with bad smells and do-do all over the floor.
IBM has always been organized around the 10-1 employee to manager ratio. It comes from Watson Sr and how he was influenced by the military. Now contrast that with management efficiency tools introduced over time (PC’s, SW, e-mail, etc etc) and you can easily justify a 20-1 ratio. If IBM just implemented a 20-1 model for 1st lines, and 10-1 for second lines and above (this should include admins), you would conclude that IBM is way over managed. Now throw in a FaceTime with customers requirement for band 10 and above, and you start to see IBM is way way top heavy and inefficient. Meta realized this 2 years ago and cut management and employees (admin) 25% across the board. Just making those two changes, OR saying management and band 10’s and above are going to be reduced by 25% would impact IBM’s bottom line far greater than the current PIP and RA protocol. It’s time that IBM management takes a good hard look in the mirror, and begins to address the elephant in the room.
@ey "IBM could probably fire 80% of its current employee base, and keep the most productive 20%"
What they actually seem to be doing is the opposite, RAing the productive 20% and keeping the deadwood.
IBM Consulting is full of Band Ds and Band Cs with high sounding titles indicating major leadership responsibilities who have ZERO or maybe 1-2 direct reports (who themselves are Band 10s or Ds but have no directs) and who haven't been in front of a client in the better part of a decade.
But at IBM, more than anywhere else I've worked, it's also how much you can bullsh-t and parrot upper management's complete horsesh-t about the capabilities of the company's products and services. That's why I like to say RT and all the rest of 'em... they all co-k su-kas.
The OP is well-intentioned, but IMHO misses the point (but just slightly). For years, IBM's employment structure was treated like a social club rather than anything resembling achievement, competence or requirements for the tasks at hand. For example, upper tier executives HAD to have Ivy League backgrounds...nobody else would do. (For all I know, this may still be the case.) Yeah, there are lots of pointless positions and sinecure jobs. Just like the US government keeps useless people on the government payrolls, IBM keeps "friends" of management on IBM's payrolls. RAs, PIPs and whatever are treated similarly...management will find any excuse to keep members of the club, but those who aren't in the club get booted out the door (and don't ever come back, ya' hear? The employment records of non-members were often marked "non-rehire").
IBM has done this sort of thing for its entire lifetime. They got away with it because the company brought in lots of money and could cook the books. But times are tough now...they ain't taking in enough money, they can't cook the books like they once did, and all those social hangers-on are indeed hanging on for dear life. Just my opinion, but IBM could probably fire 80% of its current employee base, and keep the most productive 20%. They would shoot up in profitability and shock the world.
They could do it...but they won't.
Anyone with the name Arvind, Dinesh, Mohammed or something with similar sounding characteristics has too much of good time to the detriment of US IBMers.
Time to stop the Indian Chopshop racket.
Chief Upskill and Diversity Officer
There are 2 categories of jobs at IBM.
The first category consists of engineers, marketing, sale and support , responsible of providing customers with products. The second category consists of the rest (CEO, VP's, DE's and most STSM;s). The second category is filled with snake oil salesmen. The second category can be trimmed to 1/10 of its current size. It will have no effect on the work of the first category of employees or customers. I predict, that productivity will increase and the engineers will not spend their time worrying about being fired to cut the cost. The second category is the parasites that feed on the first category.
Any CMO who takes the role then boasts at never having done marketing before.
Since some one ready mentioned about the Consulting Partners, how about pointing out the Clueless Management dolts who make up the CIO office from the loser VP who roars like a bull in heat every time he has a meeting, to the utterly ridiculous SVP Wright who never gets anything right about Client Zero but is still in the job since she's a DEI hire with a funny accent ? Wright is one big Zero.
All the friends of friends of friends of DEI friends are in the management ranks at the CIO office where fat shamed Krabanaugh likes to make sure they are upskilling in more more worthless CIO nonsense.
Ask the old question "How many IBM CIO managers does it take to change a light bulb ?" and the answer you get is "More than you need in a lifetime. In the US and India."
Maybe you should consider taking a chill pill and upskill sessions with RT the co-k suc-a.
You sound like Alvind on a bad curry day.
Anyone with Business Partner in their title
Of course he's bitter - so many useless people who should never have been employed, and at a minimum, should be terminated immediately.
My nomination for this list is countless Partners (in Consulting) who from my perspective do little more than review the work of their Associate Partners, and it would make virtually no difference to the company's bottom line if every single one of them were let go tomorrow and not replaced.