Is Big Blue trimming its workforce again? If media reports are to be believed, IBM is letting go thousands of employees across the US. About a fourth of its Cloud Classic operation team (the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS division) has reportedly been affected in this round. However, no official announcement has been made nor are exact numbers known. It is also reported that IBM is trying to shift a significant amount of work to India.
This round of job cuts may reportedly impact employees in the consulting, cloud infrastructure, sales and corporate social responsibility (CSR) teams.
That the company was considering a reduction in headcount has been known for some time now. In September of 2024, media reports said that the company was quietly letting go thousands from its workforce, and that too at the senior level. Those affected reportedly belonged to the sales, programmers and support teams. It was also reported that employees were bound by a non-disclosure agreement or NDA to keep the details of the job cuts to themselves. About 54 employees were reportedly struck off the rolls on 24 September, in Santa Clara County, while 57 permanent employees were laid off in San Francisco, including a data scientist and an artificial intelligence (AI) engineer. In Washington, 63 were let go in the second week of August.
While $300 million is what IBM incurred in the workforce rebalancing exercise carried out in Q1 of 2023, the company had expected to spend more in 2024, that is, about $400 million on the exercise.
In August, the American tech multinational had announced its intention to trim its workforce in China, putting a stop to its research and development (R&D) activities in the country. It revealed its plans to shut down its China Development Lab and China Systems Lab. At the time reports said that the move would affect at least a thousand employees across Beijing, Shanghai and Dalian.
