Do you guys have constant layoff fears if you’re in the US? What kind of jobs are kept in the US? I heard ibm does 70:30 with respect to hiring where 30% of roles can be in the US, are the US roles usually in low cost areas like Texas? I ask because Google is very transparently starting the offshoring process that IBM has been doing for decades so it would be good to compare how the future looks for us.
Is it that bad dude?
The only jobs guaranteed at google are executive level, no one else is safe https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article/google-layoffs-development-teams-19429883.php
Wow, that really sucks. But what's going on dude? Is this because of the investment necessary for buying more resources for AI? Wish I could offer a referral, but we are probably going to close in a year or two, so yeah...
Constant fears of layoffs at IBM? 100%. Just look at the IBM sub reddit. Only India is safe.
We had layoffs the past two years. I lost 3 out of ~15 people that report to my first line manager.
Yes, there's a constant layoff fear across the board at IBM. The reason is that the majority are coasters. Most don't know to code, think radically, build systems etc. They can do 1+1 =2.
"low cost areas like Texas?" My impression is that places like Texas would be the "high cost" area and "low cost" is India or whatever. It's a consulting company. Rather than 70:30 US vs rest of world, I'd probably think of it something more like x% country-of-the-client vs (1-x)% India. They want to have people collaborating closely with their clients, and they want to have people offshore to maximize margins. Research is a probably better place to work than the consulting divisions, but research is sort of like what might be product development in a tech company. Google may continue to cut costs, but they still hire in places like the bay area. They still pay better than IBM, and still sell in a lucrative market (advertising etc). Moonshots like Waymo may take off too. I don't picture core businesses like Waymo or their advertising and search models getting outsourced/offshored. Google hires engineers to build technology that Google wants to see work well to improve their own revenues or reduce their own costs. That makes it worth their while to spend heavily... but it might make sense for Google to offshore some of their less critical work. I dunno, are they really moving ad and search teams to India? I would assume not but maybe their CEO is even worse than it seems. IBM in contrast hires engineers because a client signed a contract for x person-hours of integration efforts installing software IBM licensed from some other company. The business is fundamentally about client service and service delivery vs margins. They do need some people to understand the architectures of these systems or edit code to customize for client requirements, but I'd think of it more as a sales-run organization than a tech-run one. I don't see Google becoming that anytime soon. The fact that someone might compare working at Google to IBM is pretty sad for Google, and I hope they turn things around. To answer your question though, no, people at IBM don't fear layoffs. Code is bad. Performance evaluation is lightweight and easy. No one works long hours as far as I know.
We used to build technology to make things better, but we just laid off our python team despite being an “ai first” company https://www.hindustantimes.com/business/google-layoffs-sundar-pichai-led-company-fires-entire-python-team-for-cheaper-labour-101714379453603-amp.html Thanks for the reply! This was very helpful, though it sounds like nothing is safe from offshoring at google since we don’t really have clients, except in cloud.
@IBM Are you really at IBM? You seem to know nothing about IBM. IBM has product teams, hardware (Z, quantum), research and consulting. You are giving an impression that consulting is all IBM does! what a dumb