IBM is cutting off thousands of employees across numerous locations in the United States of America (ISA), as per a report by The Register.
According to sources familiar with the situation, the employment losses include a significant drop in IBM’s Cloud Classic segment. Layoffs were reported in Raleigh, North Carolina; New York City and State; Dallas, Texas; and California.
The exact number of affected employees is unknown, but a source informed the publication that “concrete numbers are being kept private,” adding, “It is in the thousands.”
Employees from multiple departments have been impacted. These include consultancy, corporate social responsibility, cloud infrastructure, sales, and internal information technology systems.
Last week, reports surfaced that IBM’s Marketing and Communications staff had also been laid off, which Senior Vice-President Jonathan Adashek revealed on an internal teleconference.
According to insiders, the job cutbacks are part of a formal restructure at Cloud Classic, which was built on IBM’s 2013 acquisition of SoftLayer.
“It’s a resource action. I don’t know how many people are in IaaS Classic. They don’t typically make that information easy to find,” the source said.
They added, “What I can say is that they have been making a lot of changes to shift employment to India as much as possible.”
A former IBM employee who was recently let go described the scenario as a layoff, stating that about 10 per cent of IBM’s larger cloud division was affected.
“Everyone I know that was affected, myself included, was simply offered a separation agreement,” the individual said.
Meanwhile, IBM employees are being required to follow new return-to-work policies that mandate in-person presence at least three days per week by the end of April, Times of India reports.
According to sources, badge swipes are logged, and management is allegedly opposing medical exemptions too.
