IBM Stops Disclosing US Headcount Data, Over 100K 'Employees' in India

Looks like IBM is set to go the way of Toyota -- to be fair, they're finally living up to their name 'International' Business Machines -- as usual the comments are better than the actual article.

Speaking as an IBMer... (Score:5, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12, @12:40PM (#31453664)
We're projected to have more Indian employees than American in the next year or two. We already have over 100k in India, and we're ramping up in Argentina and Brazil.

Meanwhile, internal outsourcing has been an absolute mess. Our Indian-based helpdesks are reviled, both inside IBM and by our customers who use them. Indian technical resources are likewise extremely difficult to work with, and it has nothing to do with language or timezones - they refuse to speak up (from what we're told, "it's cultural", meaning don't make an issue of it or you'll get sent to sensitivity training). A solution can be completely wrong - as in, the contract says we were supposed to start work two months in the past or numbers literally don't add up, yet they won't question blatant errors, and won't respond if you question them. Apparently questioning someone else is deeply frowned upon, and makes them next to useless as anything but strict, brainless order takers. They have no initiative whatsoever, and seemingly no capability of independent creative thought. Maybe it's "cultural", maybe it's poor training - I don't know. I do know it's not working, but all executive management sees is that they cost a fraction to hire as western workers. You get what you pay for, and all that...

None of this applies to the many Indians I work with who are based in other geographies. But for whatever reason, Indians in India are just extremely poor replacements for western workers.

[From Slashdot News Story | IBM Stops Disclosing US Headcount Data]

and

Thank you Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12, @12:54PM (#31453876)
As a soon-to-be IBM ex-employee caught up in this latest round of layoffs (or "Resource Action" in IBM corporate lingo), I'm glad that IBM's total disregard for its own country's workforce is finally coming to light. IBM has been engaged in this behavior for years now, yet it has done such a good job burying the information so it gets little to no coverage by the media. In fact, according to a leaked management-level PPT posted on the Alliance@IBM site, IBM upper management is actively implementing a policy where even employees rated by their managers as solid contributors are artificially given lower ratings in subsequent years if their salary is deemed too high so that there is a pretext to push them out of the company and re-hire cheaper labor abroad. While I truly hope that the government would provide much needed intervention, I sincerely doubt any meaningful action will be taken. The best thing we can do is ensure as much media coverage as possible.

[From Slashdot News Story | IBM Stops Disclosing US Headcount Data]

So. Along with Microsoft and Adobe, now you know where the quality is. NOT. 'Made in America.' Looks like "Indianational Business Machines" is getting exactly what they want. A cheap, compliant, easy to abuse work force that will drive down labor costs. In fact look at what they've done already.

Are we sure these are 'American' companies? Maybe they should move base to where the bulk of their workers are.

Drunky out.

[Sheesh. $4500 smackers for a FINDING?? I'm in the wrong bid-ness]

"IBM, Cisco, AT&T, HP, Dell, and Microsoft Are Top U.S. Customer Selections for Infrastructure Outsourcing, But Customers Rank Full Service Outsourcer as Top Business Model for Service Delivery" (David Tapper)