A potential restructuring of computer hardware company IBM could result in layoffs of 26% of staff, or over 111,000 people. If true, it would be the biggest corporate layoff in history, dwarfing the previous record – coincidentally held by IBM after a 1993 reorganisation – of 60,000.
Robert X. Cringely, a Silicon Valley journalist and author of the eBook The Decline and Fall of IBM, revealed the news in his Forbes column. Cringely blames former CEOs Louis Gerstner and Sam Palmisano for mismanagement, which current CEO Virginia Rometty has done nothing to stymie.
According to Cringely, the IBM reorganisation, nicknamed Project Chrome, has been in the planning stage since before Christmas, and has been triggered by another quarter of falling revenue, the 11th in a row for the company.
He remains sceptical that the drastic Project Chrome will do anything to save the ailing company, saying, “So while IBM is supposedly transforming, they are also losing business and customers every quarter. What are they actually doing to fix this? Nothing.”
“In saying the company is in a transition and is going to go through the biggest reorganization in its history, will this really fix a very obvious customer relationship problem? No, it won’t.”
Source: IT World
