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IBM: It's Being Mean
I've been getting my head around a post over, on all places, PBS.org. Seems like one of the rabble-rousers, a Cringely fellow, predicted that IBM will cut 150K jobs for cost savings.
This was like red meat to a pack of starving wolves. There were over 1000 comments on his first article, and his second article is kicking as well. It's like a group support meeting over there with IBM'ers spilling the beans on what they REALLY think of the company and how the company acts. Adding to the mix are the usual free-marketers (count me in on that bunch) and the social-engineering crowd (why can't we make laws so people can keep their jobs?)
If you are looking for an hour or two of reading about what's wrong with big-company consulting from the inside, you should check it out. This Cringely fellow is following the scuzzy pattern of making outrageous claims, getting a bunch of response, then backing off (Devorak anyone?) but he's obviously also hit a very real nerve. People don't understand how big businesses work, they don't trust them, and they want some stability and reward for all the hard work they've been doing. Read on if you want my opinion.
Look, IBM is a huge monstrosity. Huge monstrosities aren't what they used to be. In reality they never were, but it just used to take a long time for the market to figure that out. Trying to keep 300 thousand people in alignment with worldwide IT needs is right up there with teaching camels to bowl. It ain't happening, and if you hear about it happening, it's either trick photography or it's a quirk, not a natural law. The IT field is all over the place. Sure, IBM can chase business with the best of them, but you can't have a huge company lead in an industry that is being led by small companies. Big companies just can't do it.
I feel for those IBMers. Really I do. Some good friends of mine work there, and some other good friends of mine have worked at other big consulting firms like EDS and found themselves shown the door after many years of service. I've heard this story before. Many times.
But as one guy said, life ain't fair, wear a helmet. If IBM can't make their huge monstrosity work, then passing laws for the Federal Government to intervene is not going to help anything, just make things much worse. The simple fact is that you can't get an IT job and expect to retire with it anymore, unless you're the only IT guy in a shop that does something completely non-technology related. The world is simply moving too fast for most large organizations to keep up.
It sounds like the gripe is that IBM is offshoring their work, and that it's not going to work. Well, I can believe that. But I can also understand why: IT is a business where the perceived value is zero. That is, "the computers" are always supposed to work -- it's a given. Nobody thinks they owe Google money for doing searches, nobody thinks they should pay money for their chat program to work, and nobody thinks they should pay any money for their checkbook to balance. Programs are basically without value to the average consumer. You can dress these programs up as "services" and go for a subscription model, but even then it's a race to the bottom. Somebody is going to beat you in terms of features for price. And that somebody is probably going to be paying programmers 2 bucks an hour in outer Mongolia. That's not what I would like, that's just life. It happens. Change happens. IT is all about change.
So the jobs are not SysAdmins, testers, or coders. The jobs are architects, process engineers, innovators, entrepreneurs, business process re-engineering types. If you're not moving up the conceptual food chain the tiger of change is going to be chewing on your tender parts. Like I said, I don't like it, but I'm not spending a lot of my emotional life feeling bitter about it, either. I need to keep moving, just like the rest of us.
Where is it all going to end? Can those 150 thousand IBM employees turn into 150 thousand small business owners? I think so, but it is unlikely. What we can encourage is for them to turn into a thousand small businesses with 150 employees each. That means we need to start 10-20 thousand businesses over the next couple of years for the successful ones to work out.
THAT means no-tax zones, open entrepreneurial zones, more public Ansari-type prizes for innovation, facilitating synergy, and reducing risk to investors. Anybody talking about doing that? Not likely. Politicians and voters both don't have a clue, and if we get any action it will be in the form of protectionist legislation, which will hurt all of the rest of us. Politicians are paid to make it look like they are doing something about problems, not to actually do anything.
I'm not trying to be cynical, it's just that when is the last time you heard an honest debate about open markets versus protectionism from a politician? Ain't happening. But you'll hear a lot about "protecting the workers" just like "protecting the children", "protecting our rights", or "protecting our military" -- when those guys start protecting stuff, we always get something different than what is advertised. Let IBM, like any other tragedy, go, and let's make something positive and learn from it. There have been a lot of IBMs in the past, and there will be a lot in the future. We can adjust our lives and expectations to reality, or we can expect reality to change for us. For those wanting reality to change, I wish you the best.
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