U.S. Tech Layoffs Fade, But No Hiring Boom

[Natalie Kopple]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1471&ncid=1471&e=1&u=/ibd/20031020/bs_ibd_ibd/20031020general

[Stephen Pride]

From the Yahoo! article:

While IBM's earnings report Wednesday didn't thrill investors, its plan to add 10,000 jobs next year offered the best tangible hope yet that tech-sector job woes could be ending.
IBM said it's confident about the prospects for technology spending and the economy and will add positions in "key skill areas," including high-value services, middleware and Linux (news - web sites).
Still, IBM didn't say how many of those jobs will be in the U.S. Recent reports have said IBM plans to boost staff in India to 10,000 by 2005 from less than 5,000 now.

Here is an interesting rebuttal excerpt from: http://www.allianceibm.org/PressRelease101603.htm

When IBM announced its 3rd quarter 2003 results, Chairman Sam Palmisano added in a written statement that IBM will �see the need for approximately 10,000 new positions in key skill areas, including high-value services, middleware technologies, Linux and open standards based hardware and software.�
This announcement raises many more questions that it answers.
The Alliance believes the announcement of these �new� jobs is merely a smokescreen to hide the fact that thousands of career IBM employees have already lost their jobs in 2003 and 2002. In fact, our sources within IBM say that up to 30,000 Global Services employees will lose their jobs by 2004 due to Offshoring.
We also are very skeptical as to where these �new� jobs will be located. Will they be here in the United States? Or will these jobs be created in one of IBM�s many offshore locations, such as India, China or Brazil. IBM has already signed deals to train 100,000 software specialists in various Chinese cities over the next 3 years.

[Tim Holloway]

Actually, if the fuzzy mush that serves me for memory hasn't failed me, IBM laid off somewhere around 30-40,000 people worldwide over the past 2 years or so.
So if they hire 10,000, we're still down overall. But it will be instructive to see what countries they do their hiring in, since an effort of that magnitude will go a long way to prove or disprove whether the North American, West European and Australian IT professions are in fact under siege or were simply victims of an unusually strong recession.

[Glen Cai]

Another move of layoff is coming next month. We'll see.

[Matt Cao]

Hi,
I do not see how can it be any hiring boom now or in the near future. Unless we have a major break through in term of idea such as dotcom.
If any movement at all are from the military industrial complex and pharmaceutical. Military industrial very picky of whom they hired in the name of national security. Pharmaceutical, Indian is jumping on it as I read from Yesterday LA Times.
Regards,
MCao

[Natalie Kopple]

CBS with Dan Rather will air IT offshoring, H1-B replacement stories on October 22. Phil Marraffini from South Florida, ex-First Data employee will be on CBS National News. He was replaced by H-1Bs at First Data. Phil was in the original WKMG CBS story back in Feb 2003.

The WKMG Feb 16-19 story "Where did the jobs go?" has been nominated for an Emmy.

[Al Newman]

Originally posted by Natalie Kopple:
CBS with Dan Rather will air IT offshoring, H1-B replacement stories on October 22. Phil Marraffini from South Florida, ex-First Data employee will be on CBS National News. He was replaced by H-1Bs at First Data. Phil was in the original WKMG CBS story back in Feb 2003.

The WKMG Feb 16-19 story "Where did the jobs go?" has been nominated for an Emmy.

People should understand something about First Data. They are the pond scum of employers.
It's entirely within their modus operandi for them to dump their whole staff and hire a bunch of H1B's leaving the former staff with a lot of nothing. In a year or two they will fire the H1B's (probably when they start to ask for green cards) and do something else. Leaving the H1B's without plane fare home, most like. I did a contract with them a decade ago. They fired every contractor in the place and didn't pay for the day. That one cost me $4000. BTW, First Data also habitually treated the employees like dogs as well.
Stressful place to work, as proven that they had a murder-suicide in the parking lot one morning while I was there.....

[Jim Baiter]

Also, when they just talk about "IT", it really is a bit skewed since this includes all the admins, support and other functions. Many of these are being outsourced (not offshored) and "tooled out" (e.g. where you only need 5 DBA's now as opposed to 20 before because the tools have improved). On the outsourcing front, some large companies such as Pfizer are trying to completely outsource their data centers. Should this trend continue this will represent huge consolidation around any careers involved in those operations.

[Peekaboo Switchback]

My friend that got laid off 2 weeks ago had 3 interviews already in the Minneapolis area.