IBM Soap Opera

Monday May 14, 2007

I have no idea where Robert Cringely gets his numbers, and since no one inside IBM seems to be responding with other than the corporate line, I have no idea of the truth of this column: Lean and Mean: 150,000 U.S. Layoffs for IBM? The reason I am drawing it to your attention is that I want you to read the comments that the article generated - all 1051 of them.

Reading the comments is like viewing a cross section of opinions of people working in America today. Fear of job loss; fear of outsourcing jobs; offshoring jobs due to globalization; fear of retirement benefit loss; no pay raises for the many; people rated as "needing improvement" as an employee, among thousands of others; misleading information about LEAN as a corporate "program" and what its purpose is; having a corporate program with a "name;" top heavy management unwilling to really change; an internal "ranking" exercise to value or devalue employees; and poor management company-wide. Gads. If even a portion of these opinions are true, they represent everything I attempt to counter in my writing and recommendations on this Web site. Corporate America as put forth in my worst nightmare.

Reading this string of comments reminds me of the worst of times in corporate America and the pain it can generate in the employees who subsist on rumors, opinions, and fear of loss. Here's Mr. Cringely's most recent column following up. And, it brings home for me, one more time, why most of the emails I receive ask how to deal with situations like the ones described in these comments.