The Good News Economist

For IBM, It's All Good - Should Be No Surprise

Big Blue is always in the mode of hiring and firing and re-balancing their business units. From my understanding, even when layoffs are announced folks who get "RIFFed" in one division frequently have a very good chance at finding something else on the Big Blue internal jobs board before they actually have to walk out the door... several of my friends have done this multiple times and remain "lifers" at IBM. My cousin who is a lifer at INTC advises the same mode of operation at the chip vendor. (He's been at INTC now 25+ years)

So just because you see that IBM announces x number of layoffs, it does not equate to x number of people losing their job at IBM... in most cases at big blue the number is significantly less than x and many who walk out the door do so because the package is quite compelling...

@BlueSore, if you hit the IBM public web jobs boards (and the internal jobs board if you have access) you'll see that even tho big blue has announced "layoffs", HIRING is continuing in "stealth mode." Its just the media enjoys publishing about the cuts these days...