[HN Gopher] IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs wi...
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IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 229 points
Date : 2023-05-02 08:34 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (finance.yahoo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (finance.yahoo.com)
| vcryan wrote:
| Lol with the quality of work coming out of IBM these days, they
| should just replace every one
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I see this as a sales pitch for consulting, they want people to
| hire them to transform their companies from overseas outsourcing
| to AI outsourcing. Doing it to themselves first serves as a case
| study.
| rvz wrote:
| Oh well. Typical good ol' IBM shapeshifting again.
|
| They also know it is time to learn to code adapt.
| prepend wrote:
| My experience is that there are lots of BS consulting jobs where
| I would wonder "what do these 10 people do?"
|
| This included lots of offshoring companies, like IBM, that seemed
| more about filling out whatever the budget sheet given to them
| than actually making software or even any evidence of software
| (commits, issues, etc).
|
| I expect that there are firms out there right now using ChatGPT
| to produce the facade of work so instead of messing around and
| billing 8 hours times 30 people every day, they just have a few
| people fiddling with prompts and checking in the generated text.
|
| I actually think this might have the same impact but would hope
| that the value just goes back to the client in having employees
| do the AI work directly.
|
| The joke was that behind every successful offshore project was
| one or two really busy onshore engineers manically covering and
| integrating work from the away team.
| isoos wrote:
| I know a company that already reaches test coverage metric
| goals by feeding chatgpt with code that they need test for.
| These are tests based on mocks, running trivial things,
| providing little to no value to the overall codebase. But if
| the requirements are garbage, the delivered items will be
| garbage too.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > The joke was that behind every successful offshore project
| was one or two really busy onshore engineers manically covering
| and integrating work from the away team.
|
| To me, ChatGPT's output is indistinguishable from what I've
| seen offshored coders produce. Only difference is you get the
| results in 30 seconds in a chat window instead of overnight in
| a zip file emailed to you.
|
| There are whole businesses here in America that only do
| rewrites for offshored projects.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Consulting jobs are largely bullshit because their main role is
| to be a corporate mercenary that makes up solid data supporting
| the direction that management wants to go. Their job is
| weaponizing confirmation bias.
|
| Relevant: https://twitter.com/ConsultingHumor
| jiggawatts wrote:
| That's unfair and inaccurate.
|
| We also serve as convenient scape goats in case risky
| projects go bad.
| hgsgm wrote:
| That's Management Consulting. Tech consulting is building
| expensive boondoggles.
| giantrobot wrote:
| AbstractBoondoggle boondoggle = new
| AbstractBoondoggleFactory()
| a4isms wrote:
| Thor's Law:
|
| As the length of a thread about software design
| increases, the probability of someone mentioning a
| "general-purpose tool-building factory factory factory"
| approaches one.
|
| _Including the act of quoting Thor 's Law._
|
| ------
|
| https://www.danstroot.com/posts/2018-10-03-hammer-
| factories
| moffkalast wrote:
| Amazing read. And I'm stealing that "Library: you call
| it. Framework: it calls you." quote.
|
| Though in reality does that mean that the guy bought a
| metal 3D printer?
| jsight wrote:
| > The joke was that behind every successful offshore project
| was one or two really busy onshore engineers manically covering
| and integrating work from the away team.
|
| After getting ChatGPT to write some code for me, this could
| happen again except with AI instead of an outsourced team.
|
| So far, it understands the requirements better and writes
| pretty good code on average. Its unit tests are pretty good
| too. It always requires some fixes and integration, of course.
| soco wrote:
| The question is, can IBM place those consultants at customers
| and get paid for them? Then they're definitely not "BS jobs"
| for IBM. They might be BS for the person interacting directly
| with them, yes, but I see no reason for IBM to reduce them.
| Imnimo wrote:
| Even if it's true that 7,800 jobs at IBM could in principle be
| replaced with AI, there's no way IBM has the AI chops to
| accomplish that.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| >Krishna said in an interview he believes around 30% of about
| 26,000 non-customer-facing positions, like human resources jobs,
| could be replaced by AI over a five-year period--amounting to
| about 7,800 lost jobs. HR duties like documenting employee moves
| to different departments and writing employment verification
| letters will likely be among the first rolled over to AI, Krishna
| told Bloomberg. Jobs focused on interacting with customers and
| developing software at the 260,000-worker strong company should
| not be impacted in coming years, according to Krishna.
|
| Source:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2023/05/01/ibm-...
| hgsgm wrote:
| The names tasks are _already_ automated _without_ AI.
|
| Who need a generative LLM text to print a _receipt_?
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Starkly reminiscent of blockchain. Many "blockchain problems"
| were really just software problems. Coincidentally, IBM also
| went all-in on blockchain before quietly abandoning it
| sometime last year.
|
| IBM seems to be run by very gullible people.
| hinkley wrote:
| Now IBM will be able to create solutions so complex that even
| their own people don't understand them.
| anttiharju wrote:
| Idk how fair that is but reminded me of the email fiasco some
| time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27706128
| linksnapzz wrote:
| Wow. Finally, Watson can replace the ppl. you get in the first
| five levels of phone support for hardware. Then again, they could
| be outsourcing it to Amazon.
|
| "Alexa...why won't my mainframe IPL?"
| patwolf wrote:
| Perhaps they're trying to create FUD around AI destroying jobs
| with the hopes that governments will restrict AI development.
| Ologn wrote:
| As has been posted in a few submissions today (including one of
| my own) - Chegg stock lost half its value _today_ after
| announcing how ChatGPT is affecting its business. Pearson stock
| tanked today too. Meanwhile Nvidia stock hit its 365 day high
| yesterday.
| afrcnc wrote:
| [dead]
| t43562 wrote:
| IBM felt to me like the last holdout of the shiny shoed salesmen
| when I briefly worked for them. Before the internet and big tech
| companies with leaders who were theoretically technical there
| were the companies dominated by salesmen because selling was the
| critical part.
|
| I imagine that getting a board to spend a lot of money on some
| project is hard and you need the support of the kind of people
| that can influence board members.
|
| So to get your project past a lot of people who basically don't
| respect or believe in nerds you had to hire a company with non-
| nerdy salesmen to back you up.
|
| i.e. the entire thing is social. And just because the nerds (us)
| have trounced them for the last N years, it doesn't mean that the
| world has converted into 100% nerd. Shiny shoed salesmen are
| probably still quite necessary.
|
| I joined as part of an acquisition. I am probably biased but they
| spent a year making the product multilingual and not fixing
| anything. Everyone knows the name of the Open Source knock-off of
| that product but not the name of the product anymore. It's
| probably still there taking almost no investment of effort.
|
| So I got the impression that IBM is a company where software goes
| to live out its old age and die. I think of Redhat (perhaps
| unfairly) with their super complicated Linux distribution which
| must be a nightmare to maintain because it does so many things
| and needs to keep long compatibility guarantees. I'm not
| expecting any innovation whatsoever from them. Perhaps this is
| very unfair and ignorant of me. I'm happy to be corrected.
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| How do you think selling is being handled nowadays that the
| nerd percentage has increased within the companies?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| IBM as a company barely makes sense at all at this point. They
| are a very large and a former tech company that mostly coasts
| along on doing expensive consulting projects around me-too clones
| of things that other people have invented just so they can still
| pretend to be a tech company. So you can do things with AI,
| cloud, and databases with them. But they aren't really leaders in
| any of that for a long time. And having been exposed to some of
| that stuff, they aren't very good at it even but they can still
| get some things done. They still have lots of ancient tech from
| last century that they support of course. But mostly a new
| company starting their business today would have very little
| reason to engage with IBM on anything. There's very little that
| they do that you can't get cheaper and better elsewhere.
|
| So, IBM using this opportunity to cut down their own org tree a
| bit more and "replace it with AI" (or simply drop some people) is
| not unexpected. Because consulting related to doing exactly that
| is probably what they'll be selling a lot for the next few years.
| Basically, as world + dog is trying to figure out how to fit AI
| into their businesses, consulting related to that is going to be
| booming. And IBM is a consulting company. A lot of their previous
| efforts are actually powering the backoffice of course. So now
| that AI is going to replace all of that, that basically means
| there is going to be a lot of consulting happening as to how that
| would work. So that's a good business opportunity.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| It was always the case that IBM stuff was way overpriced
| compared to alternatives but a senior manager who bought it
| could rest easy, knowing that if he called and complained,
| they'd be right on it. Even 10 years in the future, they'd be
| right on it.
|
| That's worth something to some people, who really don't give a
| shit about technology and just want the problem solved.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| exactly. As I heard, google can be pretty bad at support, for
| example. Better tech does not mean better experience overall
| swexbe wrote:
| Now when they call I guess they'll be directed towards the AI
| chat bot helpline :)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Yup. Never underestimate the ability of middle managers to
| zero in on the company's main competitive advantage and
| wipe it out with cost-cutting, e.g.
|
| "We have a great beer customers love? Great, now we're
| going to use cheaper ingredients. They'll never notice."
|
| "We have great Mexican food, because everything's made
| fresh on-site? Great, now we're going to shift to a central
| commissary."
| t43562 wrote:
| Software for people who don't care about software! Personally
| I think if you don't care about something it will be bad.
|
| This is great for small companies and startups - if the
| bigger ones did things properly how could anyone compete?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Exactly! They're creating a Quality Umbrella.
|
| "if you don't care about something it will be bad" -- maybe
| to you. To them, it's not causing any problems that they
| care about.
| manicennui wrote:
| You have no idea what you are talking about. IBM does more
| cutting edge research than the entire HN bubble combined. Hard
| research like materials science and semiconductors.
|
| Consulting is less than a third of their revenue and regardless
| of how you feel about consulting, it seems kind of idiotic to
| claim that this "barely makes sense at all at this point". Are
| the only companies that make sense the ones that work on fad
| bullshit that makes the front page of HN?
| [deleted]
| agumonkey wrote:
| This is the strange side of IBM. Very muddy and mild "normal"
| software engineering, and all of a sudden, top 3 (maybe top
| 1) Quantum Computing research.
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| You can't hire their research arm.
|
| > regardless of how you feel about consulting
|
| It's a matter of how well they do it. They're not known for
| creating customer value.
|
| > Are the only companies that make sense the ones
|
| ... who don't lay off entire arenas full of people and
| discuss stupid platitudes like replacing them with AI.
|
| Pretty much. Management's messaging around this was so
| delusional - "replace with AI" - that it's obviously a stock
| play from a company desperate to cut losses, not a positive
| statement from a going concern.
| rybosworld wrote:
| They have seemingly 1000 products so it's definitely not fair
| to apply experiences with one of those, to all of the others.
|
| That said, I've hated the handful of IBM software products
| I've needed to use.
|
| Another anecdote: I've never met a fellow developer that
| spoke highly of IBM. That includes the folks who used to work
| there.
|
| I think it's remarkable how rare it is to meet someone that
| speaks highly of the company. Companies don't usually achieve
| such reputation without reason.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| For a company that's done so much tech, and had such a huge
| impact on the computer industry, there are very few "true
| blue" IBMers who you can hold up as engineering pioneers.
| Tehy've always been bog-standard salesmen.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| My college roommate has worked for IBM his entire career,
| over 30 years. He loves it there, obviously, and never
| seriously considered leaving.
| mynonameaccount wrote:
| He doesn't need to consider it, IBM will consider it for
| him
| gjadi wrote:
| "There are two types of companies: the ones people complain
| about, and the ones nobody has heard of."
| makeitdouble wrote:
| In which camp do you put TSMC ?
| fallingknife wrote:
| Nobody has heard of. Ask people outside of tech and I bet
| <10% have heard of this company.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| This is without even getting into projects under NDA.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| bro, I'm not holding my breath for the next Benoit Mandelbrot
| to come out of today's IBM. The comment above might have been
| hyperbolic, sure, but IBM isn't the omnipresent Goliath it
| once was. Maybe it's for us older folks that the comparison
| rings more true.
| acomjean wrote:
| Former IBM Research employee here (At the turn of the last
| century, and I did database stuff for them, not research).
| They spent 6 billion dollars a year on research. They had a
| chip fab in my building (Yorktown NY) had chemists,
| physicist, mathematicians... The really seemed to be
| struggling to try and turn that R&D into profits though.
|
| The hot new thing at IBM was "global services" consulting.
| Since I left they've sold their chip business, laptop
| business and really doubled down on consulting..
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Sure, those 24 consecutive quarters of revenue decline under
| Rometty is an obvious indication of cutting edge. Cutting
| edge research on how to turn investors money into into option
| traders profits.
| abakker wrote:
| I'd point out at that Ginni Rometty was a bad CEO, but that
| doesn't mean that people there didn't do good research.
| Like, they're pretty unrelated. Research and Development is
| notoriously hard to commercialize. Over here in HN land, we
| just say that product market fit is poor or that products
| didn't get traction, but those are just as akin to R&D as
| anything.
|
| A better model was that Rometty was not good at choosing
| what to fund and which bets to make. kinda a failed VC
| fund.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| What good is a R&D performed that can't be
| commercialized? To me, that is just good research
| followed by bad development. No one investing in IBM is
| expecting it to be a public works project.
|
| Lookup the saga of HP's memristor followed by "The
| Machine" for a similar story.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > What good is a R&D performed that can't be
| commercialized?
|
| Then I guess we can throw out Xerox Parc's NLS because
| they never commercialized "windows, hypertext, graphics,
| video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing,
| dynamic file linking, revision control, and a
| collaborative real-time editor." They were commercialized
| by others later on.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
|
| We can also throw out most psych, social science,
| archeology, and history R&D, too.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Would love to know what the last major breakthrough in
| social science / psych R&D was.
|
| Archeology / history, on the other hand, definitely have
| some pretty awesome finds.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > We can also throw out most psych, social science
|
| Yes.
| anthk wrote:
| First at all, they had to be called 'sciences'. They
| aren't.
| pinewurst wrote:
| NLS came from SRI not Xerox PARC. NLS was in fact
| commercialized and sold by Tymshare.
| smcin wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLS_(computer_system)
|
| Fun fact: funded by ARPA
| dralley wrote:
| Also 2000 years of Mathematicians talking about Prime
| Numbers before someone came up with the idea of
| cryptography using prime numbers.
|
| And the laser, which took a few decades to find an
| application.
| 6510 wrote:
| > What good is a R&D performed that can't be
| commercialized?
|
| It attracts playful wizards. If you get enough of those
| no amount of zombies can beat them.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Income and cutting edge technology are at best orthogonal
| to each other. Now I'm not saying that IBM has cutting edge
| technology, I'm just saying that a ponzi scheme that
| profits 24 months in a row is cutting edge under your
| definition.
| tootie wrote:
| IBM also bet the farm on AI about 10 years ago and belly-
| flopped. Their Watson AI suite was pretty advanced and they
| famously beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy, but they didn't get
| vary far making their tools practical or profitable. And now
| they've just been crushed by OpenAI. I wonder if the subtext
| to their announcement is that they're ditching their entire
| AI department and buying services from OpenAI instead.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| I think the true thing is that IBM has ceased to be a leader
| in Computer Science. They used to be! But they gave that up
| long ago, and have resorted to various publicity stunts
| (e.g., remember Jeopardy?). But sure, they may be a leader in
| materials and semiconductors (though honestly I have no idea,
| that's not my space).
| piyh wrote:
| They're cutting edge on quantum computing, can't think of
| anything more computer science than that.
| elorant wrote:
| And what are the real life applications of quantum
| computing?
| bawolff wrote:
| There are quite significant applications related to
| simulating certain quantum processes.
|
| However everyone is still pretty far off from that.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| So they say. Remember Watson? Whatever came of that? IBM
| is PR and overpriced IT outsourcing.
| jsight wrote:
| People mock them for that Jeopardy thing, but that would
| have been the perfect first move to offering something like
| Watson as a service.
|
| They could have built it over time to offer real assistance
| to knowledge workers with a real revenue stream.
|
| But that would have required vision and foresight.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| That's exactly what it was for, but it was basically a
| fraud:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/technology/what-
| happened-...
| juve1996 wrote:
| They did and it failed miserably.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The problem is that "Watson" wasn't a real thing, it was
| just a name they gave to any solution they were trying to
| sell.
| sgt101 wrote:
| [flagged]
| rerx wrote:
| Lyrics by Chat-GPT?
| sgt101 wrote:
| nahh - poor human generation
| dlevine wrote:
| [flagged]
| pulse7 wrote:
| Unlike many other tech companies they provide unprecedented
| backwards compatibility which makes a very solid foundation for
| their customers... There don't do "automatic-updates" which
| break software like Microsoft is doing with Windows...
| rst wrote:
| IBM is a bunch of businesses, some of which still likely make
| sense -- their mainframe hardware line (S/360 successors,
| currently branded as z/System), and associated products, are
| still actively developed, and very likely profitable,
| considered on their own. But that may not be enough to carry
| the rest of the business.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| IBM lost its way in the 90s and was overrun by startups which
| became massive. Nobody wants to work for IBM as it's kiss of
| death to your CV.
| hinkley wrote:
| IBM's MO now, especially for the Global Services arm, is Dazzle
| Them With Bullshit.
|
| They come up with solutions so baroque that it's exhausting
| even to hear them talk about it. So you just hire more IGS
| people to take care of the problems they created. It's a
| racket, based on them literally not making sense.
| Frost1x wrote:
| Keep in mind that a lot of B2B transaction use in tech is about
| passing responsibility and liability. Executive or director
| somewhere has to solve this internal problem. IBM claims they
| solve it and provide some degree of guarantee. You're now able
| to pass that problem, responsibility, and liability off by
| pointing to the contract and saying legal pursuit is an option.
| Obviously this strategy isn't great from a business
| perspective. If the problem is actually critical to the
| business function, simply having a hired scapegoat to complain
| and point at doesn't help you get past that problem.
|
| If you're this massive inertial machine and the problem is to
| some degree artificial and a waste of internal resources but
| someone thinks it isn't, having someone like IBM on the hook
| gives credibility to the argument that they did their due
| diligence to solve the problem. Business at scale has a lot of
| childish fingerpointing. "No one ever got fired for
| hiring/buying IBM" as the saying goes.
| htrp wrote:
| as barney from himym says ... PLEASE
| roncesvalles wrote:
| IBM got to this point for a very basic reason - they don't pay
| well.
| aflag wrote:
| That's a very cynical view. It might be true, but I hardly
| think they were just waiting for the perfect opportunity. If it
| made business sense before, they would've already been halting
| their hiring.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| They've been going through cycles of doing that for many
| years. Their head count has dropped by about a third in the
| last decade. It peaked at 460K people in 2012 and they are
| now closer to 340K. So -120K people in ten years.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/number-
| of-...
|
| What they just announced is a relatively minor round.
| bonzini wrote:
| That source doesn't seem too accurate, 2020 is shown as a
| decrease but it's when RH was acquired, and 2021 or 2022
| should have had a -90K from the Kyndryl spin off.
|
| Also I am not sure if the 2014 decrease is also related to
| the formation of GlobalFoundries but I couldn't right away
| find news about a -80K layoff that year.
| wesapien wrote:
| A lot of corporations are replacing humans jobs instead of
| enhancing them with new tech like what the tech gurus say
| during their TED talks about the benefits of X tech. Another
| reason to flip cars.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Smart Money flips houses. The Smartest Money flips GPUs.
| mitjam wrote:
| Smart Money flips houses. The smartest money flips bits.
| ThorsBane wrote:
| The smartest money flips the output of the GPUs, more
| precisely. Flipping GPUs is just a side project.
| realusername wrote:
| The irony of that is they are probably going to use AI services
| of competitors to do that despite pioneering the marketing on
| it for years, thus closing the loop.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Their in house stuff is mostly based on OSS anyway. There
| isn't a whole lot of IBM proprietary tech that they have to
| bring to the table anyway. I wouldn't be surprised to see
| them do some acquisitions to buy some street credibility
| though.
| anonylizard wrote:
| There's nothing ironic about it. They invested only in the
| marketing of AI, but not in the serious R&D of it, pretty
| sure internally they never believed in their own AIs. Plus
| they got the publicity benefit from Watson, which is
| important for a consulting company.
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| IBM had / has an army of sales types running around trying
| to insert Watson into health care, always reminded me of
| the Dick Jones character from Robocop trying to pedal the
| fundamentally flawed ED-209: "I had a guaranteed military
| sale with ED209! Renovation program! Spare parts for 25
| years! Who cares if it worked or not!"
|
| Such an ethically questionable decision, trying to push
| unproven / non-functional tech into life or death decision
| making.
| dagw wrote:
| _trying to insert Watson into health care_
|
| They were trying to insert Watson into everything. I used
| to work at a company that worked with building management
| systems and we had Watson sales people all over our
| senior managers trying to get 'collaboration' projects
| going.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| IBM is a company in the same way Hawaii is a state. There's a
| lot of great of stuff going on, most of it is done "at the
| other island" and a lot of the stuff will be consumed by a live
| volcano without anyone really noticing.
| pulse7 wrote:
| I think that AI is just an excuse here... They wanted to cut jobs
| anyway but they say AI is the cause (which is not), just to be
| "in trend"...
| ep103 wrote:
| IBM lays off 10% of workforce is literally a yearly headline
|
| As are IBM sued for age discrimination, and IBM closes product
| line
| retrocryptid wrote:
| IBM is still alive? Hunh. You learn something new every day.
| JCM9 wrote:
| IBM is known for its marketing BS over "AI" (see the previous
| fiasco surrounding the trail of unfulfilled hype with Watson) but
| this one really takes the cake.
|
| IBM has long been struggling. They could release a press release
| saying they're pausing hiring because businesses are
| underperforming. Or they could play the news cycle and say it's
| because of how awesome their "AI" is. Interpret that as you wish.
| rchaud wrote:
| Remember when IBM was claiming all kinds of imminent
| breakthroughs in healthcare via their Watson AI project? Sad that
| they have to now resort to digital outsourcing to pump the stock
| price.
| mouzogu wrote:
| nice way to try and pump your stock price.
|
| similar to that google guy who left because Google's AI is about
| to become a sentient, nice little boost to the retirement fund.
| hgsgm wrote:
| He said he left because it's dangerous, not sentient.
| Dr_Birdbrain wrote:
| I think parent comment was talking about Lemoine, who never
| claimed the AI was dangerous, but rather that it was sentient
| and not being given the rights it deserved.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| I am sad J. G. Ballard is no longer with us to comment on IBM's
| plan.
|
| IBM is replacing humans, who can identify an exceptional events
| which weren't anticipated by planners, with AI, which only
| regurgitates past training data.
|
| I'm sort of imagining IBM human resources department now as some
| hellish mashup of Ionesco, Nietzsche and Ballard (with a piquant
| dollop of THX 1138 to provide that absurdist, institutionalized
| aroma IBM seemed to love.)
|
| At least the TVA was smart enough to recruit biological entities
| to run it's bureaucracy.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Hmm, all my experiences with the old, more-human IBM (randomly
| powering off VMs, randomly breaking the UI for cloud admin,
| etc.) have been pretty much Kafka all the way, so maybe this
| will be an improvement (though not for the 8K employees who
| will be replaced).
| retrocryptid wrote:
| I can only talk to my experience at IBM on-and-off from '89
| through '94. There were many things wrong with IBM, but at
| least through '94, internal processes were fairly solid.
| Compare that to my current firm, where we wasted three days
| of employee time trying to figure out how to get Workday to
| properly render the text area I was supposed to use to
| provide employee evaluations. (This doesn't include the days
| it took to find someone in HR who understood what Workday was
| and had an idea who in the company managed it. It turns out
| that employees are given access roles in Workday (not really
| a bad idea) but our humans didn't understand that only people
| with specific roles could create surveys with form elements
| regular users could fill in. We apparently fired the people
| who knew that during the last round of layoffs.)
| RobLach wrote:
| If jobs are being replaced by AI I would think a company in IBM's
| position would be hiring to help offer those transitions as a
| product.
| [deleted]
| justinzollars wrote:
| I wonder how long our jobs last?
| gumballindie wrote:
| Nah, they are letting 7800 people go because of poor business
| practices. The AI thingie is to save face.
| willis936 wrote:
| Strangely I think they would have saved face better if they
| said "we are letting 7800 people go due to poor business
| practices" rather than some BS line about LLMs being ready to
| replace humans.
| gumballindie wrote:
| IBM hasn't been making logical decissions recently (past
| decade or so) and this fits the pattern. It's actually rather
| embarassing they even mention the term AI considering they've
| been playing with it for a while and nothing came out of it.
| They should stick to low quality consulting and call it a
| day.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Nah, you have to look at this from the perspective of IBM's
| target customers. A bunch of Fortune 500 execs who can barely
| use a computer are going to see this and say "That's
| brilliant! Can you do the same thing for us?"
| flangola7 wrote:
| Source?
| caporaltito wrote:
| Also, their competitors are better at AI, they basically use it
| to say they fire people because of their competitors.
| sumoboy wrote:
| Poor middle management, those should be the majority of the
| people to let go.
| oofta-boofta wrote:
| That's literally every tech company. Middle managers, product
| owners, project managers, etc can all go.
| shahbaby wrote:
| It makes sense. IBM is primarily a consulting company pretending
| to be a tech company, run by business majors.
| MR4D wrote:
| From what I've read/heard from others, if they try and replace
| those people with Watson-based AI, they'll need to hire another
| 10,000 consultants to try and implement it.
| fdye wrote:
| This is just using the AI hype as cover to not get slammed by the
| markets. If they came out and said "We are pausing hiring..." the
| markets would rightly be like "Man they are screwed..."
|
| Expect to see more of this from zombie companies in the future,
| as long as they spend $20/mo on a ChatGPT subscription somewhere
| they are probably not violating SEC disclosures either.
| freetinker wrote:
| This is spot on.
| [deleted]
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| Exactly. As useful as ChatGPT is for a lot of menial tasks,
| people give humans far too little credit.
| trifurcate wrote:
| > If they came out and said "We are pausing hiring..." the
| markets would rightly be like "Man they are screwed..."
|
| This hasn't been the case with the ongoing tech layoffs though?
| Investors for the most part congratulate these companies for
| diligently cutting costs in preparation of a recession.
| theRealMe wrote:
| That is the case for companies that overhired during the bull
| market. IBM, on the other hand, has been losing employee
| counts steadily for over a decade.
|
| If a company that people are expecting to be losing relevance
| does a layoff, it's still not a good sign.
| tempest_ wrote:
| I don't even properly know what IBM is now that they spun a
| bunch of things off.
|
| I guess they tossed all the services/consulting into
| Kyndryl and everything else got to stay blue.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| They spun off only Global Technology Services, which was
| only IT infrastructure consulting.
|
| Most of the business consulting, including outsourcing
| software engineering, is still with IBM.
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
| d--b wrote:
| They don't even have to spend anything on ChatGPT, they can say
| they're using Watson!
| gitfan86 wrote:
| Yes, they have done things like this before. IBM is good at PR.
| kneebonian wrote:
| You have to understand their competitive moat, DoD and
| especially Pentagon contracts.
|
| Most companies don't have the capitalization, runway or people
| who are so badly broken as to go through the bidding process
| for something like that.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Yep was at a small startup and the owner insisted we go with
| IBM, over the protest of everyone. Months of work and we got
| infrastructure moved over. Only to find out the stack we were
| sold on was being sunset. Owner insisted we move to the new
| stack. Month later we were on new stack. This happened twice
| more.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Yep if you read what the CEO said the quote was that they
| "could" replace workers with AI over five years and as the tech
| improves. That's just pure speculation and bullshitting, like
| when Elon said Tesla cars will be fully self driving vehicles
| in five years. It's market pumping talk from a company with a
| vested interest in selling "AI" to enterprises.
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| [flagged]
| hraedon wrote:
| I mean, are they wrong? Elon promised coast-to-coast
| summoning in 2016 with a time horizon of two years! there
| were supposed to be a million telsa robotaxis by the end of
| 2020!
|
| Like, putting aside everything else, it had to have been
| very obvious internally that neither of those goals were
| plausible in that timeframe without miracles happening.
| newswasboring wrote:
| IBM is a public company, doesn't that mean they have to give
| some details to shareholders? I would hope so, this is a big
| ambitious plan, I hope they have to present an actual plan
| somewhere. You can't just say stuff, right?
| belter wrote:
| But it seems Watson is concerned and looking for a new job...
| zod50 wrote:
| But the market has actually rewarded companies pausing hiring
| and doing layoffs. In other words, if company is saving money
| by reducing fixed salary costs, market appreciates that move.
| drumhead wrote:
| As its IBM we might see a first here, firing AI's.
| abawany wrote:
| you forgot the outsourcing stage: first the ai will be
| outsourced to a rpi zero w running os/2, and then the product
| will be cancelled.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| More likely they are just saying this to get in the headlines as
| a "Look IBM is AI too" story.
| susanasj wrote:
| obviously AI is moving quickly, but every mainstream news article
| about AI is incredibly gullible. Good time to be the Simpsons
| monorail salesman but for AI.
| jppope wrote:
| Better Title: IBM announces scheduled bankruptcy in roughly ~3-5
| years
| rkagerer wrote:
| Hah! Good luck with that.
| kypro wrote:
| I won't comment on whether this is good or even workable idea,
| but I will acknowledge this announcement is kinda genius.
|
| Playing into fears about AI replacing large segments of the
| labour force in the coming years invites calls for regulators to
| slow down their competition. While at the same time this
| announcement makes investors happy because IBM is signalling that
| they're looking to both cut costs and embrace AI.
| jzb wrote:
| This assumes that IBM is not serious about trying to replace
| jobs, but is trying to make a strategic 3D chess move. I'm very
| skeptical that this is the case.
|
| But, let's say it is. It _might_ play well with investors, but
| the idea that it 's going to spur regulation or legislation to
| slow down AI development seems optimistic at best. That assumes
| a government and elected officials who are looking out for
| workers and not the investors who are going to be giddy about
| this.
|
| In the U.S., at least, government has been actively trying to
| suppress wages and maintain higher levels of unemployment. Why
| would this spur any action to slow down AI?
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| I would note that IBM is like 80% middle management. At this
| scale, one could easily make an AI tool that generates
| powerpoint presentations from an email, present it to a
| different AI that can create an email with the bullet points
| that can then be read by another AI...
| wunderland wrote:
| The original story from Bloomberg:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-01/ibm-to-pa...
| [deleted]
| SilverBirch wrote:
| This is like how Kodak pivoted to crypto. It's chasing a short
| term stock market bump at the cost of being _absolutely
| bollocks_. Or maybe I 'm being unfair and they're smarter and
| actually this is just a ruse to avoid more lawsuits for age
| discrimination in their firing practices. Either way, it's more
| of a sign that IBM is in trouble than AI is really breaking
| through.
| voxadam wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35780706
| dboreham wrote:
| Could definitely replace the press release writing dept. with AI.
| flenserboy wrote:
| This is why companies should consider just doing things, and
| then, if they work, point backwards to how great an idea that
| was.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _More mundane tasks such as providing employment verification
| letters or moving employees between departments will likely be
| fully automated, Krishna said._
|
| ...and if some employees quit out of frustration about being
| managed by AI (being "moved between departments" at the whim of
| an AI sounds pretty spooky to me at least), even better!
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| It says "moving" employees which maybe implies voluntary, so
| "internal mobility" in other words which can create a lot of
| admin (business need, cost centres, levels, specs, visas etc
| etc). It'll perhaps be a while before the AI overlord runs the
| entire company and just moves us at it's whim and treats us all
| as Amazon Mechanical Turks[1] :)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I took it more to mean that the paperwork involved in the move
| would be automated, rather than the decision to move.
| lynx23 wrote:
| I doubt there is much of a difference between typical brainless
| human management, and AI management. Maybe AI is even better,
| that is at least likely.
| jzb wrote:
| It won't be. AI will be trained on human input, after all.
| And it will be even harder to appeal or reason against.
| XorNot wrote:
| I actually can't wait till I'm managed by AI. At least with an
| AI there's the high probability it will get better. In fact
| most likely it'll just be the same gradually improving system
| which I can converse with for the rest of my career.
|
| Whereas with human managers who knows? Maybe they're good,
| maybe they're bad, it's a reset every time.
| nullsense wrote:
| If it's trained on data human managers then it'll just burn
| you out and emotionally manipulate you into staying with the
| company longer to maximize corporate profits.
|
| ...or your life could become utopia. Who knows?
| 0zemp2c wrote:
| Its easy to make a headline by claiming AI will eventually
| replace people you never intended to hire anyway
| sammalloy wrote:
| And strangely, they never replace CEOs, who earn more than 200
| times what workers earn. One would think, that would be a
| priority.
| jmount wrote:
| Gonna be funny watching IBM apply their consulting methodology to
| themselves.
| seu wrote:
| AI will not replace humans. IBM's CEOs and managers will replace
| humans with AI. Shareholders will force IBM to replace humans
| with AI. Let us stop blaming the only thing that is _not_ making
| any decision. Capitalism is a powerful idea that will kill the
| same people that vouch for it.
| jzb wrote:
| This makes as much sense as "guns don't kill people, people
| do."
|
| AI tech is being driven by capitalism. The reason companies are
| so eager to embrace it is to replace people. If you're in the
| AI business or advocating for it, you're (at least in part) an
| arms supplier for cutting jobs.
| sitkack wrote:
| The end goal is for The Board (maybe) and the shareholders to
| be human. Everyone else can get replaced with automation.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Managers will do every job.
| [deleted]
| ResearchCode wrote:
| AI will do management.
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