back to article IBM CEO Rometty swaps heads of strategy and servers

Ginni Rometty, who has been CEO at IBM for a year and a half, is making two big changes in the upper echelons of her management teams; she is swapping the head of corporate strategy and the head of its Systems and Technology Group, and it is presumably to get better results than IBM showed in its first quarter of 2013 in its …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    smoke and mirror

    She is inept. Period.

    First San, and now Ginni are screwing up the company. EPS increase is not due to operational efficiency. It is due to aggressive stock buy back and very very aggressive cost cutting. The cost cutting include not approving business essential items such as pencils (!) and monitor for programmer to do the work. Employees has to buy stationary etc. using own money.

    Lot of good people are leaving the company, only dead-wood that nobody would want runs the company.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: smoke and mirror

      "The cost cutting include not approving business essential items such as pencils (!) and monitor for programmer to do the work. Employees has to buy stationary etc. using own money."

      Not where I work and I haven't heard anything like this, I've been working with and for IBM for three years.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Unhappy

        Re: smoke and mirror

        Buy your own pencil is all over USA. Do a quick search on IBM union and you'll find all those stories.

        Additionally, employees in services (GBS, GTS) are required to record billable hours greater than 2000. Do the math (and factor in travel time, vacation, sick days, holidays) and quickly it is apparent that the management is asking employees to lie in their time sheets and over charge the clients.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: smoke and mirror

          Don't forget that IBM recently gutted 401k (retirement) offering.

    2. Lord Elpuss Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: smoke and mirror

      I know many many IBMers from Europe, Asia and the US, and have spent a great deal of time over the last year in IBM locations in Raleigh, NY, Atlanta, San Francisco and Boulder, and have never seen or heard of employees having to buy their own stationery. And given the amount of bitching some of these folks do about everything from the canteen to the color of the walls, if they were forced to buy their own stationery they would have mentioned it.

      Also a 'quick search' on IBM union as you mention shows absolutely nothing of the sort.

      I call utter bollocks on your post.

      And while I'm at it you can BE stationary, but you can't BUY it.

      1. Lin78
        Childcatcher

        Re: smoke and mirror

        I work for IBM STG in RTP, NC. I have to provide all of my own office supplies - pens, pencils, paper, white board markers, you name it. I only have a monitor on my desk for my laptop b/c I snagged it from someone who left the company.

        I have a friend that moved from STG to SWG, and she told me that there are office supplies available there. So, preferential treatment for the money makers. It also shows in our offices...SWG has clean, modern facilities. STG is in dirty, cockroach-ridden buildings, with System x in the worst of the worst. I second the comment above about the desk chairs, etc. It is shameful.

        1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge
          FAIL

          Re: smoke and mirror

          @Lin78.

          Cockroaches? In which building? Please tell me so I can report it to facilities management. Would be a little odd though; I was in 061 week before last (education center, generally regarded as the worst building in RTP) and although it's a little old now, the facilities were clean and well maintained with not a cockroach in sight. Although I spent the majority of the week in and around Hatteras, Roanoke and Chimney Rock, I did have the opportunity to tour most of the facility including 001, 002, 062, 500 and 205 whilst holding breakout sessions. Not a cockroach to be seen, and everybody there seemed to be pretty clean.

          There were also stationery cupboards scattered around the place at various intervals; well stocked with all the items you just mentioned. If your building is short a few marker pens or white board markers, I suggest heading over to 061 from 002 (go indoors rather than across the quadrangle), and keep an eye out for the (open) stationery cupboards from which you can borrow if you ask nicely.

          Still and all; cockroaches. Wow. In a country with more lawyers (and lawsuits) per capita than any other country in the world, and you haven't thought about filing one regarding your hovel-like work conditions? You must be pretty wealthy, because if there actually WERE cockroaches, you'd make a fortune.

          But of course they're the special, shy kind which only come out when nobody's looking.

    3. samgib

      Re: smoke and mirror

      Same here - Im based in NY and had to purchase monitor and notebook by myself in order to be able to do my work. The IBM provided equipement was nearly 6 years old.

      The office chair Im sitting on is 30 years old (manufacturing date is printed on the bottom). Approx. 3-4 years ago they stopped cleaning offices. You are sitting in dirt except you buy cleaning materials and stay after work to clean up. They also removed every 2nd light bulb to save energy - and bear in mind the offices have no windows.

      This goes further ... offices are literally falling apart. IBM fixes/maintains mainly entrance areas. In my building the hallway to the meeting rooms that are frequented by customers are maintained. Other parts look like an abandoned factory building with for instances water leaking in, roddens and missing floor elements.

      1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: smoke and mirror

        @ samgib

        Hmmm... exactly the same complaint as the original poster, a complaint which (a) nobody else has ever heard of, and (b) would be utterly incomprehensible if true (why the hell would any company not give you a monitor if it were *necessary* to do your work? If you just WANT a monitor, and IBM gives you a perfectly good ThinkPad, then that is a different question...)

        Oh and then I have a look at your post history, and surprise surprise you've made just this one post, and joined on 25th April 2013.

        samgib = Anonymous Coward #69, and I claim my $5.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Joke

          Re: smoke and mirror

          Dear Lord Elpuss

          Read other posts! Now are you happy that many more people have reported of "buy your own stationary/monitor" policy ?

          Lord Elpuss is filthy IBM senior executive mole/agent posting on their behalf, and I claim my $100. BTW, I really need it to buy my stationary for this year ;-)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: smoke and mirror

            I thought he was one of those legendary PR hacks, who wrote up the last 10 Beeellion dollar investment press releases -- when you don't have news create it by creating a beeellion dollar investment press release. Tsk tsk tsk...

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