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Oh dear!

The announcement that IBM is to shed about 13,000 jobs should come as no surprise to all but the most naive. The company ballooned in size after the buy out of PWC and with the slow down in the tech market something was going to have to give. I guess the hope was the amputation of the PC business would obfuscate the need to make people redundant in the short term but it seems this wasn’t the case. To be fair to IBM, something I’d never thought I’d ever say, some of the staff lay offs will probably come with natural wastage as like most IT companies staff turnover is high. Coupled with the glacial drift to become consultancy practise that just happens to sell software and tin, the focus will inevitably be on the high margin services. I know how gut wrenching awful be made redundant is and I’ve also had first hand experience of how medievil IBM can be when it comes to matters of people management, my only hope is that IBM takes a more empathetic approach than it did when it absorbed Lotus.