The layoffs have been conducted in secrecy, with employees being required to sign non-disclosure agreements.”Unlike traditional layoffs, this one was done in secret,” the insider said. “My manager told me that they were required to sign an NDA not to talk about the specifics,” said the report quoting an impacted IBM employee.
IBM confirms job cuts
While IBM has acknowledged workforce reductions, it has downplayed the extent of the cuts. In its first-quarter 2024 earnings report, the company disclosed a $400 million “workforce rebalancing” charge, indicating that layoffs are part of its restructuring efforts. An IBM spokesperson told The Register, “Early this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that would represent a very low single digit percentage of IBM’s global workforce, and we still expect to exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment as we entered with.”
Last year, CEO Arvind Krishna said IBM expected to replace around 7,800 jobs with AI, though no specific time frame was provided.
However, based on previous job cuts and the company’s current workforce size, analysts estimate that the number of layoffs could be significantly higher than what IBM has publicly stated.
“This letter is to inform you that International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) has announced a permanent reduction in force at its worksite [in San Francisco],” Lawrence Sposato, the company’s director of human resources in the United States, reportedly said in letter to the EDD (Employment Development Department) that was also made public by the agency.
Source Agencies
