IBM Thursday layoffs

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s official. IBM has dropped 10% of its employee base worldwide, dropping 20,000 - 30,000 professional positions this last week.
One interesting tidbit I happen to know about:

IBM aquired Sequent computer systems; arguably making the worlds best servers available on the consumer market.
They integrated all of Sequents employees to IBM; did not grandfather their years of service (many 12 year employees) in terms of serverence pay or sabatticles. The last wave of all Sequent employees were dropped in this last thursday’s layoff, and the technology aquired from Sequent computer systems was shelved, as were all products relating to Sequent computer systems server technology.

IBM was subsidized in the neighborhood of 1 billion of your tax dollars to perform this social and economic terror, under the auspices of a recession from a plane crashing into the world trade centers.

-Justhink

2

OK, since this is the first I’ve heard of this particular 9/11-based subsidy (and given that I was under the impression that IBM aquired Sequent sometime beore 9/11), I’ve got to ask for details.

3

OK, it’s the next morning, and I’ve taken the time to perform a few searches on the financial news sites - and now I’m more confused than ever.

Reuters (in this article) seems to only know about 1000 or so of these layoffs occurring last Thursday, with “plans to cut 7,950 to 9,540 jobs, or 2.5 percent to 3 percent of its work force”. That’s significantly below the numbers you’re stating. Note that IBM currently has 320,000 employees worldwide (OK, 319,000 as of Thursday).

I can find no reference to this funding anywhere. Could you help me out here?