IT behemoth IBM is again on a firing spree.
This time, 10,000 employees are getting fired, due to the emergence of Cloud and AI technologies.
Will India get impacted?
IBM Is Firing 10,000 Employees
As per reports coming in, IBM is about to fire 10,000 employees in Europe.
The countries which will be majorly impacted are UK and Germany, where majority of employees are getting fired.
Several employees in Poland, Slovakia, Italy, and Belgium can also be fired.
IBM seldom discloses the number of employees getting fired, or the location, but due to a massive number of 10,000 this time, reports are leaking out.
Once 10,000 employees are fired in Europe, IBM will lose approximately 20% of their workforce in Europe.
This is easily one of the biggest lay-offs ever executed.
IBM has already spoken with the European labor representatives regarding this massive layoff program.
The Reason For Firing: Cloud and AI
The emergence of Cloud technologies and automation, along with machine learning is seen as the primary reason why IBM is firing employees.
In a statement, IBM said, “Our staffing decisions are made to provide the best support to our customers in adopting an open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities. We also continue to make significant investments in training and skills development for IBMers to best meet the needs of our customers.”
As per the report by Bloomberg, IBM employees dealing with legacy IT infrastructure related tasks such as maintaining data centers, installing programs on the computers etc will be most hardest hit.
These all process are now on Cloud, and can be remotely managed. This means thousands of employees are out of job.
IBM Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh has already said, “We’re taking structural actions to simplify and streamline our business,”
Will Indian Employees Get Impacted?
Not as of now, since all the reports about firing employees are mainly centered in and around Europe.
However, since IBM is spinning off a new business vertical dedicated for Cloud computing, we can expect some reshuffling of teams and processes in India as well.
We have already reported that around 29,000 Indian employees may only work on Cloud in the coming days.
We will keep you updated, as more details come in.