Hijexx wrote:
Cringely's latest column is about IBM possibly cleaning house at Global Services to the tune of 100,000+ plus jobs.

1. I think Cringely is smoking crack. The 150,000 number is about equal to IBM's entire U.S. Employee base according to Google. They'd have to fire upper management and the research labs to meet that number.

2. Your points about the inappropriate use of cheap labor are quite correct. In fact I think the best enforcement point for illegals is with the companies that employ them. Furthermore, I do not like H1Bs. If you need to bring people in, you should bring them in on a permanent basis with a path to citizenship. An L1 is more appropriate. Getting an L1 means you really couldn't find such a person locally. However, I think that some of the education requirements for L1 are unreasonable in certain professions where that is not really an indicator of expertise.

3. I've personally worked with offshoring enough that it doesn't really bother me. Generally speaking those guys are a cheap way to get coal shovelled, and it frees up more experienced people to do harder stuff. There are some real research efforts going on in India that are competitive, but the bottom line is that I don't think this results in contraction of the economy in the U.S... We don't want to move jobs. We want to expand. I do think it means you have to be nimble and smart. You shouldn't seek digital coal shovelling as a career. You should seek to innovate and solve problems.

RE: Lean and Mean: 150,000 U.S. layoffs for IBM?