IBM Jobs Laid off, 1,700 Employees Affected

On Thursday, IBM decided to lay off some of its employees. And this report proved the earlier reports in TheLayoff, an online message board.

In addition to that, the relief will affect around one half of one percent of the employees. IBM holds more than 340,000 employees based on its recent proxy statement. And this means the layoff will hit about 1,700 employees.

The company’s spokesperson wrote in a note, “We are continuing to reposition our team to align with our focus on the high-value segments of the IT market, and we also continue to hire aggressively in critical new areas that deliver value for our clients and IBM.”

As a result, the page of IBM jobs showed 7,705 job openings.

Aside from that, the reducing of IBM jobs aims to develop its business through the acquisition and reach its goal of increasing profits.

Also, IBM shares surged 16% since the start of 2019. Then in April, the company announced its first-quarter revenue, which dropped 5% year over year and below the expectations of the analysts.

IBM’s job cuts also happened in 2016 and 2017.

IBM in Acquiring Red Hat

Furthermore, the American multinational information tech company is currently preparing to obtain open-source software giant Red Hat for $34 billion. And it is expected to close the deal in the second half of the year.

IBM owns a public cloud infrastructure for deploying applications. However, if it obtains the Red Hat, the company can also expand its business from companies adopting other public clouds. For example, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure both have more market share.

Also, Daryanani and Liu noted, “Investors remain on the sidelines until they have better understanding of IBM’s financial profile post close of the Red Hat acquisition.”

According to Red Hat’s annual report last February 28, the company had 13,360 employees.