Reply #10: I am one of the 1300...

[CATagious]

I worked as a contractor in IBM's Global Services. Last week, we lost about a third of our group (data center) and I've heard that many of our technical support people were also let go. There are rumors that everyone at the Lexington data center will be gone by the end of the summer.

This is no surprise... they've started talking about LEAN months ago and have been implementing new web-based tools that are suppose to make our jobs easier and more efficient (i.e. fewer people/easier to outsource). The past couple of years, alot of our jobs have moved to Brazil and India. Even though there continue to be concerns about their performance, they continue to take our jobs. The support people complain about them, the customer, etc. but I guess they are cheap enough that quality is not expected. We have two floors of servers at our location and soon they will all be managed and monitored solely from overseas. I'm not concerned about myself, I had started taking classes a couple of years ago and will now go full-time and get a degree in accounting. But, IBM has been a family business for us. I have 4 cousins working there and my brother. My dad worked there and 2 of my uncles but they were there during the good old days. It's not like that any more. IBM should move completely to India and be done with it. Or there should be a law.