IBM: There will be layoffs, but 110,000 is 'ridiculous and baseless'

Reports 'off by a factor of 10' says company, meaning 10,000 jobs probably to go

IBM has begun debunking the widespread rumours that it will be laying off 26 per cent of its workforce this week, which amounts to around 110,000 people, as Computing reported yesterday.

The company's director of corporate communications, Doug Shelton, has called the rumour "ridiculous", and "off by a factor of more than 10".

This suggests that blogger Robert Cringley's original figure of 110,000 should be reduced to around 10,000 job losses at the 435,000-employee company.

Shelton didn't confirm whether the layoffs would start as early as this week, and which of the 170 countries IBM operates in would be hit hardest. Cringley's source said the US would see the most redundancies, mainly from IBM's mainframe and storage divisions.

IBM is also hiring, said Shelton, and is currently trying to recruit 15,000 people with more current skillsets to support its moves into cloud, security, big data analytics and "social and mobile technologies".

An official statement from IBM late yesterday also described the rumours as "ridiculous and baseless" and pointed out that IBM hired a further 45,000 people last year, and that its new openings are "evidence that IBM continues to remix its skills to match where [it sees] the best opportunities in the marketplace".

IBM also admitted it has taken on a "$600m charge for workforce balancing".

"This equates to several thousand people," it said.

Are you, or anyone you know, being made redundant by IBM this week, and would you like to share your experiences? If so, please get in touch with Computing.