IBM fired 2,000 employees in United States on the basis of their productivity and performance in the company. The company states that it needs to focus on re-inventing the operations to satisfy customer demands. The decision was taken right after its Indian unit laid down 300 of its employees in May.
IBM has a history of cutting off its staff by large numbers since 2016. It had about 3.5 lakh employees left with vacancies for about 25,000 posts reported in 2018.
According to a statement given to Bloomberg, the small cuts in the workforce are to allow aggressive growth in the fields of artificial intelligence and invest in the high-value segment in the IT sector. The company said in a statement to Business Times, "We are continuing to reposition our team to align with our focus on the high-value segments of the IT market - while aggressively hiring in critical new areas that deliver value for our clients and IBM".
The latest study by some experts shows that the cuts in the workforce might be because of the slow annual growth of the company. According to the statistics, the company has not quoted more than 1 percent revenue growth in two consecutive years.
IBM India is also following the footsteps of its parent company; it cut off its workforce by 500 people in segments within nine months.
There have been regular job cuts in other IT companies as well to adapt to the pace of technological advancement in the sector. Aggressive recruitments have been going on for the posts of Data Science, AI and ML after cutting down the regular workforce.
Congnizant is also following the footstep of the tech giant by firing 200 senior employees last month. They reasoned the drop-off, by stating their inconsistent capability to adapt to the changes in the pace of work and their focus on digital requirements.
