The Big Blue Bug

The Big Blue Bug hit on Thursday.
And it hit bad.
And hard.

Around 5000 IBM employees were layed off all across the country, called "Resource Action".

I am so thankful to God that Guru wasn't part of it.

Friends of our were though.



IBM didn't NEED to layoff people - they posted profits in the last quarter (unless they cooked up the numbers in the books).
IBM is negotiating with Prez. Obama to get some part of the stimulus money for some project that reportedly will create 900,000 jobs.
IBM is sending off atleast 50% of these layoff jobs to Brazil, India and China.
IBM totally took advantage of the economy to pretend they needed to cut jobs, when they were actually just trying to increase profits by exporting 50% of those jobs to lower cost countries. The other 50% was unfortunately, a true layoff.
IBM could've offered buyouts to their long term employees before the layoff(lots of people 50+ actually wanted it), so the layoff could've been reduced in half and saved a lot of jobs.

I am a complete capitalist and am all for the power of free economy, but it is things like this that makes me want to turn and rant about the greed of the corporate.

Sigh. I am so thankful that Guru still has his job.
But I'm mad that I am basing our happiness on someone else, and its not in our hands.
I am thankful that had something happened, we didn't need to have panicked.
But I am mad that had something happened, we would've have cushion only for 4-6 months and then nothing.