Tech giant, with offices in Bulgaria, cuts thousands of jobs

IBM is laying off a significant number of employees this week and is trying to keep it quiet, writes plovdiv24.bg, referring to his sources.

An IBM employee told The Register that IBM Cloud had undergone a "massive layoff” over the past few days which has affected thousands of people.

"Unlike traditional layoffs, this was done in secret,” said the insider. "My manager told me they were required to sign a Confidentiality Agreement not to talk about the details.“

Asked to confirm the layoffs, an IBM spokesperson told The Register: "Earlier this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that will represent a very low single-digit percentage of IBM's global workforce, and we still expect to we will exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment we entered with."

With around 288,000 employees worldwide at the end of 2023, the opportunities for "very low single digit rate” for 2024, it could be 1 percent (2,880 cuts), 2 percent (5,760 cuts), 3 percent (8,640 cuts), or more. Assuming a fixed cost per employee, last year's charge and cut disclosures suggested that about 5,200 positions would be eliminated at a charge of $400 million.

The people who are stuck are mostly the people in higher positions than the programmers, the support specialists and the sellers, the publication writes. We are talking about people aged 50-55 with 20-24 years of work at the senior level.

Last year, CEO Arvind Krishna said IBM expected to replace about 7,800 jobs with AI, though no specific timeframe was provided. His corporation's stock price is up 33 percent year-to-date to $215 a share.

The company has over 1,900 customers in Bulgaria, who maintain and support software for infrastructure systems, cloud storage and desktops