[bitmapbrother]

This is IBM's way of making their remote employees quit rather than looking like the bad guy and firing them. Why fire them and pay them severance when you can give them an ultimatum, let them quit and not pay them any severance? And the ones that don't quit will eventually get fired.

I'm surprised how the board of directors can continually show their confidence in one of the most incompetent IBM CEO's in recent history.

[PhantomGremlin]

I'm surprised how the board of directors can continually show their confidence in one of the most incompetent IBM CEO's in recent history.

I'm not a big fan of Ginni Rometty. She's been CEO for over 5 years.

But in her defense, what can she do??? She's been dealt a tough hand. Their legacy businesses are tapering off, their strategy of offshoring their consulting services isn't working, and their sizzle (such as Watson) doesn't amount to a hill of beans (to steal from Bogart) compared to the size of the company.

What should she have been doing to fix IBM's problems?

[yourapostasy]

She inherited Palmisano's promise to investors, and re-committed to it when she signed on, and at that very moment she painted herself into a corner. She tries to serve two masters, and ends up failing both: shareholders and a bet-the-company pivot.

This likely signals she herself doesn't really believe in her own championing words on the pivot. Definitely not enough to command the shareholders and spend the buyback funds she did spend on the pivot instead.

At this point, the sectors they're betting on for the pivot are not hauling in the kind of revenue required to replace what they are losing in their legacy sectors. Hence the appearance of a death spiral.

What isn't widely known is those legacy sectors are by and large still profitable. Just not enough for the leadership team; a tragedy of micromanagement and misdirected metrics.