Sources: IBM is firing thousands of US employees and sending many of the jobs overseas even as it pledges to hire 25K workers over four years
Big Blue pledged to hire 25,000 workers over four years. It wasn't long before employees were accusing the company's CEO of hypocrisy. — by
Context & Ripple Effects
Three weeks after IBM's 25,000-worker US hiring pledge, backed by a $1B training commitment, Bloomberg reports the company is simultaneously firing thousands of US employees and moving many of those jobs overseas. The juxtaposition is immediate enough that employees are publicly accusing CEO Ginni Rometty of hypocrisy — turning a goodwill announcement into a credibility problem.
First-order effects
- Thousands of US workers lose their jobs now, many to overseas relocations, while the same company advertises a four-year, 25K-person American hiring commitment — making the pledge the focal point of employee and political criticism rather than a shield against it.
Second-order effects
- The episode forces IBM to manage every future workforce action against its own headline numbers — a pattern that recurs when it lays off thousands across five states in 2020 ([[a:953921]]) and cuts a 'ballpark' 3,900 roles in 2023 after the Kyndryl and Watson Health spinoffs ([[a:834480]]).
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, large tech employers normalize decoupling gross hiring pledges from net US headcount — announcing targeted hiring waves even as restructuring continues, as IBM does again in 2026 when it triples entry-level hiring 'for all these jobs that we're being told AI can do' ([[a:1163363]]).
The trend: US tech employment is becoming a communications exercise in which headline hiring pledges coexist with continuous offshoring and restructuring, leaving net job counts — not announcements — as the real measure.