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IBM Starts Another Round of Job Cuts

By
Jonathan Vanian
Jonathan Vanian
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By
Jonathan Vanian
Jonathan Vanian
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May 20, 2016, 8:41 PM ET
Latest Consumer Technology Products On Display At CES 2016
LAS VEGAS, NV - JANUARY 06: IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty arrives at her keynote address at CES 2016 at The Venetian Las Vegas on January 6, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world's largest annual consumer technology trade show, runs through January 9 and is expected to feature 3,600 exhibitors showing off their latest products and services to more than 150,000 attendees. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)Ethan Miller Getty Images

IBM’s woes continue as it struggles to reinvent itself in a fast-changing technology industry.

The business technology giant laid off an undisclosed number of employees this week, according to a report on Friday by The Wall Street Journal.

The cuts impacted offices in North Carolina, New York City, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Boulder, Colo., the report said. Some jobs were being moved to India and Costa Rica, according to unidentified workers interviewed by the newspaper.

The latest job cuts follow another round of layoffs in March that impacted nearly 5,000 workers, according to the Journal.

The layoffs affected various business groups across the company including the Global Technology Services consulting unit, according to the website of Raleigh-Durham, N.C. T.V. station WRAL. Unlike fellow technology companies Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Intel, IBM does not generally say how many jobs it eliminates.

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Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi estimated in March that IBM could cut over 14,000 jobs overall.

In April, IBM reported its sixteenth straight quarter of declining revenue as its core software licensing and hardware business shrinks. The company has been trying to turn itself around by pushing hard into more cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing, but it has yet to offset the erosion in its core business.

During a call with analysts, IBM CFO Martin Schroeter acknowledged the March job cuts and said they were intended to “rebalance the skills” of IBM’s staff. At the same time, he emphasized that the company was still hiring in the areas of cyber security, data analytics, and cloud computing.

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An unidentified worker told the Journal on Friday that IBM’s new initiatives were not working as fast as executives have hoped.

Fortune contacted IBM for comment and will update this story if it responds.

Update – May 21, 11:00 AM PST.

An IBM spokesperson responded to Fortune and reiterated a similar statement that the company said back in March when news of the layoffs first came out, saying that IBM has over 25,000 open positions, many in “key skills areas” like cognitive computing and cloud.

“If we meet our hiring targets, we expect our employee numbers to be roughly the same at year-end as they were in 2015,” the spokesperson said.

About the Author
By Jonathan Vanian
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Jonathan Vanian is a former Fortune reporter. He covered business technology, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, data privacy, and other topics.

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