Global technology company IBM has announced that is laying off staff across its marketing and communications teams, as previously reported by CNBC. According to media reports, the IBM layoffs were made by the company’s chief communications officer Jonathan Adashek in a meeting amongst those in the marketing and communications teams who will be affected.
The layoffs reflect IBM’s rapid move to replace nearly 8,000 jobs in the company with AI, as well as massively upskilling all of its employees on AI. Its CEO, Arvind Krishna, previously told CNBC that it will be cutting 3,900 positions back in January 2023. “In 4Q earnings earlier this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that would represent a very low single digit percentage of IBM’s global workforce, and we expect to exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment as we entered with,” the company stated.
IBM joins a slew of tech companies making significant layoffs this year including Cisco, Amazon, Snap, Okta, PayPal, and Microsoft.