IBM is expected to lay off "several thousand" employees, but not the 112,000 that had been reported.
A rep for the company told Reuters that "if anyone had checked information readily available from our public earnings statements, or had simply asked us, they would know that IBM has already announced the company has just taken a $600 million charge for workforce rebalancing. This equates to several thousand people, a small fraction of what's been reported."
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Over the weekend, pseudonymous tech blogger Robert X. Cringely claimed that Big Blue was planning to lay off as many as 112,000 employees this week -- 26% of its workforce. Doug Shelton, an IBM rep, told WRAL Techwire that the rumor was "ridiculous, and off by a factor of more than 10." That would mean that fewer than 11,000 IBM employees might be jeopardy. Reps from IBM could not be reached for further comment.
That figure is in line with other big layoffs at tech companies in recent years, including up to 18,000 at Microsoft and the 29,000 Hewlett-Packard announced in 2012.
IBM reported its 11th consecutive quarterly decline in revenues last week. The falloff on top-line results comes as the company attempts to excise unprofitable units and focus instead on the cloud and mobile.