Bluewashing Continues, Red Hat Onboarding Interns in Low-Paid Regions
Leave is for IBM management to figure out how to destroy Red Hat and Fedora
Bluewashing continues. This was hours ago:
At the end of last year we witnessed "forever layoffs" at Red Hat and it continues this year (that's how IBM skirts WARN notices). It does not seem to end and in recent hours we see Red Hat onboarding interns in a place that starts with an "I":
That's just from recent hours and it is what many comments have long said in relation to layoffs at Red Hat. It's about the salaries lowered or cheapening of the workforce.
IBM is just trying to turn Red Hat into more cash. In the past 3+ days Fedora Planet had only one entry in English and it's this weird anime thing, nothing to do with Fedora. The community of Fedora is basically just IBM now.
For those who forgot, IBM also has RTO coming into effect to cause people to resign. As Paul Kunert at The Register MS put it some months ago, "Red Hat back-office team to be Big and Blue whether they like it or not" (and there's of course the RTO in effect now). Quoting Kunert: "The team remaining at Red Hat will be part of the central Strategy & Operations group managed by Mike Ferris. As such, engineering, product, sales, and marketing personnel will be unaffected. For now at least. Not everyone is pleased to move across to IBM and some don't seem too fazed, feeling they already work closely with their counterparts at Big Blue."
See the comments, including: "Ha ha. I remember hearing from one of our Red Hat reps that IBM wasn't going to take over their culture, and in fact they believed Red Hat was going to take over IBM culture. It is to laugh."
It was bluewashing at the end, not 'redwashing'.
As someone else put it: "Back in my early years in IT I would yearn for a job at IBM. That feels like decades ago now. Probably because it is."
A discussion thread connected to this ("Red Hat Back-Office Team Moving To IBM From 2026") had former staff explaining:
As a former IBMer, let me explain the acquisition process.
Starting in 2026, Red Hat's back-office staff in HR, finance, legal, and accounting will be transferred to IBM, while engineering, product, sales, and marketing teams remain at Red Hat
Those back office teams are what IBM values the 2nd most from the acquisition. They didn't buy Red Hat for the people, they bought it for the Intellectual Property.
Once the IP is inventoried and audited, the layoffs will start for the engineering, product, sales, and marketing teams. Wait for an announcement for a small layoff sometime between March and June of 2026. The sales team will likely see one at the end of the year when IBM wants to find a way to avoid paying bonuses based on meeting sales targets.If you want a real world illustration, look what IBM did to Lotus after their purchase.
In the coming days we expect to hear about changes at Red Hat. It's the end of the second Monday of 2026. █
Image source: Ensign Semicolon