What Really Matters to Companies is Net Income or Profit (Bankruptcy is Possible Even With High Revenue)
"Microsoft, the world’s most valuable company, declared a profit of $4.5 billion in 1998; when the cost of options awarded that year, plus the change in the value of outstanding options, is deducted, the firm made a loss of $18 billion, according to Smithers."
Related: Linux Foundation's Net Income Plunged Nearly 10 Million Dollars in a Year, Jim Zemlin Still Pays Himself About 1.2 Million Dollars a Year and Proxima Well Over 2 Million | YouTube Layoffs Mean That YouTube is Still Losing a Lot of Money (Net Income or Profit Almost Definitely Negative) | OpenAI: If OpenAI Survives Another 2 Years, It'll be About 30 Billion Dollars in Cumulative Losses/Debt
A few hours ago (late night in the US) somebody attempted to explain what had gone wrong at IBM and someone else responded an hour ago. See below.
Who to blame for layoffs at IBM ?Layoffs at IBM are testimonies of the failure, the incompetence and the corruption at all levels of leadership.
No leader is exempt from the blame. First and foremost, the technical leadership that fail into mediocrity and produces subpar products.
US technical leadership produces garbage, that is not technically competitive. In order to sell it, lowering the cost price is required, The executive leadership found an easy and stupid way, offshore the work to India.
Now, leadership get fat bonuses, customers get garbage and US employees get the boot.
[...]
I’m not sure it’s quite that simple. In addition to everything op said, IBM hit the bad side of scale. I think all big tech is in a way, except the difference with IBM is they hit it over a decade ago.
I’m astonished that it takes three quarters to deliver basic features, I’m astonished there is zero pathway for SaaS models - it’s like working in the stone age. What little scraps of ‘product’ is produced isn’t enough to feed the big blue machine.
The only reason ibm is surviving is its size, which is also the thing that’s slowly ki-ling it. IBM generates $202,620 in revenue per employee in 2024, where as Google generated $1.92 million.
Leadership in ibm are not just responsible for the terrible ‘products’ they are also responsible for how the business scales. They are doing an equally bad job at both.
Between ripping out teams that make us competitive like UX and research, and outsourcing to India things won’t improve. No disrespect to anyone from the India geo, but the general trend I’m seeing is everyone having a tough bedding down period. The tech scene isn’t as mature as the us and while the skills exist in the geo, quality and standards have to be communicated which is causing massive delays and shipping poorer quality - if you get to ship.
This is a game of decades for ibm.
The yardstick to look at is Profit per Employee, not "Revenue" (a company can have very high revenue and still be in deep debt with losses, i.e. growing debt plus interest on the debt to constantly pay).
Having just mentioned more mass layoffs at Google (despite the above-alleged $1.92 million in revenue per employee) and same for IBM, let's examine how companies almost a trillion dollars in debt fare:
Google is not there and there's hardly technology in the top 10 (Microsoft is #35, but we know its results are fake).
We ought to stop talking about revenue without focusing on actual profit.
A lot of today's economics got so bad that fools get seduced/lured into pyramid schemes with a "cryptic" vocabulary and an online cult.
Moreover, companies that compensate staff with shares (not salaries/rewards) inflate their own value while giving hard-working people nothing but tokens (which cost the company nothing to fabricate and help fake supposed "market cap" - not the same as real "value").
It'll get worse. The schemes are not sustainable.
For instance, later this month the debt-saddled Microsoft will talk about "revenue" as the quarterly results come out; after losing some government contracts in the "cost-saving" efforts (many licences for government departments) it'll be more obvious and clear why there have been so many layoffs this year and cuts to datacentres (even those in the middle of the construction process). Those layoffs lead to additional problems.
As an associate put it: "How many permatemps and contractors are let go without having to say a word to the SEC? Worse these "former" Microsofters go and infect other work places with their toxic work culture, lack of values, and not-fit-for-purpose products."
Yes, well... that also happened when IBM laid off hundreds of thousands of workers. Some wound up leading Novell... into Microsoft's arms. █