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Something like 18k to 25k people to be laid off, and it's rippling around the world. Even some people from the Watson team are being let go. How the mighty are fallen.
Unhappy times at IBM, unhappy times at Qualcomm, unhappy times at Intel. While it sounds really bad I think one way to look at it is just that computer related industries finally are maturing and they are going through the same changes that heavy industries went through decades ago. Part of it is a technological change. Another part is globalization. The latter one is somewhat troublesome if inevitable. US did well when they could maintain absolute technical leadership and get "paid" whatever they asked for the good no one else could produce. This time has past and it looks like the middle class is paying high price for it.
Just a sign that we need to innovate more. Which is very much happening in systems and software, e-cars and many other areas. But agreed the "smokestack industries" of chip design are not faring so well.
