Red Hat "day of learning and IBM laying off 1,800+ workers
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Kevin Fenzi: Misc bits from late February 2025
Here's another misc bits from Fedora Infra land. I missed last weekend as I was off on some vacation. I've got a few more days coming up that I need to use before they go away. :)
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Day of learning on friday
Red Hat does these quarterly "day of learning" days, where everyone is encouraged to go learn something. Work related, not work related, interesting, useful or not. It's really a great thing. This time I decided to play around with Home Assistant some more and figure out how it does things. Adam Williamson mentioned it in a matrix discussion, and I had been meaning to look into it too, so seemed like a great time. I picked up a Home Assistant green (which is basically a small arm box that has home assistant (HA) all installed on it and ready to go. Initial setup was easy, no issues.
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STCN: IBM Chinese R&D Branch Closed
China Security Times (STCN) recently reported on an IBM internal decision stating that IBM China Investment Company (IBMV) and its branches will cease business activities starting March 1, 2025. Related office spaces will also be suspended.
IBM announced last August that it will withdraw all research and development work from China. The China System Laboratory work has been transferred to other IBM infrastructure bases overseas. The move this time only involves IBMV, which is mainly responsible for R&D and testing. The employees are located in many cities across the country, including Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, etc., involving more than 1,800 people.
According to the financial report, IBM’s 2023 revenue in the Chinese market fell by 19.6 percent, becoming one of the main reasons for dragging down revenue growth in the Asia-Pacific region. In the first half of 2024, IBM’s sales in China fell again, down 5 percent year-over-year. In addition to R&D, IBM’s current business in China also includes consulting business (IBMC). According to information released by IBM last year, the number of IBMC Chinese customers has dropped by 45 percent in the past two years. Some IBM employees revealed that IBMC will also lay off employees this year.