IBM has added more than 30,000 new employees, and has 70,000 using Apple Macs
In it Rometty announced several surprising statistics, including that IBM has already grown its headcount by a whopping 30,000 people in its fiscal first half.
Much of that was through hiring though some of that was through acquisitions. IBM has closed 10 acquisitions in 2016.
Here's a part of the email she sent the troops, shared with Business Insider:
"In the second quarter we also continued to make meaningful progress in how IBMers work and contribute to this success. With Checkpoint, all IBMers are getting and giving faster and more frequent feedback. 130,000 IBMers have been trained in agile, 70,000 IBMers have chosen to work with Mac products, and more than 250,000 IBMers are using Box. Almost all IBMers participated in Cognitive Build, helping 20,000 colleagues collaborate on nearly 3,000 cognitive start-up projects. And we continue to invest in our people, with IBMers benefitting from 9 million hours of learning in the first half, and with more than 30,000 new IBMers joining the company."
To decode that a little: "Checkpoint" is IBM's new performance review system, in which it ditched the 10-year-old system of grading an employee's performance after-the-fact with a new system that gives employees ongoing feedback.
"Cognitive Build" was an enormous artificial intelligence hackathon that began in 1Q with an event and winners selected in the second quarter. IBM believes it may have been the largest AI hackathon ever held.
During the event, teams of employees created projects that were then crowded-funded using the company's internal Kickstarter-like program, called iFundIT, where IBM employees get to vote on the employee-led projects IBM should pursue.