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Recently, IBM suddenly announced the closure of its R&D department in China and laid off more than 1,000 employees. The announcement took only three minutes and attracted widespread attention.

This decision not only shocked many employees, but also triggered a discussion about the nationality and management style of corporate executives. Some netizens believe that this is related to the current IBM Indian CEO Arvind Krishna, who has carried out multiple rounds of layoffs around the world.

The closure of IBM's R&D department in China is not an isolated incident. Previously, Microsoft also moved its R&D department and personnel in China to the United States. However, IBM insider information revealed by relevant employees shows that there may be deeper motives behind the layoffs.

A netizen who is suspected to be an IBM employee said: "IBM will close its R&D center in China, and the staff will either be dismissed or relocated to Bangalore, India." This is actually a disguised layoff. This view has been resonated by many netizens.

Looking back, the performance of Indian executives in companies has always attracted much attention. In recent years, more and more Indians have entered the top global companies as executives; among the Fortune 500, there are 75 foreign CEOs, of which 10 are Indian.

However, as the financial power of Indians in Europe and the United States has increased, the Anglo-American community in the United States has realized the seriousness of the problem, and has laid off Indian executives in recent years. For example, the first thing Musk did when he took over Twitter was to fire Indian executives. On the 13th of this month, the Indian CEO of Starbucks was also replaced.

This series of events makes people wonder why American companies prefer to use Indian executives?

On the one hand, Indian executives are generally well-educated and have strong professional qualities and management capabilities; on the other hand, Indian executives like to stick together in the company, and Indian employees tend to hire more Indian compatriots when recruiting. In addition, the huge talent gap caused by the US education problem has also contributed to the dominance of Indians in US companies.

Another important reason why Indian executives are popular in Silicon Valley is that they are often very good at cost management. They can make financial statements look good in a short period of time by laying off employees, cutting budgets, etc., thereby pushing up stock prices, which is what corporate shareholders are happy to see.

However, this is also a double-edged sword, because although many testing and R&D positions are difficult to generate benefits in the short term, they are indeed the foundation of corporate development.

After Boeing hired an Indian CEO in 2015, it drastically lowered its quality inspection standards and outsourced flight control software to an Indian company. Subsequently, a number of 737 passenger plane crashes occurred, and Boeing handed over the throne of the number one in the aviation industry to Airbus. Previously, the Windows system frequently experienced system vulnerabilities, and large-scale blue screens caused huge disasters, which were also said to be related to the elimination of testing positions by Microsoft's Indian executives.

Now IBM is forcing its employees to move to Bangalore, India, in disguised form of layoffs at its China R&D center. Whether this will have unexpected impacts remains to be seen.