What it appears to be doing is saying that it will hire people for US positions and then firing them and moving them off-shore, just like it always did.

Company CEO Ginni Rometty told USA Today in December that IBM would hire 25,000 people for US positions in the next four years, 6,000 of them this year.

IBM suits were a little surprised by that because they are seeing mass redundancies with jobs being shipped to Asia and Eastern Europe Of course, Rometty is not calling them firings. They are “resource actions” and job losses for the year likely totalled in the thousands.

Bloomberg reported that this month, IBM started notifying more US workers that they would be let go.

IBM insisted that in the next four years, its U.S. workforce will increase but only if can fill the 25,000 planned positions. So, in other words what it is doing is firing US workers and if it can’t find US workers to replace them it is bringing in foreigners to do the same jobs or shipping the position overseas. Pretty much what it was doing before.

Several IBM workers were not pleased by Rometty’s language in the USA Today piece, and took to message boards and Facebook to gripe.

Some complained that the new recruiting drive wouldn’t offset jobs sent overseas in recent years. Others said Rometty had neglected to mention whether and how many people would be fired in the meantime. Some urged online communities to contact the Trump transition team and educate his aides about IBM’s history of layoffs and outsourcing.

Trump’s team might be confused by Rometty’s antics. After all she wrote to them, pledging her company’s support and seeking cooperation in creating what she called "new-collar" jobs, which require specialised skills but not necessarily a two- or four-year college degree.