Which means American managers and Chinese (or Asian country) slaves.

Last October, IBM (IBM) chief executive Ginni Rometty vaguely hinted the company’s self-styled makeover to analytics, cloud, mobile and security specialist could mean yet another round of layoffs, following last year's firing of 10,000 workers with another 1,700 shown the door in 2013.

But that was small potatoes compared to what might hit IBM next week amid one report the vendor is prepping to lay off what could amount to 26 percent of its global workforce. If events play out as a Forbes report by noted IBM watcher Robert X. Cringely outlines, by the end of February some 100,000 IBM workers could be gone.

If enacted, the layoffs would arrive timed to a major corporate reorganization codenamed Project Chrome ending IBM’s hardware, software and service silo history and creating new business units for Research, Sales & Delivery, Systems, Global Technology Services, Cloud, Watson, Security, Commerce and Analytics. IBM’s 11th consecutive quarter of declining revenue might have triggered the vendor to initiate the far-reaching reorganization, said in some circles to be IBM's largest overhaul in its 103-year history.