IBM Plans To Hire 18,800 People This Year

WASHINGTON, Aug 12 (AFP) - Computer and technology group IBM said Thursday it had nearly doubled hiring plans for this year to 18,800 new workers as it expands business services.
"We are going to hire 18,800. We originally forecast 10,000," said IBM spokesman Clint Roswell.
So far this year the giant had already hired more than 10,000 people, he said.
Two-thirds of the hires were related to the information services and business consultancy.
Much of the growth was based on operations related to the Linux-based operating system software, whose core source code is freely available instead of being guarded as a corporate secret.
IBM had 319,280 staff at the end of 2003.