Red Hat, a wholly-owned subsidiary of IBM, is about to move some of its back-end employees and technical support teams, and its business will be completely moved into the IBM headquarters system. This integration will officially take effect in early 2026, and relevant information was notified to internal employees on September 3.

It is reported that most members of Red Hat's human resources, finance, accounting, legal and other administrative functional departments will join IBM, while the leadership team will temporarily stay in Red Hat's main business. The relevant conversion progress will vary slightly depending on the laws of each country, but it is expected that most regions will begin implementation within the year.

Although some industry insiders believe that this integration is long overdue, as soon as the news came out, some employees could not hide their worries. They were worried that American technology giants such as IBM would eliminate redundant positions after the merger in order to streamline back-office operations. In January of this year alone, IBM expected to save $3.5 billion in costs throughout the year due to job cuts.

There is currently no exact data indicating the number of Red Hat back-end employees involved in this adjustment. It is understood that the total number of Red Hat employees worldwide is approximately 19,000, mainly concentrated in engineering, sales, support and other business areas.

Teams that remain at Red Hat will be managed by Strategy & Operations, and engineering, product, sales, and marketing personnel will not be affected for the time being.

Some people said they didn't mind the employees who were about to be transferred to IBM, thinking they had already worked closely with IBM before. However, some people left messages on the social platform Reddit, saying that the company's atmosphere has long since changed. "The open culture has long since disappeared, replaced by micromanagement and unrealistic mid-level decision-making," said a Reddit user.

Red Hat laid off about 800 people (or 4% of its employees) in April 2023. Since being acquired by IBM for $34 billion in 2019, it has been operating relatively independently. Some Red Hat employees are worried that the migration of the back-end functional team may mean more integration initiatives in the future.

IBM disclosed that Red Hat's annual operating revenue in 2024 has reached US$6.5 billion, and is regarded as the strategic core of IBM's cloud computing business. Red Hat declined to comment.