IBM allegedly trained his replacement on his duties weeks before telling him
A new federal lawsuit accuses IBM of paying an employee a profit-sharing bonus one day and handing him a termination notice the next.
Stephen P. Gutierrez, a former Integrated Service Manager in IBM's Infrastructure Cloud division, filed the suit on March 6, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado (Gutierrez v. IBM Corporation, Case No. 1:26-cv-00922-RTG). He is alleging retaliation, age discrimination, national origin discrimination, sex-based wage discrimination, and violations of the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act.
Beyond the legal claims, the case reads like a cautionary tale about what can happen when workforce restructuring runs ahead of its own paperwork.
According to the lawsuit, IBM rated Gutierrez as "thriving" in a performance evaluation on February 10, 2025. On March 17, the company processed his annual profit-sharing payment — a bonus IBM's own documentation tied to the employee's contribution to business results. The following day, March 18, Gutierrez received a termination notice citing a "Reduction in Force" and "Talent Footprint."
The timing alone would raise questions. But the lawsuit goes further.
It alleges IBM had already begun onboarding a replacement worker roughly 28 days before telling Gutierrez he was being let go. Internal Slack messages and Monday.com records cited in the filing allegedly show a colleague spending 1.5 hours training the...
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