5 ms·

You mean the same company that this year, laid off over 20,000 positions? Get the hell out IBM, you're acting like a bunch of sycophants. P.S. Bluemix is bad a

You mean the same company that this year, laid off over 20,000 positions? Get the hell out IBM, you're acting like a bunch of sycophants. P.S. Bluemix is bad and you should feel bad. EDIT: I normally try to approach my commenting with a rational calm way, but I can't, not with I.B-fucking.-M.

shakna 10y ago
Can any of us approach the behemoth calmly? It seems that wherever I go, everyone has something terrible to say about them, but they still keep getting huge contracts that they fail to deliver on. Is there someone here who can reasonably explain why they like IBM? Because I can't understand it. And I congratulate Queensland, Australia for banning future contracts with them for the next fifty years. (QLD can't contract to them for 50 years).
- alex_anglin 10y ago
  I'm certainly not an IBM customer, but I recognize that they have a very strong sales force. Relationships with management level IT folks and lots of golf games/schmoozing is probably one of their main competitive advantages.
- krona 10y ago
  No CTO ever got fired for buying IBM.
  - mattsmith321 10y ago
    That is what I was coming to post.
  - randcraw 10y ago
    No longer true. When IBM borked the Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic control software upgrade (1993), they very publicly lost the contract and many heads rolled. Mitre (their very stable FFRDC) lost a third of their FAA support staff in the blood-letting that ensued. IMHO, the only remaining golden boys of business are consultants like Bain and BCG, who tell the C-suiters what to think. Of course, the great secret is that these opt-shops will be the first companies to be fully automated, but invisibly. Then for decades thereafter, human CEOs will blithely continue to follow the lead of their precious Bain-bots, not realizing they've become a bot too (which they always were, of course).
  - user5994461 10y ago
    Pretty sure buying IBM in 2017 is a good way to get fired ^^
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > It seems that wherever I go, everyone has something terrible to say about them, but they still keep getting huge contracts that they fail to deliver on. Like many businesses that thrive on enterprise, and particularly government, contracts, IBM's key competitive strength is in knowledge of an expertise in navigating and manipulating the relevant contracting processes.
- StillBored 10y ago
  I'm not sure its really a case of "like"... or for that matter "hate".. IBM has a heaping pile of problems, many of which are completely understandable, and in many cases self inflicted due to "poor management". Yet, for many companies/government organizations (particularly large ones with decades of IT systems, frequently tied together with bailing wire from the last merger/spinoff/etc) they remain a choice, simply because buying another zSeries/iSeries/etc is the least expensive/risky proposition. These are companies that have been using IT solutions for decades, and have pretty mature processes, that frequently are damaged by modernization. Its not that these problems couldn't be solved by a modern web stack, or whatever is sexy this decade. It is that there is a working solution, and the companies have a history of trying to replace it, or living through the pain the last time they did. So, they buy a new iSeries every couple years for $250k, when the machine is doing the work of a $5k server from dell, or a couple thousand dollar a year cloud instance. In many cases they buy the new machine/contract/consulting even though there is an in-house project "replacing" it with a java/php/node.js/whatever stack, and the resulting product still isn't done. So, they pay IBM to tweak the current solution a little so it works on an phone browser (or whatever) instead of throwing the whole stack away and struggling with the 1/2 baked replacement. Sometimes they try to pay IBM to replace a solution, and the same thing happens, only its some other consulting company that comes in an quietly buys another iseries/hp nonstop/etc and continues on with business as usual. So, if you have been in IT for any length of time you realize that its not just IBM. The industry is littered with failures, many quietly hidden behind NDAs. In fact there are statistics floating around about modernization projects at large organizations, and they aren't pretty. All that said, IBM has some really bright people working for it. They produce things like the POWER8 or FS900 which are fantastic pieces of technology. Although having fantastic pieces of technology isn't necessarily by itself a recipe for success. If it were, we would all be using VMS on Alphas. That said, you can frequently see the WTF, in IBMs products. The proprietary DIMMs that were originally used in the "scale out" POWER8's, or the mess that is the firmware on the linux only power machines. Two problems that would have been much better if IBM had just stuck with industry standards and made them work from the beginning (standard DIMMs and UEFI) rather than thinking they were special snowflakes and creating further barriers to the use of their technology. They like all the other really big tech companies, drink far to much of their own cool aid. Particularly when they are slowly declining.
samtho 10y ago
IBM employed roughly 378,000 people in 2015[1] and the actual number laid-off is closer to 14,000[2]. This represents 3.7% of the workforce. While layoffs are never great, most of these were from legacy systems as they have been attempting to hire 25,000 since that was announced[3]. IBM is a very large company and employs a great number of people. They have been transitioning from a hardware company to a services company and thus, many workers who specialized only in the older tech will be let go. I cannot speak for everyone, but (AFAIK) they were given opportunity to move elsewhere in the company. To put the layoffs in context, Cisco is expected to lay off 14,000 workers (nearly 20% of its workforce), Walmart is laying off 17,500, and Seagate is laying off 8,100 by 2017 - 15.5% of its 2015 workforce[4]. 1: http://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM_Annual_Report_2015.pdf http://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM_Annual_Report_2015.p... 2: http://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-layoffs-continue-1463784692 http://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-layoffs-continue-1463784692 3: http://fortune.com/2016/05/20/ibm-layoff-employees-may/ http://fortune.com/2016/05/20/ibm-layoff-employees-may/ 4: http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/08/19/12-companies-laying-off-the-most-workers/ http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/08/19/12-companies-...
- wmccullough 10y ago
  Thank you for informing me.
- noobermin 10y ago
  You probably intended this to be obvious since it's in your profile, but you should disclose here too that you work for IBM.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Of those 370k how many are warm bodies for "contract service positions" and how many are paper pushers?
  - HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
    Why does it matter?
Spooky23 10y ago
Of course its IBM bullshit. They get to tie hiring they needed anyway to some incentive that they will be negotiate. They have an effective methodology for holding governments hostage and this is no different. You cannot blame IBM... they are making the noises that pandering politicians want to hear and driving value for their shareholders.
princetontiger 10y ago
Glad that someone posted this. I tried to use Bluemix to prototype some stock market AI thing... I spent a few weekend nights playing with it. Frankly, I didn't find Bluemix or Watson any more capable than myself. Of course, I then received several emails from sales reps.
solotronics 10y ago
IBM is pivoting towards cloud so they let go a lot of people associated with legacy projects. Bluemix happens to be great. We have had an excellent experience with them.
- athenot 10y ago
  Pretty heavy Blumix and AWS user here. Honest question: what do you feel is great about Blumix and what is the main differentiator? Except for the fact that they have bare metal in their offering, I haven't been impressed with them.
  - blakesterz 10y ago
    I can't tell if you're talking about SoftLayer or Bluemix or are they the same thing now? I feel like a confused old man suddenly because I thought Bluemix was a thing and now it's SoftLayer I thought, but maybe it's still that other thing?
    - athenot 10y ago
      I'm thinking of SoftLayer (now branded as Bluemix).
meira 10y ago
I got banned by commenting like this

shakna 10y ago

Can any of us approach the behemoth calmly? It seems that wherever I go, everyone has something terrible to say about them, but they still keep getting huge contracts that they fail to deliver on. Is there someone here who can reasonably explain why they like IBM? Because I can't understand it. And I congratulate Queensland, Australia for banning future contracts with them for the next fifty years. (QLD can't contract to them for 50 years).

alex_anglin 10y ago
I'm certainly not an IBM customer, but I recognize that they have a very strong sales force. Relationships with management level IT folks and lots of golf games/schmoozing is probably one of their main competitive advantages.
krona 10y ago
No CTO ever got fired for buying IBM.
- mattsmith321 10y ago
  That is what I was coming to post.
- randcraw 10y ago
  No longer true. When IBM borked the Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic control software upgrade (1993), they very publicly lost the contract and many heads rolled. Mitre (their very stable FFRDC) lost a third of their FAA support staff in the blood-letting that ensued. IMHO, the only remaining golden boys of business are consultants like Bain and BCG, who tell the C-suiters what to think. Of course, the great secret is that these opt-shops will be the first companies to be fully automated, but invisibly. Then for decades thereafter, human CEOs will blithely continue to follow the lead of their precious Bain-bots, not realizing they've become a bot too (which they always were, of course).
- user5994461 10y ago
  Pretty sure buying IBM in 2017 is a good way to get fired ^^
dragonwriter 10y ago
> It seems that wherever I go, everyone has something terrible to say about them, but they still keep getting huge contracts that they fail to deliver on. Like many businesses that thrive on enterprise, and particularly government, contracts, IBM's key competitive strength is in knowledge of an expertise in navigating and manipulating the relevant contracting processes.
StillBored 10y ago
I'm not sure its really a case of "like"... or for that matter "hate".. IBM has a heaping pile of problems, many of which are completely understandable, and in many cases self inflicted due to "poor management". Yet, for many companies/government organizations (particularly large ones with decades of IT systems, frequently tied together with bailing wire from the last merger/spinoff/etc) they remain a choice, simply because buying another zSeries/iSeries/etc is the least expensive/risky proposition. These are companies that have been using IT solutions for decades, and have pretty mature processes, that frequently are damaged by modernization. Its not that these problems couldn't be solved by a modern web stack, or whatever is sexy this decade. It is that there is a working solution, and the companies have a history of trying to replace it, or living through the pain the last time they did. So, they buy a new iSeries every couple years for $250k, when the machine is doing the work of a $5k server from dell, or a couple thousand dollar a year cloud instance. In many cases they buy the new machine/contract/consulting even though there is an in-house project "replacing" it with a java/php/node.js/whatever stack, and the resulting product still isn't done. So, they pay IBM to tweak the current solution a little so it works on an phone browser (or whatever) instead of throwing the whole stack away and struggling with the 1/2 baked replacement. Sometimes they try to pay IBM to replace a solution, and the same thing happens, only its some other consulting company that comes in an quietly buys another iseries/hp nonstop/etc and continues on with business as usual. So, if you have been in IT for any length of time you realize that its not just IBM. The industry is littered with failures, many quietly hidden behind NDAs. In fact there are statistics floating around about modernization projects at large organizations, and they aren't pretty. All that said, IBM has some really bright people working for it. They produce things like the POWER8 or FS900 which are fantastic pieces of technology. Although having fantastic pieces of technology isn't necessarily by itself a recipe for success. If it were, we would all be using VMS on Alphas. That said, you can frequently see the WTF, in IBMs products. The proprietary DIMMs that were originally used in the "scale out" POWER8's, or the mess that is the firmware on the linux only power machines. Two problems that would have been much better if IBM had just stuck with industry standards and made them work from the beginning (standard DIMMs and UEFI) rather than thinking they were special snowflakes and creating further barriers to the use of their technology. They like all the other really big tech companies, drink far to much of their own cool aid. Particularly when they are slowly declining.

samtho 10y ago

IBM employed roughly 378,000 people in 2015[1] and the actual number laid-off is closer to 14,000[2]. This represents 3.7% of the workforce. While layoffs are never great, most of these were from legacy systems as they have been attempting to hire 25,000 since that was announced[3]. IBM is a very large company and employs a great number of people. They have been transitioning from a hardware company to a services company and thus, many workers who specialized only in the older tech will be let go. I cannot speak for everyone, but (AFAIK) they were given opportunity to move elsewhere in the company. To put the layoffs in context, Cisco is expected to lay off 14,000 workers (nearly 20% of its workforce), Walmart is laying off 17,500, and Seagate is laying off 8,100 by 2017 - 15.5% of its 2015 workforce[4]. 1: http://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM_Annual_Report_2015.pdf http://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM_Annual_Report_2015.p... 2: http://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-layoffs-continue-1463784692 http://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-layoffs-continue-1463784692 3: http://fortune.com/2016/05/20/ibm-layoff-employees-may/ http://fortune.com/2016/05/20/ibm-layoff-employees-may/ 4: http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/08/19/12-companies-laying-off-the-most-workers/ http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/08/19/12-companies-...

wmccullough 10y ago
Thank you for informing me.
noobermin 10y ago
You probably intended this to be obvious since it's in your profile, but you should disclose here too that you work for IBM.
raverbashing 10y ago
Of those 370k how many are warm bodies for "contract service positions" and how many are paper pushers?
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
  Why does it matter?

Spooky23 10y ago

Of course its IBM bullshit. They get to tie hiring they needed anyway to some incentive that they will be negotiate. They have an effective methodology for holding governments hostage and this is no different. You cannot blame IBM... they are making the noises that pandering politicians want to hear and driving value for their shareholders.

princetontiger 10y ago

Glad that someone posted this. I tried to use Bluemix to prototype some stock market AI thing... I spent a few weekend nights playing with it. Frankly, I didn't find Bluemix or Watson any more capable than myself. Of course, I then received several emails from sales reps.

solotronics 10y ago

IBM is pivoting towards cloud so they let go a lot of people associated with legacy projects. Bluemix happens to be great. We have had an excellent experience with them.

athenot 10y ago
Pretty heavy Blumix and AWS user here. Honest question: what do you feel is great about Blumix and what is the main differentiator? Except for the fact that they have bare metal in their offering, I haven't been impressed with them.
- blakesterz 10y ago
  I can't tell if you're talking about SoftLayer or Bluemix or are they the same thing now? I feel like a confused old man suddenly because I thought Bluemix was a thing and now it's SoftLayer I thought, but maybe it's still that other thing?
  - athenot 10y ago
    I'm thinking of SoftLayer (now branded as Bluemix).

meira 10y ago

I got banned by commenting like this