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As an ex-IBMer with 10 years of dealing with Sametime, I find this discussion amusing. Just think of Slack but with 300,000+ in your team. Sametime was a big

As an ex-IBMer with 10 years of dealing with Sametime, I find this discussion amusing. Just think of Slack but with 300,000+ in your team. Sametime was a big part of IBM culture. IBMs work from home policy was tied up with it. At work means you are online and responsive to Sametime. A typical meeting involves people sitting in a conference room Sametiming comments to each other about the speaker. One nice thing about Sametime is that you chat history is in XML files on your computer. This allows you to use grep to find past information. IBM started to use Slack when I left. On the one hand this allows you to collaborate with people outside IBM, but downside is you need both tools running. Slack for the cool kids, Sametime for the old guys. My new job is giving me a new experience- video conferences using Google Hangouts. Many times with googlers on the Google bus.

k__ 9y ago
The last company I worked for had an IBM fanboy as CEO who wanted to do all internal communication with IBM tools. Domino, Notes, Sametime. I think these were the worst tools I ever had to use in my whole career. Even after they rewrote the UI with Eclipse later.
- jhallenworld 9y ago
  Yeah, Notes is basically written in the Lotus 123 spreadsheet scripting language :-) Eclipse just made it worse. Obligatory http://www.ihatelotusnotes.com/ http://www.ihatelotusnotes.com/ The one positive comment I can make is that you did end up with a unified enterprise-wide set of collaboration tools. Oh there was a new tool I hated before IBM decided to get on the git bandwagon: Rational Team Concert- project management and source control tied into one. Imagine having to start a giant 500 MB Java application to "git checkout". (In fact the project management part was OK, just using it for source control was horrible).
  - compuguy 9y ago
    ClearCase I think (I have not used rational team concert) infinitely worse than RTC.

k__ 9y ago

The last company I worked for had an IBM fanboy as CEO who wanted to do all internal communication with IBM tools. Domino, Notes, Sametime. I think these were the worst tools I ever had to use in my whole career. Even after they rewrote the UI with Eclipse later.

jhallenworld 9y ago
Yeah, Notes is basically written in the Lotus 123 spreadsheet scripting language :-) Eclipse just made it worse. Obligatory http://www.ihatelotusnotes.com/ http://www.ihatelotusnotes.com/ The one positive comment I can make is that you did end up with a unified enterprise-wide set of collaboration tools. Oh there was a new tool I hated before IBM decided to get on the git bandwagon: Rational Team Concert- project management and source control tied into one. Imagine having to start a giant 500 MB Java application to "git checkout". (In fact the project management part was OK, just using it for source control was horrible).
- compuguy 9y ago
  ClearCase I think (I have not used rational team concert) infinitely worse than RTC.