IBM is in a bind. They were so behind for so many years that anyone talented left. The ones who stayed were around were there because of tenure, not talent.

IBM is in a bind. They were so behind for so many years that anyone talented left. The ones who stayed were around were there because of tenure, not talent. What do you do when your best employees are gone and your best days are past? Share buybacks, overmarketing, and aggressive pursuit of license audits. But none of those require a large senior employee base. So they took the most aggressive policy possible while still plausibly remaining inside the law.