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IBM-er here. yep, it's kinda a disaster, but tech savvy people can access their mail (clearing cache & cookies every few hours helps for some folks). Funny thi

IBM-er here. yep, it's kinda a disaster, but tech savvy people can access their mail (clearing cache & cookies every few hours helps for some folks). Funny thing, IBM tried to move to Exchange for years, but it failed every time. Turns out, calendar integration (between Exchange and Verse/Notes) is tricky. Especially if you have to do it for 300000 accounts. To be frank, I haven't received any meeting invites in 3 days, so I'm actually quite satisfied with the migration.

sharkweek 5y ago
I was gonna say - this sounds like a dream week for most.
albatross13 5y ago
Hilariously enough, I imagine people are getting more done this week :laugh_cry_emoji:
verst 5y ago
Migration from Lotus Notes is always horrible. In 2011 I worked on many migrations to Google Apps for Business (GSuite, Google for Work etc) and there was only one person in all of Google who understood Lotus Notes and could maintain the migration tool he had created.
- samus 5y ago
  And every time a big user moves away from Lotus Notes (and other such dinosaurs, such as Cobol), it gets harder as this knowledge becomes more niche. The people doing it spend the rest of their career at that combany and that's it.
jhgb 5y ago
> I haven't received any meeting invites in 3 days, so I'm actually quite satisfied with the migration. Task failed successfully?
- mlboss 5y ago
  Task was successful because it increased productivity.
spec-obs 5y ago
As a RH'er who has started to see a creep in contact coming from IBM'ers the past few days have been very peaceful.
- chris_j 5y ago
  Pardon my ignorance; what does RH mean in this context?
  - justinclift 5y ago
    Red Hat
    - chris_j 5y ago
      Many thanks. I feel like I ought to have been able to figure that one out...
ElViajero 5y ago
> IBM-er here. What do you think that it is the level of competence of people at IBM? For what I read here in Hacker News, it would seem that you have very incompetent colleagues. I am old enough to remember IBM with certain sympathy/nostalgia and I hope that the situation is not so dire.
- kmarc 5y ago
  ex-IBMer here. I was at IBM research (as an engineer), and thankfully I can say most of my direct colleagues were great and highly competent ...when it came to actual research. I think we had a good engineering core team too, but whenever we had to interact with "big IBM" (outside research) we mostly bumped into incompetent people, and career(money)-focused managers. Fun fact, due incompetent management 90%+ of my team left in the past 5 years. Since then I had to work with other IBMers (both engineers and managers/team leads) on different projects and although some of them I'd consider knowledgeable, none of the engineers were able to create high quality output. But I guess this is the same in any monstrously huge organizations. I would have been surprised if IBM could tackle such a complicated engineering problem like this migration.
  - ElViajero 5y ago
    > Fun fact, due incompetent management 90%+ of my team left in the past 5 years. Not fun, but I get the idea. That is never a good situation. I has been a manager in the past, and I have seen many people that despises the position. I think that it is more important that people gives credit for, and that everybody seems to call out bad management but few appreciate good management because is "transparent" and it seems that everything will work without them.
    - kmarc 5y ago
      FWIW, my direct manager was indeed "transparent", as in, he wasn't managing us textbook-properly, but he definitely shielded us from upper management BS, while helping us out to achieve our goals and enable our engineering work. I usually try to avoid assessing management as "bad" (it's just a downward spiral, everyone just says it, and trigger each other), but in this particular case it was so exceptionally bad that we all went into long discussions and analysis of it.

sharkweek 5y ago

I was gonna say - this sounds like a dream week for most.

albatross13 5y ago

Hilariously enough, I imagine people are getting more done this week :laugh_cry_emoji:

verst 5y ago

Migration from Lotus Notes is always horrible. In 2011 I worked on many migrations to Google Apps for Business (GSuite, Google for Work etc) and there was only one person in all of Google who understood Lotus Notes and could maintain the migration tool he had created.

samus 5y ago
And every time a big user moves away from Lotus Notes (and other such dinosaurs, such as Cobol), it gets harder as this knowledge becomes more niche. The people doing it spend the rest of their career at that combany and that's it.

jhgb 5y ago

> I haven't received any meeting invites in 3 days, so I'm actually quite satisfied with the migration. Task failed successfully?

mlboss 5y ago
Task was successful because it increased productivity.

spec-obs 5y ago

As a RH'er who has started to see a creep in contact coming from IBM'ers the past few days have been very peaceful.

chris_j 5y ago
Pardon my ignorance; what does RH mean in this context?
- justinclift 5y ago
  Red Hat
  - chris_j 5y ago
    Many thanks. I feel like I ought to have been able to figure that one out...

ElViajero 5y ago

> IBM-er here. What do you think that it is the level of competence of people at IBM? For what I read here in Hacker News, it would seem that you have very incompetent colleagues. I am old enough to remember IBM with certain sympathy/nostalgia and I hope that the situation is not so dire.

kmarc 5y ago
ex-IBMer here. I was at IBM research (as an engineer), and thankfully I can say most of my direct colleagues were great and highly competent ...when it came to actual research. I think we had a good engineering core team too, but whenever we had to interact with "big IBM" (outside research) we mostly bumped into incompetent people, and career(money)-focused managers. Fun fact, due incompetent management 90%+ of my team left in the past 5 years. Since then I had to work with other IBMers (both engineers and managers/team leads) on different projects and although some of them I'd consider knowledgeable, none of the engineers were able to create high quality output. But I guess this is the same in any monstrously huge organizations. I would have been surprised if IBM could tackle such a complicated engineering problem like this migration.
- ElViajero 5y ago
  > Fun fact, due incompetent management 90%+ of my team left in the past 5 years. Not fun, but I get the idea. That is never a good situation. I has been a manager in the past, and I have seen many people that despises the position. I think that it is more important that people gives credit for, and that everybody seems to call out bad management but few appreciate good management because is "transparent" and it seems that everything will work without them.
  - kmarc 5y ago
    FWIW, my direct manager was indeed "transparent", as in, he wasn't managing us textbook-properly, but he definitely shielded us from upper management BS, while helping us out to achieve our goals and enable our engineering work. I usually try to avoid assessing management as "bad" (it's just a downward spiral, everyone just says it, and trigger each other), but in this particular case it was so exceptionally bad that we all went into long discussions and analysis of it.