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> 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 inc

> 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.
throwaway-ibm 5y ago
IBM is huge... It's not really a single company, but like a bunch of independently operating companies that share (some) resources, and of course their name. We have fairly high hiring standards in our office, but when it comes to interacting with people from other offices, I've worked with people I'd never hire. I work on the IBM Cloud platform, which seems to be one of the most innovative places at IBM currently (compared to GBS/GTS, the latter became Kyndryl recently).
- ElViajero 5y ago
  >It's not really a single company I heard similar things about Ericsson, here in Sweden. > I work on the IBM Cloud platform, which seems to be one of the most innovative places at IBM currently That makes sense, it is a newer technology. I think that as an engineering discipline we are quite bad at maintaining our systems. "old" systems become hard to work with and people just gives up. It should not be like that.
throwaway_ibm_1 5y ago
Ex-IBMer here. I used to work for what was then called IBM Software Group in the early 2000s. I worked with some brilliant engineers, some of whom had spent their entire careers at IBM and achieved some amazing things. I worked with some brilliant managers as well. But the place felt rotten to the core. I don't think there was a problem with the people so much as with the system. IBM, as you might expect for a company of that size and age, felt incredibly bureaucratic. Whatever you wanted to achieve, there was a process that made it hard to achieve it. Whatever good idea you had, there was a committee of people who would dilute and ruin that idea or simply forbid you from pursuing it. Whatever industry standard tool you wanted to use, you couldn't use it because there were IBM tools that you were required to use instead, tools that slowed you down and frustrated you (I'm thinking of stuff with Lotus or Rational in the name). Whenever you needed to make a decision, it felt like no one was empowered to use their initiative to make that decision. Frankly, it felt like doing good work meant having to go under the radar because IBM wasn't set up to allow you to do good work. I did have good times there and I hear good things about the way that IBM has dragged itself into the 21st century since I left but I regret having spent so many of the best years of my career at that company.

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.

throwaway-ibm 5y ago

IBM is huge... It's not really a single company, but like a bunch of independently operating companies that share (some) resources, and of course their name. We have fairly high hiring standards in our office, but when it comes to interacting with people from other offices, I've worked with people I'd never hire. I work on the IBM Cloud platform, which seems to be one of the most innovative places at IBM currently (compared to GBS/GTS, the latter became Kyndryl recently).

ElViajero 5y ago
>It's not really a single company I heard similar things about Ericsson, here in Sweden. > I work on the IBM Cloud platform, which seems to be one of the most innovative places at IBM currently That makes sense, it is a newer technology. I think that as an engineering discipline we are quite bad at maintaining our systems. "old" systems become hard to work with and people just gives up. It should not be like that.

throwaway_ibm_1 5y ago

Ex-IBMer here. I used to work for what was then called IBM Software Group in the early 2000s. I worked with some brilliant engineers, some of whom had spent their entire careers at IBM and achieved some amazing things. I worked with some brilliant managers as well. But the place felt rotten to the core. I don't think there was a problem with the people so much as with the system. IBM, as you might expect for a company of that size and age, felt incredibly bureaucratic. Whatever you wanted to achieve, there was a process that made it hard to achieve it. Whatever good idea you had, there was a committee of people who would dilute and ruin that idea or simply forbid you from pursuing it. Whatever industry standard tool you wanted to use, you couldn't use it because there were IBM tools that you were required to use instead, tools that slowed you down and frustrated you (I'm thinking of stuff with Lotus or Rational in the name). Whenever you needed to make a decision, it felt like no one was empowered to use their initiative to make that decision. Frankly, it felt like doing good work meant having to go under the radar because IBM wasn't set up to allow you to do good work. I did have good times there and I hear good things about the way that IBM has dragged itself into the 21st century since I left but I regret having spent so many of the best years of my career at that company.