5 ms·
> IBM as a company barely makes sense at all at this point. I started my career at IBM in the 1980s. My dad worked there before me. It's impossible to convey
by beachy 3y ago
> IBM as a company barely makes sense at all at this point.
I started my career at IBM in the 1980s. My dad worked there before me.
It's impossible to convey how much hubris existed in the company then, at the peak of the "No-one ever got fired for buying IBM" days. IBM was a god.
The company had never laid off a single employee. The talk was that the R&D divisions had multiple generations of innovative tech up their sleeves and if any competitor ever got close, well they'd just pop something out like from a vending machine to kick their ass. I believed it.
It became obvious when the company started losing the PC market that things weren't actually that rosey at all, and there were serious issues.
Later it became obvious that the company was turning into a consulting company instead of a technology company and the glory days were well over.
Nothing's changed since then. Things have only gone from bad from worse for IBM.
My point - nothing really but disagreement with this observation.
IBM still makes sense, as a dying beast but with customers that can still be milked. As long as those customers can be mikled, IBM will continue to make sense.
- anukin 3y agoDamn it feels so much like Apple now
- asdfman123 3y agoAnd Google
- jb1991 3y agoApple Silicon is one of the most revolutionary new technologies in awhile. Apple has a long way to go before it is at IBM’s status.
- Analemma_ 3y ago> The talk was that the R&D divisions had multiple generations of innovative tech up their sleeves and if any competitor ever got close, well they'd just pop something out like from a vending machine to kick their ass. It's amazing that this story just keeps popping up over and over. People also said this about Intel (nope, 10nm was a total wash and during that time AMD and ARM started eating their lunch) and Google (no, there is no secret Google lab with the "good AI", it's just Bard and it sucks compared to GPT-4).
- beachy 3y agoI would love to know why Google appear so behind GPT-4. The vibe is that they are not releasing stuff until it's trustworthy. My initial playing with ChatGPT is that it's amazing. Would I trust it to recommend medication? Likely not. Is it useful? Hell yeah. Google should be taking a good hard look at how they have missed this boat, it could help them flush out their internal arteries.