Comment by abraae
7 days ago
I joined IBM over 40 years ago, like my pappy before me.
My main takeaway from IBM's longevity is just how astonishingly long big companys' death rattles can be, not how great IBM are at running software businesses.
7 days ago
I joined IBM over 40 years ago, like my pappy before me.
My main takeaway from IBM's longevity is just how astonishingly long big companys' death rattles can be, not how great IBM are at running software businesses.
Are they dying? IBM’s stock is up 160% over the past 5 years.
No. They are a multi-generational institution at this point and they are constantly evolving. If you work there it definitely FEELS like they are dying because the thing you spent the last 10 years of your career on is going away and was once heralded as the "next big thing." That said, IBM fascinated me when I was acquired by them because it is like a living organism. Hard to kill, fully enmeshed in both the business and political fabric of things and so ultimately able to sustain market shifts.
That's an interesting and enlightening way to look at it.
For me it was the death of IBM's preeminence in IT. When I started there a job at IBM was prestigious,a job for life. More than once I was told that we had a lengthy backlog of inventions and technological wonders that could be wheeled out of the plant if competitors ever nipped too closely at IBM's heels.
At that time IBM had never made a single person redundant - anywhere in the world. The company had an incredible sophisticated internal HR platform that did elaborate succession planning and considered training and promotion as major workforce factors - there was little need to think much about recruitment because jobs for life. IBM could win any deal, maybe needing only to discount a little if things were very competitive.
It's impossible to imagine now what a lofty position the company held. It's not unfair to say that, if not dead, the IBM of old is no longer with us.
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I interned there one summer and I felt like 9 years ago when I was there the company died 30 years prior. It’s a super weird place to work
I don't think they're dying at all, they're just become yet another consultancy/outsourcing shop
turning into a rent-seeking-behavior engine.
the final end-state of the company, like a glorious star turning into a black hole
exactly
[dead]