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I laughed when I saw this; my 14yo looked over to see why I was laughing and asked "what's IBM?" indeed, child, indeed.

by dgacmu 12d ago

mrbonner 12d ago
When I was in the final year of college in 04-05 my dream would be to work at IBM. It still had the kind of prestige of R&D in the world. Fast forward a couple of years to 08-09, I don’t recall the event but IBM perception went down and a stone. Was that when they sold the hardware business and became fully consultant?
- ofrzeta 12d ago
  They only sold the consumer and low-end server hardware line. You can still get IBM servers (Power) and mainframes.
- dgacmu 12d ago
  I think they started on a long slide starting in the late 90s when they tried to couple research more and more tightly to product deliverables, and then as they pivoted to being a services company, including selling off non-mainframe hardware to Lenovo, to coupling r&d to, uh, I guess services revenue, whatever that means. They had some research layoffs in 2008, at the same time that MSR and Google were really blossoming in research spend and perception, and I think they kind of got left behind. I had a former student go there around 2008 and it seemed like the vibes were starting to sour around then. They maintained some awesome researchers in, e.g., databases, but I think the "make sure you are showing closely how your research directly contributes to services revenue" thing was strong by then and somewhat ruinous for how pleasant a work experience it was for many.
- powvans 12d ago
  Same. My first real job out of college was at IBM 2004 to 2005. I was so proud to be an IBMer. Hated it. Lots of good people, but the bureaucracy, the pace, the whole thing, not fun.
Alien1Being 12d ago
Same thing is happening to Microsoft and Google. A slow, long slide through mediocrity into irrelevance...
- lotsofpulp 11d ago
  Alphabet is operating and expanding the only fleet of fully autonomous vehicles in the world, to rave reviews. The first contact with AI most people have is Gemini. And their net income went from $74B to $100B to $132B in 3 years and profit margin from 24% to 32%. Mediocrity and irrelevant are hardly how I would describe them.
  - lokar 11d ago
    You could interpret the comment as a prediction based on the same pattern of overwhelming internal bureaucracy impacting engineering innovation. Control swinging entirely over to finance and legal. Focused entirely on rent seeking and protecting monopolies. Eventually these patterns kill companies.

I laughed when I saw this; my 14yo looked over to see why I was laughing and asked "what's IBM?" indeed, child, indeed.

by dgacmu 12d ago

I laughed when I saw this; my 14yo looked over to see why I was laughing and asked "what's IBM?" indeed, child, indeed.

When I was in the final year of college in 04-05 my dream would be to work at IBM. It still had the kind of prestige of R&D in the world. Fast forward a couple of years to 08-09, I don’t recall the event but IBM perception went down and a stone. Was that when they sold the hardware business and became fully consultant?

ofrzeta 12d ago
They only sold the consumer and low-end server hardware line. You can still get IBM servers (Power) and mainframes.
dgacmu 12d ago
I think they started on a long slide starting in the late 90s when they tried to couple research more and more tightly to product deliverables, and then as they pivoted to being a services company, including selling off non-mainframe hardware to Lenovo, to coupling r&d to, uh, I guess services revenue, whatever that means. They had some research layoffs in 2008, at the same time that MSR and Google were really blossoming in research spend and perception, and I think they kind of got left behind. I had a former student go there around 2008 and it seemed like the vibes were starting to sour around then. They maintained some awesome researchers in, e.g., databases, but I think the "make sure you are showing closely how your research directly contributes to services revenue" thing was strong by then and somewhat ruinous for how pleasant a work experience it was for many.
powvans 12d ago
Same. My first real job out of college was at IBM 2004 to 2005. I was so proud to be an IBMer. Hated it. Lots of good people, but the bureaucracy, the pace, the whole thing, not fun.

Alien1Being 12d ago

Same thing is happening to Microsoft and Google. A slow, long slide through mediocrity into irrelevance...

lotsofpulp 11d ago
Alphabet is operating and expanding the only fleet of fully autonomous vehicles in the world, to rave reviews. The first contact with AI most people have is Gemini. And their net income went from $74B to $100B to $132B in 3 years and profit margin from 24% to 32%. Mediocrity and irrelevant are hardly how I would describe them.
- lokar 11d ago
  You could interpret the comment as a prediction based on the same pattern of overwhelming internal bureaucracy impacting engineering innovation. Control swinging entirely over to finance and legal. Focused entirely on rent seeking and protecting monopolies. Eventually these patterns kill companies.