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Ask HN: What's going on at IBM?

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71–80 of 80 posts

Re: Ask HN: What's going on at IBM?

#71

I remember Mr Buffet talking about how awesome IBM's pipeline for the next few years is. Also, this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2015/11/17/wh...

Warren Buffet has often said he avoids investing in the tech sector because he does not like to own companies he does not understand. For the life of me, I can not fathom why he broke this cardinal rule with IBM.

buffett also likes companies with a "moat", which (arguably) IBM's patent portfolio provides.

Also they can borrow at incredibly cheap rates, which makes them useful as a financial company. (like GE / GE Capital)

Re: Ask HN: What's going on at IBM?

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always been controversial whether a company should be allowed to invest in new fields. Over the last 100 years a few people have even made the argument that it is illegal for a company to invest in a new fields. There were some lawsuits about this in the 20th Century, though the courts always sided with the corporations. Still, the argument is interesting to consider. Suppose it is 1995 and Microsoft it at the p…

This isnt what I asked at all. If MSFT has BILLIONS in the bank - why do they literally sit on the money instead of investing heavily in GOOG when GOOG is born? I am not saying a company should give the money they have in the bank back to their shareholders to invest - I am saying why dont they actively invest in startups VERY AGGRESSIVELY as opposed to sitting on the money entirely. Also, I am literally only talking…

The answer has nothing to do with any of that.

The answer is simple: companies are deferring their income tax payments in anticipation of an upcoming tax holiday year, which is the expectation given the decades' long history of past policy decisions. You don't want to be the CEO that paid a bunch in taxes when you could have just waited a few years and let the problem solve itself at no cost to your shareholders.

Re: Ask HN: What's going on at IBM?

#73
post #5

IBM has transitioned into an enterprise services/consulting firm over the past 15 years or so. Their game plan is to get huge $$ contracts from Fortune 50 companies and government agencies, which is a long and costly process. This kind of business is extremely hard to scale, compared to a true software or hardware company innovating and licensing/selling products. IBM does have a ton of resources behind Watson, but t…

IBM had the contract to run most of the IT infrastructure for the State of Texas and subsequently lost it. I don't have any facts as to why, but rumor was it was an execution problem.

Re: Ask HN: What's going on at IBM?

#74

I've been working at IBM for a couple of years now, started as a grad. What you must be referring to is the stock price, which has dropped from 200 dollars a couple of years ago to like 120 these days. I can't claim to understand this company, I think very few people can. There are 300,000 employees and more teams/products/departments than you can imagine. It's absolutely insane. However, what I can say is the follow…

AKA Fucked by Cloud: http://www.wired.com/2015/10/meet-walking-dead-hp-cisco-dell...

Re: Ask HN: What's going on at IBM?

#75

Regarding some of the Buffett posts, he has been reading the IBM annual report for 50 years. Other major investments he owns, like Wells Fargo and BNSF, are major IBM customers. He once said Wells Fargo's largest expense is paid out to IBM each year. Buffett's position is that IBM has succeeded in turnarounds throughout its 100+ year history. Also, their advantage is in the Public/Private hybrid cloud. Buffett also b…

Blumix is late to the game and has to put it mildly road to do https://status.ng.bluemix.net/

Re: Ask HN: What's going on at IBM?

#76
Something not mentioned here is their 'big push' into Design Thinking. IBM have snapped up ~14+ of the graduates from my college course (Visual Communications, IADT, Dublin) flown them out to Austin for a 3 month starter course and now have quiet a substantial design department here in Ireland.

More info: https://www.ibm.com/design/studio.shtml

Re: Ask HN: What's going on at IBM?

#77

Regarding some of the Buffett posts, he has been reading the IBM annual report for 50 years. Other major investments he owns, like Wells Fargo and BNSF, are major IBM customers. He once said Wells Fargo's largest expense is paid out to IBM each year. Buffett's position is that IBM has succeeded in turnarounds throughout its 100+ year history. Also, their advantage is in the Public/Private hybrid cloud. Buffett also b…

Blumix is late to the game and has to put it mildly road to do https://status.ng.bluemix.net/

When bluemix started out on day one, I didn't know what the heck was going on. When I look at that list now, I'm impressed with the cohesion of the services presented. I see bluemix, Twitter insights, weather insights, and a lot of other services that fit into the narrative IBM has pushed through the media. The services appear relevant, and I'd trust ibm to support and grow them instead of using the public as its sandbox.

Re: Ask HN: What's going on at IBM?

#78
post #34

I've been working at IBM for a couple of years now, started as a grad. What you must be referring to is the stock price, which has dropped from 200 dollars a couple of years ago to like 120 these days. I can't claim to understand this company, I think very few people can. There are 300,000 employees and more teams/products/departments than you can imagine. It's absolutely insane. However, what I can say is the follow…

They're not referring to the stock price, the revenue that IBM takes in has fallen for 14 straight quarters: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ibm-reports-another-quarter... The stock would actually have fallen much, much more but IBM has been performing continual stock buybacks to prop it up: http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2015/10/27/why-investors-d... Some people think IBM is nothing more than a financial enginee…

My personal experiences with IBM representatives in Eastern Europe were rather negative (IBM was a strategic partner of my company), concerning IBM BPM and Cloud hosting. Their people were not trying to be nice or helpful. You had to really push them to get anything done. I'd expect better service, more focus on documentation.

edit: I do however recognise how huge the company is and how dramatic and brave their decisions have been to redefine the business.

Re: Ask HN: What's going on at IBM?

#79
I joined IBM Global Business Services (IBM's consulting division) in London a couple of years ago.

As others have said, IBM is so big that it can only really be understood as many different companies, all with slightly different cultures. There are plenty of people who are better qualified than me to discuss the overall strategy and financial picture, so I won't even try.

I can, however, give a few opinions about my 2+ years in GBS.

* There is a general lack of respect for technical skills. I was hired as a "Technical Consultant" but put through the same training as the business consultant grads, which is largely about project management / presentation skills. A lot of money is spent on this training, if you ask for funding to (e.g.) attend a developer conference, you are told to forget about it. Maintaining dev skills or learning new ones is to be done in your own time or as part of "giveback", which is the IBM name for extra work done on top of your day job.

* The leadership team is utterly obsessed with maximising billable hours. While this is understandable for a services business, it is taken to ridiculous extremes. People are under such pressure to be billable that they are forced into roles that are completely unsuitable for them, rather than spend a few days waiting for the right role. Training etc gets cancelled at short notice if billable targets are not met, especially in Q4. Last year the entire GBS UK workforce were banned from taking any vacation for several weeks in November and December. A spoof email from senior management was circulated, saying "Christmas is cancelled" which gives an idea of current morale.

* The annual appraisal (PBC) system is a popularity contest. The best way to game the system is to do "giveback" (see above) work for senior people and persuade them to write nice things about you. This is all well and good, but it means that performance in your main job role is actually secondary to how much eminence you can gain by doing odd jobs for senior management. Thankfully IBM has seen the light and retired the PBC process, so I'm looking forward to seeing how well the replacement works.

* I get the feeling that nobody really understands Watson. It seems like the senior execs are under a lot of pressure to buy into the hype and sell Watson to their clients. There is a lot of hand waving about using Watson in "virtual assistant" type of use cases, but I've seen very little of any substance.

* The bureaucracy can be incredibly painful. I once had to go through multiple layers of sign-off involving people in 2 different countries over several weeks, to buy a $25 software licence (which I needed urgently for my job).

* Things are changing, slowly. The iX service line is adopting a startup-like approach on some projects. Agile is being promoted in a big way, and we now have access to modern tools like Slack and Enterprise GitHub.

I hope I don't come across as a bitter, entitled millennial. These are just my opinions.

Re: Ask HN: What's going on at IBM?

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blumix is late to the game and has to put it mildly road to do https://status.ng.bluemix.net/

When bluemix started out on day one, I didn't know what the heck was going on. When I look at that list now, I'm impressed with the cohesion of the services presented. I see bluemix, Twitter insights, weather insights, and a lot of other services that fit into the narrative IBM has pushed through the media. The services appear relevant, and I'd trust ibm to support and grow them instead of using the public as its san…

yeah but look at the outages, provisioning of something is broken every other day. this has impacted my startup already multiple times, sadly.
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