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IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO

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Re: IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also couldn't they basically sit on their rear and collect on mainframe contracts from now until the end of time?

On Wall Street, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

They’re stock price is the same as it was in 2010, so the market is clearly not expecting great things.

Re: IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO

#52
post #42
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satya wasn't an engineer at microsoft.

> Satya wasn't an engineer at microsoft. This is true, strictly speaking. But (also strictly speaking) he was an engineer > Nadella attended the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet[7] before receiving a bachelor's in electrical engineering[8] from the Manipal Institute of Technology (then part of Mangalore University) in Karnataka in 1988.[9][10] Nadella subsequently traveled to the U.S. to study for an M.S. in compute…

Nadella was a Program Manager at Microsoft.

Re: IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO

#53
post #5

So, not working with any insider knowledge (I work for Red Hat, but reading the news like everyone else), but the other news is that Jim Whitehurst is going to be the IBM President. Hopefully a big push in keeping Red Hat's culture relevant and influencing IBM to transform.

> Hopefully a big push in keeping Red Hat's culture How would you describe RedHat culture?

I've been at Red Hat so long now (12 years) that it can be easy to take things for granted, but the biggest thing is just how open and transparent a company it is. There's not a lot of silo's or little kingdoms fighting each other, we're all generally working together.

For example, we're a fairly large company (10000+), but we still have an all company mailing list. And it is used by anyone to raise a concern, talk about an opportunity, etc. And that starts a conversation with anyone participating. I am on the Services side, but there is no barrier in place for me to reach out to anyone in the BU, Engineering, Marketing, whatever. I don't think I have ever had to pass a message up the chain of command for it to be passed down somewhere else, I'm just allowed to communicate when and how I need to.

The other way it comes out is that open-source has truly warped our way of thinking about things. For example, there's not a culture of restricting access to our own documents, team drives, etc. One of my peers was working on a new slide deck on a team drive, hadn't really shared it with anyone, then found out that one slide was copied into a presentation done by an EMEA team a day later. That kind of easy access and reuse is just _standard_. It applies to code, but also everything else we do.

I've worked with lots of clients through my job, and it is always eye opening when their employees are worried about "sticking out their neck" or otherwise rocking the boat. Or companies where a developer trying to talk to the business would be an incident with your manager giving you a talk. This is just completely foreign to anyone at Red Hat.

Re: IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO

#54
post #22

Another Indian-born tech CEO? It's incredible. IBM joins Microsoft, Google, Adobe, Nokia, and Harman in this regard. Also, MasterCard and PepsiCo (until 2018). I wonder how much it's a cultural thing.

This is a biased, but honest observation that I'd like to share. I've been working for a big corp for about 5 years now. I was born in a SE Asian country and came to the US for college. I have worked with a lot of India-born people. As a fellow foreigner and as an Asian, I can tell that more often than not Indian people are bolder and more aggressive in asking for what they want (e.g., one of my Indian colleague aske…

I think a lot of this also comes down to class and your environment growing up.

For example: I grew up in an environment where you're meant to resent your boss, complain about them, and see them as an adversary. They are not someone you try to become because bosses are bad.

How much harder do you think that makes it to climb corporate ladders if your internal narrative is that being the boss means you're a bad person?

Re: IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO

#55
post #26
post #7

My bet was on Jim Whitehurst.

That was surely most Red Hatters' dream, but Arvind Krishna as CEO is probably the best possible outcome for Red Hat among the realistic ones (not counting that Whitehurst will be President, while Ginny Rometty was President and CEO). Arvind Krishna was "Jim Whitehurst's boss" until now (Red Hat is under the IBM cloud division), and back when the acquisition was announced in 2018 he visited one of the Red Hat offices…

> Arvind Krishna was "Jim Whitehurst's boss" until now

Not true. Jim (and Red Hat under him) reported directly to Ginni. Red Hat was under IBM cloud for revenue reporting, though, but the distinction is material.

Re: IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO

#56
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to argue that IBM is currently healthy and performing as they should but they did have over $22 billion in cloud revenue for 2019 so they are evidently in the discussion somewhere.

Also couldn't they basically sit on their rear and collect on mainframe contracts from now until the end of time?

No. There's immense pressure on the mainframe market; there's a constant drumbeat of mainframe-killer tech that's definitely better/faster/stronger (and, on rare occasions, is...at least for some narrowly defined workload). IBM has to work very hard keep mainframes competitive technology, and even harder at sales/marketing to fend off the alternatives.

Re: IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO

#57
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a biased, but honest observation that I'd like to share. I've been working for a big corp for about 5 years now. I was born in a SE Asian country and came to the US for college. I have worked with a lot of India-born people. As a fellow foreigner and as an Asian, I can tell that more often than not Indian people are bolder and more aggressive in asking for what they want (e.g., one of my Indian colleague aske…

ALSO. the people you are describing are (I'm guessing) immigrants. Meaning they are a subset of people from their home country with the internal initiative, drive, and resources to move halfway around the world and make their way in a culture besides the one they grew up in

This is under appreciated. I spent significant time living and working in China and it’s HARD. I came back to the US with a MUCH deeper respect for any immigrants I work with. Everything is much more confusing and frustrating.

Re: IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO

#58
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a biased, but honest observation that I'd like to share. I've been working for a big corp for about 5 years now. I was born in a SE Asian country and came to the US for college. I have worked with a lot of India-born people. As a fellow foreigner and as an Asian, I can tell that more often than not Indian people are bolder and more aggressive in asking for what they want (e.g., one of my Indian colleague aske…

I think a lot of this also comes down to class and your environment growing up. For example: I grew up in an environment where you're meant to resent your boss, complain about them, and see them as an adversary. They are not someone you try to become because bosses are bad. How much harder do you think that makes it to climb corporate ladders if your internal narrative is that being the boss means you're a bad person…

In big companies, not a small family owned business, I see bosses or mamagers have their own bosses or managers which give them difficult tasks like refusing promotion, or increment or such. When I started seeing my boss and his/her duty as two different things, that he is just doing his job; I started feeling less resentful against boss & more towards the company or its policy makers. Obviously there can be exceptions & great & worst bosses can be there enjoying themselves.

Re: IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO

#59
post #30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except that IBM manages to show up with some positive cash flow at the end of the day, unlike modern VC darlings Comparing IBM to a VC funded startup doesn't make any sense to me. Big old tech companies (like IBM) in Silicon Valley mostly do turn a profit, some quite a bit more than IBM.

True. A fun fact: most also turned profit pre-IPO. Look up old S-1's. I was just joking about the buzzword mumbo jumbo. I want someone to take me for an AI ride in a self driving cloud. I already had so many social network and Uber-for-X rides, those days were cool. Does your mom do fintech, too? That's sooo cool!

Heh, I actually agree with you on the buzzword mumbo jumbo. There's no doubt IBM can throw out meaningless buzzwordy phrases with SV's best.

Re: IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO

#60
post #22

Another Indian-born tech CEO? It's incredible. IBM joins Microsoft, Google, Adobe, Nokia, and Harman in this regard. Also, MasterCard and PepsiCo (until 2018). I wonder how much it's a cultural thing.

In business, ultimate bias is money. Who ever brings in more at the same time saves on expense.
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