Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

newsroom.ibm.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 235 posts

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#71

Post by MattGaiser »

avereveard wrote: post #32
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #28

One of my recent revelations was when I told my teen children "... a company like IBM". To what they said "what is IBM??" They know all the large tech companies but that one was a surprise to them, they had a look at Wikipedia and said "ah yes, it was a great company in your times". Time to get some wine.

IBM portfolio isn't targeted to consumers like Apple's or other companies, even at peak IBM it was an office name, not a household name. The only consumer facing product they had for the longest time were cash registers, and those aren't particularly hip as to live in consumer imagination Edit: in today episode, hacker news forget they're a niche cohort.

> even at peak IBM it was an office name, not a household name.

Even if this were the case, they would have been part of nearly every office in one way or another and they certainly are not now.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#72

Post by MattGaiser »

djrogers wrote: post #43
nomoreplease wrote: post #36

When I talk to former IBMers (including a VP), it seems much of the outward “success” there is financial engineering, yet the business is crumbling in reality. Jim leaving amidst a chaotic, failed email migration that is impacting sales is not surprising

> leaving amidst a chaotic, failed email migration that is impacting sales is not surprising I'm not sure if you're trying to imply causation here, but vast sweeping changes like this rarely happen in a matter of days - it's far more likely that this has been in the works for a while, and the email mess is coincidental.

It speaks to the standard of work they do at IBM.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#73

Post by jodrellblank »

avereveard wrote: post #32
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #28

One of my recent revelations was when I told my teen children "... a company like IBM". To what they said "what is IBM??" They know all the large tech companies but that one was a surprise to them, they had a look at Wikipedia and said "ah yes, it was a great company in your times". Time to get some wine.

IBM portfolio isn't targeted to consumers like Apple's or other companies, even at peak IBM it was an office name, not a household name. The only consumer facing product they had for the longest time were cash registers, and those aren't particularly hip as to live in consumer imagination Edit: in today episode, hacker news forget they're a niche cohort.

As far as I'm concerned, the term "PC" comes from the "IBM PC"[1]

> "The PC was IBM's first attempt to sell a computer through retail channels [...] they partnered with the retail chains ComputerLand and Sears Roebuck"

> "Reception was overwhelmingly positive [...] the IBM PC immediately became the talk of the entire computing industry.[38] Dealers were overwhelmed with orders [...] By the time the machine was shipping, the term "PC" was becoming a household name.[39] [...] Sales exceeded IBM's expectations by as much as 800%, shipping 40,000 PCs a month at one point.[40] The company estimate that 50 to 70% of PCs sold in retail stores went to the home."

It is worth noting how small the market was at the time though, "In 1983 they sold more than 750,000 machines" - Apple has just passed 100,000,000 iPhone 12s in six months since launch.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#74

Post by chakkepolja »

TheDong wrote: post #21
datahead wrote: post #6

I like Whitehurst and have had the chance to meet him a few times. If you want to understand his ethos check out "The Open Organization". It details his transition from Delta to Red Hat and the transformation of his leadership style being around a lot of smart engineers and team players ready to constructively challenge each other. Good read for anyone interested in building inclusive company culture in tech. Honestl…

> leadership style being around a lot of smart engineers [...] building inclusive company culture in tech. Red Hat was certainly an open company. I don't know if "inclusive" is the right word though. "Inclusive" has strong connotations now of people being welcoming, especially of those that are different. This is largely anecdotal, but my interactions with Red Hat and external observations can better be summed up as…

> white males

This is HN not twitter.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#75

Post by [deleted] »

htrp wrote: post #19
datahead wrote: post #6

I like Whitehurst and have had the chance to meet him a few times. If you want to understand his ethos check out "The Open Organization". It details his transition from Delta to Red Hat and the transformation of his leadership style being around a lot of smart engineers and team players ready to constructively challenge each other. Good read for anyone interested in building inclusive company culture in tech. Honestl…

In every acquisition the Acquirer imposes on the Acquiree..... In this case, I'd bet that it's Arvind Krishna pulling people out of IBM Cloud (his old division) to run the rest of "big blue" And yes, IBM will basically bleed talent from Red Hat for the next 3 years until RHEL is a pale shadow of its former self.

[deleted]

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#76

Post by ivalm »

echelon wrote: post #51
reaperducer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why haven't they at least set up something temporary? Yes, just spin up e-mail addresses for 400,000 people in 177 countries. No problem. Just run it on a Raspberry Pi in the basement.

Pay Google or Microsoft to do it for you. Focus on the core business competencies, of which email is clearly not one. Edit since I can't reply: An extended email outage isn't a good look either. If IBM can't run their own critical systems, why trust them with yours? I personally think making the strategic decision to outsource demonstrates the ability and desire to find timely solutions.

Consulting on email migration does sound like it should be a core competency for an enterprise tech consulting company…

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#77

Post by raverbashing »

momothereal wrote: post #42
walrus01 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

google "IBM phoenix payroll canada" for a fine example of what has gone wrong. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ibm+pho...

By far the biggest software fuckup in Canada's history.

Nah, don't forget Target's SAP migration

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#79

Post by throwawaygal7 »

osipov wrote: post #23
echelon wrote: post #2

I'd really like to see IBMers talk about the past, present, and future of the company. It looks pretty pale to me. Back in the Thinkpad era, IBM had a lot of cool stuff going on. But now it seems like a shadow. Watson and IBM cloud look like flops. The email fiasco is weird and should never have happened. What did buying Red Hat accomplish? As an outsider, it doesn't seem to have infused any new ideas, and the change…

ex-IBMer here. I rode this from 2001 until 2016 when it became clear that breaking up the company (as they recently did) would become the only sensible path forward. While many poor decisions were made inside of the company, I ultimately blame Wall Street for IBM's downfall. Remember that back in 2011, Palmisano finished strong with IBM's Watson winning Jeopardy, IBM Software delivering consistent >80% profit margins…

I was an intern at IBM from 2010-2015, and then an full time engineer for a short while before moving on.

I agree completely that the change in leadership marked an inability to really bring WATSON to market, and some other products too.

While I was an intern, I sat next to ExtremeBlue interns and team members working on Watson. The technology was awesome and they were working like mad. Sleeping under the desk. By 2015 the push had stopped and everyone knew it was a failure to launch.

Post reply on HN