Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President • Hacker News Board

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#91

Post by sedatk » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

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

In addition to other examples in the thread, OS/2 Warp was a direct competitor to Windows 95. We could be using OS/2 today instead of Windows had it become successful.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#92

Post by thedougd » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

IBM can recover from this with some stock buybacks. Maybe borrow to get it done.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#93

Post by deckard1 » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

trimbo wrote: post #64

avereveard wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 I'm curious to see data on this. My guess is that in the early to mid 80s, IBM had to have been the top consumer technology brand. At least in knowledge of the brand, even if they didn't own one. Their Charlie Chaplin ads were everywhere, then they spent an enormous amount of money marketing PCjr[1]. [1] - "As part of $32.5 million in advertising for the…

my impression of the mid '90s was that IBM also spent a boatload on OS/2 Warp marketing as well. But by that time everyone was on Windows and wanted Windows95. The ads for Warp were everywhere, in print and on TV. IBM seemed to be reliving the same mistakes they made with the PS/2 and micro channel arch.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#94

Post by thedougd » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

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…

IBM once had a deep, deep bench of engineering talent and squandered it away. They failed to maintain the engineering culture while making many strategic mistakes (cloud).

Starting in the late 2000s and early 10s, executives were crying for 'cloud skills' as part of their continuous 'workforce remix'. Did Amazon build AWS by hiring cloud skills? Of course not. You build a cloud with a wide array of talent including hardware, chip design, software, and systems engineering. IBM had all that available in house.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#95

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

I was considering applying to Red Hat and was assured by the fact that IBM put Jim in charge. Now that I see this I'm reconsidering Red Hat as a company.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#96

Post by ulzeraj » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #34

avereveard wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 IBM was synonymous with PC for quite some time.

Remember when IBM tech powered every popular video game console? Not long ago. I thought having POWER machines for gaming was very cool. It didn't worked out for some reason.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#97

Post by mech422 » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

avereveard wrote: post #54

ComputerGuru wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even at peak IBM it was an office name, not a household name IBM was synonymous with PC for quite some time.

At a time when pc weren't household items, that came about quite later

PC's were big in the 80s, and 'PC' meant IBM PC (or clone). The rest of us had 'commodore's or 'atari's - we didn't have 'pc's. It was also the heyday of computer magazine's from PC shopper to DDJ and Compute! Computers weren't as unknown back then as people like to think..

So I'd argue IBM was a household name as far back as the mid-80s.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#98

Post by ComputerGuru » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

avereveard wrote: post #54

ComputerGuru wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even at peak IBM it was an office name, not a household name IBM was synonymous with PC for quite some time.

At a time when pc weren't household items, that came about quite later

It even overlapped with the period AOL was a thing. Unless you’re suggesting that wasn’t a household name, either.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#99

Post by agumonkey » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

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.

I always remind myself that hollerith machines was born in the 19th century.. it's a long game :)

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#100

Post by jve » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

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.

I'm 33, allergic to IBM (and Oracle), want to stay away from their products if possible.

Luckily I know nothing about IBM, only the spectrum protect backup... I mean why everything has to be so complicated? Ugly?

Props for having documentation + they support lots of OSes and features. But when it comes to management... even Linux people in my office make fun of that product, because how awkward, complex and time consuming it is to do particular tasks there. I showed Veeam admin some spectrum protect stuff, because he had todo some task there... He just laughed out loud.