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Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

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Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#131

Post by mixmastamyk »

indymike wrote: post #65
trimbo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

IBM was synonymous with high tech in the 1970s and 1980s. From the Styx song Mr. Roboto, "...my blood is boiling, my brain IBM". They were a huge deal.

Information Society, the band also had a few IBM references in their geeky repertoire.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#132

Post by zacherates »

jhickok wrote: post #121
DevKoala wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One or two of those will be dropped in the next decade or two. It is how things go. In fact, Netflix is only there nowadays to avoid the acronym from becoming offensive.

And it doesn't include Microsoft for some reason. FANMAG always made more sense to me.

... because FAANG was about compensation and MS is not competitive (at least for mid-career hires).

Take a look at levels 62 / 63 at MS vs. comparable roles at FAANGs: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,Google,Facebook,Micro...

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#133

Post by mixmastamyk »

agumonkey wrote: post #101
deckard1 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't picture IBM being consumer.. they were too deep and too big. They didn't speak mainstream .. Jobs had some stuff to sell (aesthetics, art, culture) .. IBM had 'enterprise grade'.

Yes, they tried but it fell flat. Hindsight and all that.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#134

Post by rst »

atatatat wrote: post #127
htrp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anyone have any insight on why Red Hat sold their soul?

The decision was in the hands of a board whose sole legal goal, these days, is securing maximal financial return for shareholders (and the shareholders agreed -- there was an explicit vote). A soul is a luxury that companies don't usually get to keep past IPO.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#135

Post by houseofzeus »

atatatat wrote: post #127
htrp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anyone have any insight on why Red Hat sold their soul?

They were a publicly traded company and IBM offered something like $190 a share when they were trading around $120.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#136

Post by pengaru »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #95

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.

My connections at RedHat say nothing has changed for them, and that RedHat is not IBM.

But Jim leaving does make it look less likely that IBM will be turning into RedHat anytime soon.

From what I'm told RedHat continues operating as an independent business unit under IBM.

Edit: full disclosure; I too am considering RedHat, as I'd like to resume full-time work on systemd/journald in the future and there aren't exactly many places employing people to work on upstream systemd. So I may be biased in wanting to believe the above is true, grain of salt and all.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#137

Post by theandrewbailey »

jve wrote: post #100
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 cons…

From what little exposure that I've had to IBM, Oracle, and professional HP products, it's the result of a different evolutionary line of computing. It predates personal computing (from back when there was allegedly market for 5 computers[0]), so its interface and naming conventions are foreign to each other, as if it lives in ivory towers and never mixes with anything else. It's painfully obvious that personal computing moves much faster and is easier to use.

[0] https://freakonomics.com/2008/04/17/our-daily-bleg-did-ibm-r...

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#138

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

spitfire wrote: post #82
htrp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exception to this rule was NeXT purchasing Apple for negative $400 million. Most of the NeXT senior staff (jabs, avi, etc) Went on to take over roles at Apple. They also brought in all the NeXT technology and threw out Apples' Nextstep/Openstep->Mac OSX

They were acquired by their old boss so less of a culture clash and no need for turf wars between opposing sides.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#139

Post by jhickok »

zacherates wrote: post #132
jhickok wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it doesn't include Microsoft for some reason. FANMAG always made more sense to me.

... because FAANG was about compensation and MS is not competitive (at least for mid-career hires). Take a look at levels 62 / 63 at MS vs. comparable roles at FAANGs: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,Google,Facebook,Micro...

I won't pretend to understand how these levels compare, but it looks on par with Apple, no?

My understanding of FANG initially was that it was about tech stock performance and not compensation.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#140

Post by TheDong »

datahead wrote: post #37
TheDong wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm curious if our interactions could be biased. For example, we're clients of RH (RHEL & Openshift) so I'm guessing we interact with more presentable humans. Everyone I've met has been genuinely wonderful and supportive across eng, sales, product, TAM, etc. One of the few vendors I enjoy working with. I used inclusive in this context to mean that a junior engineer is expected to speak up and offer input in an execut…

My interactions have largely been meatspace and in open source communities they are heavily involved in (outside of k8s).

We do seem to have either interacted with difference slices of the company, or gotten different impressions.

Which is all well and good, an aggregate of anecdotes is better than just one.

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