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

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#221

Post by yourapostasy » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:28 PM UTC

blcknight wrote: post #218

crb002 wrote: post #193

He sold zero IBM System Z mainframes to AWS. He let thousands of IBM point of sale systems to be replaced with crap that can't buffer keystrokes - instead of modernizing the SDKs for those who know Linux and not AIX. He bought RedHat, but not Digital Ocean so they had a cloud consumers trust. He didn't win a serious contract with Facebook for kernel tuning. He didn't win a serious contract with AWS for AWS Linux 3. H…

Who is he? Jim? Jim came from Red Hat (it’s two words btw)

I'm guessing Arvind Krishna by the "He bought RedHat...". But I didn't realize the IBM CEO is expected by investors (or anyone really) to be that involved in those kinds of sales mentioned in the other points.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#222

Post by wolverine876 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #211

wolverine876 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also don't think it would lead to a curious, constructive conversation. There is probably nothing OP could offer which would change what the experience of 8 years in RH engineering showed me. To me, the intentional insistence that you want to and will remain ignorant undermines the credibility of the rest of the comment. Who knows what else have you shut your mind to and thus overlooked at RH.

On the contrary, I find it very realistic. We don't have time to argue with every single individual who thinks we're wrong, no matter how much we might think _they're_ the ones in the wrong. With people like the GP, there's just no convincing them, you just have to move on and not waste your own time trying to debate with them.

> We don't have time to argue with every single individual who thinks we're wrong

Sure, but then don't enter the discussion at all. It's generally no faster to fight with the other person than to try to understand them.

> no matter how much we might think _they're_ the ones in the wrong

That assumes that's the point of the discussion. Do it to find out about the other person, help them find out about you, and to explore what they know and what you know.

> there's just no convincing them

I think that assumes, again, this adversarial fight. I'm not trying to convince them (see above). And often, people are open and curious if you approach or respond to them differently.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#223

Post by BossingAround » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

shadilay wrote: post #118

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…

This is exactly how I feel. I thought Jim would make IBM more like redhat but in reality redhat became more like IBM.

> in reality redhat became more like IBM

This is a pretty strong statement. How is Red Hat more like IBM now?

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#224

Post by BossingAround » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:34 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.

To be totally honest, I too had completely forgotten about IBM. In my mind, they are synonymous with processes and bureaucracy. No idea if that's fair; they are big nowadays, they must be doing something right (other than paying $20M to get rid of Ginni Rometty after she showed one mediocre year after another).

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#225

Post by jve » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #215

jve wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Given the amount of work they contribute to the Linux kernel, I expect you not to use anything Linux related then.

I do. I can manage services I need on my raspberry. That is not sole exposure to Linux and not afraid of it.

Anyways, I get that IBM is a big whale. It just i rather avoid their products.

But speaking for spectrum protect... the more I think of it, the more I understand that it is the configuration and usage of the product I really dislike. And the embarrassment of helping customers configuring/troubleshooting that product. Otherwise it is solid. Once configured, does its job pretty well and solid. And we are a service provider - it was actually capable of providing with the feature set a service provider needs to.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#226

Post by pabs3 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 11:09 PM UTC

yourapostasy wrote: post #219

pabs3 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the people fleeing RH going to go? There are not many workplaces as large and as Free Software focussed as RH.

Generally most M&A's like this turn into a talent smasher event (think atom smasher, aka particle accelerator), and the people scatter to the four winds in hundreds/thousands of different landing zones instead of coalescing into another convergent organization. Emergent consensus centered around such a large organization takes a lot of effort and time to build because it operates through social trust pathways (that p…

I don't see how RH customers can become a captive revenue stream like mainframe has; there are a few other distributions with enterprise support (like SUSE/Ubuntu) to migrate to as well as community distributions (like Debian) that can be used if you have in-house engineers.

Disclosure: I might be biased as a Debian user/contributor.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#227

Post by pabs3 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

yourapostasy wrote: post #219

pabs3 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the people fleeing RH going to go? There are not many workplaces as large and as Free Software focussed as RH.

Generally most M&A's like this turn into a talent smasher event (think atom smasher, aka particle accelerator), and the people scatter to the four winds in hundreds/thousands of different landing zones instead of coalescing into another convergent organization. Emergent consensus centered around such a large organization takes a lot of effort and time to build because it operates through social trust pathways (that p…

If RedHat were to be dissolved, there aren't enough companies paying for work on Free Software to absorb all the engineers that work at RedHat. For Free Software, this is one of the big dangers of having so many people working at the same place. If RH goes down, there are going to be a lot of projects with greatly reduced maintenance and some outright abandonment.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#228

Post by osipov » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:24 AM UTC

jldugger wrote: post #63

osipov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Google was hiring left and right with comparative ease (as an aside, now they are dealing with the consequences). In the five years since you left IBM in 2016, GOOG has tripled in value, while IBM has lost 8 percent. I think I know which set of consequences I'd prefer to deal with as an executive, shareholder, or employee.

Obviously I wrote to the problems that Google is experiencing now, not the ones that it tackled back in 2016. Google's future is less bright as of 2021 than it was in 2016.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#229

Post by osipov » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:25 AM UTC

thedougd wrote: post #103

osipov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sam's EPS target was the singular focus during that time. Executive management squeezed everything for the last penny during that period, IMO setting the path to failure.

>Sam's EPS target

Yes, but on the flip side Sam was getting results. Ginny failed to capitalize of Watson, Software, and Cloud.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#230

Post by rsynnott » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:54 AM UTC

freeone3000 wrote: post #182

shp0ngle wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think those companies still exist, but they exist in China. I might be wrong though. I just see the growth of China and decline of the US, and I cannot stop feeling like those two are connected. But what do I know. People were afraid about Japan before.

And now the world's largest car manufacturer is Toyota, the biggest gaming providers are Nintendo and Sony, and Mitsubishi and Hitachi are important players in every industry. American manufacturing in the same industries are down. People seeing the growth of Japan and decline of the US were only wrong in a matter of degree.

The world’s largest car manufacturer (by units) is Volkswagen, FWIW.