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IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

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Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM has been a dead company since about late 80's/early 90's.

In terms of developer credibility with the entrepreneurial community? Sure. In terms of being a going concern for large customers and investors? The make billions of dollars of profit per year, have a P/E valuation better than Apple's, and pay out 4-5% dividends annually. I'm not sure what it really means to "be dead" for 40 years. In a sense, the average human is "dead" for 70-something years. But periods of time at…

"Be dead" usually means having a low P/E and little REAL stock price appreciation (that comes with low P/E and high dividends).

IBMs stock price was $100 in the 2000s. It's only $133 now. If it adjusted for inflation - that would be $173 today. You lost about 25% in real depreciation to get about ~3% per year yield in dividends (taxed as income $$$).

You can do better with Treasuries.

So why take the risk on Big Blue?

Not uncommon for someone to describe a company like this as "dead" - even if it is, presumably, providing some economic value.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#32
post #5

> Chief Executive Arvind Krishna has been trying to pivot Big Blue from its traditional business of infrastructure and information technology services to the fast-growing cloud-computing market. Skating to where the puck has been. While other companies are taking a look at how much they are spending on cloud. It's already a commodified market yet IBM sees itself as the one to grow into it.

Given their existing relationships they can leverage and the romanticism finally bleeding out of FAANG's reputations, if they can put together a stable, fundamentally capable platform they could definitely grab a chunk. Toyota has made a multi-decade business model around "skating to where the puck has been". Why can't IBM?

> Given their existing relationships they can leverage and the romanticism finally bleeding out of FAANG's reputations, if they can put together a stable, fundamentally capable platform they could definitely grab a chunk.

IBM has failed to build a reasonable cloud platform, and not for lack of trying -- for over a decade at this point -- through both internal work and acquisition. Create a cloud.ibm.com account and poke around.

> Toyota has made a multi-decade business model around "skating to where the puck has been". Why can't IBM?

They can, but I'm not sure what you mean by Toyota... they were early on hybrids in general and are definitely the leader in the plug-in hybrid space... what competes with the RAV4 or Prius plugins if you need ICE car range on the weekends and electric for your short commute?

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#33
post #17
post #8

Not to be snarky or anything, but a legitimate question: what does IBM actually do? I used to work for a partnering engineering team at and met with dozens of enterprise clients (think Fortune 100) and I never heard anybody ever mention any IBM products. I am really intrigued to understand what keeps this company afloat. My main hypothesis is selling to government and acting more as a holding of acquired companies th…

For Oct-Dec 2022 (according to https://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM-4Q22-Earnings-Chart... ) Mainframes: $4.5 billion Consulting: $4.8 billion (even after selling off Kyndral) Software: $7.3 billion Software includes all of Red Hat, a pretty big security business, and "transaction processing" which isn't explained but I guess is running payroll and the like for other companies. So lots of un-sexy stuff that never…

And that is $4.5 billion in Mainframe just in one quarter...

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#34
post #17
post #8

Not to be snarky or anything, but a legitimate question: what does IBM actually do? I used to work for a partnering engineering team at and met with dozens of enterprise clients (think Fortune 100) and I never heard anybody ever mention any IBM products. I am really intrigued to understand what keeps this company afloat. My main hypothesis is selling to government and acting more as a holding of acquired companies th…

For Oct-Dec 2022 (according to https://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM-4Q22-Earnings-Chart... ) Mainframes: $4.5 billion Consulting: $4.8 billion (even after selling off Kyndral) Software: $7.3 billion Software includes all of Red Hat, a pretty big security business, and "transaction processing" which isn't explained but I guess is running payroll and the like for other companies. So lots of un-sexy stuff that never…

A piece of my soul died just trying to imagine the depths of boredom this would take you.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#35
post #34
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Oct-Dec 2022 (according to https://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM-4Q22-Earnings-Chart... ) Mainframes: $4.5 billion Consulting: $4.8 billion (even after selling off Kyndral) Software: $7.3 billion Software includes all of Red Hat, a pretty big security business, and "transaction processing" which isn't explained but I guess is running payroll and the like for other companies. So lots of un-sexy stuff that never…

A piece of my soul died just trying to imagine the depths of boredom this would take you.

If you pay me 250k cash I'll have no issue maintaining whatever obsolete tech you wish.

Work doesn't need to be fun.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM has been a dead company since about late 80's/early 90's.

In terms of developer credibility with the entrepreneurial community? Sure. In terms of being a going concern for large customers and investors? The make billions of dollars of profit per year, have a P/E valuation better than Apple's, and pay out 4-5% dividends annually. I'm not sure what it really means to "be dead" for 40 years. In a sense, the average human is "dead" for 70-something years. But periods of time at…

Dead as personal computing company, AI products - bad, blockchain - garbage. It exist as a consulting firm that engages in what I would call shady practises. Everytime I see an article about government contract and IBM it is always portraits IBM in very negative light. So yes, billions of profits which is basically siphoning public tax money to shareholders (well Accenture and Deloitte are not better).

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#38
post #8

Not to be snarky or anything, but a legitimate question: what does IBM actually do? I used to work for a partnering engineering team at and met with dozens of enterprise clients (think Fortune 100) and I never heard anybody ever mention any IBM products. I am really intrigued to understand what keeps this company afloat. My main hypothesis is selling to government and acting more as a holding of acquired companies th…

My friend works for IBM doing file system development and device driver development.

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#39
post #13
post #8

Not to be snarky or anything, but a legitimate question: what does IBM actually do? I used to work for a partnering engineering team at and met with dozens of enterprise clients (think Fortune 100) and I never heard anybody ever mention any IBM products. I am really intrigued to understand what keeps this company afloat. My main hypothesis is selling to government and acting more as a holding of acquired companies th…

An IBM recruiter reached out to me a while back which caused me to go and have a dive into IBM. From what I found IBM is mostly consulting.

Most of that was spun off to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyndryl

Re: IBM to cut about 3,900 workers while still hiring in ‘higher growth’ areas

#40
post #39
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An IBM recruiter reached out to me a while back which caused me to go and have a dive into IBM. From what I found IBM is mostly consulting.

Most of that was spun off to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyndryl

did they run out of vowels?
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