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

IBM to acquire Confluent

confluent.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 374 posts

Re: IBM to acquire Confluent

#341

Post by TobiWestside »

PeterCorless wrote: post #314

I have thought quite a bit today about the news from Confluent and IBM. I have friends and colleagues at both companies. When I was an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon University in the 1980s I used to wear a big brown and tan IBM button that said "THINK." And here is a picture of Ben Lorica 罗瑞卡 interviewing Jay Kreps and other industry leaders at The Hive back on the evening of 25 February 2015. I believe they were talk…

A note on your "IBM has been shrinking" take: IBM spun out Kyndryl in 2021, including 90,000 employees [0]. That leaves the remaining company with 255,000 employees after the spin-off in 2021, which means it has actually grown by 15,000 people to reach the 270,000 in 2024.

The spin-off also explains the drop in revenue. In 2021, the first results reported excluding Kyndryl, IBM had revenues of $57.4B [1]. Since 2021, revenue grew by ~9% to reach $62.75B in 2024.

[0] https://www.kyndryl.com/us/en/about-us/news/2021/11/2021-11-... [1] https://newsroom.ibm.com/2022-1-24-IBM-RELEASES-FOURTH-QUART...

Re: IBM to acquire Confluent

#343

Post by GhosT078 »

raverbashing wrote: post #327
GhosT078 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM is where good (acquired) software goes to die. RIP Clearcase.

good? That POS is the one SW that 100% deserves it place in hell

Yes it really was quite good despite all the hate it seems to get in internet comments. I used it for several years. The feature set, particularly config specs and dynamic views, was brilliant. The product was pretty mature and complete 25 years ago. I agree that administration was complicated and performance could be slow if misconfigured. We configured right, it was very intuitive and pleasant to use. IBM has effectively killed it by continuing to charge an excessive premium while adding nothing significant since they bought Rational (for Clearcase, DOORS, Apex etc.)

Re: IBM to acquire Confluent

#344

Post by phyzome »

willsmith72 wrote: post #301
phyzome wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Actual 9 to 5", meaning the standard 40 hour work week? If someone is telling you to work more than 40 hours a week in a salaried position, and they're not paying out the nose , you're being scammed.

depends, "out the nose" is relative based on what else you could be doing and what else is out there and no job i've had considered 9-5 40 hours after a 1 hour lunch break

Well, I don't know anyone who takes a full 1 hour lunch break -- back when I was in the office, I reckon it was more like 30-45 minutes? But people at all 4 office jobs I've worked did a standard 9-5 schedule.

But yes, "out the nose" is qualified by your particular situation. For me, that might be 2-3x my normal salary, which would mean I could take breaks for a few years or retire sooner.

Re: IBM to acquire Confluent

#345

Post by ownagefool »

sbarre wrote: post #337
beachy wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting and enlightening way to look at it. For me it was the death of IBM's preeminence in IT. When I started there a job at IBM was prestigious,a job for life. More than once I was told that we had a lengthy backlog of inventions and technological wonders that could be wheeled out of the plant if competitors ever nipped too closely at IBM's heels. At that time IBM had never made a single person redund…

To be fair, the whole job market has changed. Layoffs and the death of "a job for life" is not unique to IBM. I think the pace of progress and innovation has, for better or worse, meant that companies can no longer count on successfully evolving only from the inside through re-training and promotions over the average employee's entire career arc (let's say 30 years). The reality is that too many people who seek out j…

Honestly, I think that's people reacting to the market more than it's the market reacting to people.

If your average zoomer had the ability to get a job for life that paid comparably well by a company that would look after them, I don't think loyalty would be an issue.

The problem is today, sticking with a company typically means below market reward, which is particularly acute given the ongoing cost of living crises affecting the west.

Re: IBM to acquire Confluent

#346

Post by saberience »

npalli wrote: post #272

Confluent was trading at less than 50% of its IPO price when IBM made the offer. The stock and the company has been going sideways for several years now, keeps growing revenues but loses even more as most of it is in Sales and Marketing. In which world is this seen as some sort of extraordinary company that will get sabotaged by IBM. Seems Confluent management knows the writing on the wall, IBM will clean up (fire a…

IBM is a consulting business, not a software business. Their software sucks, and every actual software engineer knows it. IBM has a business selling to big, old, backwards enterprise businesses who wouldn't know good software from literal pieces of faeces.

Re: IBM to acquire Confluent

#347

Post by red-iron-pine »

namdnay wrote: post #338
beachy wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I joined IBM over 40 years ago, like my pappy before me. My main takeaway from IBM's longevity is just how astonishingly long big companys' death rattles can be, not how great IBM are at running software businesses.

I don't think they're dying at all, they're just become yet another consultancy/outsourcing shop

turning into a rent-seeking-behavior engine.

the final end-state of the company, like a glorious star turning into a black hole

Re: IBM to acquire Confluent

#348

Post by nemo »

Mistletoe wrote: post #265
wetwater wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In defense of Byzantines. Their rules and amazing diplomatic prowess is what let them be an empire for so long. The negative connotations to Byzantine comes from the negative perception the west had of them. Byzantines were very practical in regards to who they allied with.

I learned more here and I'm not sure I agree with your comment fully. https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/8shw5r/what_is_t...

The claims about extreme complexity of the Late Roman/Byzantine state came into the popular imagination by Enlightenment and other Western thinkers who were deeply biased against the late Romans due to a long history of cultural conflict. The OP is completely correct here, the reddit comment is an extremely incomplete story. It notes that the Roman state was more complex than other Medieval states (correct), but to say that it was "too" complex is a culturally based judgment, not a fact. The origin of the negative cultural judgment about that complexity waen't coming from the Romans, they were coming from the Franks, Venetians, and later Western Europeans who in large part were repeating the old prejudices going back to the schism, but also justifying their own conquest and abuses of of the Roman people.

Re: IBM to acquire Confluent

#350

Post by otterley »

saberience wrote: post #346
npalli wrote: post #272

Confluent was trading at less than 50% of its IPO price when IBM made the offer. The stock and the company has been going sideways for several years now, keeps growing revenues but loses even more as most of it is in Sales and Marketing. In which world is this seen as some sort of extraordinary company that will get sabotaged by IBM. Seems Confluent management knows the writing on the wall, IBM will clean up (fire a…

IBM is a consulting business, not a software business. Their software sucks, and every actual software engineer knows it. IBM has a business selling to big, old, backwards enterprise businesses who wouldn't know good software from literal pieces of faeces.

That's not entirely true. Db2, for example, is a well-respected database.
Post reply on HN