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IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

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Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#571

Post by matheusmoreira »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #396
tekstar wrote: post #260

I worked for a large e-commerce company. I wanted to investigate putting all our support data into Watson and see what sort of recommendations it could provide, maybe a sort of auto-suggestion to help our customers. Three really funny points stand out from the experience: 1) To apply for Watson access you needed to show C-level approval, so our CEO put his name and phone number on the application (trying Watson was s…

> an IBM marketing team called HIS CELL and asked for ME. What the fuck is this? A name/email for your company when trying something out is so that you can keep track of any support requests we need, not for you to sell shit to me.

Marketers have no sense of boundaries or limits. Everything they do is in violation of social norms. You give them an email that's clearly for some specific and useful purpose, they abuse it by turning it into their personal marketing channel which benefits nobody but them.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#573

Post by ashtonkem »

civilized wrote: post #488
pmorici wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are just a contracting company making money off billing the government hourly for their employees time. It’s a horrible business.

Sounds like an awesome business if you're getting the money.

A good deal if you can get it, but probably not the ideal outcome if you’re a citizen paying for it or dealing with systems engineered by them.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#574

Post by ashtonkem »

afandian wrote: post #537
aenis wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, similar thing happened to me. IBM along a few other behemots pitched for a serious project at a company I worked for as enterprise arch. All companies brought their top salespeople, and all tried nasty things, but IBM was by far the worst. Their top guy started their pitch by saying he chatted with our CEO over the christmas holidays. He mentioned - and I am not making this up - that he should be talking to pe…

Stories like this about IBM were handed down to me by my father. They've been doing this a long time!

My first instinct is that this would be a short term strategy that trades off the company’s good name for marginal sales, but I guess not!

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#575

Post by ashtonkem »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #396
tekstar wrote: post #260

I worked for a large e-commerce company. I wanted to investigate putting all our support data into Watson and see what sort of recommendations it could provide, maybe a sort of auto-suggestion to help our customers. Three really funny points stand out from the experience: 1) To apply for Watson access you needed to show C-level approval, so our CEO put his name and phone number on the application (trying Watson was s…

> an IBM marketing team called HIS CELL and asked for ME. What the fuck is this? A name/email for your company when trying something out is so that you can keep track of any support requests we need, not for you to sell shit to me.

Also, C suite phone numbers are worth their weight in gold for sales teams. Confusing that with another person’s number is a pretty bad mistake.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#576

Post by selimthegrim »

pram wrote: post #492
throwaheyy wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the whole culture there (and other places like Oracle) is all about implanting mindshare at the decision-maker level and driving unilateral adoption from the top down. Pursuing such an approach is highly revealing because if the technology actually worked , that approach would not be necessary. Once they’re “in” at the decision-maker level, they can continue to milk the organisation with long-duration support a…

Oh yeah I worked on a similar project at Oracle. The sales people basically sold the state on a 'stack' with a bunch of random horseshit that was magically supposed to work together and then dumped it on engineering. I mean that in a totally serious way, sales seemingly just grabbed a bunch of names of Oracle software and mashed it together. It literally never worked at any point. Then Oracle sued THEM about it, lmao…

I met one of the "managers" on that who told me with a straight face "All you need is a college degree in anything to manage developers" (hers was in English IIRC)

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#577

Post by openknot »

ethbr0 wrote: post #542
wildzzz wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because they want to talk to the most power in the decision but with the least information as to how the problem could be solved without the help of Oracle/IBM/whoever.

This, 100%. Think about it another way: IBM et al. sales only lose by talking to lower-title folks. Best case, they lose control of the narrative as it's reported up internally, and someone higher up still has to approve it. Worst case, some engineer who actually knows their shit very quickly outlines why this can never work for the given problem. Once you're into the VP level, there's (usually) less technical knowle…

To add on, it's also a standard negotiation tactic for a negotiator to try and speak to the highest-ranking person possible. This tactic was specifically recommended by a guest speaker at a Stanford Business School seminar about how to negotiate uploaded to YouTube (timestamped to 31:59 for the relevant bit). [0]

[0] (Seminar from 2007) https://youtu.be/rCmvMDrCWjs?t=1919

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#579

Post by macintux »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #570
wildzzz wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because they want to talk to the most power in the decision but with the least information as to how the problem could be solved without the help of Oracle/IBM/whoever.

One would think the decision makers would trust the technical advice of the smart people they've hired instead of the opinion of some obviously lying salesman...

"If they're smart, why are they working for me?"
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