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At least it wasn't Oracle

chrisshort.net

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Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#71

Post by ChuckMcM »

kodablah wrote: post #53
ChuckMcM wrote: post #49

Having been in Chris' shoes (being acquired by IBM) I found the reactions of different people in the company most interesting. Several people had the same sort of "Everything is different now that IBM owns us." reaction, but if you unpack that, the reality is a bit different. For a company like Redhat I can't imagine it will be largely changed in the first couple of years at least, so for that period of time you will…

> What will be different will be access to a company that has been running for over 100 years and evolved over that time, at all levels. Facilities all around the world. Access to some of the scientists that you may have only read their papers but now can chat with via slack. I too was in similar shoes. While I agree with much of what you wrote, I disagree with this point. The size and compartmentalization of the com…

If you could, would you share a time when you tried to interact with a different department and were unable to?

I ask because it sounds like we had different experiences there. I found all IBMers to be very open to talking about what they were working on, as slack became more widely deployed it was even easier. (Sametime as an IM client was a bit clunky). People would post on their 'home' page what they were up to some times, I talked at length with an engineer working with the atomic force microscope (AFM) in San Jose.

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#72

Post by DonHopkins »

tombert wrote: post #65

I used to work for Jet.com, which was acquired by Walmart, and I stayed there for about two years after the acquisition. It was an OK place to work, and they gave Jet some level of autonomy, but I left when I read that Walmart wants to start "integrating" their stuff ours, which in my case was a lot of Java crap that was clearly at least 10 years old. I doubt that my experience is atypical with this. Big companies li…

Imagine the Java -vs- Objective C wars, if Apple had bought Sun.

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#73

Post by pooppaint »

babarock wrote: post #26
mindcrime wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of who's left at IBM are either: A. "lifers" who are biding their time until retirement and aren't interested in rocking the boat, or doing anything to make noise. They want to come in, do their time, go home and go fishing... lather, rinse, repeat. B. New grads who have no clue what they have walked into because they haven't worked anywhere else for comparison and haven't been at IBM long enough to realize how…

380,000 employees at IBM, you're sure your 3 categories encompass everyone?

Categories don’t have to encompass everyone as long as the remainder are rounding errors. One of the most successful CEOs in the world works at every Fortune 100 company. Who cares.

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#74

Post by gargravarr »

hinkley wrote: post #63
DonHopkins wrote: post #20

That's the opposite of what I thought when Oracle bought Sun. Q: What do you get when you cross IBM and Apple? A: IBM On the bright side, now RedHat employees can flash their new IBM business cards at International Brotherhood of Magicians shows in Las Vegas to get in for free, thanks to the terms of a trademark infringement lawsuit settlement from decades ago.

Didn’t Apple and IBM work on an OS boondoggle back in the Windows 95 time period?

IBM and Motorola worked with Apple to make the PowerPC chips Apple used in their (i|Power)(Mac|Book) ranges for years. They called it the AIM Alliance.

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#75

Post by DonHopkins »

HEHENE wrote: post #62
DonHopkins wrote: post #20

That's the opposite of what I thought when Oracle bought Sun. Q: What do you get when you cross IBM and Apple? A: IBM On the bright side, now RedHat employees can flash their new IBM business cards at International Brotherhood of Magicians shows in Las Vegas to get in for free, thanks to the terms of a trademark infringement lawsuit settlement from decades ago.

>On the bright side, now RedHat employees can flash their new IBM business cards at International Brotherhood of Magicians shows in Las Vegas to get in for free, thanks to the terms of a trademark infringement lawsuit settlement from decades ago. Is this true? I can't find any references anywhere.

I heard the story from some IBM people while I was working for Kaleida Labs (a joint venture of Apple and IBM (as was Taligent), both the embodiment of that joke.)

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#76

Post by new12345 »

dkarl wrote: post #59
apohn wrote: post #2

I've worked for companies that got acquired and also acquired other companies. Year 1 is usually nothing and things stay the same unless there is some serious fat that needed trimming. The interesting years are 2 and 3. That's when the parent company tries to optimize things (e.g. streamline the sales force), create synergies, etc and you start seeing the changes. Depending on where you are in the acquired company, i…

The interesting years are 2 and 3. That's when the parent company tries to optimize things (e.g. streamline the sales force), create synergies, etc and you start seeing the changes. In my one experience with acquisition, that's when upper management's bonuses got tied to "synergy" metrics and suddenly everybody had to learn a new relationship to reality. Almost everything we did for a whole year was dedicated to gami…

It seems like the moment big corps acquire a well performing product, product starts to loose its value, like trying to move a viscous liquid between containers using a sieve. Eventually, acquired product quality get completely destroyed and it end up creating gap in market that product was serving. I think its good for new product startup as it creates opportunities for them. Its like nonterminating cycle of creation and destruction.

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#77

Post by cyphar »

floatboth wrote: post #21
makecheck wrote: post #10

With Oracle/Sun it was pretty inverted...the first year was a huge cash infusion, and if anything Sun hardware projects had greater potential than before. And yet, within 5-6 years the entire hardware division imploded. And, meta-comment: this site layout is frustrating on mobile, the text runs off the left/right edges slightly and it refuses to allow pinch/zoom. Sites really need to stop writing code to intentionall…

The Solaris team quit almost immediately though

No, the Solaris team quite almost immediately after the OpenSolaris re-proprietarisation in late-2010[1]. Sun was acquired in 2009. This was fast but not immediate, the reaction was mostly in relation to how Oracle treated OpenSolaris and not the acquisition itself.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#78

Post by mixmastamyk »

There is some precedence of an acquired company doing a brain transplant on its host. Think Pixar taking over at Disney, replacing accountants with creative folks.

Not familiar with IBM's current management enough to know if that is a possibility.

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#79

Post by tombert »

DonHopkins wrote: post #72
tombert wrote: post #65

I used to work for Jet.com, which was acquired by Walmart, and I stayed there for about two years after the acquisition. It was an OK place to work, and they gave Jet some level of autonomy, but I left when I read that Walmart wants to start "integrating" their stuff ours, which in my case was a lot of Java crap that was clearly at least 10 years old. I doubt that my experience is atypical with this. Big companies li…

Imagine the Java -vs- Objective C wars, if Apple had bought Sun.

Actually, Java is used fairly heavily at Apple for their backend systems. If you go on their job boards, you'll see quite a lot of Java positions.
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