I no longer believe that they have a sense of purpose and direction for the business. It's quite noticeable they are losing control. I can't even imagine what IBM will look like in a few years. Where is all this going with such management? I would say straight to the bottom.
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Most middle managers are scared that we’ll find out they are utterly incompetent even though it’s painfully obvious. They promote other incompetent people to not feel threatened and the cycle continues until every band 6/7 reports to 5 pseudo-managers who refuse to learn any tooling.
The secret decoder ring is the worst kept secret. The big reveal: (1) Maintain dividend, (2) Maintain stock price to maintain confidence in holding the stock for the dividend.
This only requires short term EPS with a tad longer roadmap to maintain that.
I mean even Gartner, who's happy enough, and party to sentiment (and thus decoder success), can't think mainframes and huge monolithic data servers are anything but a 4-5 year rolling future. All Gartner cares about is a moderate level of leadership in something
I'm confident Arvind can maintain decent(enough) EPS for 4-5 years - though as the parked cash projects/products age out.
So in 4-5 years Arvind will retire happy and remembered for maintaining the secret decoder ring plan. IBM will be even more of a distant shell.
My prophecy for the next major inflection point (death knell signal) will be when they sell off Quantum. "To effect laser focus on Hybrid cloud"
"Products that were relevant a decade ago were turned into cash cows with minimal crew, the very significant money those products used to make was used..."
This all around me. And those products are dying in that they're getting left behind with not even money, from that profitable product, to maintain it's position if not grow it.
It's kind of like a slug or snail - devouring projects to feed itself - leaving a slimy trail of consumed detritus in it's wake.
IBM will partner out the infrastructure business before they exit the consulting or sw business. Why? Because HW is too cyclical (bo-m and bust) whereas consulting and SW are long term (3-5 year contracts) It’s all about cash flow IBM’s ultimate goal is to become a high yield annuity that is very very consistent
"all the smart white people already left"
well the equity and inclusion officers did not plan on keeping them anyway
Agree, they are disconnected from reality. Misinterpreting the facts, marginal managers make up their own truths. While tops cannot communicate their vision to save their life. No vision, no planning, not even when facts are laid in their lap, they manage to ignore, twist and sc--w up. I felt bad for GTS spin off, I now wonder if they actually got the better deal out of it.
don't want to sound racist but all the smart white people already left. :D
In 2-3 years IBM Consulting gets spun off into a separate standalone company. 1-2 years after that one of the hyperscalers acquires whatever is left of IBM Technology, mainly for Red Hat and the legacy customer list. Sorry if I ruined the ending for anyone.
Management without a vision? Agreed ... but I'd have to add without a moral compass, integrity, work ethic, and competence as well.
iBM is a company bleeding talent with no plan (or will) the replace it. Months without new faces but lots of resignations, full of management shifts to “turn the business”, like just putting and sharing slides with an empty goals like “lead the market with innovation and customer focus “ is equal to innovate and get customers. Products grow with the right investment and the right talent, not with calls of surging together and creating more directors an focus groups. The Products that were relevant a decade ago were turned into cash cows with minimal crew, the very significant money those products used to make was used to finance the green fields of Watson [paste your name here], including a layer of big bosses for the cutting edge (almost) vaporware they keep talking about. All those moonshots made (and still make) laughable revenue compare to the old legacy products. But the big VPs have not learnt anything. Their solution is to create Watson offerings (and managements layers) In a combo (cloud paks). I guess, they think that since the products did not sell well (or at all) separately they will be an smash hit in a pak. There is not single person that privately will not tell you how bad that is going to end.
IBM will soon only be managers and executives sitting in a room. No workers. Just suits. The coffee pot will go empty. Nobody gets up to make it. So they hold a hungers game style event to submit managers into working again. All mangers wiped out, the executives, still coffeeless and afraid, turn on each other until it’s only arvind. He gets up to make the coffee, but quickly realizes this machine is too advanced for him to operate alone. He orders Starbucks through door dash and gets a text confirmation saying, “Ginni is approaching with your order.”