Isn't it sad to know that the company you work for peaked decades ago and it's only downhill from this point on? I have to say, I envy those of you who worked at IBM when it was at its full strength. I heard great things about those times from older employees.
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Talking sm--k about competitors definitely has the possibility of backfiring.
Publicly making snarky remarks about customers / potential customers is downright foolish at a conference (aka sales event). It’s rather like going on a date and being nasty to the doorman, waitress and valet, definitely not getting repeat date and the word will spread lessening chances for dates with others.
@5vfq That evangelist behavior is nothing new...while at a client (IBM outsourced, but pre-Tivoli), a Tivoli salesman came in one day to do a sales pitch. He handed out complementary rolls of toilet paper on which were printed various corporate logos of different competitors. In the audience that day was the CIO.
That client never bought anything Tivoli, pre- or post-IBM.
From a customer point of view IBM is on a long downward slide. The peak was around 1980s.
In the days of old true ibm technical experts were in the field and talked with customer technicians about issues and how to solve them.
The model shifted to barely technical polished sales-people (badged as tech experts) selling products to the c-suite that the customers technicians knew were unneeded/unreliable (same for ibm services)
Then there was the birth of the ibm product suite evangelists who often had inflated egos and groupies. One such evangelist RM was single handedly responsible for all IBM products being removed from a Fortune 500 company. On stage at IDUG one year he randomly pointed to a company leader (at former employer) and said she was the d-mbest blonde he’d ever met. I’m sure he had no idea of who he had insulted or that he had just permanently lost a multi-million dollar account. The fact that he felt he was entitled to behave badly and all the other IBMers on stage except JC laughed, told the company leader that it was not a company to do business with.
The more I hear and see Arvind talk, the less I think he should have ever been made CEO of IBM.
Diversity hiring is definitely destroying the company. I think we all can agree that IBM will never be relevant in any tech space again.
This race stuff is totally d-mb... unfortunately, it is being perpetuated by IBM with their completely wrong diversity hiring practices. Can you say: Arvind is an ID--T, and downright to it a RACIST?
It will be a great day when the 8 bar is only seen in the Smithsonian
I agree with you. Soon White people will be a minority... it is already very much the case in tech companies.
Not to sound racist but another common denominator is the fact there's less white people in many companies now. Just saying 😌
I think you are seeing Google peak now. The gravy train is no longer running for them either.
Their advertising via the search engine is like IBM's mainframe. They've tried a lot of other stuff, but that is the only money maker they have and it isn't growing.
I worked for the wrong iteration of IBM ... wish I'd been a generation earlier. It was THE employer in my hometown back in the 70s & 80s ... every kid in school had a parent that worked at IBM or Storage Tek - or so it seemed.
IBM = Increasingly Bloated Management, Id--ts Become Managers, Increasingly Becoming Mediocre, International Bowel Movement, etc. etc.
That Boulder campus is a ghost town now and the grounds look like sh-t. Prairie dogs outnumber employees 100:1
I used to work at IBM and was laid off a year ago. And I was happy I was. The constantly changing focus from direct sales to parter-driven sales, then back to direct sales, along with the forever changing product suites and strategy made achieving target impossible. Assigned a new role and territory, was soon identified as a “low performer”. Most of my energy was spent dealing with disgruntled customers and partners and not sales.
My 2 cents’ worth on how IBM arrived in its current state:
IBM’s heyday appears to coincide with the introduction of the Friedman Doctrine, advanced by economist Milton Friedman, in which the only responsibility of business is to increase profits for shareholders.
American business took that to heart and by the 1980’s was the guiding principle for executives. Married with executive compensation schemes loaded with stock options, and the conditions were created for the rot which now characterizes American big business.
Oh yes, many business “leaders” became and continue to get very rich (the only goal these days). But the focus on short term gains has caused irreparable damage to once stalwart companies (IBM, Boeing, and GE, to name a few), and caused significant harm to American society.
We’re all in this together. The “I got mine, sc--w you” mentality common amongst senior management will only continue to make things worse.
It’s too late for IBM now, however: the intellectual foundation has rotted out.
I must say the 70's were a great time to work at IBM. The S/360 was still going strong, the stock was a fortune, promotions were frequent, and raises were fantastic! I was proud to be an IBMer. Times have changed...