After the Red Hat mess I see many people saying IBM destroys everything they touch, but I can’t think of many examples of it. Can you tell me what else IBM has destroyed after acquiring it, or something good that they themselves developed and then ruined it with stupid corporate choices?
IBM bought a an innovative SAN company, and sold these products for a while as their XIV brand (no relation to my username!). Was pretty much superior in most ways to their home-grown SAN offerings.
They killed the entire line off, after the 3rd gen product; about all that remains of it is the management UI, they butchered it and applied it to their own SANs. But the UI was only a small part of what made XIV great.
The original XIV founder went on to found Infinidat, which basically carries on where XIV left off, it was a great migration to their hardware!
I was part of an acquisition, company was performing well against bigger players and IBM came in and threw a load of money at the owners.
Once we completed the transref of business we were paid massive retention bonuses, managers got company cars etc.
Not one sale of the product was made in the next 6 years and the business unit closed down. Previous CEO founded a competitor when his non compete clause ended and the customer base IBM had bought moved.
IBM bought the Weather Underground. It had a set of developer APIs that allowed small-scale apps to make use of their data. As soon as IBM bought them the APIs were changed and replaced with a set priced to be affordable only to other mega-corporations.
It killed a tiny little free app I had built around it. The real irony is that I took a deep breath, looked around, and adapted the app to use the Dark Skies API instead. A few years later Apple bought Dark Skies and killed off its API too. {heavy sigh}
but think something in their brains got wired differently when they worked there - they just build all sorts of amazing stuff without thinking about the strategy for it. who will use it, in what scenarios, how will it be supported once interest surpasses cycles of the creator.
not all indicative of the companies history or current reputation but interesting to see at the micro level
Every large company have this aspect, but they usually have this group as part of research. These research projects are unbridled, with no concern for business. The group is measured by the number of patents they file.
A separate group then picks through the research output and figure out how to monetize it.
This right here. When the company I worked for got bought by them our code got “blue washed” by a team of…lawyer/dev hybrids for lack of a better term.
They ripped the shit out of our code. It took us years to unshitify it.
Bluewashed was a IBM term. Since IBMs main color is blue it went with everything. Bluetape, bluewash, blueshit, etc.
Bluewashing to them was taking a program/app and doing a series of things to fuck it up.
Strip out any code that might get them sued.
Strip out any “bad” or “funny” comments in the code.
If easily possible replace things like Apache for IBM HTTP server. Wildfly/Tomcat for IBM Websphere.
Product must have an installer even if you have a product that the customer doesn’t install.
There’s probably more that I blocked out but thats the tl;dr of it.
Oh speaking of Blueshit. If you wanted to order something like say a laptop dock for your new laptop. Try to order it through their “buy on demand” system.
Me: Ok its for my laptop so I can get work done.
Them: (Some asshat in Denmark) Denied, workstations are not allowed docking stations, mice, additional monitors etc.
Me: “hold my beer” Resubmit request: Lab equipment for the REDACTED lab, to support multiple monitors in the test environment.
Them: (Someone in France) Approved! You should see your equipment in 2-3 weeks.
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IBM bought a an innovative SAN company, and sold these products for a while as their XIV brand (no relation to my username!). Was pretty much superior in most ways to their home-grown SAN offerings.
They killed the entire line off, after the 3rd gen product; about all that remains of it is the management UI, they butchered it and applied it to their own SANs. But the UI was only a small part of what made XIV great.
The original XIV founder went on to found Infinidat, which basically carries on where XIV left off, it was a great migration to their hardware!
I was part of an acquisition, company was performing well against bigger players and IBM came in and threw a load of money at the owners.
Once we completed the transref of business we were paid massive retention bonuses, managers got company cars etc.
Not one sale of the product was made in the next 6 years and the business unit closed down. Previous CEO founded a competitor when his non compete clause ended and the customer base IBM had bought moved.
This is not an isolated occurrence.
IBM bought the Weather Underground. It had a set of developer APIs that allowed small-scale apps to make use of their data. As soon as IBM bought them the APIs were changed and replaced with a set priced to be affordable only to other mega-corporations.
It killed a tiny little free app I had built around it. The real irony is that I took a deep breath, looked around, and adapted the app to use the Dark Skies API instead. A few years later Apple bought Dark Skies and killed off its API too. {heavy sigh}
Have you ever used this thing called “Lotus Notes” before?
Oh dear God.
Triggered!
fwiw i work with a bunch of former ibmers.
super super nice people who are crazy smart.
but think something in their brains got wired differently when they worked there - they just build all sorts of amazing stuff without thinking about the strategy for it. who will use it, in what scenarios, how will it be supported once interest surpasses cycles of the creator.
not all indicative of the companies history or current reputation but interesting to see at the micro level
Every large company have this aspect, but they usually have this group as part of research. These research projects are unbridled, with no concern for business. The group is measured by the number of patents they file. A separate group then picks through the research output and figure out how to monetize it.
IBM is a law firm wrapped in a tech company.
Source - 10+ years working with them and watching them keep their claws dug in with management.
This right here. When the company I worked for got bought by them our code got “blue washed” by a team of…lawyer/dev hybrids for lack of a better term. They ripped the shit out of our code. It took us years to unshitify it.
What does blue washed mean?
What does blue washed mean?
Bluewashed was a IBM term. Since IBMs main color is blue it went with everything. Bluetape, bluewash, blueshit, etc. Bluewashing to them was taking a program/app and doing a series of things to fuck it up.
Oh speaking of Blueshit. If you wanted to order something like say a laptop dock for your new laptop. Try to order it through their “buy on demand” system.
Me: Ok its for my laptop so I can get work done.
Them: (Some asshat in Denmark) Denied, workstations are not allowed docking stations, mice, additional monitors etc.
Me: “hold my beer” Resubmit request: Lab equipment for the REDACTED lab, to support multiple monitors in the test environment.
Them: (Someone in France) Approved! You should see your equipment in 2-3 weeks.
Me: WTF??
Gotcha, so it’s IBM’s own brand of enshittification lol
Yes but think of it as a company with mostly infinite resources to infinity shitify
Ibm has a reputation for destroying everything they touch thanks to one thing.
Profit at every cost.
Never trust a big corp, never expect anything from them except the intent to screw you. They’ll be expecting a thank you.