But by now I know the systems, I know the people, and leaving feels like starting over. So I stay. It's stupid but it's honest. I think there are many stuck at IBM with a similar mindset.
47 replies (most recent on top)
@pp no, it was your post, so aggressive and critical of my friends here, it made me feel awful. I just lost all motivation to do anything positive for this awful company. Now I don't like starbucks because they're like coffee IBM but here I am, sipping a latte, getting revenge
If one post convinced you to quit working for the day, that’s not my post’s fault. That’s a performance issue wearing a coffee badge.
@pj ya know, i'm on my way to the office right now and planned on putting in a full day but after reading your post i've decided to coffee badge. Way to go, shill-mo
The “Indian intern” line tells me this is less about IBM strategy and more about personal resentment. Lou Gerstner did not “sell IBM’s soul.” He helped stop the company from collapsing when it was in real danger. You can dislike consulting culture, layoffs, and executive compensation without rewriting history. IBM is not perfect, but calling it a “corpse” while it continues competing in hybrid cloud, AI, mainframe, consulting, security, and enterprise technology is emotional theater, not analysis. Criticism is fair. Bitter mythology is not.
It is cute that our little Indian Intern thinks we would have cared about what "Mr. Gertsner" would have thought. Having met him in person I could care less.
I for one no longer believe that Gertsner "saved IBM". Yes IBM management put us in a hot pickle back then, got their golden parachute's and then what? We became the poster child for McKinsey Inc. - su-king the life blood out of workers since Gertsner invited them into the house like vampires. That has been our status quo ever since.
Matthew 16:26: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?" Gertsner did not save us at all - he sold our soul to McKinsey. IBM is now nothing but a garden variety WITCH company completely incapable of innovation, a company that lost its soul a long time ago, as vampires at the top feed off its forever dying corpse.
Really? Now we have people talking like they are at a bar?
Mr Gerstner would be appalled to see these comments
Arvind and his executive team would not approve either. I am trying to learn as much as I can and we have juvenile jokes.
@jr Bob, i didn't know you were a comedian too. Amazing.
@js better go easy on those badges. They'll cause your palms to grow hair.
@jk I’m not calling everyone who disagrees with me a “shill.” I’m calling you a shill, because that’s what you are.
While most of you were posting negativity and dehumanizing comments about Arvind and his executive team, I earned more badges and am now SCRUM Certified. I make sure my weekends are productive.
That is a lot of name-calling with very little business analysis. IBM is not irrelevant because someone on the internet says so. It remains a major enterprise technology company serving governments, banks, airlines, healthcare systems, and global businesses that need secure infrastructure, hybrid cloud, automation, AI, consulting, and mission-critical systems. You can dislike restructuring and still admit the executive team has to make tough decisions to keep IBM competitive.
@jk Unfortunately those hard choices by the fascist executive team, all of whom look like insects or very large mammals and have questionable personal habits, have not made IBM relevant. Other than legacy stuff IBM might as well not even exist. Those execs need to stop spewing bullsh-t like hot thick lava. They need to stop right here, right now. Anyone who says otherwise is a shill. I don't care what Mr. Gerstner would think.
@jk, go to sleep. It is past your bedtime in Bangalore.
Posting sh-t on this forum, might give you IBM nightmares. Drink your tea and go to sleep.
@jf Calling everyone who disagrees with you a “shill” is not an argument. IBM operates in a global technology market where companies either adapt or get left behind. Restructuring is painful, but leadership has a duty to keep the company competitive, profitable, and positioned for long-term survival. You can criticize executive pay without pretending every difficult business decision is “abuse.” Emotion is not analysis, and insults are not evidence.
@je You’re delusional at best. “Hard choices” don’t include taking $30M+ in smash & grab incentives while destroying the lives of thousands of employees and their families. As for you…Doesn’t matter if you’re an Indian or not. You’re clearly a company shill. The IBM executive team are abusive and unethical.
I’m not from India, so that part is wrong right out of the gate. Second, IBM’s executive team has to make difficult decisions in a brutally competitive global market. You may disagree with those decisions, but pretending leadership is supposed to ignore margins, restructuring, AI shifts, shareholder obligations, and long-term competitiveness is not serious business analysis. Companies do not stay relevant by avoiding hard choices.
@hx “ ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!”…no my little Indian intern. We’re just getting started. When you’ve been here for more than a year dealing with the mental abuse from this garbage executive team who care more about shareholders and their own payouts than they do the people who actually make this company run, the you’ll begin to understand.
@hx You seem increasingly agitated. Is your corporate sponsor getting impatient with your inability to quell the ranks?
Wrong and wrong.
These are my words. I am not from India.
Also the hate and racism you are spewing is disgusting. You are dehumanizing people. Mr Gerstner would be sick to his stomach seeing what hateful people some of you have become.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!
I cut and pasted comments, from @er @hs @d5 @aw @d4, all messages I suspect are written by the same being, into multiple AI engines, ChatGPT, ...., I asked the simple question: What is the country of origin of the author ?
The answer was unanimous: INDIA.
So little Indian, go back to your little shithole and stop being a pest.
Indians are like a termite infestation
No, I am pointing out how ridiculous some of you sound. Comparing monitoring websites and who is going to the office as Knot-Zee Germany.
Mr Gerstner would be appalled to see what is being posted here
I am not from India and I am not a bootlicker. Why is so much animosity and negativity being spewed here ?
@ew "no credibility"
Pot kettle black you corporate shill.
Out little Indian intern will be a boot l1cker right up until the day he’s RA’ed.
Left IBM few years back and realized it’s abusive and rigged system. They preach fairiness and ethics but reality is they don’t practice what they preach. I only saw it or understood it after seeing how it really is suppose to work at another place
@ew You're a troll. You gave it away by how you spelled N@zi.
@er
Monitoring websites visited is not N@zi tactics. You have no credibility.
Again, you are paid to work and not to shop on Amazon. DO THAT ON YOUR OWN COMPUTER ON YOUR OWN TIME
Can you read English? I said I am not from India. I am not here on a visa
And again. Don't like IBM? Find a New Job
I am working hard to learn new skills and you and others brag about coffee badging and making fun of Arvinds and Jims and Robs appearances.
This is not what Mr Gerstner envisioned when he saved IBM
@dz Stop it or what? You'll blow a gasket? Be my guest. Here, let me help you: I'll RTO if I want, when I want, and for as short a time as I want. Go ahead and set your Ge----o on me too, to track my websites, keystrokes, what ever. I specialize in workarounds for such Na-i surveillance tactics. In fact, while you've been busy piling up badges, I've been busy building tech skills to "fool the fools," skills that let me do the bare minimum work to get by. And if I'm RAed, well, so be it. I'll take my degenerate tech skills over your stinking badges any day. Cuz in the real world, no one gives a fu-k about your stinking badges.
You are paid to do your job. Not to surf the web and buy stuff om Amazon. That is what your personal computer is for.
I am sure you know that they can track the websites you visited and your keystrokes. IBN is not the only company who does that. Surf the web on your own time.
Mr Gerstner did not save IBM just for people to check sports scores.
I am not in India. And I took a couple of days off for vacation to finish up with getting more badges and getting SCRUM Certified as well as taking more WatsonX courses.
@da
Stop it !!!! You are not forced to stay with IBM. You are free to find a new job. This N@zi reference is childish. Arvind mandated 3 days a week to RTO. He did not say come in for coffee and leave.
Mr Gerstner saved IBM and here we have angry people spewing hate and anger here.
@OP I've been gone from ibm nine years and I've hated ibm all nine of them
@d4 it’s not thriving. It has been a downward spiral for sometime leading up to the paying to Globalfoundries to take a bunch of the fab sites. That’s right GF didn’t buy the sites from IBM - IBM paid GF to take them. All the Quantum leadership buzz is also hype. Anyone working on it knows. We should place bets on Kashi of when IBM will inevitably give up the “lead”. But there are no customers or practical uses so this too will shrivel up after a few years. @cw+1kr4jq0y8 Is right. This in not the IBM of old. This IBM has been coasting for decades on what your comments have pointed out. But their current leadership has milked this dry at this point and are rapidly running out of the ibm reputation supply
"IBM needs to track people badging out too."
Well yer quite the resourceful tool, ain't ya? In that case I'd badge in in the morning but I wouldn't actually go in. Instead, I'd go for coffee, breakfast, who knows, maybe even a massage. Later on I'd RTO (LOL), pretend to be looking for my badge at the door, and tailgate behind the next IBMer badging in, flashing my badge with an, "Ah, here it is." LOL
What you really want to do is force all IBMers to wear a body cam when they're "on duty." ROTFLMFAO That'd be quite consistent with IBM's imbecilic authoritarian reputation.
The Negativity, hate, and overall malaise here spews thick like lava. If you do not like IBM, you are free to find another job. And if you are required to be in the office you go. And enough of the coffee badging. IBM needs to track people badging out too.
@cz
IBM has been around for more than a century because it keeps adapting, not because it is “inefficient.” It helped build modern enterprise computing, remains deeply embedded in global banking, government, infrastructure, cloud, AI, mainframe, cybersecurity, and consulting, and still serves clients that require reliability at massive scale. You can criticize bureaucracy in any large company, but reducing IBM to a vulgar insult is not an argument. It is just emotion dressed up as analysis. A company does not survive through multiple technology eras by accident. It survives because major institutions still trust it when failure is not an option.
IBM is a blue tube with a mouth at one end and a shithole at the other. IBM will eat you up and sh-t you out. And in between it will subject you to the most pathetic, inefficient, id--tic, and unbelievable bullsh-t ever seen in the history of the universe.
IBM is no longer prestigious place to work
I worked for a different company for 13 years and thought it was time for a fresh start. I joined IBM
five years ago, but in many ways it turned out to be the same job — just with fewer friends and enemies.
Looking back, leaving behind all those stock options to join IBM was probably a mistake. And leaving IBM would likely be another mistake unless I make a real career change rather than just another company change.
If you switch from soccer to golf, you need to change the club. If you no longer enjoy soccer, it does not help to play soccer in a different town.
It seems obvious in hindsight, though it was not obvious to me at the time.