If you've been married long enough, you know that your marriage consists of several mini-marriages connected together. IBM over 30 years is similar -- a series of different culture and experience connected only by time...
At the beginning in the 80s the culture was oddly paternalistic with white shirts and suits for men (as a woman I had a bit more freedom in dress but not much), no alcohol at any corporate events, outing for the kids, holiday parties, etc. It was odd by today's standards but it worked. And the company was surprisingly woman friendly for the times.
In the early 90s when IBM was losing billions and everything hit the fan, there was mass panic for awhile but then things settled down quickly after the huge firings. All the IBMers raised in the 80s culture hunkered down and fixed company (Gerstner took way too much credit). They loved the company and hung together to get it fixed.
By 1998 the culture had started changing. Gerstner had always regarded employees as a profit center, but he reached new heights of duplicity when he used the IBMers' pension fund to goose the corporate earnings per share (google it). The older IBMers never forgave him for the theft.
In small ways the company started shifting towards lower pay, fewer benefits, and fairly regular layoffs. But it was still a good place to work and many of us enjoyed our work during this time.
When Palmisano came in in the early 2000s the company really lost its footing, although it wasn't obvious at the time and the company was still a good place to work. Palmisano basically made a deal with Wall Street that IBM would meet yearly EPS targets and the Street would bid up IBM stock. During this time IBM Finance took over the company (and has never relinquished control). Every sales and product development action was viewed through the prism of how it would affect the EPS.
From a cultural perspective, some superb IBMers -- many of whom went on to lead other companies -- started leaving as they saw the shift to a self-serving and myopic company strategy.
Rometty basically inherited a mess from Palmisano and his EPS Roadmap strategy, but she hasn't played her hand well. Rather than down-size all at once as was done in the early 90s, Rometty has presided over a 5 year slow drip of firing occurring at least five or six times per year. In addition, the company has sought to squeeze every penny possible out of employees through increasingly petty actions -- only paying 401k matches in December comes to mind as one example, cutting severance to one month for fired 40 year employees is another.
The result is a current culture where it's hard to be productive. Finance runs the company, bad strategic decisions are made on a regular basis, no one knows if they'll have a job next week, and executive management has largely become populated by 'yes' men and woman who often don't understand the business they manage.
What will be the next part of this marriage? It's hard to say. The company still makes a lot of money but that part of its business is shrinking quickly. In its stead, IBM has placed all bets on Watson, AI, Blockchain and a few other 'strategic imperatives.' I personally think these are good bets, but I fear the toxic culture won't support bringing these bets to fruition.
The best hope here is that Rometty declares victory and heads off into retirement as is customary at age 60. Then, one would hope, an outsider is brought in who examines the bets IBM has placed, implements one single down-sizing, fixes the culture so employees feel valued again, and returns the company to its product development and sales roots.
Sorry for the length here. Hope this gives you some perspective on how IBM has evolved over the decades.