[ale] Who'd'v thunk it?

[Jim Kinney]

TheReg cherry picked to make a headline?!?!?!

Yeah. 

A re-read of the article hinted it was extrapolation from insufficient data.

Not that IBM has ever done anything to deserve the cynicism thrown at it. </sarcasm>

Scott,

Many thanks for the insight. Large mergers are always a sticky nightmare. It is my fervent hope that RedHat works it's way into IBM as positive change rather than IBM suffocates RedHat as we all expect.

On November 5, 2021 9:25:42 AM EDT, Scott McBrien via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>Being both a Red Hatter and a manager, I think this may be getting
>distorted by the register.  (They do have some history at strategically
>selecting quotes to support a narrative designed by the author which
>Red Hat has experienced before.)  Or also maybe they’re writing an
>article about an 18,000 person organization based off the experiences
>of one person, which might not be a good sample size.
>
>My own team grew by 100% this year.  We have been told to not expect
>additional head count in the upcoming year. But frankly, given the
>growth I had this year, that’s not unreasonable and I feel well
>positioned to execute on our projects.
>
>I’d dispute several of the “facts” of the article like associate
>software developers or software developers having limited mobility.  If
>anything they are more able to move around the company because managers
>don’t have to have a huge stockpile of budget to accommodate them.  I
>was just having this conversation with someone who is Senior Principle
>level about going to Consulting level.  Essentially, if he’s a Sr
>Principle, while it’s difficult for him to change to another team if
>he’s unhappy, it can be done.  At Consulting level the $$ of the
>headcount are going to be beyond the level of other teams to get money
>to fund (those job prefixes are probably meaningless, but both are late
>in career, relatively high level positions for individual contributors,
>conversely associate or non-prefixed jobs are generally early to
>early-mid career positions).
>
>Also the financials reported by the article are off.  I would point out
>that in last quarter’s earnings call, Arvind called out Red Hat as
>being a bright spot in earnings.  Why would IBM mess with that? 
>Especially given the fact that they took on A MOUNTAIN of debt to
>acquire Red Hat?
>
>I have seen some changes since the acquisition, but they are very
>minor.  Things like we used to get an annual budget and we could spend
>that money anytime in the year.  Now we still get an annual budget, but
>that is further broken into a quarterly budget.  We’re expected to land
>spend in the quarter for which it’s allotted, which is not an
>unreasonable ask.  However, we were used to being very loose with
>project management and the like so if it slipped a quarter, meh.  Now
>we have to care, and it’s caused some (better) behaviors for project
>and vendor management.
>
>We were asked to put together a 3 year strategy.  What??? A 3 year
>Strategy??? The nerve of IBM to ask for such a thing!  Of course that’s
>sarcastic. My team already had a multi-year strategy, which we fit into
>the 3 year format IBM requested, but for some groups, who didn’t have
>an idea of what they were going to do multi-year, it was more
>disruptive.  But again, probably a good thing, ultimately.
>
>If IBM was really intent of absorbing Red Hat, several things would
>happen.
>1) you’d see IBM executives replacing Red Hat executives
>This is not happening.
>2) they’d collapse the corporate structure
>IT, HR, Finance, Legal, and Marketing would be the first departments
>absorbed into IBM.  That has not happened.
>
>-STM
>
>> On Nov 5, 2021, at 8:17 AM, Jim Kinney via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>> 
>> https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/05/red_hat_jobs/
>> 
>> IBM starts the finance choke on RedHat. Did anyone think it wouldn't
>happen? 
>> 
>> Forget about systemd for a moment.
>> 
>> RedHat sold support for Linux systems and that got Linux systems into
>businesses. Then they used those funds to expand the capabilities of
>and add new tools to the Linux environment. They hired programmers and
>trainers. They got Linux visibility outside of the Linux world.
>> 
>> And now the zombie shell of a former technology titan has acquired
>them and has begun the systematic vampire sucking of capability. 
>> 
>> Wondering if Mike Warfield thinks this ISS familar. :-)
>> -- 
>> Computers amplify human error
>> Super computers are really
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-- 
Computers amplify human error
Super computers are really cool
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