This is slightly off topic but simply stated I just love IBM these days. There aren't many corporations that dedicate as much focus on research and yet, for a large corp. they also keep their nose surprisingly clean (these days). While we watch the swirling tech scandals ebb and flow they just quietly sit off to the side and keep changing the world.
Wow. I haven't opened ie on my think pad in years. And it's been longer since I ran ie6
IE 6 as a requirement is really rare now. (as an FYI for everyone else - IBM has one of the largest Mac fleets in the world, and fully supports a Linux desktop client as well. ( and yes Lotus Notes runs on win/mac/Linux/iOS/Android)
Sorry to take a tangent here:
Curious what you'd say about someone who is moving to NYC and thinking about what kind of work to find. Formerly worked for one of the big SV tech companies in a project management role. Would love to work for a smaller company now but there aren't as many tech startups in NYC so perhpas IBM is the best bet.
How do you like working there all in all? I understand hierarchy and bureaucracy are the name of the game back east, especially at big blue, but I suspect this will be nothing new... and that SV just claims to be more flat. But would love to hear your perspective and whether it's fulfilling in your org.
There is a horrible amount of waste because of the many levels of management. The higher ups often push software changes on us because of some agenda (it was developed in-house) when the software is very inferior and will hurt our productivity greatly.
IBM tries very hard to encourage us to participate and let our voices be heard, but in my experience anything that takes time, effort or money is ignored, making the whole thing a silly puppet show.
I'm leaving the job soon because of things like this. I absolutely hate it when people say "such overhead is inevitable within such a big organization" because it's become an excuse for EVERYTHING. You wouldn't believe the sort of things we spend weeks on doing that should take minutes. We are talking manually renaming files and proccessing log files, because the "budget for such changes is already used up" or some other bullshit.
There is no ridiculous mind-numbingly slow process that isn't justified by the fact that the organizational aspect is in the way. I think it's become a warm blanket that managers can wrap around themselves to avoid taking responsibility.
Sorry to hear, sounds like some of the major negatives I experienced in Silicon Valley. Nevertheless all companies have their healthy and unhealthy divisions and practices. Presumably someone is doing something right to pay for everyone else. We'll see if they continue to stay in the game.
Thanks for the info!
I guess the NYC job market's a tough one especially for tech.
If ISSI (internal software updating tool) hasn't hit you yet, it's very possible to still be running IE6. ISSI can't hit everyone all the time. And there are still apps that can't run on Firefox, so needed IE (6 if not a newer version of IE).
Sorry to take a tangent here but interesting to be able to ask two individuals for their experience:
Curious what you'd say about someone who is moving to NYC and thinking about what kind of work to find. Formerly worked for one of the big SV tech companies in a project management role. Would love to work for a smaller company now but there aren't as many tech startups in NYC so perhpas IBM is the best bet.
How do you like working there all in all? I understand hierarchy and bureaucracy are the name of the game back east, especially at big blue, but I suspect this will be nothing new... and that SV just claims to be more flat. But would love to hear your perspective and whether it's fulfilling in your org.
It really depends on your department. Some people get to work on the really cool and fun stuff. The stuff that gets IBM so much respect on HN these days, most people inside IBM never even touch. Then you have other areas, where there are internal applications that still rely on IE6 and have horrible interfaces (edit: and yes, Lotus Notes is really truly the application that should not be named :D).
You're right, hierarchy and bureaucracy are name of the game, but that's true in any big org. You're probably best off asking someone who's actually working in the department where you'd be applying. There are so many departments and each one has their own culture, processes, etc. Someone who complains or is happy about stuff in one department is most likely not reflective of another department.
For the record, my department isn't exactly great, but they're giving me the opportunity that I actually care about (an opportunity to live in China so I can learn Mandarin).
Thanks for the reply! China sounds like an awesome gig. I did some time in India with my last gig but China would have been the preferable option... at least for me.
Anyway to be honest I sort of like the idea of honesty about being hierarchical. Sometimes SV's claims of flatness feel like propaganda and rub me the wrong way when they're not realistic.
I can imagine what you mean about most people not being on the really cool stuff: I can see that IBM is keen to develop really awesome stuff that doesn't necessarily make money but which ensures IBM's brand is synonymous with innovation. Better than splattering coke and pepsi signs across the world's cities after all :)
This is more because of secrecy (and ignorance). Any company of such scale is engaged in hundreds patent disputes every year at least, maybe thousands, maybe tens of thousands, it really hard even to estimate. And this continues for decades.
Those ten-twenty disputes that made to journals and blogs are in such small amount that they can be counted as statistical deviation and more of PR or anti-PR moves.
Real patent wars are never off, especially for multinationals.
The way I've always heard the story told, IBM actually kept the patent peace in the industry for decades. They have thousands of patents going back to the foundational era of computing, and warehouses full of prior art. They also operated for a decade or so under harsh anti-trust scrutiny, which limited the viability of "offensive" patent use. Instead, if some upstart threatened to corner off key new technology, IBM was always ready to fire back with some "method for utilizing a spinning disk to store structured records" patent. Cross-licensing agreements among the big players were the norm, not patent fights (even the big Microsoft/Apple dustup over the GUI was over copyright, not patents).
I see evidence for this folklore in that the biggest technology patent wars we've seen in recent years have focused around wireless, which one might consider the first major new computing technology that IBM didn't take a big part in developing.
I'm extrapolating on all industry actually, but I have a friend in a small (<100) company in ex-USSR that does exclusively patent reverse engineering for Freescale/Motorola. This one company (there are at least several others working for F/M in Czech and few other countries) does at least hundred patent researches per year for 10+ years at least, meaning buying devices by Apple, Samsung, TI, Microsoft etc. demolishing to bare crystal and then photographing layer by layer microscheme structure, restoring it on PC to reverse integral scheme and find patent infringing (and maybe a little more, some interesting tech things that wasn't known publicly, i.e. TI does very innovative tricks that are interesting for F/M).
So returning to your question,no, I don't have sources, only second hand experience which I find very believable.
I am sorry, but from the press release they have only added two new industry partners to help develop this battery. There is still a long way to go before they have anything near a working product.
I wonder how relevant this really is? Although the IBM of 2012 shares the same name of the IBM of the 1940s, I can't help but wonder if that's the only quality the two companies share. It's not as though employees of that era are still employed there today.
"These days" means everything after 2010 when the sex scandal+insider trading+FBI sting caused the ouster of super executive Robert Moffat, thought to be the next CEO of IBM.
