Comment by altmanaltman 5 hours ago
I mean, okay, but you're taking the current leadership's words and claiming they are incorrect because IBM management was not great at identifying trends decades ago. Historical trend is not an indicator of the future and it's not engaging in good faith on the conversation if overspending on AI can be backed by revenue in the future. You're attacking the messenger instead of the message.
Except that, over the same time period, IBM was also very successful at innovation and investing in technologies. Yes, they made some very high-profile misses that the top poster lists, but they were still a powerhouse doing other stuff during that time (as a commenter replying to that points out).
Except all the technologies listed were basically in the heydey of the 70s and 80s. Gerstner redirected IBM into an enterprise services business in the early 90s and by the late 90s that's where all their money was. The 2002 acquisition of PwC consulting cemented this shift. In the mid 2010s under Ginni Rometty IBM software became secondary and it abandoned selling it as standalone software instead bundling it into its consultancy.
So IBM hasn't been doing hardware R&D for about three decades and abandoned software R&D well over a decade ago. R&D hasn't been in their DNA for a long time, their previous contributions notwithstanding.
> So IBM hasn't been doing hardware R&D for about three decades
Even a 5 second google search says you are wrong.
I don't understand how calling something "a ship of Theseus in corporate form" or "culture hasn't changed" etc, is not dismissive of the actual comment by the CEO on AI overspending. They dismissed the content of the message by saying IBM's culture sucks, is how i read it. Also things can be funny and dimissive at the same time, they often are.
I’m saying given IBMs track record of completely failing at innovation repeatedly and failing at investing on the correct technologies, why do you assume today’s CEO is better at it and has bucked the milquetoast culture that has pervaded IBM? It’s a company that has largely divested its ability to provide solutions and technology and turned more into a large shop consultancy (+ milking their legacy mainframe contracts and whatnot).