Re: What the Hell Has Happened to IBM?
The post should be titled "What the Hell Has Happend to ________?" where you get to fill in the blanks, pick your corporation of choice. IBM's handling of employees is SoP for US corporations and its actually one of the principal reasons why "Make America Great Again" is never going to be much more than a slogan. The disconnect starts at the boardroom; the Guru of All Things Capitalist, Milton Freidman, taught that the one and only purpose of corporate management was to "enhance shareholder value" -- in other words, to persue dividens and stock price rises. Which, coincidentally, also maximizes executive compensation. The problem with this approach is that it loses sight with what the business actually does -- so long as the business makes money its not thought to be important how this is done or how steps taken today might impact the future.
Its a well known story. The problem, though, is that word gets around and sooner or later the corporation can't hire talent because it has nothing to offer except a medicre salary, an overbearing management culture and chronic employee insecurity. It uses outsourcing and aquisitions to cover its tracks for a time but it won't work, its in a downward spiral with the end is never in doubt. The only unknown is "how fast?".
(If I sound a bit cynical its because this has been the reality of my working life, first in England and then in the US. I've only avoided the worst of it by working at startups; this is a different type of gamble but its still vulnerable to the excesses of 'financial engineering'. I've been relatively luck but I've seen the impact this corporate mindset has had on friends, colleagues and relations. Our national goal should be to encourage the Chinese to embrace this kind of rot because if they don't they're going to end up wiping the floor with us.)