Posts by ByTheSea

Red Hat’s new CEO on surviving inside Big Blue: 'We don’t participate in IBM's culture. It’s that simple'

Re: It is the IBM PC again

You sound bitter tbh.

Re: It is the IBM PC again

An example of the mindset that takes over... I managed an IBM team that specialised in the supply of customised Desktops to customers. Secenario was that customer goes to their dealer with a request for 10,000 boxes over two years, each with cards and software over and above the standard spec. Dealer maybe has a number of customers like this. So my team spec a package for factory build, complete with costs and delivery schedule, for the dealer. Everyone delighted.

I casually ask dealer who is supplying the Servers. Dealer says, I cannot sell IBM Servers as customers want rack mounted of which IBM do not have a model. I feed this correspondence up the chain to the Lab who reply in terms that indicate they are unaware of this customer need and in any event the plan for this year and next has been agreed with Corporate. So maybe a rack mounted Server is about 18 months away. PC Business goes down the toilet.

Re: It is the IBM PC again

Having personally lived thru that experience I can say that there is no doubt that will happen.

TalkTalk still struggles to shut down legacy email addresses on request

"Someone has been able to reset my passwords for Amazon, eBay, my broadband provider, iTunes and more,"

I'm guessing they used the... "I've forgotten my password, send me a new one to my email address " ...hole in the system So have a very good password on email (change it when you abandon use of the address) and continue to monitor legacy email addresses until they are killed by the ISP.

IBM wafts stat minimum redundo terms under noses of Global Tech Services staff

Re: Food for thought.

"One day the chance to leave with some money will no longer be available."

Unlikely since they are only now offering statutory redundancy terms and will be compelled to continue that offer.

Essex named sexiest British accent followed closely by, um, Glaswegian

"...Someone from Govan (Rab C. Nesbitt's location, seeing as he was shown in the story) sounds nothing like someone from Milngavie or Bearsden..."

Exactly. I'm born and brought up in Glasgow.

1) On a business call once to our office in the USA the female at the other end said..."What a lovely accent you have." I did briefly consider suing for sexual harassment (joke!).

2) On a Caribbean cruise an English couple (very Queen's English) overheard us and the woman whispered "where are they from?". Posh Scots replied her husband. Since my early years were in a tenement flat with an outside toilet we laughed about that for years afterwards.

Frankly the Essex accent sounds like someone has had a lobotomy.

IBM HR made me lie to US govt, says axed VP in age-discrim legal row: I was ordered to cover up layoffs of older workers

Re: Not what they used to be

"IBM have been loosing ever since they tried to ignore Microsoft and Windows."

I recall a presentation on OS/2 by a senior VP..."We're going to whip their (MSoft) ass". The rest is history.

"If true, I hope IBM lose. They need to feel the pain treating staff that shitly."

IBM have been doing this for 25 years at least. What has caused controversy and ill-feeling is that in the past they paid candidates very generously to leave. Many, myself included, were happy to accept.

Now they terminate them on minimum terms mandated by law.

Memo to Microsoft: Windows 10 is broken, and the fixes can't wait

MS are not alone in their approach to testing. I know a very able, talented and hard-working tester in a major banking operation, where one would think that thorough testing would be paramount. Not so, on a Friday he has been approached by development on the line of... this release is due to commit Monday can you come in over the weekend. Having spent a long career in IT I find this approach by a bank frightening. Too often senior IT management have never written a line of code and approach it as...how hard can it be.

What's Big and Blue – and makes its veteran staff sue? Yep, it's IBM

I joyfully took voluntary separation in 2000 and it was always about the money for IBM. It was openly stated by Functional Managers, time you over 50's took the money and went. The irony is some years later I met one of those FMs who had been forced out and boy was he bitter. I laughed about it for days afterwards.

TSMC chip fab tools hit by virus, payment biz BGP hijacked, CCleaner gets weird – and more

If you turn off Active Monitoring it later turns itself on again. Sneaky and not welcome.

IBM turnover shrinks $28bn in 6 years but execs laugh all the way to the bank

Re: incentives must match desired behaviour

Deja Vu. In the 90's I often commented at the lunch table that we (IBM) appeared to be doing the some old things with less people. I was rebuked by some colleagues in that "Lou G has increased the share price 5 times". IBM has been a work in progress for almost 30 years.

Tech’s big lie: Relations between capital and labor don't matter

"3 hrs hottuberrol...

What surprised me most is that they were letting people go IRRESPECTIVE of the customer and revenue impact of that decision."

Been that way from the early 90's. As a manager I was forced to let go bright, smart, hard-working young guys who were making a real contribution to the business. Why? Because they volunteered, knowing they had another job offer, and HR over-ruled my wish to retain them. Heads out the door was what mattered. In my own case I was managing an EMEA-wide critical project, recognised as an outstanding contributor, but wanted to go. No problem, I was in my 50's. Heads out the door. Never looked back.

Probe: How IBM ousts older staff, replaces them with young blood

Re: No evidence seen by this insider yet

"I've been with big blue many years in the UK and not seen this happening much here yet."

Perhaps not in your location. I retired in 2000 and throughout the late 90's Function managers talked openly about "reprofiling our demographics". Meaning you're over 50 and it's time to accept voluntary separation. Which I very happily did. Some time later I bumped into my Function manager who looked somewhat stressed and confessed that he had not realised just what was involved in my role.

Keep looking over your shoulder.

Acronis: Ransomware protection! Get yer free ransomware protection!

"Link for download may have changed since publication, it's now: https://www.acronis.com/en-gb/personal/free-data-protection/"

Installed it from the above link (the one in the article gave me a page not found). Looks OK and it's free. Early days.

IBM lifts its 22-quarter shrinking sales curse: Finally, a whole 1% uptick

Interesting set of numbers in that in the early 90's IBM set itself a target of becoming a 120 Billion Dollars revenue per year business by the end of the 90's. This was talked about regularly in internal presentations. Long way to go.

Meltdown, Spectre: The password theft bugs at the heart of Intel CPUs

Re: Lead time on new CPUs?

"I've been thinking about getting a new laptop for a while - lots of useful features have matured since my Core 2 Duo machine."

Ditto my desktop. So I'm certainly interested in when, if ever, Intel will fix this in hardware.

Missed opportunity bingo: IBM's wasted years and the $92bn cash splurge

Redundant management and others at IBM was a problem as far back as the late 90's when I worked in the PC division. Some second line managers had two reporting managers, each with 4 employees. 3rd line often one or two second line. Many non-management had jobs you could do before the morning coffee break. It's no secret that when Lenovo bought the division they laid off masses of people and still grew the sales enormously.

VW engineer sent to the clink for three years for emissions-busting code

What has not been mentioned in the article, nor discussed in posted comments, is that it is conceivable that when engineering were stuck for a solution to the emissions problem, and being pressured by management, that it was an engineer that came forward with what he thought was a brilliant solution. That would put the moral imperative on the management who accepted it. That raises the question, who is more guilty?

The biggest British Airways IT meltdown WTF: 200 systems in the critical path?

Re: Ignorance and greed

"Even in the ones where they had some engineering experience it was so out of date as to be useless"

In IBM I referred to these managers as "technicians". They had forgotten everything they ever learned in Engineering and had learned nothing in Management.

IBM: ALL travel must be approved now, and shut up about the copter

Re: Just like old times.

"Did you use that guide to staple said memo to said manager's arse?"

No, but I submitted the memo to the site exec (anonymously of course, I had 3 years to go to a comfortable retirement) with a covering note asking if this was the best use of resources in a division repeatedly turning in a loss. I did have many a happy thought at the conversation that, hopefully, took place in the exec suite.

It gets worse. The reason the manager required hard-copy docs for approval was that he disliked the electronic email and soft-copy document distribution system, so every evening his secy printed everything he received and put it on his desk. If you wanted onto that pile it was best to walk a hard-copy up to her before she left. This was in the late 90's.

Just like old times.

Happy days! I remember a senior and very well paid IBM manager distributing a memo setting out the correct way (meaning his preference) for stapling the pages of a document together when submitting it to him for approval. Staple at approx 10mm from upper left corner and at exactly 45 degrees.