Something I find myself doing when I stumble through the saloon doors of a Hacker News link only to be met by a silent corporate stare, is to imagine real humans doing real human things. Like drinking their coffee, finishing their milk soup with marshmallows, and seeing their kids off to school.

They each get in their car, fasten their seatbelt, and back out of their storage bay onto the road. They tune their radio to a morning zoo being visited by a reeling ninth caller who didn’t win the free party pack.

They depart the trunk line and park in a fragmented matrix of similarly unique cars, de-safety their belt, rummage the console for an identity token, and head into their own morning zoo, paned wall-to-wall with one-way glass, seemingly installed backwards.

The humans shed the remaining vestiges of their real human mornings and dutifully touch base on how to liven up their portable document that contentfully explores, ”how can technology further deliver value to our audience?” perhaps using hypertext, while drinking more coffee.

Anyways… If you haven’t clicked “client value” at the top-right, I strongly encourage doing so. Ten points and a free party pack if you can read the entire thing with a straight face.

Direct link: https://ibm.com/roadmaps/client-value.pdf

Yeah, that's some seriously ultra-processed corporate-speak mumbo-jumbo.

I upvoted the OP only because of your comment.

Many others on HN will, like me, scoff at the OP but appreciate your comment.

Straight face read on client-value.pdf here.

It seems to be describing a series of high-end sales calls, in the form of a management consulting engagement, with the question of, "How can I send IBM more business, and can you help me make slide decks to pitch this idea internally?"

That's not necessarily bad. You could do a lot worse on vendors or consultants.

(And what's the saying? "Nobody ever got fired for hitching their wagon to an IBM sales team.")

You made me do it! Reading through it felt like carrying the whole world on my shoulders whilst walking up a mountain…

> Anyways… If you haven’t clicked “client value” at the top-right, I strongly encourage doing so. Ten points and a free party pack if you can read the entire thing with a straight face.

This reminds me of this video. This Is How Companies REALLY Come Up With 'Organisational Values': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Xn0EUrQg0

Love the ending! "They don't reflect reality! If they reflected reality then the values of a company like Boeing would be Not. Quite. Enough. Bolts. But that's not their values, that's not their values. Their values are - and I swear I'm not making this up - their actual values are Safety, Quality, Integrity, Transparency. Well James In fairness, their planes are very transparent. They do deliver on transparency, that is true."

> Anyways… If you haven’t clicked “client value” at the top-right, I strongly encourage doing so. Ten points and a free party pack if you can read the entire thing with a straight face.

That's a bit cruel. I just won the party pack, but lost all desire to enjoy anything in the process.

Oh dear. Looks like I’m not taking home the party pack.

Semi-seriously I’m wondering though: when did corporate rhetoric shift from “creating value” - which almost makes rapacious capitalism sound benign - to shamelessly “capturing” that value? It’s as if they want to give the Marxists a reason to think they were right all along.

wow, you should write a book! amazing

Just a morning note (over coffee) of appreciation for the line “… when I stumble through the saloon doors…” and the whole macguffin, really.

google tells me "IBM gross profit for the twelve months ending June 30, 2025 was $36.866B"

Its not that someone writes that sort of stuff, its that it people read and think "yeah! give me some of that!" that makes me worry for humanity.

Looks like a typical corporate slide, I have seen endless of those during the last 30 years.