Surely by now everyone, including non-developers and non-software people, know exactly what IBM is, and you don't sell to IBM/join IBM without knowing exactly what's about to happen. No one joins IBM today and thinks there will be a huge focus on customer satisfaction or focus on great product design, it's all about squeezing maximum profit out of products until you need to discontinue them because you chased away all of the customers.

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oersted 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Not wrong but the image that people are painting in the comments is getting close to a caricature now.

The stuff IBM is doing on Quantum Computing is serious cutting-edge science and engineering for instance. The R&D they are doing on semiconductors on their 2nm and sub-2nm processes is also impressive and hardcore tech. They are doing a bunch of progress on post-quantum cryptography and homomorphic encryption. They've fallen behind now, but they were also quite strong on pre-LLM NLP for a couple of decades, it was not all fluff.

Yes they have an awful enterprise culture and they are not focused on building excellent products. But what they offer fits the needs of many organizations, and a lot of the things they are doing on R&D are no joke.

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tgma 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

IBM shouldn't be thought of as a singular company. It is a conglomerate that does widely distinct things. Some enterprise boring profit squeezing, some shady scam "IBM blockchain on Z OS prevents viruses," some research/patent efforts elsewhere.

That said the GP is spot on for this sort of acquisition we know what will happen and has nothing to do with 2nm research division.

	▲	newsoftheday 16 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> IBM shouldn't be thought of as a singular company. It is a conglomerate that does widely distinct things. Agreed, like others, small startup I was with, we were acquired years ago and first advice from IBMers who'd been acquired was that IBM is like 1000 smaller companies.
	▲	kedean 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> IBM shouldn't be thought of as a singular company. It is a conglomerate that does widely distinct things. This. Employees in the various sub-companies and divisions usually don't even know who most of the executive leadership is outside their little world. There is no cohesive "IBM" anymore, and I don't think there has been for a very long time.

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Lu2025 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The R&D they are doing on semiconductors on their 2nm and sub-2nm processes is also impressive and hardcore tech.

But they don't have production. How can they develop successfully without running silicon in a fab?

	▲	zipy124 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They sell the patents to manufacturers. They are an IP shop.

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bdelmas 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Doing research? Sure... Maybe. But it doesn't mean they are going to get anywhere to mass production... What was their last huge innovation? On top of that I won't give that much credit for what they do or say they do. Remember how much they lied about many of their "innovations" like IBM Watson?

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_zoltan_ 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Scanning Tunneling Microscope, high-temperature superconductivity - 2 Nobel prize right there.

Then laser eye surgery, magnetic storage, relational databases, UPC barcodes, DES, FFT, RISC, ...

yeah, almost nothing. /s

disclaimer: I work for IBM Research and I love every second of it.

	▲	rcbdev 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		People do not have anything to do with IBM Research. As long as IBM Consulting exists, your name will be seen as tarnished and not be taken seriously by most technology workers. Just look at this comment section as Q.E.D.

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jen20 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> not focused on building excellent products

> a lot of the things they are doing on R&D are no joke

Sounds a _lot_ like Microsoft too...

	▲	ekianjo 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sounds a lot like every very large company, in broader terms