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    IBM to acquire Confluent

    (www.confluent.io)
    443 points abd12 | 12 comments | 08 Dec 25 13:43 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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    JSR_FDED ◴[08 Dec 25 15:03 UTC] No.46192996[source]▶
    IBM have an absolutely stellar record of blowing acquisitions. The highly motivated newly acquired team will be in honeymoon phase for 3 months, and then it slowly dawns on them that they’ve joined an unbelievably rigid organization where things like customer satisfaction and great products don’t matter at all. Then they’ll be in shock and disbelief at the mind boggling Byzantine rules and internal systems they have to use, whose sole purpose is to make sure nobody does anything. Finally, the core IBM sales force will start to make demands on them and will short to ground any vestiges of energy, time, opportunity and motivation they might have left. The good team members will leave and join a former business partner, or decide to spend more time with the family. They’ll meet often at the beginning to relive the glory days of pre-acquisition and recount times where they went went above and beyond for that important early customer. But then these meetings will become fewer and fewer. Finally they’ll find a way of massaging their resumes to cast the last years as being “at the heart of AI infrastructure”.
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    1. diob ◴[08 Dec 25 16:45 UTC] No.46194488[source]▶
    Yeah, they acquired the company I worked at and left us alone for a year or two. Each year would get worse though, and each year we swapped nearly all bureaucratic things around. Always a different way to do performance reviews goals, etc.

    A lot of the successful projects at the original company are now dead.

    It's also weird being in IBM, because if your "contract" ends they put you on the bench. Then you basically have to job hunt within IBM, and if you can't find anything within a month or so you are out. It's super weird.

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    2. tssva ◴[08 Dec 25 16:56 UTC] No.46194640[source]▶
    "It's also weird being in IBM, because if your "contract" ends they put you on the bench. Then you basically have to job hunt within IBM, and if you can't find anything within a month or so you are out. It's super weird."

    This is standard operating procedure at most consulting/professional services firms.

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    3. newsclues ◴[08 Dec 25 16:59 UTC] No.46194697[source]▶
    Also the CIA
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    4. Gilthoniel ◴[08 Dec 25 17:24 UTC] No.46194981[source]▶
    I don’t know how many contracts IBM deals with, but the concept of a bench is very common in government contracting. It helps retain talent in an environment that’s more volatile than a typical office. Good for the company to avoid brain drain and hiring overhead, good for the employee because it’s a built-in safety net. Much better than your contract ending and immediately being out of a job, especially in today’s market
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    5. echelon ◴[08 Dec 25 17:52 UTC] No.46195388{3}[source]▶
    Sounds similar to university applied research arms too.

    GTRI locally hires a lot of non-students to work in its various labs. Its labs then pitch ideas to private companies and the DoD. Sometimes they're solicited directly if the lab is well-known and has a track record of delivering good research-oriented results. They research and build prototypes around various capabilities: robotics, avionics, even classified stuff.

    They're always pitching, because contracts end or fall through, and that's the source of everyone's payroll. The labs can even be competitive with one another, and the individual researchers might spend time split between labs.

    Academics as a service.

    6. derefr ◴[08 Dec 25 19:31 UTC] No.46196555[source]▶
    I don't think they're objecting to the idea of a bench as an ultimate fallback; I think they're objecting to the idea that there isn't, during such "internal layoffs", a default automatic reassignment of all headcount to other teams. In such cases, you would only land on the bench if you refuse the automatic reassignment.
    7. system_exit ◴[08 Dec 25 19:53 UTC] No.46196777[source]▶
    Longer Bench allowed only for consultant with security clearance as those are such a hard thing to come by. General govt work, they just let you go like in commercial sector.
    8. lisbbb ◴[08 Dec 25 19:58 UTC] No.46196828[source]▶
    Yes, the bench sounds great but it is incredibly nerve-wracking and I never liked that aspect of consulting at all. Better to just go to zero pay and be a free agent and if the company finds you another gig, great, but no promises either way.
    replies(1): >>46199914 #
    9. lisbbb ◴[08 Dec 25 20:00 UTC] No.46196853[source]▶
    Those are the positives. The downside is that the sales team presents you with really lousy contract opportunities and you are pressured to accept one knowing it is a crap assignment that isn't helping your career growth. And you can be stuck on one of those for years!
    10. tssva ◴[09 Dec 25 00:48 UTC] No.46199914{3}[source]▶
    I retired a couple of years ago at 54 and now spend my days feeding horses, mucking stalls and spreading the resulting manure (a task consulting prepared me for), but for about 24 of my 30 year career prior to retiring I worked for consulting companies and was lucky enough to never sit on the bench.
    11. nextaccountic ◴[09 Dec 25 07:21 UTC] No.46202180{3}[source]▶
    Can you elaborate? That sounds interesting
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    12. newsclues ◴[09 Dec 25 11:08 UTC] No.46203578{4}[source]▶
    John Kiriakou Described the process in a podcast, maybe the JRE.