IBM to acquire Confluent

This is so fascinating to me. I mean how IBM keeps taking over other companies, but they consistently deliver low quality/bottom-tier services and products. Why do they keep doing the same thing again and again? How are they generating actual revenue this way?

Ok, so does anyone remember 'Watson'? It was the chatgpt before chatgpt. they built it in house. Why didn't they compete with OpenAI like Google and Anthropic are doing, with in-house tools? They have a mature PowerPC (Power9+? now?)setup, lots of talent to make ML/LLMs work and lots of existing investment in datacenters and getting GPU-intense workloads going.

I don't disagree that this acquisition is good strategy, I'm just fascinated (Schadenfreude?) to witness the demise of confluent now. I think economists should study this, it might help avert larger problems.

> they consistently deliver low quality/bottom-tier services and products

I worked with IBMers. The main priority for a lot of them is to ensure continuous employment for themselves and their buddies. They'd add unnecessary complexity to a product to stretch out the development for another couple of years. And they work at leisure pace for tech. Actual 9 to 5, many coffee breaks. They can't compete.

I'll say this about IBM: because it's so old, it was the most diverse company I ever worked for- including age, nationality, race, sex, and any other category you can think of. Basically you had all types of people in all stages of life, not just young white workaholic tech-bros. The founders are long gone, so everyone there (including CEO) is a professional- meaning nobody has any kind of personal attachment to the company. We were all in the same boat, as it were. When your older coworker suddenly disappears due to a stroke, it puts things in perspective.

The fast-paced startup is really the hack, combining the energy of youth with the ego-mania of their founders. Ask yourself, is it healthy?

Anyway, IBM's customers tend to be other fortune 100s and governments- basically other similar organizations, and my experience was that we took care of them pretty well. The products were not pretty (no Steve Jobs-like person to enforce beauty), and rather complex due to all the enterprise requirements. But they were quite high quality, particularly the hardware.

The awe induced when standing in front of a brand new, kitted out x95 frame with all its drawers full and that special shade of IBM blue on everything is definitely something. Pull out the HMC and just think about how many decades of R&D and experience and tears went into the entire system.