The Decline and Fall of IBM: End of an American Icon? Paperback – June 10, 2014

I'm a tech professional who specialized in IBM/Lotus software from 1996 through about 2012. I've read Robert Cringely's I, Cringely columns over the years, and watched how he documented the decline of IBM as a company where employees were respected and organizations received value for their money. The Decline and Fall of IBM: End of an American Icon? is Cringely's effort to take all his columns over time and present the material in a cohesive and comprehensive manner. With very few exceptions, I have to agree that his assessment is dead on (based on my observations and interactions with others), and the future does not look bright based on the path IBM is taking.There are a number of factors that are contributing to the decline. One of the worst problems is the relentless cost cutting that lays off experienced employees and shifts their jobs overseas to untrained personnel. The problem is that while the trench workers are cut and/or overworked, the management structure and layers just continue to grow. The drive to get to $20 EPS by 2015 has decimated the morale and capabilities of staff, and it's tragic that no one in IBM management has stepped up to say that's a meaningless goal by a prior CEO and it's gutting the company. If there were only a handful of (ex-)employees sharing bad experiences, it might be tempting to think that it's only a minority of people who are complaining. But the numbers of stories are huge, and the examples are too many to be isolated incidents.The current CEO is tossing big bucks at "the next big thing" to try and restore IBM to a dominant position as an industry leader. But until/unless those pan out (Watson and cloud come to mind), their execution on existing software and services continues to go downhill as they don't have the experienced staff any longer as they were "too expensive". The future will tell whether IBM or Cringley ended up being right on the outcomes, so it's not as the death of IBM is a done deal. But history is littered with large tech companies that are no longer around, and IBM is not "too big to fail."If you are (or were) interested about or associated with IBM at some point, The Decline and Fall of IBM is an interesting read. The second half of the book is padded (in my opinion) with blog comments he's received on his articles. You could easily read those online if you were interested. But the first half of the book makes for some persuasive arguments.Disclosure:Obtained From: AmazonPayment: Purchased

I am one of the odd people that was hired by IBM, twice, and quit, twice, between 1989 and 2012. I am happy I was able to see the "old" IBM, and this book is dead on accurate about how Gerstner transformed it in the 1990s. I spent a total of about 15 years at the company in 4 different divisions, both as an engineer and as a business development manager.I feel fortunate that I was able to work at IBM in the late 1980's and 1990's. It was an amazing company. But as this book points out, the last decade has been filled with financial engineering, employee manipulation and executives that are out of touch with reality.Armonk NY must have some sort of reality distortion field, because everything in this book is known to people on the street and at other US site, but somehow no one at HQ realizes how screwed up things are. All the innovation is gone and every IBMer I still talk to absolutely hates their job. I was a "one performer" and I quit out of disgust and with no other job lined up. It was clear to me that the company is going to implode.I still hope that this book will shed light on what was once an amazing and awesome company, but I feel it is too late for IBM to change direction.I'd like to see Mr. Cringely write sequels on Cisco and Microsoft too, I am sure they have similar paths and stories.

Well, to be fair the first half of the book explains a lot the problems at IBM, and how upper management is aiming to get a higher benefit in the short term while killing the jobs of the working bees. The second half of the book is boring as hell because it consists only of testimonials from by-the-time-employees and ex-employees and many of those comments repeat themselves. I think this part of the book could be put apart, as a collection of those comments in some web-page and just show the readers an URL link if they want to check a handful of them avoiding too much repeat of the content itself. That's why this part of it feels a little bit lazy and boring.