It's amazing how if someone said blatantly false things over and over again about Google or Yahoo laying off employees then it would get flagged out of existence, yet somehow Cringely makes the same false "prediction" over and over again about IBM and people vote it right up. Check your source people, you are actively spreading disinformation by a known doomsday prophet, and like most doomsday prophets he has been wrong every time.
If other HNers Are anything like me, they perceive IBM as this massive, outdated company that's behind the times and only useful for supporting COBOL systems. This is obviously not true, but that's the perception. This makes people quick to upvote "news" that confirms the bias.
I think the problem is that IBM has transitioned itself largely into a services company computing with the likes of TCS, Wipro, Infosys and Cap Gemini, and for people like us, those companies add zero value in the tech space. Unfortunately, whatever they're doing with Z/OS and the Z13 platform, Watson, and who knows what else is so marginalized that no one really cares.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. People are hoping that to be the case here, since IBM is largely perceived by HN to be a hopelessly outdated enterprise behemoth.
Unfortunately not very uncommon. I'm amazed how much trust people seem to give to business intelligence companies like IDC.
A good example is their predictions on mobile phone OS market share. According to them, windows mobile is poised to take the no2 spot from iOS in just two years. The problem is that they move those two years forward every six months when their latest report on actual market share and updated predictions are published.
In Rochester, MN, IBM has been doing several very large rounds of layoffs over the past 5 years. Nearly half the building is empty now and being rented to other companies.
