From: addinall@stallion.oz.au (Mark Addinall)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: Wow, flames...!
Date: 13 Apr 92 01:54:59 GMT


In <1992Apr11.054033.3830@cs.mcgill.ca> becap@cs.mcgill.ca (Brian CAPSON) writes:

>In article <1992Apr10.004227.7518@cs.cornell.edu> rvinluan@cs.cornell.edu  
>(Rolando Vinluan) writes:
>> 
>> 	Ha! I knew I'd get some flak...but only two so far? Shame, shame.

[ stuff deleted ]

>I've worked for IBM, and I know several guys who worked with them on joint
>contracts, and I've got to say that they are the most f**ked up company that
>I've ever dealt with. Too many managers and not enough doers. Everybody wants 
>to meet several many times for every little issue, and have comference calls
>all across the country to ask permission that nothing ever seems to get done.


I have dealt with I.B.M. for most of my career in one form or another. I have
found out that I.B.M. is a really big company ;-) with a lot of differing
personalities, rules structures etc., that vary widely from place to place.
For example;

   1. Project. SAA Pilot transaction project, phase 2.
      Project manager. Me.

      The help from I.B.M. on this project was simply the best support
      I have _ever_ had from any company I have dealt with. Thanks to a
      group of gentlemen, notably Curt Brury ( hope I got the name right,
      it's been a few years ;-), Geoff Hughes and Trevor Skeels. They made
      available all I.B.M. R&D people available to my team and I still am yet
      to meet a group of people that treated an external development team
      so well. Thanks :-)

      [ many years pass, my hair goes grey, I awake to find myself involved
        with 'Open Systems'... ]

   2. Project. High speed data communications. RS6000/AIX
      Department Manager. Me.

      AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!
      Quite possibly the most frustrating project I've _ever_ been
      involved with.
      Training. Oh, you can fly your engineers to Austin for a course.
                Did that.
      Support. -Since we're in the business of writing device driver
                code for *NIX systems, we need some access to the
                kernel code that describe the various interfaces-

                No.

      Did you know (and this shocked me) that thier only seems to be
      one guy in the southern hemisphere that has access to source,
      _and_ he's not endowed with an excess of customer care. Sorry
      I.B.M. it's the truth. After 17 years of recommending, using,
      buying and coding I.B.M. iron, this is the first time I considered
      chucking the bloody thing into the river :-(

      So the point is, the company can range from bloody great all the
      way to bloody lousy depending on location, time of year, lunar
      phase and other seemingly random events ;-)



>Perhaps that's why they've never been able to produce any decent software for
>the PC (OS/2 remains to be seen). 

Have to disagree here. As mentioned the project for British Steel was to
get OS/2 and MVS/XA together under an SAA environment. That included using
PM, OS/2 database manager, OS/2 communication manager (APPC, LU6.2/PU2.1,
SDLC) to design and implement co-operative processing transactions
with a CICS-DL1 data base tranasctional system. It worked like a dream
way back in '88, OK the APPC was a bit hard to figure at first but no more
difficult than STREAMS or Sockets or TCP/IP, just took a bit of reading
and as I mentioned, superlative support. I wrote the code using BRIEF for
OS/2 which was a nice editor, wrote the specifications using Word for
OS/2, drew pretty boxes and arrows for the reports using some desktop
publishing tool (can't remember which, sorry), used the Microsoft C
compiler for the communications MUX and the application code. All worked
fine :-)


>My friend who was doing contract work with
>IBM (a big group from each company) was telling me that he suggested they get  
>some office dividers so that they could work in more privacy. They shruddered
>at the thought, and replied that that would be very difficult, involve alot
>of paperwork, and not get there, if at all, for at least a month. Hmmm...  
>sounds like a company crumbling under its own weight to me. Perhaps they should  
>spin-off there PC division.

I have worked for very _tiny_ companies where the thought of ordering a box
of diskettes needed a board level meeting ;-)

I think the PC division is a seperate business unit %-? Could be
mistaken though...


>- Brian

Later...
Mark...


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