Ashes to ashes, dust to dust - Red Hat is dead.
Red Hat will be a distant memory in a few years as it gets absorbed by the abhorrent IBM culture and its bones picked clean by the IBM beancounters. Nothing good ever happens to a company bought by IBM.
I worked as a contractor for IBM's IGS division in the late '90s and early 2000s at their third biggest customer, and even then, IBM was doing their best to demoralize their staff (and contractors) and annoy their customers as much as possible!
Some examples:
The on-site IBM employees (and contractors) had to use Lotus Notes for email. That was probably the worst piece of software I have ever used - I think baboons on drugs could have done a better design job. IBM set up a T1 (1.54 Mbps) link between the customer and the local IBM hub for email, etc. It sounds great until you realize there were over 150 people involved and due to the settings of Notes replication, it could often take over an hour to actually download email to read.
To do my job I needed to install some IBM software. My PC did not have enough disk space for this software as well as the other software I needed. Rather than buy me a bigger hard disk I had to spend 8 hours a week installing and reinstalling software to do my job.
I waited three months for a $50 stick of memory to be approved. When it finally arrived my machine had been changed out (due to a new customer project) and the memory was not compatible! Since I worked on a lot of projects I often had machines supplied by the customer on my desk. So, I would use one of these as my personal PC and would get an upgrade when the next project started!
I was told I could not be supplied with a laptop or desktop from IBM as they were too expensive (my IBM division did not want to spend money on anything). IBM charged themselves 3x the actual price to customers for their ThinkPads at the time! This meant that I never had a laptop or desktop PC from IBM in the 8 years I worked there. If it wasn't for the project work I did I would not have had a PC to work on!
IBM has many strange and weird processes that allow them to circumvent the contract they have with their preferred contractor companies. This meant that for a number of years I ended up getting a pay cut. What was strange is that every single time I got a pay cut, IBM would then announce that they had bought a new company! I would have quit long before I did, but I was tied to them while waiting for my Green Card to be approved. I know that raises are few in the current IBM for normal employees and that IBM always pleads poverty for any employee request. Yet, they somehow manage to pay billions of dollars for a new company. Strange that, isn't it?
Eventually I was approved to get a laptop and excitedly watched it move slowly through the delivery system. I got confused when it was reported as delivered to Ohio rather than my work (not in Ohio). After some careful searching I discovered that my manager and his wife both worked for IBM from their home in, yes you can guess, Ohio. It looked like he had redirected my new laptop for his own use and most likely was going to send me his old one and claim it was a new one. I never got the chance to confront him about it, though, as IBM lost the contract with the customer that month and before the laptop should have arrived IBM was out! I moved to the company that had won the contract and regret not having the chance to tell that IBM manager what I thought about him and where he could stick the new laptop.
After that experience I decided to never work for them in any capacity ever again. I feel pity for the current Red Hat employees and my only advice to them is to get out while they can.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
