Re: Same as it ever was.
"I've never understood why anyone would trust IBM, look what they do to their employees/"
Because at one time they were one of the BEST companies to work for, attracted THE best people, and made some pretty decent kit to boot. There was truth in the old "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", because the company had a rep and an ethos. You had a problem with your IBM solution? They'd fix it.
That all changed when Gerstner and the bean-counters took over. IBM still has some seriously good people working for it, but the higher echelons don't give a rodent's rectum for their staff, or even the business, provided the numbers "add up" at the end of the month/quarter/year, they can make their packet, satisfy the shareholders and vest their not-inconsiderable stock options.
The problem now is inertia. When you've been building your core systems on IBM for decades, moving isn't just a trivial matter of throwing a few thousand and a couple of weeks at a migration; it's a decade's work. You need a long-term strategy, and sufficient continuity of management to actually see it through (and few companies have that - usually the next bunch of guys not only don't keep the strategy but actively want to chuck it out and do something different ("after all, if you're not tweaking what your predecessors did, you're not 'managing', are you?")) Often, it's easier, cheaper (and, yes, technically better) in the short turn to just keep building parts at least of your new stuff on the same platforms that everything else sits on.
I wouldn't advise anyone to buy a used match from IBM nowadays.
- (ex) career IBMer