Yep. When a brand has tarnished itself enough, it makes sense for the brand to step back. Nowadays, we interact with their more popular properties, such as Redhat.
My limited understanding (please take with a big grain of salt) is that they 1.) sell mainframes, 2.) sell mainframe compute time, 3.) sell mainframe support contracts, 4.) sell Red hat and Redhat support contracts, and 5.) buy out a lot of smaller software and hardware companies in a manner similar to private equity.
Mainframe for sure, but IBM has TONS of products in their portfolio that get bought. They also have IBM Cloud which is popular. Then there is the Quantum stuff they've been sinking money into for the last 20 years or so.
I can think of nothing more peak HN than criticizing a company worth $282 Billion with $6 billion in profit (for startup kids that means they have infinite runway and then some) that has existed for over 100 years with "I'm not even sure what they do these days". I mean the problem could be with IBM... what a loser company!
:) As much I love ragging on ridiculous HN comments, I think this one is rooted in some sensibility.
IBM doesn’t majorly market themselves to consumers. The overwhelming majority of devs just aren’t part of the demographic IBM intends to capture.
It’s no surprise people don’t know what they do. To be honest it does surprise me they’re such a strongly successful company, as little as I’ve knowingly encountered them over my career.
but when I look at their stock, its at all time highs lol
no idea