IBM is huge with hardware, software, global services and other biz units that makeup the entire picture. They try and put on this face of &quot;were so advanced&quot; with watson and buying companies to stay ahead but in the end it&#x27;s old school management that fails the company.  Global services is the majority of employees and middle management is so bad they couldn&#x27;t distinguish good internal talent if it hit them in the head. It&#x27;s all about supplanting highly skilled labor with offshore talent, your job is truly replaceable.  I&#x27;ve seen $200+&#x2F;hr rates get outsourced to multiple $25&#x2F;hr unskilled labor. Ask any major company who has brought IBM in and you&#x27;ll hear horror stories. If you&#x27;re an employee of a Fortune 5xx company where IBM comes in to take over your I&#x2F;T department, RUN!!  They care about money, not people.<p>IBM is easily replaceable with hardware, software, and finance solutions and you have young I&#x2F;T managers who could give a rats a$$ about the old sentiment &quot;buy ibm and you can&#x27;t go wrong&quot;.  Google, facebook, amazon, yahoo have all shown you can build and scale solutions beyond anything that a mainframe can do and much cheaper.  IBM keeps living in the past and the most messed up places of employment I&#x27;ve encountered.<p>agree with everything @afforess says.