IBM Management: The Buffalo Chicken Wing Delivery Method
February 26, 2018
I love IBM. I miss my three IBM PC 704 servers which ran the Threat Open Source Intelligence Gateway for years. Toasty puppies were they. I wondered about IBM’s ability to management development projects when I tried to figure out how Serveraid could lose data so reliably. Oh, well.
I read “IBM Buffalo Billion Project Fails to Deliver.” I know. The association with chicken wings that fail to arrive was not the best metaphor. Perhaps it was the lake effect?
The article’s main idea struck me as IBM’s selling a project and then running into itself. The project was a state funded deal. The idea was to create jobs in booming Buffalo. The article points out:
The company would set up an office downtown, Cuomo announced, with $55 million in state funding for computer equipment and renovations to office space in Key Center at Fountain Plaza. In exchange, IBM promised to create 500 jobs over five years; these positions, one state memo noted, would pay, on average, $70,000 a year. Nothing in IBM’s agreement with the state, however, requires the company to create any particular kind of jobs or specifies how much they will pay.
A former employee described as a “permatemp” without benefits observed:
“‘Y’all know we got bamboozled, right?’”
IBM was to provide services like a customer call center or help desk. The training program reminded me of the IBM documentation to the quad core PC 704s; for example, the article points out:
Their training mostly involved watching PowerPoint presentations. One mislabeled the state Department of Environmental Conservation, calling it the Department of Energy Conservation. Some slides noted that IBM was “still waiting on more information.” Others outlined state programs, only to add “the IBM service desk does not have access to this tool.” Other training sessions took place over speakerphone, sometimes with more than 70 people huddled together, trying to keep quiet so everyone could hear, some taking notes with pen and paper because they were still waiting for their computers.
I noted this interesting factoid in the write up, which, I assume, is actual factual:
The deal with IBM was brokered by former SUNY Polytechnic President Alain Kaloyeros, before his arrest on federal and state corruption charges in late 2016.
Ah, IBM. Let’s ask Watson what’s going on. On second thought, let’s not.
Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2018
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