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Comments: 185 +- News: Arrested IBM Exec Goes MIA On the Web on Saturday October 17, @01:30PM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Saturday October 17, @01:30PM
from the never-heard-of-him dept.
from the never-heard-of-him dept.
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theodp writes "Among those charged in the largest hedge-fund insider trading case in US history was IBM Sr. VP Robert W. Moffat, the heir apparent to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and the guy behind Big Blue's 'workforce rebalancing' and the sale of IBM's PC unit to Lenovo. IBM's not talking about the incident, but it's interesting that Moffat's bio is MIA at IBM.com ('Biography you tried to access does not exist.'), and his Smarter Planet video can no longer be found ('This video has been removed by the user.') at IBM's YouTube Channel. Do you need approval from the Feds before tidying up after someone who's under investigation? BTW, if stories and comments appearing in the Times Herald-Record and Poughkeepsie Journal are any indication, Moffat may want to avoid a local jury trial. 'I have talked to a few IBMers today, and there seems to be a lot of cheering in the halls of IBM over his arrest,' said Lee Conrad of Alliance@IBM."
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IANAL, let alone a Fed... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah. There's nothing against cleaning up your image, only against destroying the evidence. Or something that could be construed as evidence. You can generally even supply it to the court under seal, if you don't want your neighbors to know.
(Well, that's civil law. Criminal law might be different. But I doubt it. If you're supplying the evidence rather than having it seized, I think you generally get a lot of control over how widely it's shown.)
Bernie Madoff (Score:5, Interesting)
RIP IBM Thinkpad... (Score:3, Interesting)
IBM Thinkpad was by far the best laptop line.. Now, it's basically just another piece of crap laptop. Moffat deserves jail time just for this.. "Crimes against quality."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The quality hasn't changed because it's the same machine.
Crikey, I have been using IBM Thinkpads for over a decade, and I can tell you the quality has changed, and not for the better. These days, a Thinkpad is no more desirable than an Acer machine, I'll tell you that. They were making *business* machines, now I can't get one that *hasn't* got a glossy, widescreen display on it.
Re:RIP IBM Thinkpad... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lenovo's quality of the "real" ThinkPads (T-series, X-series, W-series) is still pretty good.
The R-series have always been not-as-good. What Lenovo did was to introduce the SL-series, which are crap.
I've been using a T60, until i needed more power and switched to the W500 in last december. It's a great machine. I'm using it with Windows 7 x64, with WS08R2 on a VHD to run VMs through Hyper-V.
Parent
Re:RIP IBM Thinkpad... (Score:5, Insightful)
The quality hasn't changed because it's the same machine.
Sorry, but...no, it's not.
My company has been using ThinkPads exclusively for years, and once IBM sold the unit to Lenovo, the quality of the ThinkPad line has gone down, in my opinion.
I think IBM demanded a higher of level quality than Lenovo demands of itself. My experience seems to indicate there is now a higher failure rate, as well as evidence of cutting corners.
R.I.P. ThinkPad
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It is really quite straight forward. When Lenovo purchased bought the thinkpad unit, they naturally enough in business terms, dumped that purchase price into that units debt structure. In order to start paying off that debt, which basically adds say around 5 to 10 percent (depending upon how quickly they want to reduce that debt) to every notebook sold. They simple cut corners and hope to trade on the prior reputation of quality, basically lie about the current quality and pretend it was the same as before
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM invented all kinds of goofy laptop stuff, including the butterfly keyboard. To be fair, the fold-out screen idea is stupid, but trying new things is commendable. Failing to build reliable hardware is just failure, though.
As an ex-ibm'er from the Hudson Valley... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just want to testify to the anger towards IBM in the Hudson Valley. IBM has moved from being a socially responsible organization towards being a profit driven company. During the process a lot of people have gotten hurt. People who invested their lives working for IBM lost their pensions. They went from being a massive economic presence and benefactor to being a fading sun. If this guy was one of the reasons for the move towards a new cutthroat IBM then good riddance.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe if you ignore the monopoly thing a few decades ago. What has gone from companies like IBM and HP is job security. They are now process and project driven instead of technology driven, so when a product goes, so do the people.
US's comparative advantage is change, not technology per se. Any technology that starts to become a commodity is shipped overseas, and the US companies have to move on to emerging,
Re:As an ex-ibm'er from the Hudson Valley... (Score:5, Interesting)
If Watson were still here, the people would be retrained into the next phase/project/product. It would cost money. Having people with such a diverse skill set would be a huge boon to innovation. Watson would see that end game and hold out for it.
People used to know, if you got hired at IBM, you were set for life. This is how Watson attracted the best of the best. Their failure to keep their eye on the ball is a primary contributor to their current position as an irrelevant has-been.
My friend's dad was a typewriter repairman for IBM most of his life. He had MS. When the Selectrics started disappearing in the mid-80's and as the MS started to impair him, they retrained him to work on a bench, repairing PCs. When his MS progressed to the point that the PC repair was too much for him, they gave him an office, and his one responsibility was to file a report on a monthly basis. He was not required to come to work every day. Still received full pay and benefits until he could no longer show up once a month, after he took a fall resulting in injury. He was able to leave with his pension and full benefits.
IBM was more than a corporation, it was an institution. It is extremely sad that this institution no longer exists.
Parent
Re:As an ex-ibm'er from the Hudson Valley... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Workforce rebalance" (Score:5, Insightful)
Anytime such grandiose outsourcing and/or workforce cutting schemes are created, you can suspect that a psychopathic suit just got an idea how to look busy and useful.
Speaking of such.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Cost is part of the calculation, Mr. Moffat noted, but typically not the most important consideration. "People who say this is simply labor arbitrage don't get it," he said. "It's mostly about skills."
You know, I keep hearing that, but I have yet to see any proof. And if you walk into any American CS program, you'll see plenty of American students as well as foreign ones. What I'm saying is that there are plenty of qualified US students coming out of US universities and there are plenty of qualified US citizens to do any IT job. If you find that not to be your experience, I'd like to point out a few issues your organization may have:
In other words, I am very skeptical of anyone who says they can't get qualified people - especially in this economy.
Parent
Re:Speaking of such.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just about wages, it's also about labour laws and not having to give benefits like pensions. They would probably even pay uk wages to these people as long as they still get to treat them like shit.
These people aren't dumb, they know they're being taken advantage of. The good ones are looking to move to the UK, Canada, US, etc to get their decent wage and benefits.
Parent
Re:Speaking of such.... (Score:4, Insightful)
God, I wish I had points to mod this up. I've never ever seen it be about skills -- usually, in fact, the people doing the arbitrage don't even *know* what the relative skillsets are.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In the past 2 years, my company's bread & butter has been cleaning up GIS (Smallworld, specifically) crap done by an Indian outfit for one of the largest ISPs in the country. They got paid to screw it up & we get paid to fix it. Needless to say, the ISP in question no longer outsources design.
Not accessible by you does not equal destroyed (Score:4, Insightful)
> Do you need approval from the Feds before tidying up after someone who's
> under investigation?
While the courts might frown on destroying records relating to such a person there is no requirement that they remain on public display.
Common PR tactic. (Score:3, Informative)
This made my day..... (Score:5, Interesting)
No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the least bit surprising. Who would want to remind the world that they heaped praise on someone who turned out to be a felonious swindler and a cheat (and probable psychopath)?
The PR people fear that it reflects very poorly of the judgment of the others. I wouldn't be too hard on them though, psychopaths smart enough to not go to jail in their youth are notoriously hard to spot in a crowd.
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
someone who turned out to be a felonious swindler and a cheat (and probable psychopath)?
To be fair, that really could be any sufficiently successful executive.
Parent
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
One does wonder when the executive culture and financial media routinely heap praise on executives who can make the "hard decisions" where "hard decision" is defined as one that hurts people in favor of profits and never means the decision to do the right thing for people in spite of the short term costs to the company. The latter decision seems to actually be the harder one since so few ever actually take that path.
Parent
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
I think labeling these people as pschopathic is misguided at best. I'm pretty sure insider trading is an epidemic now and I wager a LOT of people are doing the same thing, in fact its behavior that is probably the new normal in the morally bankrupt world we live in. These guys were just doing it on a wholesale level and were unlucky that someone ratted them out. I wonder how many people are cringing right now because they know they've done the same thing and worry a little they might get caught too. I wager a week from now all the insider cheats will be back at it because the money is too good and too easy.
It pretty tough to care about a few million made on illegal stock tips when places like Goldman Sachs are looting billions out of the pockets of all of us and getting away with it year after year. They ran a racket that nearly destroyed the global economy, pushed millions in to unemployment, foreclosure and homelessness and we punished them by giving them a bank charter, FDIC insurance, nearly unlimited money at zero percent. They are making a billion a month, and are going to pay record bonuses to the same execs who steamrolled our economy. When your whole economy has turned in to a crime scene how do you single out these people to jail.
Parent
IBM has more scrubbing to do... (Score:4, Informative)
e.g. http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/biography/10068.wss [ibm.com]
[In case their scrubbers find this bio] "Robert W. Moffat, Jr.
Senior Vice President and Group Executive, Systems and Technology Group
Full biography
Robert W. Moffat, Jr. is senior vice president and group executive, IBM Systems and Technology Group. Named to this position in July 2008, Mr. Moffat is responsible for all IBM hardware offerings as well as the microelectronics division, which translates IBM research and development into semiconductor solutions for IBM systems and OEM clients. In addition, the company’s integrated supply chain operations, which include global manufacturing, procurement and customer fulfillment, report to him.
Mr. Moffat was senior vice president, Integrated Operations. In this cross-functional role created in July 2005, he led an initiative to transform and integrate the company’s supply chain and service delivery operations globally, leveraging new business process designs and advanced technology to achieve greater levels of efficiency while improving IBM's market responsiveness.
Prior to that, Mr. Moffat was senior vice president and group executive of IBM's Personal and Printing Systems Group, where he was responsible for worldwide sales, development, manufacturing and marketing of Personal Computers, Printing Systems and Retail Store Solutions. Before that, he was vice president, finance and planning for the Enterprise Systems Group.
Mr. Moffat has held a number of executive positions at IBM, including general manager of manufacturing, fulfillment and procurement initiatives for the PC business. He led the team that pioneered the Advanced Fulfillment Initiative, and channel collaboration initiatives, which were awarded the 1999 Franz Edelman Award, the highest recognition for achievement in operational research and management sciences, and supply chain management.
His other positions at IBM, since joining in 1978, included assistant general manager, finance, planning, and business support for the IBM PC Company in Europe, and vice president of finance and planning.
Mr. Moffat is a member of the IBM Performance Team and the IBM Corporate Operations Team. He serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for The Manufacturing Institute, an educational and research affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers. He is also a non-voting observer on the Board of Directors of Lenovo Group Limited.
Mr. Moffat is a graduate of Union College in Schenectady, New York, with a B.S. degree in Economics. He also holds an MBA in Management Information Systems from Iona College in New Rochelle, New York.
July 2008"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Mr. Moffat is a graduate of Union College in Schenectady
Why Lord? Can't someone from Schenectady become famous for something other than being a crimial? I guess I'll have to be the first...
OK. fine. There was the Rivest [wikipedia.org]
Time Was... (Score:4, Interesting)
Too bad there's not a company like that anymore...
IBM CEO Gerstner raided the Pension Fund (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Dance-Inside-Historic-Turnaround/product-reviews/B00009NDAF/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_2?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addTwoStar [amazon.com]
Many like these:
"It is strangely ironic that, after doing his best to suppress all negative communication within IBM, it should be the reader feedback on amazon.com that alerts Gerstner to what the world at large really thinks of him. Ever since 1994 the newsreading public has been conned into a set of beliefs about IBM and Gerstner, simply through IBM's vice-like control of all media that wanted a share of IBM's ad spending. It is bizarre that he expects us to read through a critical employee e-mail on pages 81-82 of his book, when he admits that he couldn't even spare the time to reply to it himself.
Gerstner was the IBM CEO with a worse revenue record than John Akers, the man he replaced. The only way Gerstner could find to grow revenue was by buying firms like Lotus. He turned what was a fantastic company to work for into a an ordinary one. He writes in the book that he transformed the company into a firm where the most able got the most rewards. In fact he converted it into a firm where the most aggressive individuals, like Gerstner, win through. He destroyed IBM's employee benefits schemes across the world, claiming they were unaffordable at the time of IBM's darkest hour. Perhaps they were at that time, but Gerstner's greatest sin was that he never returned any of the benefits to the employees when business improved, except through a silly bonus scheme that in my experience never motivated anyone. The result is that IBM has become a company that people still want to have on their CV, but those who join in mid-career almost never stay more than two years.
Gerstner groped around and never really found the right idea for growing revenue. His shift to services meant that he took his eye off all the products in the IBM catalogue, and IBM architectures have become an irrelevance in a world now dominated by Windows, TCP/IP, Linux, Solaris and Oracle. He used the AS/400 as a cash cow when a very aggressive pricing scheme could have seen the system create the market that Windows NT instead built. Gerstner has said the Internet saved IBM, but frankly it did a lot more for rivals like Microsoft and Sun.
There's a part of me that makes me think this book is one huge, ironic joke -- the guy only pretends to be unaware of the impact of his decisions on others. He boasts about a turnaround that never was and advocates management behaviour that no-one should accept.
That would be fine if it were confined to the pages of this book. But unfortunately the impact of Gerstner is written large across the lives of many, many individuals who crossed his path, both inside and outside IBM. The blight cast over their lives means that, when they get the chance, they usually don't recommend IBM products. Gerstner just doesn't understand that.
These pages on amazon ought to be required reading for anyone foolish enough to think they want a career in IBM. "
There would be a LOT more cheering, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes you got FP. It looks like the crook will get downsized by the Feds and unsized by his new boyfriend.
Re:First post??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Prison rape isn't funny.
Parent
Re:First post??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
He's not a fucking troll (Score:5, Interesting)
I say this as an American: we've become barbarians. We torture [wikipedia.org] people. We incarcerate more people, both in absolute terms and on a per capita basis, than any other nation in the world, and think it's okay to gang-rape 1% of our population [wikipedia.org]. Our wealth is distributed like that of a banana republic [baselinescenario.com]. We're stupid [4brevard.com], vapid [mtv.com], and like a feral child, we snarl [blogspot.com] and bite [wordpress.com] when someone tries to help us [scienceblogs.com]. America really is the sick man of the world, and personally, I'm about ready to give up and pronounce the disease incurable. We can argue about causes and solutions, but you can't deny that we're in a steep decline. As George Orwell write,
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:He's not a fucking troll (Score:5, Insightful)
We're coasting on the accomplishments of our ancestors. Unfortunately, their America is not our America.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You have a pretty skewed view of the whole situation. For example, Prescott Bush founded the family fortune on working for a company which funneled funds to the S.S. to do Hitler's bidding. And since we're talking about IBM, this is an excellent time to mention that IBM of Germany built and delivered the machines to manage the concentration camps, and actually printed the punch cards as well [villagevoice.com], but does their level best to deny their part in history [scrapbookpages.com]. Nonetheless, many [jewishvirtuallibrary.org] racial groups have reason to recall. No,
While those things are deplorable (Score:5, Insightful)
While those things are deplorable, the trouble isn't that the US is the worst in the world as it is that we can do better.
Saying that "We" are guilty of these thing isn't true - though some few of us are and no doubt we can do better. We should do better. We should encourage each other to improve and not despair.
On the other hand: Slavery is still a common practice in large parts of the world, particularly Asia (and to some degree in the US too). China harvests organs from political prisoners. In Russia the rule of law is still privately funded and enforced. Rape of political prisoners to discourage dissent is reportedly practiced in Iran. Female genital mutilation, "honor" killings and simply setting your wife on fire are practiced in many places. As I write this one billion of my six billion fellow humans is starving. And let's not even talk about the pit of hell that is Africa. And then there's the deplorable incremental loss of human rights caused by busybodies determined to legislate every possible human action from marriage to business to whether you wear seatbelts in your car to whether you have seventeen forms of insurance; from what you read and watch and say to who you associate with to where you travel. To count our ills as Men is perhaps counterproductive. It's probably better to count our blessings and be happy with our lot, and then reach out and do what we can to improve the lot of others - but without risking so much that we become part of the problem.
If you really think our country is that bad, the exit is here [state.gov]. Be careful, though. It's a one-way door. And don't let it hit ya where the good Lord split ya.
Yes, prisoners raping each other is a despicable act and it occurs far more often than it should. It's not as common as people seem to think though and most of the people who joke about it don't do so because they approve of it. Voluntary "situational" homosexuality during incarceraton is far more common, as it is in polygamous cultures and other cases and doesn't get nearly as much discussion. Like most other fonts of humor like death and toilets and sex people joke about it because making light of the human condition is how humans deal with things that make us uncomfortable. It's how we let go of the inevitable sadness so we can cope. It's a joke. Laugh.
Parent
Re:First post??? (Score:5, Informative)
He was the man considered responsible for some of the largest cuts within IBM's STG (Systems & Technology Group). A lot of programs were cut locally in order to add to the globalization effort, which is just the politically correct way of saying off-shoring. He was considered the standard bearer to what a lot of workers felt was the increased feeling of greed among the current IBM executives. A lot of good programs and people were axed during his tenure which added to the short term bottom line but have shown in the last 4 years to hurt their long term objectives. It's difficult when you ask your top performers to do more for less, until they either leave or you cast them off.
Parent
Re:First post??? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of good programs and people were axed during his tenure which added to the short term bottom line but have shown in the last 4 years to hurt their long term objectives.
That's so textbook corporate psychopaty. When will people learn?
Parent
Re:First post??? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's so textbook corporate psychopathy. When will people learn?
After they're caught.
At which time they will wax sympathetic, not admit any guilt and promise not to do it again.
All the while crossing their toes.
When a culture celebrates and rewards parasitic behavior, it's no wonder the psycho's are winning.
***How much time will the billionaire serve do you suppose? I predict he "affords" his justice and walks. Worst case, no admission of wrongdoing and 18 months of "hard" club-fed time for perjury or jaywalking.
Parent
"corporate psychopathy" is so harsh (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's just call it an extreme form of capitalism...
No, it's definitely NOT capitalism. (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, the main distinction between capitalism and communism (corporatism) is ownership. In capitalism the owner runs the business and risks its own property in the process - thus the owner is interested in well-being in the long run. In communism (or corporatism) the communist comisar (corporate executive) runs business that does not belong to him, does not risk anything and is interested in skimming some of it via bonus (for posting cooked results) or some form of fraud.
Using ownership distinction it is easy to explain why some corporations (Google, even Microsoft) are doing well (and have clean vision) while others (pre-Gerstner IBM, HP after Compaq merge) have no vision except next quarter results. Apple is a blatant example - founded by Jobs & co, then taken over by some classic corporate drones (and nearly killed in the process), then taken back by Jobs and regained all its shine (and some more). This also explains why large corporations like to merge creating larger (more poorly managed) ones - the larger (and less transparent), the more occasions for upper management to steal something.
Parent
Open source can be outsourcing too (Score:4, Funny)
Surely some jobs were lost when IBM put more emphasis on Linux and thus didn't require as many workers to support it.
Parent
Re:First post??? (Score:4, Funny)
You mean anyone who disagrees with Obama's policies makes IBM racist?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're right, I was able to find it: here [ibm.com]. The link was removed, but the page is there.
Re:Now if we just got the same thing for Ballmer (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)