Nothing to see here, says IBM, Redbooks are still a thing. Move along please
- Reference: 1636134350
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/11/05/ibm_redbooks/
- Source link:
Redbooks is technical prose created and published by IBM Garage. "We develop and deliver skills, technical know-how, and materials to IBM technical professionals, Business Partners, clients and the marketplace in general," says [1]IBM's blurb .
A well-placed senior insider told The Reg that Chris Konarski, IBM veep of worldwide technical sales and lab services, informed employees working on Redbooks content that they would be redeployed from 1 November to support technical sellers.
[2]
"All work," our source said, was to "stop immediately, books would have to be finished off probably by editors or contractors, all resident writers [were] told to stop work immediately on any Redbooks related projects and that there would be none next year."
[3]Red Hat forced to hire cheaper, less senior engineers amid budget freeze
[4]Kyndryl spins out of IBM, stock starts trading on NYSE – and shares tumble
[5]IBM Systems sales sag as revenue growth slows to a crawl – but at least tape did OK
[6]IBM US staff must be fully vaccinated by December – or go back to bed without pay
[7]Senior IBMer hit with £290k demand from Big Blue in separate case as unfair dismissal claim rolls on
But then it all seemingly changed after clients reacted "rather badly" to the news. Our source says a number of employees working on Redbooks had even been assigned new managers.
This looked like a potential disaster in the making as plenty of group strategies rely on Redbooks and this threw those that internally fund Redbooks into "disarray," or so our source claimed.
[8]
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Perhaps sensing a disturbance in the force or responding to the higher-ups – IBM management, not the Almighty – Konarski took to Twitter on 20 October to calm nerves and assure folk that Redbooks was not going the way of the dodo.
Despite some misunderstandings, IBM Redbooks will continue to operate and provide the technical insight and guidance its followers have valued and depended on for decades. — Chris Konarski (@ChrisKonarski) [10]October 29, 2021
The response was positive, with [11]one saying : "Good to know, the message that came out earlier in the week was very worrying." Another [12]urged : "Please don't 'improve it' as was done to [technical sales support] Tech Docs," while another [13]asked if it would continue "with existing team members or new?"
Others expressed absolute relief. "Redbooks are IBM's best resource for showing how their systems work in real use," [14]said Jay Maynard (the Tron Guy), a sysadmin and programmer. "I'm also given to understand they're a lot of fun for the folks working on them. I'm happy to hear they're not going away."
An IBM spokesperson in the UK told us:
There was no backtracking here. Despite some misunderstanding, there was never any intent to shut down IBM Redbooks. As you saw in Chris's tweet, Redbooks will continue to provide the technical insight and guidance its followers have valued and depended on for years.
We asked if the staff simply imagined they were being told to move. "All I can say for certain is that there was a misunderstanding," IBM's press handler added.
One source claimed: "It was exceptionally clear what he [Konarski] wanted to do. But he's been inundated with emails and calls to reverse it." ®
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* Or Hokey Pokey, depending on where you live
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks.nsf/pages/about?Open
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YYlXxn7sJQyVQkatGilwxwAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/05/red_hat_jobs/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/04/kyndryl_ibm_spinoff/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/21/ibm_q3_2021/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/07/ibm_covid_vaccination/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/23/ibm_shamayun_miah_court_cases/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YYlXxn7sJQyVQkatGilwxwAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YYlXxn7sJQyVQkatGilwxwAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://twitter.com/ChrisKonarski/status/1454110707096637442?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[11] https://twitter.com/Millseypops/status/1454397857117659139?s=20
[12] https://twitter.com/v1gnesh/status/1454268745052942339?s=20
[13] https://twitter.com/POWERHAguy/status/1454130677008449543
[14] https://twitter.com/tronguy/status/1454400416356122630?s=20
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YYlXxn7sJQyVQkatGilwxwAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: "There was no backtracking here"
Yeah, exactly that. What message are your sending if it's obvious to all and sundry that you're lying through your teeth. Oh I know, "You cannot trust the people I speak for."
PR weaselry at its finest
Read the IBM statements carefully. They are entirely consistent with the original plan to move all internal staff to "other projects" and to produce Red Books using external contractors. PR weaselry at its finest.
The resulting Red Books will, of course, be complete crap, and will come at the cost of doubling the effort required from the IBM SMEs who create and check the meat of the content - and, I suspect, many of those SMEs will be exactly the same IBM Garage people who were previously professionally producing the old Red Books that customers loved so much.
Never explain, never complain.
One day...
You are producing Redbooks
Next day, you receive a Pink Slip
Virginia M. Rometty.
Virginia M. Rometty.
The only person at IBM over the age of 50 that actually reached the retirement age without getting laid off.
seriously upset
I can understand many customers would be seriously upset about RBs being stopped.
After all, they're probably the *very* best of technical IT literature of the whole market, and one massive reason why one would buy IBM kit.
Understandable concern about the demise of RefBooks
It is very clear that RedBooks are still important, even more so considering the woeful state of IBM primary product documentation. It used to be RedBooks complemented IBM documentation, but now they are the only thing that is actually left worth reading.
I've seen IBM docs. go from some of the very best, if a little dry, full bookshelves of dead tree to nothing on paper, everything on the web, only available to support paying customers, and so poorly indexed with dead links, deprecated or removed websites, and no real technical details if you do find what you're looking for.
At one time, I thought there was a deliberate push to try to make customers pay for training from IBM education by making the documentation less useful, but that's gone as well.
It really does seem to me that the execs of the remaining bits of IBM are so uninterested in their own product that they wish it would go away so they could just become a cloud and cognitive integration business, but I really think they've even missed the boat there.
If someone high up in IBM doesn't refocus on what IBM still has left of their old values, IBM will become like the oozlum bird, and disappear up it's own fundament.
"There was no backtracking here"
Just once I wish a PR weasel would lay off the spin. Had the spokesperson said something to the effect of, "Yes, we planned to shut down the Redbooks team, but we had seriously underestimated the depth of customer and stakeholder feeling, so we are reversing that decision" - they'd actually earn my respect.
Instead of which we have a Putin-esque attempt to deny reality, "all the people involved completely imagined being told to shut down their projects, you are imagining it too, black is white, war is peace, there are no Russian troops in the Crimea".
Wankers.