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Arrested IBM Exec Goes MIA On the Web
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."
Sounds like he wasn't liked at the company.
What's funny is that I am able to access Moffat's biography just fine on the IBM Website. It's from July 2008 though. I dunno if there was a newer version, but it's there nevertheless.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
But taking things down from the internet, tidying up as it were, doesn't sound the least bit questionable. Now if they remove the video, bio, and all his other stuff from their files and destroy it, then there might be a problem.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Before Madoff was arrested, a Google search for his name pointed to many pages at Yeshiva University, which he gave a lot of money to. If you clicked on the Google cache, there were glowing profiles about him. If you clicked on the actual pages, his name had been pulled out of all those pages almost as soon as he was arrested, because I was Googling all of this the day after he was arrested. It's still all probably on archive.org
the removal of my future overlord.
'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."
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."
--- We need more Ron Paul!
We'd be all set!
MSFT: Steve who? Never heard of the guy.
And nothing of value was lost.
Thereby proving the saying that, "everyone loves a winner, and hates a loser".
it's working fine here. Full bio + a 1 MiB picture available for download.
I think they use Notes for that sort of thing.
It is a wonder that everything doesn't go missing all the time.
I bet its a simple matter of removing evidence from public view during an active investigation, and it still exists for when its all hauled into court.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's not exactly news that people or companies want to dissociate themselves from people charged with crimes. Removing any connections with these people has been going on for years.
In any case, I don't know why this is even news on slashdot. If this insider trading case didn't involve a tech company, would this still be here? How is this is news for nerds??
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.
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.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
> 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.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The link to Moffat's bio at IBM's site works just fine for me. Makes me wonder how fast this (or another) story made it to IBM web developers to fix this 'problem'.
Being in a position to do large deals, you always get people offering "incentives". ie cash in envelopes to sign a deal. Brown envelopes and all that. However I spoke to my boss at my old place ie before I became management and asked his advice.
Basically, its a case of dont, ever! Basically, if a company gets audited, they will be looking for a scapegoat. Guess who gets that joy. Not only that, but it's your reputation also. In our game, reputation is worth its weight in gold!
The way to do it, is to accept offers of kit on long term loan, that they dont want back. Im not saying I take it and sign a deal. Its more a case of it they want to give me freebies to test, I dont mind. ie the odd high spec laptop here, the odd day out there. They also understand what they give me is no strings and I treat it as such.
At the end of the day price and quality are deciding factors.
Surely some jobs were lost when IBM put more emphasis on Linux and thus didn't require as many workers to support it.
Makes you wonder why the hell they didn't encrypt their phone conversations... I mean ffs, he worked at IBM, it's not like they didn't have access to that kind of technology.
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.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
What the fuck does BTW mean? This isn't a SMS message, at least write the summary like an adult.
Hiding an embarrassing employee's web presence is a common PR tactic used to delay journalists by making them look for facts about the employee longer. The lazy journalists and bloggers who just want to publish now will have fewer facts and skimpier stories which translates to less interesting stories and less media attention.
Worked for 23+ years at IBM Greenock Personal Systems Manufacturing, then they sold us off to Sanmina - SCI who closed us down less than 2 years later. Always remember Moffat's speech to those being jetissoned about how we were all like his children and how you have to let go of your children if they are to grow and realise their true potential. Patronising c**t..... More like hiring Jeffrey Dahmer as a babysitter. Am organising a reunion of my old department to celebrate.
What the origninal designer of AirWolf arrested? Wjoops wrong Moffat..
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
The funny thing is, at IBM right now there's this campaign going on to "TELL" of all your great experiences and why IBM is such a great company to work for. They're giving out small boxes of mints and such, to help you speak you know (rolleyes). Mostly, my colleagues and I have been looking at one another, going "the kind of stories we'd be telling would NOT benefit IBM. Personally (and I believe my colleagues share this opinion), I have just enough loyalty to NOT go telling all my stories.
Posted Anonymously just in case this turns ugly. In any event, the mints are tasty enough.
Adults don't use obscenity as punctuation.
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.
I say this as an American: we've become barbarians. We torture 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. Our wealth is distributed like that of a banana republic. We're stupid, vapid, and like a feral child, we snarl and bite when someone tries to help us. 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,
All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!)
And (KKKAAAA CHING!)
And take your money
?!?
Let's just call it an extreme form of capitalism...
IBM may be able to as a legal maneuver remove all the Bios and promos made by this executive. However IBM's data retention and phone system logging is going to be hotly tested. Not much is done in IBM without some tracking system. Most the company phones have logs, all the emails are archived/retention for a few years. I think even the old Sametimes messages were also logged once long ago. It sounds like the US Justice Dept will have wiretaps as the big evidence.
Unfortunately IBM's polices on email retention may put at jeopardy the cache. I think it was 3-5 years worth. IBM learned not to keep a lot of communications after problems with anti-trust lawsuits. Law enforcement may face a mess if they need to go back into the mainframe system because only a few persons know that system outside IBM and internally that generation was being wiped out.
I will laugh out loud if IBM drags its feet in producing all the documents when this hits the courts as this is what it sells to customers at a high premium. IBM's legal legions are 2nd to none for litigation and maneuvering and the do not fear the US gov.
Anyhow it is trival as I think this guy got caught with his hand in the cookie jar when the US gov was fishing for bigger fish such as hedgefund managers who are suspected of funding terrorists.
e.g. http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/biography/10068.wss
[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"
Too bad there's not a company like that anymore...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Dance-Inside-Historic-Turnaround/product-reviews/B00009NDAF/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_2?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addTwoStar
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. "
As a person who still remembers (late stages of) communism, those fat & lazy corporations resemble old (long dead) industry in communist states. So many things look exactly the same. High rank executives chasing phantom "results" just to get their bonuses, causing so much mayhem in the process. Middle rank managers who are interested in just blindly executing orders from their bosses and have to be clueless crooks to succeed, low level worker drones interested in setting up another "Q&A cell" to do some paperwork or being a salesman without any responsibility instead of doing something real.
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.
No Joy in Mudville: "What does it say, then, when the architect of LEAN is arrested for alleged insider trading?...Moffat is guilty or he's stupid, neither of which says much for IBM."
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. 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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
if Sam Palmisano was also arrested, charged, tried, convicted and hung. The top of IBM have been horrible over the last 7 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Any sufficiently successful executive is indistinguishable from a psychopath?
all of us have an ability to turn off empathy. it does not take a genuine psychological abnormality to do something evil for the sake of greed or other base instinct. it also begins to separate the man from the crime in terms of responsibility: if he's a psychopath, it removes culpability by explaining away some of what someone does wrong as a simple psychological defect, something beyond their control
no, a lot of really heinous crimes in this world are not done by psychopaths. and that actually makes the crimes far worse. we use the word "psychopath" as a quick way to explain away their crimes, of drawing distance between the criminal and us. which is probably necessary for us to do. for to consider that someone like you and me can do vile things makes us feel uncomfortable about ourselves. our potential to do horrible wrong. better to do the quick and easy thing and label the person "psychopath" rather than meditate on the real and ruinous road that takes a psychologically normal person and winds up with them committing evil
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's back...
Because any CEO of a large company isn't risking anything, just wanting to skim some extra from the top.
How do we know this?
When a CEO tanks the company, they get a golden parachute and land a nice CEO job at another company.
It's EXACTLY like your description of communism.
The only one that isn't is (somewhat) those that have not floated, where the owner is the one person in charge and they HAVEN'T come from the right stock, so their failure isn't a failure for "one of the boys" but just the failure of a johnny noname upstart.
And Microsoft is an ego-fluffer for Gates and Ballmer. It's why the company still acts like everyone else has to lose for them to win. And they have nothing to lose if MS goes down. They have enough cashed away to let them and their descendents till the end of time live without having to do a lick of work.
MS isn't doing well, either. It's riding on the communist monopoly copyright and their early rape tactics on the OS gave them.
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 34 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
I've never seen an explanation of how it can know it's been 34 minutes and still think it's been too soon since last post.
Incapability like this is pretty much the major reason why I don't sign up. Why go through the minor hassle of signing up just to get a crappy experience and reward those who made it crappy by making out it's acceptable?
No, the Russians saved us from the Nazis, and they would've gotten around to demolishing Japan as well given time. In fact, that's *why* the US threw the nukes at them, they didn't want Japan to lose against Russia as that would've tipped the post-war's world balance in their favor. Communism you did, but I'm not sure that Imperialism is much better.
This needs to be highlighted. The Russians would have won the war against the Germans on their own, had the allies not opened another front. And the Russians would surely have beaten the Japanese on their own as well. Some two thirds of all Nazi troops were deployed on the eastern front and two thirds of all casualties happened there as well. I'm personally of the opinion that a Russian dominated Europe would have been very bad, much like the Warsaw pact countries were.
However, all that is some 60 years ago, and this 2009. Time has passed and things have changed. Russia is no paradise, but the Soviet Union is gone and America has gotten itself into such deep financial straights as a nation that I find it very difficult to see the US maintaining its global place in the long run.
The Bio:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/biography/10068.wss
The video also I think: https://www.e-techservices.com/portal/IBM-Smarter-Planet-Videos
is the source of all evil in the world
all greed is is a desire to accumulate to support yourself. sometimes more than you need, but how do you draw the line? often it is the case that one mans reach for more winds up filling the bounty of those who can't or won't reach at all. societal systems that lock people's reach down wind up impoverishing all, not equating everyone at a high equal rate. there is always some natural inequality of accumulation due to merit and ability (and also via nepotism, inheritance, other vile ways) but this society with an inequality of riches is still richer than a society where everyone is artificially locked down to how much they are able to acquire. in other words, you need to accept some amount of inequality because any attempt to equalize people's wants and needs just deflates everyone's income overall
if you have a system which doesn't reward greed, people starve, literally. flesh is flesh: its sustenance is an act of transgression. you can't make a valid moral system that ignores the life-affirming value of greed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I have posted numerous times about this, with links to reputable reports, e.g. Rand corporation and Duke university. There never was or has been a skills shortage.
See this old article:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/10/1454250
I'm getting tired of posting this.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
And are going replace them with a heroic article about a manager named "Oglivy"who died in his cubicle giving his all for the company.
And if you don't get the reference, read "1984" by George Orwell.
Orwell had it right, just swap all references to the government with "the corporation".
Which is one reason I refuse to work for companies after they reach a certain size.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
and it only goes back to the mid 80's. I thought the 1st ever IBM layoff happened around that time, but according to google it was Feb 1993. It was pretty much all downhill from there. For IBM and the rest of corporate america, who read IBM's decision as an "OK" to balance economic inequities, as well as bad mgmt decisions, on the backs of "regular" employees.
As an employee of IBM, I'd take the comments from Alliance@IBM with a grain of salt. Alliance@IBM is a group of employees whose agenda it has been to start an IT workers' union. The people Mr. Conrad is likely to be talking to are therefore probably pre-disposed to being very anti-upper management. Mr. Moffat's M.O. is as an axe man, and a pool of employees who's reactionary response is to oppose any kind of reduction in workforce, no matter how necessary from a business standpoint, is hardly likely to have an unbiased opinion as to the sentiment of Poughkeepsie's general population towards Mr. Moffat. Alliance@IBM doesn't even represent a majority of IBM employees, much less the population of people from which a jury would be built.