Makes perfect sense because IBM has not been a consumer company for quite some time now. They are as much a "good high-margin hardware company" as Apple is a set-top-box manufacturer. Sure, they essentially brought the PC to market, but those Model-M keyboards /.ers love and the Thinkpad division they dropped years ago were already then tiny slices of their business.

There's no innovation left in POS. It's a solved problem. IBM makes their money as an extremely large scale systems innovator. That's what they're good at, and that's what they can market well. At this point, the only innovation happening in POS is wireless/mobility use, and there are countless tiny little startups cornering that market via iOS and Android apps.

Build cash registers is a commodity market and essentially a race to the bottom. IBM is smart for selling off this business segment while it still has value, and focusing on the big systems and big data that is their core business.

Would you rather that IBM operated on the MS model? They could buy everything under the sun and have incredible research, but then do a shitty job trying to manage and integrate across their product lines and business services. Or they could go the Xerox route and not put any of their cool research into anything usable.

No, as both a shareholder and a consumer who has respect for the brand, I'm glad they can focus on what works for them, and sell off divisions that are in stagnating industries that no longer benefit from the innovation focus they've had for the last 100 years. I don't see anyone here complaining that they sold off their typewriter division (thus forming Lexmark).

As it has done with Lenovo and the other manufacturers, the quality will decline.

Because of disruptive tablet and other mobile technologies in this market, the quality will decline regardless of the manufacturer. IBM has rightfully recognized this and is selling off before that decline can hurt the IBM brand. Look at HP for a comparison of inevitable dropping quality on commoditized (race to the bottom) hardware hurting the parent brand.

There is no money in hardware. I found out the hard (stupid) way.

A hardware engineer with a PhD gets paid, entry, 100-110k on average.

A software engineer with MS get paid, entry, 100-100k on average.

A software engineer's work experience accrues without much 'expiration' date - this is more true as you move up higher in abstraction (so I'm not talking about firmware software driver guys, although they should be damn good at C/C++ which helps with getting into other things).

A software engineer can be an entrepreneur: see: Youtube founders out of Ebay, fresh-out-of-college grads. Software initial cost is almost 0.

A hardware engineer cannot be a real entrepreneur. He has to battle a mine patentfield (yeah, same for CS but usually you can get acquired quickly) and huge initial costs. Tools licensing is astronomical. A industrial grade SPICE license + Synthesis + Layout + P&R tools + etc will cost in the hundreds of K, if not hitting a million.

A hardware engineer faces huge elimination by being too close to the transistor level. A switch out of the BJT into MOS probably destroyed many engineers' accrued knowledge in one fell swoop, quickly. Similarly, the impending switch from MOS into double-gates will destroy many IC engineers' accrued knowledge just as quickly.

The same cannot be said for CS, as most of it can be abstracted quickly, and boils down to algorithmic practices which do not get outdated.

Laundry Iphone apps, Stupid dinky games, and apps to help you count how much you fart get millions in funding, while hardware startups flounder to get by (hence preventing others from even thinking of entering the HW game).

Yet, a HW guy (EE Major) has arguably the same skills, foundation, and fundamental knowledge as SW guys (CS majors). Its really just that EE guys don't like doing CS, but they could do it easily. I went to a top-tier uni with EECS as a combined major (and this is common at the top uni's). I can tell you the top EE guys aced their CS classes easily and beat out the top CS guys or were on par.

Why are we paid less? Yeah yeah low margins, blah blah. Well, f* this. I'm taking a stand and telling the ENTIRE next generation of EECS majors to do CS only. There is not much left in EE for the hard workers to do well in, other than work forever for CorpX earning less than CS majors, while doing the same workload with the same skillset. F** this.

Indeed.

Costco (HQ Issaquah, WA) uses iSeries-I've seen the screen at the warehouses and they occasionally list iseries jobs. Most casino corporations use the system for their HR and Finance systems. Some use it for their Hotel and Casino systems.

Their real mainframe (System z) is in use in tiny places like the State of California's tax collection department, and last I heard, Citibank used them and upgraded at least their Las Vegas ones about 3 or so years ago.

Look around most LV casinos and restaurants you'll see IBM POS terminals EVERYWHERE. InfoGenesis seems to be synonymous with IBM POS terminals.

EE Majors are not idiots. They are well aware of the predicaments you listed. Even if you tell them all this they will still go into EE just as CS students don't all change into Law or Finance.

It is because they are passionate about what they do and don't like CS. Would you really want to spend vast majority of your life doing something that you just can't stand? Will you be able to go this extra mile (That all supervisors will judge you by) in a position that you abhore? When (Not if) you will get screwed over and need to look for another job, will you be able to get motivated to do it all over again?

In my opinion, career must be more than just money. You must enjoy what you are doing in order to persevere through all the downsides of the job.