And IBM often tried to get people fired for not buying IBM – a former colleague was once the CIO of the only Fortune 100 company that didn't have a corporate IBM mainframe (one or two of their subsidiaries did, but the conglomerate mother ship did not, only Univac). IBM had quite a few golfing conversations with the CEO trying to get him fired. [This was back in the '70s].
In the late 90s, the startup I worked for made a marketing deal with IBM. We were mostly running Sun hardware, I was in charge of IT purchasing. After I made it clear we would not be migrating to IBM hardware, they went after my job.
The tradition was still going at that point.
Maybe, but then again you can't buy IBM if you're forbidden from buying it in the first place.
I'm so glad people are getting enough of IBM bullshit
They get laid off for being making their department a black hole for money, though.
Please, let this quote be ironic.
No, it's historic.
No, it's current at many places.
It's a prevailing attitude in buying non-cheap ("enterprise") systems. If you buy one of the big names and it fails you can always say "they are a market leader, it was the best decision with the information we had available" - if you take a leap of faith for a not so well known name and the project fails it will probably cost you your job. People behave accordingly.