The father-son struggle that helped ensure IBM's success | Hacker News Reader

The father-son struggle that helped ensure IBM's success

nytimes.com

41 pointsbenbreen13 comments

The autobiography of Watson Jnr that Tim Wu mentions, "Father, Son and Company" really is an excellent read. I enjoyed it a lot and I've never liked IBM's hardware. It of course has a lot to say about the 360 (and how revolutionary it was), but also about management.

https://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/03/books/growing-up-at-big-b...

Agreed on the autobiography's excellence. Among other things, Watson Jr. sadly recounts how he and his father drove to colleges around the Northeast US looking for one that would accept the son and his mediocre academic record (Watson was likely dyslexic, or had some other learning disability); Brown is the one that reluctantly does so.

Wartime service as a pilot was the first time Watson Jr. found himself good at anything, and he expected to stay flying until he was pulled back to IBM. He had built contacts in Russia during the war, and used that experience when serving as the US ambassador to the Soviet Union after IBM.

I concur, strongly.

I read this biography and another one about Sr - and I found both of them to be compelling books

‘IBM and the Holocaust’ is a similarly gripping exploration of these men and their business prowess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Is there one about IBM and Apartheid as well?

I read it, and it's an interesting read, but I did not find it made a compelling argument for its revisionist historical narrative. There was lots assumption about what IBM knew or did not know that have no evidentiary basis.

As far as I know it's also been debunked by other historians.

There are several other biographies. There's the official one, "The Lengthening Shadow" (1962). There's the unofficial one, "Think; A Biography of the Watsons and IBM" (1969). Both were written when the major players were still alive.

Key point: both were really, really good at sales to businesses. IBM was a sales-driven company, where the salesmen were in charge.

Interesting perspective and agree a good example of the Innovator's Dilemma. The IBM history is rife with innovation that is similar to much of what the tech industry is today, but what strikes me as the most important was the magic that happened in the mid-40s of IBM's Poughkeepsie Lab. So much happened in this period that were major catalysts but two struck me as the most important: the end of the war and leveraging code-breaking innovation (especially from those working in electronics) and a high-rank champion (Jr.) willing to embrace innovation (electronics). This all seemed to converge in the Poughkeepsie lab in short time and the rest, well, is history. There are same amazing books (https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...), declassified documents relating to the early IBM employees post-wartime, and so much more that really tell amazing and still relevant stories.

I find the more I learn of the early IBM transition to electronics, the more I see direct parallels to the modern startup world. It was seemingly a startup within a massive company with a monetary "umbrella" to help foster innovation, although likely not the first. Another motivator for the lab's success was how they had to demonstrate value with electronics well beyond a normal burden of proof (overcoming the Innovator's Dilemma). There's still a lot more to learn from their stories.

> It was seemingly a startup within a massive company

And then that kind of repeated itself with the origin of the IBM PC, didn't it?

So I just finished this book, and it makes the claim at the end, that Watson died of assisted suicide after his stroke, which is an interesting revelation.

no paywall https://web.archive.org/web/20231026105511/https://www.nytim...

Love the lead photo. That is just Kubrick AF.

The New York Times's official onion address also works without a paywall (or at least I haven't been blocked yet):

https://www.nytimesn7cgmftshazwhfgzm37qxb44r64ytbb2dj3x62d2l...

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