When he joined IBM, it was being slowly strangled to death by its own overgrown bureaucracy, and the malaise within its ranks. Many employees basked in a culture of entitlement, and few felt anything resembling a sense of urgency to return IBM to profitability.

While the measures he took were tough, they were necessary to preserve what Gerstner seemed to think IBM was: a national treasure, that — once righted — could accomplish things that no other company could.

Yes, he pushed people hard… but never harder than he pushed himself. He deserves whatever awards come his way.

IBM is a foreign company charted in the US. Credit has to be given to the fact that they have decided to abandon all their ethics, morality in pursuit of profits abroad. Just like what they did to Endicott and thousands of employees, they have abandoned the US and moved elsewhere like a good itinerant oil salesman now called a “global company”.

The day of judgement will come when the dollar strengthens. Instead of adding to the 6% measly real growth it’ll start subtracting. The next step will then have to be to move their charter out of the US to a “tax ignorant” jurisdiction and set up tent there.

IBM, the brand that has decided it has only one ethic and morality. The brand that places itself on the altar of profit, ignoring everything else. One day this decision will destroy your brand despite your excellent communications team and economists.

Instead, today it is the second largest software company in the world, the largest IT consultancy, and remains one of the largest hardware manufacturers. The shift towards software and consulting makes sense, and the results show in this quarter’s extremely strong numbers in a down economy.

Culture? I find it to be an interesting place to work. Yes it can be stultifying as part of a behemoth, and one could easily feel lost in the machine – it takes sustained personal effort to stay on top of your game in a place with so many moving parts and cross-functional teams.

But – few other companies can achieve the stupendous engineering feats of which only IBM is capable – it is inspiring to work at a place which continually makes the world’s fastest supercomputer, or helps to solve the mysteries of man’s history as told in your DNA, or crunches massive volumes of data daily on Wall Street.

It’s a place worthy of the investment of my efforts. It you don’t feel the same way, then please do yourself, me, and IBM shareholders a favor and find some other employment.