IT class warfare — It’s not just IBM

Back in April I wrote a six-part series of columns on troubles at IBM that was read by more than three million people. Months later I’m still getting ripples of response to those columns, which I followed with a couple updates. There is a very high level of pain in these responses that tells me I should do a better job of explaining the dynamics of the underlying issues not only for IBM but for IT in general in the USA. It comes down to class warfare.

Warfare, to be clear, isn’t genocide. There are IT people who would have me believe that they are complete victims, powerless against the death squads of corporate America. […]

The crowdfunding bubble of 2013

When President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act on April 5th, the era of crowdfunding began as individual investors everywhere were promised an opportunity to gain access to venture investments previously limited to institutions, funds, and so-called qualified investors. Come January 1, 2013, we’re told, anyone can be a venture capitalist, but hardly any of these new VCs will know what they are doing. Spurred by the new law we will shortly see a surge of crowdfunding startups giving for the first time unqualified investors access to venture capital markets. And it will be a quagmire.

Like disk drive startups in the 1980s each of these new crowdfunds will […]