An internal memo dispatched by senior execs at Red Hat suggests the software biz is starting to push AI tooling within its Global Engineering department. RHEL may be about to get some Windows 11-style “improvements.”
It carries the heading “Engineering that’s evolved and amplified for the AI era,” and for any AI skeptics in the developer teams at Red Hat, the tone of the email may raise alarm bells. The times are changing, it states.
Duh, it’s run by IBM. The most brain-rotted management suite on earth. All they do is chase the cool new hotness, and unfortunately it works for them – they’re mostly selling to other brain-rotted manager types. (The end users, as usual, get hosed.)
IBM like Apple has been cautious about generative AI Not to say they don’t, their Granite models work great for personal machines.
Choice is always key, embedding it in the OS is a terrible idea.
For some reason I thought IBM didn’t exist anymore lol. What a horrible day to find out they do.
They exited the PC market a while back. They still make enterprise stuff.
They own Red Hat and IIRC, it’s their fastest growing (if not largest) business unit.
It’s like they don’t understand the reason for this success is how different their road taken has been compared to all-in on AI companies.
“Our roles: All Global Engineering roles will evolve. The focus will shift from ‘AI as a tool used on occasion’ to ‘AI automation as a way to scale the delivery of value to customers.’ Our associates’ skillsets will grow as they become proficient in these tools.”
The “scale the delivery of value to customer” phrase is a massive red flag, it means they have no fucking clue what they are doing. If they did, they would be more clear about their thinking and reasoning and not use PR speak.
They do provide some more specifics that are quoted later in the article, but it still sounds like they haven’t really thought this through:
The next few paragraphs of the memo are oddly repetitive. First, it says: “To lead in this era, we must evolve our operating model. The gap we face today isn’t just technical – it’s organizational. Today, we are beginning our transition to an Agentic Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) to transform how Global Engineering and Products deliver.”
“‘All-in’ product scope: We aren’t looking for a single scrum team to experiment in a vacuum. To avoid bottlenecks, we will move entire products or sub-products to this model simultaneously.” Scrum is a reference to the Agile development model, about which The Register’s Rupert Goodwins expressed reservations back in 2024.
What’s not clear about “delivering value to customers”? I think it is very specific to [product] that [company] delivers!
“Value” is a term so ambiguous, it’s actually worse than not saying anything.
Hopefully it’s just AI tools for development they’re talking about (though that will be bad enough if RHEL becomes vibecoded slop) and not stupid AI “features” baked into the OS.
