I’ve been with IBM for about 3 years now and I’ve found the talent pool to be diluted. There’s talented engineers and not so talented engineers. I’ve met some people where I get the impression that they’ve settled and are just coasting to earn their paycheck. IBM isn’t doing a good job with keeping the top talent in terms of compensation, so the good people leave.
I don’t know how they’re determining people to fire. My opinion is that they’re pruning the moochers
Unfortunately that's what happens to a company that's been run the way IBM has for the last ~25 years. The top talent with career aspirations bailed long ago. That's not to say there aren't still competent and talented people there, just that the most ambitious (whether for money, cool projects, promotion track etc) are long gone. Unfortunately for IBM, those were the folks that should have been helping management identify the dead wood which has been piling up. The most talented people still around probably learned long ago to keep their head down and mouth shut so they've de-prioritized 'the company' and it's probably just put in their hours each week and forget about work when they clock out.
Hmm, tricky, as first-hand perspectives of a current IBM employee can be dangerous to one's career prospects :)
That being said, my dad was hired by IBM Canada at age ~55, as a developer, and he retired of his own free will at 70 3-4 years back. The clients respected his knowledge, experience, approach and output tremendously; and in turn IBM management recognized his value. His local management begged him to stay in any capacity - part time, consultant, anything - but he felt he could not easily keep up with daily demands anymore, and that time has come for him to hang the keyboard & mouse.
During his tenure he received a promotion/band increase, and was frequently encouraged to go for a second promotion/band increase, but did not want to go to management track.
Note that he was in consulting services, which may have completely different culture than in-house development, with which I have limited exposure.
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I myself am a current IBM employee; for my first decade, I was constantly the junior member of the team - if anything, we had a reverse issue where we weren't hiring new grads but instead prized experience and leadership skills. Eventually recognizing this gap, last few years we had a flurry of programs to bring in fresh blood. At 40, I'm still probably near the median and average age on many projects I've been part of. Occasionally I get a bit jealous at rapid career progress of some of the brighter new hires, who are taking advantage of paths, programs, and culture of promotion we didn't have when I was in their spot, but I recognize that if things are getting better, that is an overall good thing and just because I missed out / didn't have that opportunity, doesn't mean nobody else should - quite the opposite :).
I've been called an IBM lifer before, and the nickname is somewhat likely to stick. I'm not particularly worried about age, I see it as up to me to demonstrate my value, and have a lot of good role models and examples in technical and technical leadership roles around me who are senior in age to me to gain some confidence I'm not deluded.
That being said, this is a personal anecdote and not anecdata; milleage will differ in different parts and situation of IBM. It's a publicly traded technical company that's survived for a century, and it (we? they? whatever the appropriate pronoun is:) did not do so by being overly emotional. I've seen IBM cut commodity hardware (HDD, Thinkpads, then x-series), and I've seen IBM cut commodity business units and teams; so I'm actively trying not to be a commodity person that's in the crosshairs, I suppose - would be true in any company as I'm actively aware nobody has guarantees of job for life anymore. I've trained youngsters and off-shore replacement several times to take over my roles, and just had to keep swimming up to keep my head above the water :-)
It's good reading.