Red Hat QA Team "Had Shrunk by Half Over the Past Year." (After IBM Divestment)
Earlier this week Phoronix published the above, citing some Fedora sites as proof of the assertion.
As it was put some minutes ago in thelayoff.com: ("AK" is IBM's CEO)
I just have a question, I will get to it, please bear with me:AK positioned himself to manage this very expensive acquisition, to then position himself again to become CEO. Cloud was supposed to become a key component of IBM's success, which didn't come to fruition, due to mismanagement.
Here's where we stand as of right now:
Catching up in the cloud market: IBM, even with Red Hat, continues to lag behind competitors like AWS and Azure in terms of market share.
Cultural concerns: Some (or perhaps many) Red Hat employees have expressed concerns about changes to the company culture and the potential for a loss of its unique open-source identity following the acquisition. The culture concerns do not end there, by any means.
Layoffs: There have been several rounds of layoffs at Red Hat since the acquisition (particularly 2023 - we know of 800, 2024 and 2025), further fueling anxieties about the integration process.
Employee attrition: A significant portion Red Hat employees have been departing for new roles or left the company entirely. As an example, a July 2025 report on Reddit claimed that the Fedora QA team had shrunk by half over the past year.
Aging product portfolio: Concerns exist about the long-term growth potential of Red Hat's core products, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), as the shift towards public cloud computing continues.
I could go on. But... the ultimate success of the acquisition depended on IBM's ability to continue fostering Red Hat's innovation and culture while effectively integrating it into its overall strategy, particularly in the rapidly evolving cloud and AI landscape.
THIS IS THE JOB OF THE CEO AND HIS TEAM.
Clearly, none of this has happened. Quite the contrary. IBM acquired Red Hat for approximately $34 billion (all-cash deal), this investment continues to lose value and diluting as times goes by.
So, here comes my question:
WHY IS AK STILL THE CEO AND ALLOWED TO B S ABOUT AI AND QUANTUM TO DISTRACT US ALL FROM THIS?
He's a buzzwords man.
New example of bluewashing:
IBM recently put a Microsoft executive in charge of Red Hat (along with other executives) and it already seems to be going in the wrong direction [1, 2]. If Red Hat's workforce is being moved to the East, then RHEL, OpenShift etc. can become a national security problem (for a segment or a technical market where most of Red Hat's financial capital - if not the lion's share of it - is derived from). █
