From my experience, 6 years is about right, maybe a slighty longer than normal.

When IBM purchased Lotus, they pretty left it alone left it alone for 5 years. In 2000 changes started to be forced on Lotus and in a year or two, it was gone.

So, IBM bought RH in 2019, it is now 2025, that seems to have followed their play book almost exactly. I also think other large acquisition proceeded the same way.

Well, luckily there are other distros out there should IBM/RHEL stumble during this "assimilation".

I see this happening live- very senior folks are "retiring" in a volume I've never seen before. Will hopefully be good for the company.

Unfortunately, we are not seeing much in the way of a flattened org chart, which is another thing that I believe is holding the company back.

I'm not sure that'll be enough to save them. I've known various people who've worked there in different departments - dev, accounting, UX - and none of them had anything good to say about the company or its culture. My impression of IBM is that it's completely rotten.

Yes