Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IBM Distinguished Engineer


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. slakr \ talk / 01:08, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

IBM Distinguished Engineer

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

IBM employs engineers. Some are distinguished. But no, it's not just that: like the Scouts, IBM gives people titles, and among these is "IBM Distinguished Engineer". This article about them, created by the intriguingly named (contributions), doesn't say much about them. But it does say The IBM Technical Community numbers over 200,000 people, including 605 IBM Distinguished Engineers and 85 IBM Fellows as of September 2013. I guess this means that IBM employs over 200,000 technicians, among whom 605 get this merit badge or the key to the executive washrooms or whatever. What? We're not told. We are told that ''DEs are integral members of their units' executive teams, demonstrating leadership to these units and across the company by consulting with management on technical and business strategies and their implementation. They often have operational responsibilities for large, complex technical projects, and may have line management responsibility as appropriate.'' Which to me sounds totally vapid. (So far as "consulting with management on technical and business strategies and their implementation", has any meaning, isn't it something that most employees do?) Wondering if there was anything else to IBM's DEs, I looked them up on the information superhighway. But blog-chatter and the like aside, there was next to nothing about them. Perhaps this has no meaning outside IBM. Now, plenty of articles in en:WP are on subjects that have no meaning outside, say, Star Trek; and it seems that IBM does actually exist, putting it one rank above (in my eyes). But (unless there are IBM conventions, IBM games, IBM cosplay and the rest) I fear that IBM DEs will remain obscure, and an informative article based on independent sources unwritable. -- Hoary (talk) 11:24, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:45, 11 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment Much less notable than IBM Fellows; I can't see this being kept. I'd suggest that the program could be mentioned somewhere, with a merge or redirect. Not certain where: there's a zillion articles about IBM. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:10, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete, without merge or redirect, unless a reliable source indicating notabilty can be added to the material where it is merged. I can't find anything outside of IBM culture and Wikipedia mirrors that discuss this. The article is promotional, badly written, unsourced and uninformative. Similar with all sources that I looked at. We are not supposed to be creating notabilty, just writing useful articles about that which already is. --(AfadsBad (talk) 16:24, 11 February 2014 (UTC))
 * Comment Frankly, this is pretty much straight internal IBM-speak, but it's not empty waffle. I'm retired now but worked inside IBM for several decades, including a long stint at one of the software development labs. DE is a job title given to someone technical who has progressed sufficiently up the company chain. It's not meaningless verbiage, though; these are the guys responsible, for example, for proposing what new function and features might be in future releases of flagship products, and subsequently for making sure the designed function actually does what the customers need, so their skills are important (and the few I've personally worked with have been, to a man/woman, extremely intelligent and competent people, with good customers skills to match their technical abilities). Personally, I'd say that what's missing from the article as it stands is that perspective that says "this is part of the way that IBM organises itself internally" - because any large technical company is inevitably going to have people doing a similar job. To that extent, an article such as this is rather "fluffy" IBM self-advertising, making it sound like something extra-special that IBM does but others don't. As to whether the internal organisation of a single company is of interest to Wikipedia, I won't comment.Fredd169 (talk) 08:59, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the comment, . I find all that you say very credible. I now think that my nomination was too longwinded and in an undeservedly facetious tone. But I'm in no rush to retract it, because I doubt that this article would ever be backed up with IBM-independent "reliable" sourcing, or even with straightforward, no-nonsense internal IBM sourcing. (If my assumptions turn out to be wrong, I'll change my mind.) -- Hoary (talk) 09:23, 14 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete per absence of WP:GNG, also WP:NOTPROMOTION. -- Trevj (talk · contribs) 14:34, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.