Anybody used to work for Big Blue?

[swampwiz]

It seems that IBM thinks that its employees should "early retire", whether or not they want to!

https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers

[big_slacker]

I never worked there, but have had two friends in architect positions. One is a millennial and still works there.

The older gent said that it is an extremely slow paced and old school organization. He said that even if you sucked at your job they'd just move you to a different group and give you menial tasks and let you retire. He worked there early-mid 2000's. So folks probably got used to this culture and obviously this led to a *A LOT* of dead weight. It's probably a good thing that they decided to clean house a bit but it also sounds like they may have swung too far the other direction. When you talk about older/higher salaried employees being cut in favor of younger/lower paid ones even when the older ones have better performance you've got a clear problem.

FWIW the younger friend who currently works there previously worked with me at top 5 tech companies and by contrast says IBM is hopelessly old school still and very slow moving. It's the whole 'turning a cruise ship' thing. So while they are hiring younger folks they have not pulled an MSFT and had massive culture change be successful.

[Polaria]

Yes for IBM United Kingdom and Ireland, I was shown the door two years ago (as was half my team) then I moved back to Belgium.
I'll just say nothing in the link surprises me.

[neil]

I grew up in an IBM-centric city and the area suffered their periodic mass layoffs - 30 years ago.  This is behavior is not as new as people think.  Never really wanted to work for them.

But after 15 years as an engineer, I do have to admit in fairness that there is simply more demand for low grade engineering work.  It's not so much that experience doesn't have value but a lot of the work just needs a handful of good leaders or mentors and some intelligent employees to work the problem.  Maybe it was less so years ago, but some projects simply have massive scope.  Good work will get you "promoted" and on a fast pay trajectory, but it's not practical that all your hires stick around - but they tend to at the more successful companies.  The family culture works when things are running smooth, but when they are not, some hard choices might need to be made.  And that's when the a different issue sticks out - the organizations are themselves often run by even older former engineers and don't really know how to downside their organizations and simply hope the unlucky ones will go away and not stir anything up that causes attention on themselves.

I can tell the great employees often see this, age irrelevant, and leave on their own by staying active on the job market and finding better situations.  Interviewing is a skill and being a lifer in STEM is going to cause problems if this happens.  It does not surprise me that the ones interviewed are not just old, but long tenured as well.  Even after "only" fifteen years I feel like I have the same problem.

STEM is a great field for FIRE, but I also think FIRE needs to be a priority also.  It is very easy for skills to become stale if you find yourself in a specialized role.  No matter how good you are, this may happen to you and I can understand not wanting to feel stuck in a gray area where it is tough to get rehired or trained for a couple more years of work.  Personally, I don't think any of these companies will get nailed on age discrimination given that they hide it behind "algorithms" and generally get people to sign the agreements.

[COEE]

Got to grow the stash while you're young in STEM careers.

WITH 35 YEARS AT IBM under his belt, Ed Miyoshi had plenty of experience being pushed to take buyouts, or early retirement packages, and refusing them. But he hadn’t expected to be pushed last fall.
...
Only two weeks after IBM laid him off in December 2016, Ed Miyoshi of Hopewell Junction, New York, started work as a subcontractor to the company. But he took a $20,000-a-year pay cut. “I’m not a millionaire, so that’s a lot of money to me,” he says.
...
Miyoshi said his paycheck is 20 percent less than what he made as an IBM regular.

Wait!  35 years with IBM, making around $100k/year and you're NOT a millionaire.  Get out of here!

[LurkingMustache]

Didn't spend much time reading the article - all I can say is that I work in a large company like this, and there have been cuts that target folks that make significantly more money in roles that require much less pay.  For instance, I am now in a corporate supervisory role and my employees (many 30 years older than me) make nearly $50,000 more than I do in roles that I did BEFORE I moved to a management role coming out of college for $70k. 

I have a hard time having much sympathy for someone that makes $160-180k with the huge benefits (read: an actual pension) while there are people starting out that make half of that.  It doesn't surprise me that these companies are cutting back.  But I don't see it as an age thing.  I see it as a "let's get rid of the highest paid doing labor that we could pay half for".  The example I read in this article was someone in Marketing.  Doesn't surprise me at all.

Edit:  My response may be callous because I am also used to (as a millenial) being around baby boomers who already say I come from an entitled generation and you just need to 'pick yourself up by your bootstraps', all while seeing these incredibly entitled people making ridiculous hourly rates in the corporate world while I got slammed in the recession straight out of college.  Somehow it isn't "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" when THEY lose their cushy jobs in corporate America.  Boo-hoo.

Edit2:  This picture description - "Marjorie Madfis was among seven women in their 40s and 50s laid off from their IBM marketing team in White Plains, New York, in 2013. The two members who remained were younger men. “The only explanation is our age,” says Madfis. (Demetrius Freeman for ProPublica)".  Or the real, simple explanation is that you were highly paid for your role and young people did it for much less.  But I guess a gender and age bias makes for good reading.

[One Noisy Cat]

My father did from 1954 to 1987 and I did one summer when I was a college student.  The majority of my classmates growing up had fathers (or an occasional mother who did). Completely different company from when the Watsons ran it back then.
       There was even then a tendency for Itty Bitty Morons to rest on their laurels and feel entitled although we did get a PA announcement once warning the Japanese were gunning for us and we were prepared.
         I can see the corporate thinking about how it’s hard to change as you age; try as I might I don’t always. I also wonder about the guy in Hopewell Junction (Hopeless Jungles). He probably worked in the 300 building in East Fishkill as I and Ad did. There were massive layoffs back in the early 1990s (Dad had retired but was told he would still have a job if he was there. Our neighbors weren’t as lucky: the wife lost hers and the husband was told transfer to Vermont or bye bye: they accepted).
         In this world you HAVE to be prepared for all kinds of scenarios. Growing up IBM, GM, U S Steel, Pan Am, Kodak were seen as indestructible. They weren’t and Apple, Amazon and others probably aren’t either.
        Nobody manages your career better than you.

[albireo13]

I grew up in an IBM (I've Been Moved) family ... Dad worked at Kingston, NY for decades and retired.
Brother got transferred to Burlington, Vt where he was laid off just shy of vesting in full pension.

IBM was a progressive company for its time.  It's decline was advanced when they hired Gerstner as CEO.
He tried to manage IBM like it was Nabisco ... stamping out Oreos at a prodigious rate ... not needing any investment in technology or forward thinking.

[Bucksandreds]

Edit:  My response may be callous because I am also used to (as a millenial) being around baby boomers who already say I come from an entitled generation and you just need to 'pick yourself up by your bootstraps', all while seeing these incredibly entitled people making ridiculous hourly rates in the corporate world while I got slammed in the recession straight out of college.  Somehow it isn't "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" when THEY lose their cushy jobs in corporate America.  Boo-hoo.

This x 100. Virtually all the worst problems America will deal with over the next 50 years have been caused by the selfish boomers (runaway federal debt, hate filled extreme politics exacerbated by white boomers electing Trump, loss of unions and lack of laws protecting subsequent generations from below living wage wage slavery. Etc, etc, etc)

[Rcc]

I did two tours of duty with Big Blue. Both were game changers for me at those relative times in my career (entry level, and later mid career climber). The latter layoff was the “dragons tickle” that has fueled my FIRE efforts ever since.

That article is nothing new, IMHO. IBM has, since Gerstner, cyclically followed the path of other firms doing whatever the latest MBA fad is to reduce benefits, pay, and employees based on the balance sheet. Outsourcing to India, Ireland, or the latest low wage country du jour, another fun trick partially mastered by IBM, and still being used today - as another example. Then the “we love recent college grads” dance... sigh.

I feel for the folks who get cut, but have a brief moment of “why didn’t you plan for layoffs” given IBMs well documented history.

“All this has happened before, and will happen again”....

[I'm a red panda]

My Dad and Grandfather both worked their entire careers there. My Dad just retired last year, was not forced out by age and had several cases of OMY.  IIRC the terms of his pension were changed several times though.

Never worked there but appreciated the Watson scholarship.

[lizh]

Never worked there, but as a 58 year old tech person I find the article frightening!

[radram]

Did not read the article, but my brother worked there for about 25 years. During one of those downsizing times back in the day, the standard joke there was:

IBM has a new dress code......... no grey hair.

The more things change....

[Fiscal_Hawk]

IBM is a shell of what it used to be. The only goal they have now is to make sure their labor costs are minimal.

[Clamdigger]

I joined IBM Federal Systems in 1989 in Owego, NY.  After about 6 months, IBM decided to offer everyone early retirement if you were eligible.  Obviously I was not eligible.  But a lot of people took the two weeks of pay for each year of employment.  I think that was the last time IBM was that generous.

In the early 1990s, Lou Gerstner became the CEO and he sold our division to Loral for around $1.6 Billion or somewhere around there.  IBM stock was about $40 a share.  Upstate NY facilities were on the decline due to the mainframe.  Housing prices plummeted in the Endicott, NY area.

I rejoined IBM in 1995 in IBM Global Services.  They were doing well and growing.  40% profit rates on contracts.  Java and WebSphere kept the company going until recent times.  Watson and the Cloud will probably not make up for declining WebSphere sales.  I left in 2003 after several years of constant travel.

Lots of missteps by IBM.  Design labs that opened and closed within a year.  Buying PWC and trying to be a business consulting company.  Outsourcing.  Offshoring. DevOps. They are on every band wagon. 

They have been in a constant state of layoffs since the early 90s.  I have seen them set up fancy facilities and then a year later close them and lay off people.  The real problem with IBM is they are followers, not leaders.  They were once leaders.  But now they are mostly followers.  The layoffs are just signs of their decline.

[slackmax]

When AT&T was offshoring all the programming jobs to Bangalore (ongoing even today?) , they instead outsourced us programmers to IBM Global Services in 1998. We were pretty sure IBM was just going to lay us off soon after they got us. Which is what they did. IBM laid us off in 2001.

Working for IBM was a lot like working for AT&T.  Lots of stress sometimes. 

I maxed out at $80,000 at IBM as a programmer/team leader with 16 years experience.  I find it outrageous (guess I'm envious!) that people are making $180,000 a year at IBM today (as  programmer even?), as a previous poster noted. No wonder they are getting laid off.       


But then again, I keep hearing about millenials with the right software knowledge and ability, getting hired out of college at over $100,000  to *start*.  I guess they must be worth it.   

[ketchup]

Maybe they can retire Lotus Notes while they're at it...

[slackmax]

Maybe they can retire Lotus Notes while they're at it...

OMG, Lotus Notes! I remember that. They were developing that when I was there, but I wasn't involved in it! LOL.   An AT&T product, wasn't it? For documentation.

[ketchup]

Maybe they can retire Lotus Notes while they're at it...

OMG, Lotus Notes! I remember that. They were developing that when I was there, but I wasn't involved in it! LOL.

My company still uses it. :(

[slackmax]

Maybe they can retire Lotus Notes while they're at it...

OMG, Lotus Notes! I remember that. They were developing that when I was there, but I wasn't involved in it! LOL.

My company still uses it. :(

I had to use Lotus Notes once. Some adjectives come to mind. Kludgy. Slow. Exhausting.  They ran it on a VM platform, I think, back then. Sorry for your suffering! lol.

[ketchup]

Maybe they can retire Lotus Notes while they're at it...

OMG, Lotus Notes! I remember that. They were developing that when I was there, but I wasn't involved in it! LOL.

My company still uses it. :(

I had to use Lotus Notes once. Some adjectives come to mind. Kludgy. Slow. Exhausting.  They ran it on a VM platform, I think, back then. Sorry for your suffering! lol.

Sounds about right.  We run Domino in a VM these days, and it's way faster now that it's hosted on decent storage (RAID10 of 15k RPM drives).  But it's still a turd.