IBM Offers Retirement With Job Guarantee Through 2013

dcblogs writes "IBM is offering employees who are nearing retirement — and may be worried about a layoff — a one-time voluntary program that would ensure their employment through Dec. 31, 2013. The program, described in a letter addressed to IBM managers, 'offers participants 70% of their pay for working 60% of their schedule.' Participating employees would receive 'the same benefits they do today, most at a full-time level, including health benefits and 401(k) Plus Plan automatic company contributions.' In 2006, IBM employed about 127,000 in U.S. The Alliance@IBM, a CWA local, now estimates the U.S. workforce at around 95,000. How far IBM will go in cutting is up for debate, including one radical estimate."

Comments

They're acting like they're in trouble!

[ZorinLynx]

Why the heck does IBM need to cut so many jobs? They're actually doing rather well by all business standards.

Yet here they're acting like they're hemorrhaging money and need to cut costs fast.

American Airlines did this sort of thing too, along with voluntary furloughs... But they're actually in trouble and have a reason to.

WTF?!

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[SJHillman]

Cutting jobs that aren't needed is one way to continue doing well by business standards. The longer people on the payroll, the more they cost - if you don't generate more for the company than you cost, why should they keep you on staff?

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[S77IM]

They've painted themselves into a corner. They experienced rapid "growth" by decreasing the bottom line. Now investors expect that, and so in order to keep up, they must continue aggressively decreasing the bottom line. If they stop, their stock price will drop as growth slows dramatically. It sucks for all involved, because eventually they'll run out of bottom line to cut, and then everybody's screwed except the investors (and executives) who sell just before that happens.

This is exactly the sort of thing Steve Jobs was talking about in the quote about bean-counters taking over the company and loss of product focus. Making enterprise software on an IBM scale, and doing it well enough to grow constantly, is really super hard. Short-term gains through off-shoring are easy.

  -- 77IM

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[dkleinsc]

The longer people on the payroll

That's an odd way of making the decision - there are very few businesses where how long somebody is has anything to do with their job performance.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[gstoddart]

Cutting jobs that aren't needed is one way to continue doing well by business standards.

Provided, of course, that these are actually jobs that aren't needed. Corporations sometimes suck at that part.

Several years ago, the entire project team I was on was notified we were being let go. As we got closer to our final days, Sales had their knickers in a twist because they had a huge business deal on the line for the product we built.

Trying to explain to a panicked salesman that fixing that bug or adding that feature wasn't going to happen because your last day is the end of the week is always fun. It boiled down to "wow, how unfortunate for you to be trying to close a multi-million dollar sale when the company has decided they don't need any of the people involved". Of course, the salesman was frantic about the sale and his commission -- couldn't quite understand why that was no longer our problem.

I've seen several instances where the bean counters decided to get rid of certain people without actually knowing what their role was.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[vlm]

Keep 5% extra on staff if you're expecting 5% growth next year and it takes weeks to years to get up to speed.

Dump people if you predict permanent long term economic decline.

Hmm, which future outcome are they apparently publicly predicting, and should I therefore buy or sell IBM stock?

Its not so much a current or historical thing as a future prediction.

Say it costs on average half a years pay in severance and half a year's pay in recruiting costs. You're betting that you won't need to hire people for expansion at least a year, or in IBM's case, frankly probably forever.

There are other hidden costs... only a madman or a desperate man would take a job at IBM knowing its only a matter of time until they randomly get the axe. In fact anyone with the ability to get a job elsewhere should hurry the F up and get out to any job, any where, especially IBMs competitors, because when IBM dies, their competitors will boom with all the new revenue. That has a HUGE medium to long term impact on productivity and corporate survival. IBM's only hope is to try and destroy their competition in the short term... watch for it.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[houghi]

I used to work at a company and they decided that each department needed a 50% cut in staff. This was calculated on actual staff, not on people actually being there.

One department should have 4 people. It was 2 people understaffed, so they fired one. Person got a nice handshake to leave. I believe several months (7 or 8) pay.

That person was re-hired after a month. I would not be surprised ig that person was hired with a higher pay then before.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[vlm]

Difference between education and training:

Educated guy has stuff to think about and do; hobbies; lasts a lifetime.

Trained guy has nothing to do but go to work, nothing to do at home but watch TV, maybe drink.

I've seen both types retire... uneducated retirement isn't pretty and they don't live long, educated guys have a freaking blast after retirement.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[MozeeToby]

Where do you work? Most every state in the US has at will employment; you can fire whoever you want whenever you want, as long as you aren't doing it in retaliation or to discriminate, and even then the burden is o the fired employee to prove. Maybe your company signs contracts with their employees, or explicitly states that you won't be fired without cause, or (more likely in general but given your 'playing solitaire' comment pretty unlikely) maybe they're unionized. But outside of those situations there's no reason your company couldn't fire 90% of their workforce tomorrow morning without warning.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who wants to retire? You sit in your house. Alone. Nothing to do. Better to just keep going into the office, and sharing your knowledge/skills.

Who wants to work? You sit in your cubicle. With your fellow cow orkers. You've got things to do - things so odious that others have to actually pay you to valuable money to do it. Better to just sit in your house, working on some project that you, personally, found so interesting you'd do it even though nobody's paying you, and share your knowledge/skills.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[thomasw_lrd]

Sounds like my job, only my bosses really can't get rid of me, cause I'm the only programmer, and the only one who can work on this colassal clusterfuck of a php/mysql webapp.

In fact, I'm so good at doing nothing, that I just got a bump in the bonus pool, and I get to work from home 3 days a week. Of course, I'm not being paid even half of software engineer median pay, but then again I live in the rural south, where everything costs a hell of a lot less than almost everywhere else, so it's a pretty good trade off.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[AdrianKemp]

I don't work in the US, I understand that your laws are better, however from what I know you're also a little ways from reality.

While it's true that the employee in the US has to prove discrimination to actually win any sort of suit, they by no means need to do so to cause serious problems for the company.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[vlm]

A prime example of theoretical vs practical.

The legal costs of defending someone filing a lawsuit, even a completely frivolous one, are so high compared to the cost of some salary that its cheaper to collect a folder of signed disciplinary actions and formal gathered evidence than to just toss them out on the street like a bouncer in an old western movie tossing a guy outta bar.

There are also numerous legal issues with your exaggerated example of firing 90% of your company... here we have "at will" theoretically, but the company has to pay a rather substantial fine to the state if they fire more than 50 people with less than 60 days warning. I really have no idea why. Technically its not "at will", in the same way that our financial system is not a "free market" but we pretend it more or less is.

Never forget than 50% of management is below median. You might think they would want to dispose of the deadweight, but they may be idiots.

Finally, or they may realize if they get rid of the peons they won't be able to justify their empire based on # of direct reports. One place I worked at, the manager really wanted to be a director, and he's not getting that promotion unless he has the minimum of X front line employees, so lots of solitaire was played. Out of business now, of course, but it was a rational strategy for that boss at that time. I'm sure he's a VP (if not higher) somewhere now.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[alexander_686]

It’s not a question of age or productivity. The issue (I am willing to bet) deals with actuary science and low interest rates. IBM has a lot of people on their Pension Plan. They tried to push people to a hybrid plan, but lost a court case.

Pension obligations are based on expected future payments (as calculated by actuaries) and discounted by a interest rate – in this case long term government bonds.

So we have older workers whose future payments are more or less fixed. Government interest tank, so the obligations go through the roof, so the company has to contribute more, so the older work’s (effective) pay goes through the roof. Kind of the dark side of having a defined benefit plan which few people talk about.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[mc6809e]

Where do you work? Most every state in the US has at will employment; you can fire whoever you want whenever you want, as long as you aren't doing it in retaliation or to discriminate, and even then the burden is o the fired employee to prove.

Mostly wrong. Your own link shows that 43 states have public policy exceptions that limit at-will employment, and 37 states have implied contract exceptions. There are also covenant of good faith and fair dealing exceptions.

Oh, then there is federal law.

There is no place in the USA with genuine at-will employment. If you fire someone, there's a chance you're going to get sued. Even if the case is without merit, a sympathetic jury can see you as a villain and nail your ass to the wall. Even you win the case, you can expect huge bills from your attorney.

Then there's the issue of being liable for the actions of your employees while they're on the job if they acted on their own and even in opposition to your directions.

Employing another person in the USA is legally hazardous. The law is definitely not on the side of the employer.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[Red Flayer]

This is exactly the sort of thing Steve Jobs was talking about in the quote about bean-counters taking over the company and loss of product focus.

Obviously you didn't read the thing Steve Jobs was talking about (or didn't retain the point he was making)... it wasn't bean-counters running the show that he found problematic, specifically it was salespeople running the show. More generally, it was non-product people running the show.

I know the zeitgeist on slashdot is to hate beancounters, but I think that's misplaced. Usually the beancounters take the bad rap among staff for decision by those made above them -- that's fine, we understand it's one of our roles (I'm speaking as a beancounter myself). But if you're going to analyze it from a higher perspective, you need to understand who is actually calling the shots -- it's rarely the beancounters (and I've yet to see any major company that isn't in bankruptcy (or near it) where finance runs the show -- it's almost always product or sales people).

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[Yaotzin]

Tall people do, statistically, earn more money though.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[Kittenman]

This is something that I feel has been lost in recent years, and I blame the political correctness garbage.

I work with people every day that have no job to do. I'm not talking about the typical "I'm the backbone of the company and without me they'd sink" attitude that so many people have. I mean they literally sit and play solitaire all day. They aren't doing bad work, because they don't have any to do.

Companies have a choice - you can be overstaffed when there's no crisis and have people sitting (basically) idle - but hopefully doing self-education (hopefully not minesweeper, but...) or be understaffed when there is a crisis. Most companies prefer the former.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[swb]

They can show you the door anytime but in most places they have to do it "for cause" in order to avoid paying you unemployment, which is actually fairly costly for an employer who is eliminating a *person* and not a position, as they will have to hire a new person for the position and train them, too, in addition to paying unemployment. The net effect is basically paying two salaries.

It's the "for cause" thing that makes it hard, you have to show that they were ignoring legitimate direction, had attendance problems or violated legal company policies and were given ample opportunity to correct their behavior.

Without cause, they can easily collect unemployment as well as hire an attorney and fish for more money based on their protected class status (ie, black, woman, older, etc) even if they have little grounds on which to pursue action. There's a lot of experienced attorneys who know how to turn a termination without cause into a quick $10k settlement. That's an easy nickel for the client, plus unemployment. I call that getting fired plus a week in Florida.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[vlm]

Hmm my point was not just fire the bottom half, but to realize that what a smart /.er would consider blindingly obvious might be far beyond the ability of perhaps the bottom half of managers, especially the lower level ones.

Sometimes it sucks to work for a guy who got his job solely based on his golf game, or who his daddy is... that's your fault for not gaming it into a new scenario where it rocks to work for someone who got his job solely based on his golf game, or who his daddy is... In the long run that behavior will destroy the company, but no one cares about the long run anymore, so...

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[drsmithy]

You seem to disagree though, what restrictions (aside from criminal discrimination) would you place on a business removing employees?

A legitimate reason.

"Your job no longer exists" is a legitimate reason. So is "you're incompetent".

"We're going to fire you today so we can hire you back tomorrow to do the same work on half the pay" or "we're going to fire you so we can hire the new CEO's son into the same position" are not.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[timeOday]

Kind of the dark side of having a defined benefit plan which few people talk about.

That's the entire point of a defined benefit plan. That's what "defined" means. It means the company is taking on the risk of unpredictable future returns, giving the employee a predictable standard of living in retirement.

But it turns out this was theoretical for those of us beneath a certain age. 10 years ago I was told there was so much money in my company's pension fund they didn't know what to do with it. So they gave existing retirees a raise in their pensions. Then once the market tanked, the pension fund went broke so they cancelled it for new hires and curtailed future accruals for current employees, shifting us to 401k's. What might those be worth when we need them? It is unknowable. Meanwhile existing retirees are sitting pretty in expensive neighborhoods drawing their bloated benefits. Oh yeah, they got pre-medicare health coverage too. Now cancelled.

I really think Social Security is a good idea, since there is no predictability at the level of individuals. However, Social Security needs to be tied to the long-term median income (say, 10 years) of current workers instead of inflation. Today's retirees seem to be oblivious to what is going on to current workers and our poor prospects for financial security in old age.

Re:They're acting like they're in trouble!

[alexander_686]

But that is expensive. A company could go out and buy the exact same benefits for their employees via a life insurance company – but at much higher cost.

Life Insurance companies (effectively) have to discount their liabilities at government bond rates – which are guaranteed. I mean, if you are going to guaranty a rate, and returns are linked to risk, that implies a low risk, and thus a low return.

I think you are a bit off on Social Security. Currently benefits are tied to Average Wage Index, not inflation. (And yes, Congress will sometimes step in a goose the figures up a bit when inflation goes up faster then the Average Wage Index, but that is the exception, not the rule.)

But back to pensions – and those are expensive. A company could go out and buy the exact same benefits for their employees via a life insurance company – but at much higher cost.

Life Insurance companies (effectively) have to discount their liabilities at government bond rates – which are guaranteed. I mean, if you are going to guaranty a rate, and returns are linked to risk, that implies a low risk, and thus a low return.

Private companies can use a much higher rate, usually a blend of stock market rates and corporate bonds – and thus are much freer to take risk.

It’s not that I am against pensions – it’s just that I am against the bad actuarial assumptions that most company plans make.

I will point you to a contra example. When AIG blew up, and the government had to bail out corporate, you might have noticed that they did not have to bail out the fixed annuity arm. That’s because 1. the life insurance was segregated out with their own accounts, 2. the pension obligations were conservatively modeled – by state regulators who are not interested in bailing out life insurance companies.

Really?

[Antony T Curtis]

I had thought that IBM had a problem with attrition among their mainframe programmers: More of them dying though natural causes than entering the field.

crossover point

[vlm]

If IBM were not closing in the US and moving completely to China and India as fast as they can, just like GE and a zillion other companies, lets figure out the crossover point:
Assume one months pay per year of employment.
This is guarantee of 70% of 18 months or about one years pay. Along with 18 months of health insurance, I'd assume.
So if you have more than 12 years in, you should risk it, you'll probably come out ahead. Less than 12 years in, you'd be better off taking the offer.

Most likely they're going to downsize every american citizen in their corporation, so you do appear to be better off taking the offer because its not a random distribution.

I'm also curious in salaried positions if you're expected to put in 50 hours per week for a "40 hour schedule", then what does 60% of schedule even mean, like you no longer work Monday and Friday at all, or you're still expected to put in 50 hours per week, except now on a imaginary "24 hour schedule"?

And a message for the last F500 employee in america, please remember to shut off the lights on your way out of the office...

Re:crossover point

[dubbreak]

I'm also curious in salaried positions if you're expected to put in 50 hours per week for a "40 hour schedule", then what does 60% of schedule even mean, like you no longer work Monday and Friday at all, or you're still expected to put in 50 hours per week, except now on a imaginary "24 hour schedule"?

I'm curious as well. It's not like IBM employees bill for every minute of overtime (especially where I live which falls under legislation lobbied by EA that excludes software developers from requiring overtime pay). My wife, a nurse, gets overtime in 15 minute increments (works 1-15 extra minutes gets paid for 15, 16-30 gets paid for 30 etc). If she was on a 60% schedule it would be explicit and any overtime would be paid out. Maybe they'll work a 3 day week? Sounds good to me, plus I put money you'd get a lot more bang for your buck. People tend to be more efficient when they work less hours and are better relaxed (from 4 days off).

Re:crossover point

[vlm]

If they'll accept the same level of software "quality", and if they'll accept made up resume stuffing and imaginary degrees, and if they'd accept everything taking 5 times as long as having a $60K local do it, I'd take that offer. Heck I'd take three or four of those jobs simultaneously. Now we're talkin...

Re:crossover point

[Gwala]

As a manager over a team in Shanghai; I can confirm that salaries are rapidly equalising there as well; you also need to pay very high payroll taxes (up to 40%); so the cost advantage is beginning to go away. (Where 5 years ago you could hire a team for the price of a single american developer; now you only get ~2 people)

On the upside; the food is better in China.

Re:crossover point

[Microlith]

Eventually it will be a global market

It's not a global market until I can move to the areas where the cost of living is cheaper and look for work on a whim. I can't, however.

It's a global market, but only for corporations.

What a crock of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

My father was just released from them last year. He was a senior level engineer 3 years away from retiring, and then they come out with this?

Re:What a crock of shit

[GungaDan]

"Hallo! My name is anonymous coward. You sacked my father. Prepare to learn Mandarin."

Re:old people don't know anything about computers

[ZorinLynx]

Heh, I'm sure you're being facetious.. but in the tiny event that you're not...

A while back we had some IBM big iron on campus, and our regular IBM tech was a guy in his (estimated) high 50s. Never have I seen someone who so *intricately* knows their shit as this man. He casually explained to me, while working, exactly what the capacitor cards do in the p690, why the system is designed the way it is, and so on. His troubleshooting ability was amazing, too.

This is expected when you have three to four DECADES of experience. A newly minted college grad may be able to sling C# code like there's no tomorrow but he won't have this experience.

I think IBM is making a mistake by letting these people go, and I'm betting they'll suffer down the line for it.

Incredibly good idea at any time

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a large company where the senior folks have an attractive retirement plan. Since work is slowing down and there are fewer exciting projects to work on, more of these folks are deciding to leave. They can decide to pull the ripcord rather abruptly with an email saying they've decided to burn up their remaining vacation pay while waiting for their retirement package to be processed. It kind of sucks to need to talk with someone who is the sole holder of some technical data to find out they had announced their retirement the week before and are now gone.

On top of how their abrupt departure can leave some of us more junior people stranded, a lot of these guys don't know HOW to retire. They're so fully part of the Borg that once they separate, they have no idea what to do with themselves. Some come back eighteen months later as consultants or part time employees. Others sit at home and whither away. I don't think is as much a problem for Gen X'ers and younger, as we've got so much going on in our outside lives we can't wait to be free to pursue those interests. However, a lot of the senior people have given so much time to the company they're lost without it... institutionalized, if you will.

Yeah, I think this is a great idea, whether it's to initiate a RIF or not.

Re:Incredibly good idea at any time

[SecurityGuy]

It kind of sucks to need to talk with someone who is the sole holder of some technical data to find out they had announced their retirement the week before and are now gone.

This is something many companies do badly, and one reason they may feel they have too many people on the payroll. They have no depth. They're a collection of single points of failure where every single one of them is guaranteed to fail, many in the next decade or so.

If your company has experienced employees who are the only holders of technical (or other) knowledge that is worth keeping, the time to worry about it is before they leave. It's before they get near retirement age. It's before your formerly gruntled employees become dis-. Really, the time to preserve it is not too long after it's become valuable.

Re:Incredibly good idea at any time

[Anonymous Coward]

On top of how their abrupt departure can leave some of us more junior people stranded, a lot of these guys don't know HOW to retire. They're so fully part of the Borg that once they separate, they have no idea what to do with themselves. Some come back eighteen months later as consultants or part time employees. Others sit at home and whither away. I don't think is as much a problem for Gen X'ers and younger, as we've got so much going on in our outside lives we can't wait to be free to pursue those interests.

I was in my cube, and I was just like reading Slashdot with my headphones on while my subconscious thought about how all these damn classes and methods fit together,
But then again I was reading about retiring,
And then my boss came in and I didn't even know she was there.
She tapped on my desk because I had the headphones on and I didn't hear her, and then she started screaming "MIKE! MIKE!"
And I go: "What, what's the matter?"
She goes: "What's the matter with you?"
I go: "There's nothing wrong,"
She's all: "Don't tell me that, you're slacking off!"
I go: "No, I'm not slacking off, I'm OK, I was just thinking you know, when a programmer stares at the walls he is working."
She goes: No! That's not Agile!"
I go: "No, I'm just thinking!"
She goes: "No, you're not thinking, you're slacking off! Productive people have more effective habits!"
I go: "Look, just tell me about the RIF programme, please?
All I want is to retire, roll over the 401(k), and she wouldn't let me.
Just a gold-spraypainted parachute.
And IBM wouldn't give it to me!
(I just wanted my retirement. AND THEY WOULDN'T GIVE IT TO ME!)

I'm not crazy! - INSTITUTIONALIZED!
You're the one that's crazy! - INSTITUTIONALIZED!
You're driving me crazy!- INSTITUTIONALIZED!
They stuck me in the Institution,
Building them an agile solution,
To help make sure my career is developed,
To protect them from the competition - myself.

I was sitting in my cube when the my boss and the HR manager came in and they pulled up a chair and they sat down.
They go: "Mike, we need to talk to you."
And I go: "Okay what's the matter?"
They go: "Me and the HR department have been noticing lately that you've been reading a lot of /. lately,
And you've been going off the grid for no reason,
And we're afraid you're going to hurt our bottom line,
And we're afraid you're going to hurt your career prospects.
So we decided that it would be in you're best interest if we helped you find a place
Where you could get the career guidance that you need.

And I go: "Wait, what are you talking about, WE decided!?
MY best interests?! How do you know what MY best interest is?
How can you say what MY best interest is? What are you trying to say, I'M crazy?
When I went to YOUR schools,
I went to YOUR six-sigma centers,
I went to YOUR sensitivity training seminars?!
So how can you say I'M crazy?
I'm not crazy! - INSTITUTIONALIZED!
You're the one that's crazy! - INSTITUTIONALIZED!
You're driving me crazy!- INSTITUTIONALIZED!
They stuck me in the Institution,
Building them an agile solution,
To help make sure my career is developed,
To protect them from the competition - myself.

Doesn't matter, I'll probably get laid off anyway.

Re:old people don't know anything about computers

[Anonymous Coward]

Kid....computer and programmers existed long before your parents where born.
Making a statement like this only reveals that YOU don't know ANYTHING about computers.

Google Ada Lovelace, google Donald Knuth, google, Charles Babbage, google Sir Tim Berners Lee, google Steve Wozniak, google Konrad Zuse, google Wilhelm Schickard, google Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, google Herman Hollerith. google Alan Turing.

YOU are N0ob. Now go back and play some idiotic shooter game.

Re:old people don't know anything about computers

[P-niiice]

They'll save money by cutting back on troubleshooting and move toward throwing in new cards. No need for that experience. Let the guy go and end up with another unemployed nobody who a certain party can blame for their "failure".

A Safe Way Out - Anecdotal

[cosm]

This is purely anecdotal, but from experiences with past co-workers who have been in the IBM trenches, it apparently isn't unheard of to get sacked a few months out from retirement at IBM, thus losing benefits or full retirement or whatever. So I'm guessing to those at IBM in the throes of fear of being sacked, this is perhaps an out to prevent being completely screwed and perhaps from an MBA standpoint a moral stabilizer (or destabilizer depending on your business unit).

Any IBM'ers feel free to chime in? My story is simply hearsay so I'd be interested in knowing how it really is under the various tentacles of that hydra.

Re:A Safe Way Out - Anecdotal

[pak9rabid]

This happened to a good friend of my father's back in the '90s. He was a loyal employee of 27 years and they canned him right before retirement. Seems to be (or was) business as usual up there.

70% pay for 60% of their schedule...

[kungfugleek]

That's an empty promise. IBM will just keep forcing them to work overtime and now only pay them 70% of their salary.

Ran it through Google's Bullshit Translator

[crazyjj]

Ran "Guaranteed employment through Dec. 31, 2013 and offers participants 70% of their pay for working 60% of their schedule" through Google's Bullshit Translator and got back "We'll promise to keep you on for another year if you'll agree to a 30% pay cut."

Re:old people don't know anything about computers

[cdrguru]

This is the sort of attitude that permeates the computer industry today. This is why we have people building software that absolutely and faithfully recreates the problems that were solved in the 1960s and 1970s - the people doing the work have absolutely rejected the idea that there is anything to learn from the past. History is dead to them because they think everything they are doing is new and different. They think they are striking out in unknown territory when in fact they are just walking alongside the same path that was covered 40 years ago.

Today, many of the same problems that are encountered are simply recreations of things that happened before. A huge problem is file systems that do not have sufficient robustness to deal with unexpected outages and hardware errors. If you have a file system that fails if you shut the power off unexpectedly at the wrong time you have something that was designed from a blank piece of paper. This kind of problem was dealt with in the 1970s in several different environments but nobody working on recent file systems have any experience with those solutions. Mostly because "it is all new" is an attitude and considering anyone over the age of 40 to be outmoded and incapable of dealing with all this new stuff.

Re:old people don't know anything about computers

[P-niiice]

Companies think they can build systems to retain the knowledge that actual experienced employees would give them. And they end up spending multiples of their salaries to do it. And it never works, and always gets torn down for the next management book of the month.

Re:Does It Involve Being Digitized?

[ajlitt]

That explains Watson: an all-digital mechanical Turk that feeds on the souls of employees who expected a pension.

Except IBM has been a cash balance plan since 1999

[tlambert]

You have your facts wrong; IBM has a cash balance plan ("hybrid plan"). They didn't lose the lawsuit, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal after IBM won.

Specifically, July 1, 1999; I was an IBM employee at the time they converted.

In a cash balance pension plan, like a defined benefit plan, there is no favoritism in contribution for tenure, so getting rid of the older workers doesn't benefit IBM, so long as the older workers are productive.

You should read up on cash balance plans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_balance_plan

You should also realize that ranknfile-ue.org and endicottalliance.org (alliance@ibm) are propaganda arms of the CWA (Communications Workers of America) union, and that the CWA has been trying to get their camel's nose into the IBM tent for forever, ever since they saw the handwriting on the wall about the Internet becoming a big deal. They have their origins in the telephone industry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_America#History

When I was at IBM, we never gave them the time of day.

* First of all, very few IBM employees are technically communications workers; all of the CWAs historical strikes to date have been against telephone companies.

* Second, we were very well paid with very good benefits, and there was no reason to hold IBM's butt to the fire in exchange for the CWA getting a percentage of our paychecks to line their pockets.

You really need to RTFA and look at who sourced it.

-- Terry