3 ms·

> On the other hand, my dad did not drop dead, but he did end up spending the last ~25 years of his life with little to do other than some light woodworking and

• rootusrootus 4y ago
  Ha! I don't know what it was like working at IBM back in the day. I will say that was when they still did the summer picnics[0] and winter Christmas parties with elves who handed out gifts for all the kids. And I still have (somewhere here in my desk, even) the actual silver spoon they gave my dad when I was born, engraved with my name. I'm not sure what the office environment was really like. My dad was a systems engineer, but went to work in a suit & tie. I think he was essentially what we'd call a sales engineer today. Finished out his career on AS/400s. I almost bought him an old working AS/400 off eBay as a gift, since the smallest ones were not much more than an overgrown PC. I mostly have fond memories of those days. That was a different IBM than today. Back then when they moved you to another office across the country, IBM would buy your current house from you at market price so you could easily make the move and buy a new house where you were going. My dad did that a couple times before landing permanently in Portland. [0] speaking of the picnics, I recall the joke about how the PCjr was created. The engineers and sales folks were very competitive, and during some heated talk at a picnic, the sales folks boasted that they were so good they could sell *anything* the engineers could dream up. Engineer reply: "Wanna bet?" We had a PCjr ourselves. They gave them out to employees for peanuts.