This doesn't really surprise me. At some point IBM did the numbers and figured out they were more profitable concentrating on services, and they ditched their p

This doesn't really surprise me. At some point IBM did the numbers and figured out they were more profitable concentrating on services, and they ditched their printer division, ditched their storage division, ditched their laptop division, etc.. Companies are supposed to be money making machines that always follow logical decisions to make more, it's supposed to make selling business services/software to them easier because you just have to prove you'll save them money, but I don't think a lot of them would have changed over like that. They play hard ball, even with themselves. That said, I've worked for IBM, and was treated very well. I worked overtime all the time, though, and it wasn't odd to see managers around even very late at night doing the same thing. I don't think I've ever had a full time programming job where everyone didn't work overtime for salary without overtime pay, actually. I think there were some contractors around when I was there, but they counted their hours, only did little jobs that amounted to exactly what they were told, and were not very effective or useful. You didn't want one on your projects, that was for sure. So it doesn't surprise me if IT professionals who start demanding that start getting listed as more expensive for the business and cut out. It is the logical money making decision by the business after all.