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> What I never heard was any constructive career advice, or any details other than the outsourcing and cheap foreigners. I don't think the purpose of their tir

by steego 11y ago

> What I never heard was any constructive career advice, or any details other than the outsourcing and cheap foreigners. I don't think the purpose of their tirade was to provide you with career advice. It sounds like they were bitter that they invested time and energy in their career and they were resentful of managers replacing them with an option that seemed cheaper. They probably grew up in a time where you could work for a company for life. I bet IBM seemed like a great place to work when they started. Can't you empathize with them even if you find yourself making better life choices?

wpietri 11y ago
Yeah, I have had a number of reasonable conversations like this with people. For a lot of people, I think part of the purpose of the conversation is offering a warning (combined with a bit of venting). That they aren't explicitly saying, "And the moral of the story is..." doesn't mean there isn't something that we can't learn from it.
rpcope1 11y ago
Can confirm about IBM. Dad spent the majority of his career at IBM as an engineer working on various mainframe platforms (and some AS/400 stuff later on); he mentioned that in the 70's an IBM check was about as good as gold; they were all promised pensions and that they'd be taken care of out into retirement, hence why there were many "lifers" like dad. The culture back then was such that if you changed jobs every single year, "there must have been something really wrong with you, since you couldn't hold a job down." Fast forward to the late 2000's and IBM had kind of been turned on it's head; Dad was real close to retirement and hoping to get out with a pension while he still could but got cut a year before he could retire, when IBM moved a huge swath of it's big iron resources to Indian firms, which is a hell of a shame. I've met a lot of these guys, and while it's unfortunate that many of them can't adapt, I think there's a serious lesson to be learned here, as they got pretty screwed by their employer. This is the reason unless I have some very personal involvement in something I'm doing, I won't break my back for my employer, I won't work 80 hours a week, I won't deal with someone jerking my chain, because you better bet few (if any) employers will ever do the same for you, and I'd hate to get later into life like that and realize I committed a huge part of my life uncompensated to an organization that didn't ever really care about me. I think that's at the root of what has torn a lot of these guys (and gals) up, is that's not how it was seen 40-50 years ago.

by steego 11y ago

wpietri 11y ago

Yeah, I have had a number of reasonable conversations like this with people. For a lot of people, I think part of the purpose of the conversation is offering a warning (combined with a bit of venting). That they aren't explicitly saying, "And the moral of the story is..." doesn't mean there isn't something that we can't learn from it.

rpcope1 11y ago

Can confirm about IBM. Dad spent the majority of his career at IBM as an engineer working on various mainframe platforms (and some AS/400 stuff later on); he mentioned that in the 70's an IBM check was about as good as gold; they were all promised pensions and that they'd be taken care of out into retirement, hence why there were many "lifers" like dad. The culture back then was such that if you changed jobs every single year, "there must have been something really wrong with you, since you couldn't hold a job down." Fast forward to the late 2000's and IBM had kind of been turned on it's head; Dad was real close to retirement and hoping to get out with a pension while he still could but got cut a year before he could retire, when IBM moved a huge swath of it's big iron resources to Indian firms, which is a hell of a shame. I've met a lot of these guys, and while it's unfortunate that many of them can't adapt, I think there's a serious lesson to be learned here, as they got pretty screwed by their employer. This is the reason unless I have some very personal involvement in something I'm doing, I won't break my back for my employer, I won't work 80 hours a week, I won't deal with someone jerking my chain, because you better bet few (if any) employers will ever do the same for you, and I'd hate to get later into life like that and realize I committed a huge part of my life uncompensated to an organization that didn't ever really care about me. I think that's at the root of what has torn a lot of these guys (and gals) up, is that's not how it was seen 40-50 years ago.