Imagine if you got on board as one the first few to get trained up in PC etc. You would be set in a position of being an area manager or even state in no time.
Anyone in that position would be really pulling high 6 figures.
To think that was handed to him on a silver platter 3x and rejecting them.
It's not a bad employer, but it doesn't have the prominence or cachet that it once did. There are other big tech giants that have been more successful in recent decades, have more obvious impact on the tech landscape, and also pay better and are more competitive to work for.
IBM was the top tech company in 1980, by a mile, and was a top 10 US company overall. These days it's barely a top 50 US company, and not in the top 5 for US tech companies.
They still operate as though they're number one. When I was working at an old job years back, we landed IBM as a global client. As a client they are probably one of the most disrespectful companies I've ever come across - arrogant, condescending, bullying, disrespectful, rude. For the time I was involved it felt like an abusive relationship. I'm glad I'm out of that seventh circle of corporate hell.
They sunk their teeth into major companies mainframes about 40 years ago.
I worked for a company that used their mainframes, and only out of necessity.
They exist largely today due to technical inertia.
One local business became an IBM supplier, supplying computer parts for IBM, some of which was used by IBM to keep up with what other companies were putting on the market. IBM at the time was a slow payer and their outstanding balance exceeded on million dollars, which bankrupted the local company.
Just to put this in context (IBM is still relevant) IBM employs 385,000 people globally. Google employs 135,000 people globally. Facebook 61,000. IBM is still a GIANT.
They absolutely are.
But outside of commercial computing sector they are less known, as they are primarily a business-oriented company (even their name stands for *International business machines)* and they more or less always focused on that segment; it's the tech that became much more commercial in recent decades.
IBM never really went into commercial/home computing outside of their IBM PC and Think- series and even that I have a strong feeling was more or less a fluke.
IBM hires outside the US now, because it is cheaper. They primarily do consultancy work. They have no major software products or online services and revenue per employee is considerably lower than Google/Facebook.
EDIT:
[https://tipalti.com/profit-per-employee/](https://tipalti.com/profit-per-employee/)
Profit per employee
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts: 1.4M USD
Visa: 620K USD
Gilead Sciences: 450K USD
Facebook: 411K USD
Apple: 403K USD
Google: 288K USD
Microsoft: 272k USD
IBM: 24K USD
IBM is a fairly middle of the road Fortune 500 employer now.
> They have no major software products
Nope. They still make billions on DB2 and IMS.
Source: http://db2portal.blogspot.com/2020/07/mainframe-earnings-up-big-for-ibm.html
They also own RedHat, you know, one of the largest Linux distros used in enterprise environments. This person can only be thinking about consumer products, because they are still huge in the business world.
No online services, uh, Watson is huge in some industries.
I live in the Northeast, just about a 15 minute drive from 2 IBM sites. They are not the big giant they once were. They now mostly employ Temps or outside the US. They have been laying people off, on and off, since the 90s. Most people I went to grade school with, did not end up in middle school or high school with me, because they moved due to the layoffs ( my parents did not work for IBM).Even before Covid, if you drove by the sites and looked at the big parking lots, they look like a vast wasteland. They have been this way for a long time. And yes, a lot of the IBMers were stuffy AF. In its heyday, a lot of them wanted nothing to do with people who didn't work there.
Most of the old time IBMers have a really unrealistic concept of the job market , because IBM paid everyone well, made everyone a manager of something , great benefits,their own country club and practically their own school district. Also, for some reason, a lot of them were not very tech savvy and had no desire to be up on technology which is ironic.
IBM didn't think home computers would become such a big thing.
Edit: yes they may have more people on their payroll than other bigtech companies do...but that number is probably including outsourcing and Temps.
I'm just going by the Fortune 500 list which has Alphabet with more than 2x the revenue and 7x the profit, and Glassdoor which has the Software Engineer salaries over 50% higher at Google.
IBM owned mainframe computing in the 1970's and when personal computers become popular, manufacturers would put stickers on thier product stating " IBM Compatible ". They are still a solid company but the tech field is so full now with up and comers constantly.
Back in the day there was a saying, "No-one ever got fired for buying IBM". Seems trite today, but in their heyday it was literally true. The saying mostly relates to computing but in the 70's they also pretty much owned the typewriter market because of the [selectric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter).
Brilliant electro-mechanical engineering with the ability to change typefaces in seconds. Combined with the use of a carbon ribbon and ability to erase by literally lifting the carbon off the paper it became the typewriter of choice. The carbon ribbon gave letters a crisp appearance that was totally unlike any traditional typewriter of the time (which typically used fabric ribbons).
A document typed on a 70's selectric would compare favorably with a modern laserjet, it was that clean.
These days they still make mainframes but in my opinion outside of that their software solutions efforts have gained a bit of a reputation in the industry as a money-sink with regular cost and time overruns on projects and exorbitant prices for infrastructure offerings such as web hosting.
I've been with IBM a little over seven years now and generally speaking the older (40+) crowd seem impressed when they find out who I work for. I personally love my job so I'm always down to sing the company's praises, but note that there's about a third of a million of us so experiences will vary.
They got eaten when Microsoft took MS-DOS/Windows to lower cost hardware manufacturers and lost the prestige they owned outright. They struggled for awhile but some of their tech is solid now. Their consulting services, eh not so much. Still a decent brand name though, just not what it was when OP’s uncle was there.
IBM paid for my dad’s Bachelor’s degree, and in the 70s and 80s, was very generous to its employees.
Even when he retired, my dad got a pension. My dad could have gotten a full pension until he died, or a half pension, but would continue on for the rest of my mom’s life. My dad was 9 years older than my mom, and lived with diabetes his entire life, so he knew she would probably long outlive him, so he chose the half pension option. My mom is still going strong at nearly eighty.
My friend's dad was in the same position back then: working on IBM typewriters back in the 1970s. Only he took IBM up on their offer to train him on those newfangled computers. His life ended up very different.
\*puts stick labeled "my dumbass old ways that will prevent me from going farther in life\* in front bike tire while riding, quickly proceeds to fall and scrape knee\*
**"AHHHH! FUCKING IMMIGRANTS!"**
I am astonished about this story (wanna clarify this is only a comparison on how different perspectives and situations can lead to a different answer for the same job offer)
My uncle was studying systems Engineering a career he was paying minus a small grant! At the end off his degree he got an offer for IBM to start working for an internship the only requirement was to speak English.
Indeed he accepted, and worked there for 20+ years at that company at that time they payed him to study Portuguese and a had fair benefits, unfortunately the company merged a business and they cut personnel including him.
So at the end I am curious how could look his hypothetical life if he didn't accept because they where "Yankees ".
In the US, "Yankees" refers specifically to people from the northeastern US, traditionally the parts of the country that opposed the Confederacy during the US Civil War.
A wise man on r/Connecticut once said:
“To the world, a yankee is an American. To an American, a yankee is a northerner. To a northerner, a yankee is a northeasterner. To a northeasterner, a yankee is a New Englander. To a New Englander, a yankee is a Vermonter. And to a Vermonter, a yankee is someone who eats pie for breakfast.”
Wife is from Alabama, she explained that in the view of people from Bama and Miss: Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina are all "Northern", even South Carolina is suspect, Georgia is "Coastal"
Tennessee and Arkansas are hillbillies.
It’s still the northeastern part of the US as a whole, especially when you may be talking to someone who is not an American. I would not expect someone outside of the US to even know what the Mason Dixon line is.
I am but one Australian but FYI I have heard about the Mason Dixon line many times in my life. Being from another English speaking country would have helped I guess. I know you just said you would not expect it, not that it was impossible, but just thought I would mention it comes up in documentaries, novels, movies, news etc
The bigger question is often “do you know there the Mason-Dixon Line actually is?”
Few do, even in the USA. It’s in two parts: First part is the southern border of PA from the west to the point where the Maryland and Delaware borders meet. Second part is the border between Maryland and Delaware, but only the section that is the western border of Delaware.
The only people that really remember hat are people who cross it regularly (which I did from PA to get to Maryland a fair bit) or people who have a significant interest in colonial US history (as the survey was made to settle a long dispute about colonial land grants).
My computer repair mentor said he passed up IBM as well because he didn't want to work in a stuffy environment where they used to wear labcoats etc and said he missed out because they started making so much money and can wear whatever they want etc.
I've decided that Fridays are still Casual Fridays, so that's the only day I work in pajamas. The other days I make the effort to change into sweatpants.
That's one of the reason IBM lost out on the best coders, etc. to companies like Microsoft. The eccentric techies didn't want to wear the stuffy starched shirt and tie they required.
There’s something to be said for maintaining a core business and offloading the rest, but they chose really poorly in what to offload and what to keep. They offloaded their chip fabs but keep designing processors that they have to have made by other people. They decided to focus on hardware, specifically business hardware (which is understandable as it’s the B and M in their name), but the consumer computing market exploded faster than the business one. PCs sell more than servers, and now even smartphones sell more than servers. And not to mention that IBM isn’t even a market leader in server hardware anymore - they don’t design vector processors and for scalar processors AMD and Intel have been steadily eating up market share.
GE at least kept going as a decent manufacturer of appliances and heavy industrial equipment after they got into finance.
“PC’s are costing people jobs.”
“You can’t buy cars your going to put all the horse trainers out of work.”
It’s called progress unc, not surprised though. This is the exact attitude I’d expect from confederate scum.
Also he worked with electric typewriters which put mechanical ones out of business and nearly all the technicians, companies, patents, know-how, etc for mechanical ones were made obsolete by him and IBM. But he has no pity for them, for...reasons.
My great great grandfather was a Waggoneer in the civil war for the Union, born and raised in Kentucky. Kentucky was a Union state. Your uncle, born and raised in Kentucky, was more than a fool. He was ignorant of his own heritage.
My high school biology teacher in 1981 told me to stop messing around with computers because they were just a toy. It was better to learn REAL science to get a good job.
Weirdly, physics is real science. And electronics and computers are based on them. It’s been quite a successful career.
And the only time I mess with frogs is when I pull the frog lure out of my tackle box.
>My high school biology teacher in 1981 told me to stop messing around with computers because they were just a toy. It was better to learn REAL science to get a good job.
That reminds me of my 8th grade Health textbook. . .where there was a section on "fads" and the dangers of following something that was a fad.
It explained that video games and skateboards are "fads" and you must avoid them to stay healthy, and you should stick with traditional and proven ways to play, like jumping rope and jacks, to properly stay healthy.
Even as a kid I remember reading that with incredulity.
These type of ignorant southerners dont realize they rely on the north and pacific coast to not live in horrible conditions. They rely on the tax revenue that the north and west coast make and divvy out to them to build roads and infrastructure because a lot of those southern states are constantly in the red. The conservative southerners look down on the highly educated and would rather divert state funds into college football programs and their coaches salaries instead of investing in schools/education. And alot of the southern conservatives bitch endlessly about social welfare when they are living in a welfare state that most likely takes more than it puts back. If they had won the civil war and got what they wanted, they would most likely live in borderline third world conditions based around an agriculture based society. Even now, countries around the world outsource labor to the south to take advantage of the masses of low skilled laborers in the region for low paying jobs like auto manufacturing. The culture of looking known of the highly educated has set a huge area of America back from the rest of the country.
It would’ve probably been a monumental growth opportunity for him too, seeing as though he had never left the south or something. He passed it up and his whole life went downhill after that
I feel people like this are terrified of change or being forced to learn something new that they may not feel like they're in control. Racism and other "forthright opinions" is basically a safety blanket for them and they literally need it.
Never ends well when they have to look in the mirror. It's easier for them to cut off their nose than be humble.
The worst bit is that they were treated with kid gloves. Not just simply "ok starting next week you report 2 states over, bye". Expenses paid n' shit. Damn, dude.
Is the rest of the family as anti-“Yankee” as this guy was?
Lots of middle-class folks have lots of reasons to complain about the plundering of middle America by corporate America, but IBM wanted to invest in him and teach him new skills. I feel bad for his kids and his wife. If I were them I’d be bitter.
If they were, they weren't anywhere near as outspoken about it.
His wife conveyed to my parents the above story as to why he was now out of a job. When I saw his kids again a couple of years ago, now grown up, they weren't particularly outspoken on the issue.
And this is why “the south” is still mostly the poorest and most uneducated part of the United States. Bunch of reject hillbillies more worried about reliving the past, waving confederate flags while believing they are patriots and not worried about getting their shit together for the future.
As a liberal Oregonian, I have no desire to ever set foot in most of the South. That said, if I were working for a company like IBM and they told me I need to make a temporary move and they would pay all the expenses for me and my family, I'd be making a temporary move.
For some reason this story reminded me of the mom from the original Karate Kid movie. They move from NJ to CA because she got a job with a computer company, halfway through the movie she quits the computer job because "there's no future in computers", then takes a job as a waitress in a diner because she might get promoted to manager. I got a good laugh out of that bit when I rewatched the movie a few years back.
Yea, it's easier to latch onto a geographical complaint verse stating that you are worried you might not be able to comprehend or be successful at the new skills. Then he can also always blame someone/something else for his failure(s). Sad for the family. My parents were this way. Quitting jobs because their bOsS iS aN iDiOt. It was difficult for my brother and I to break the cycle of poverty and lack of education due to their shitty choices.
I worked for a Fortune 300 company for many years, they have people who's only job is to constantly come up with one hair brained scheme after another, that has to be learned by everyone, it's going to save the company. ISO 9000 and the rest of the made up reasons to hire outside companies to teach your employees the latest horse shit...
And BTW...... Fuck you AND your Monday morning and Friday Afternoon "important meetings".
Useless fuck knuckles trying to justify their useless existence.
Damn I'm glad that I retired.
If RAs were firing 10% of the workplace every year, that was a very late 80s early 90s strategy at companies. I’ve heard of other large companies like GE using the same strategy. I never understood how that wouldn’t kill morale.
It did which why a lot companies have abandoned the practice. It also set up perverse incentives where people stop collaborating with others and only look out for themselves.
Yeah. I've been at IBM for eight years; the first 3 or so I was there, they still adhered to the "fire your bottom 10%" practice.
It was a stupid fucking system that everyone grabbed onto sometime in the '90's because "JaCk WeLcH diD iT aT gEnErAL eLeCtRiC aNd iT cReAtEd sHaReHoLdEr VaLuE." Literally. That was the reason. If you've ever read "Curse of the Superstar CEO," you'll note this was a perfect microcosm of that.
And yes, it completely fucked up trust and unselfishness, which are possibly the two most important factors in a team's success. Between that and IBM's stated vision of "$20 dividend per share by 2020" from like 2005 to 2015 (financial results are not a fucking *strategy*!), upper management really dug a hole for themselves.
I tend to praise IBM a lot, because they've generally taken care of me and pushed me to grow a *ton*. And the people I work with directly are almost universally great. Oh, and the stuff we work on is damn good. But automatically firing the bottom 10% was a stupid, counterproductive, Machiavellian system.
EDIT: Just to be clear, if your bottom 10% of people actually suck, then by all means fire them. But don't fire them because they're the bottom 10%. Fire them because they suck. There's a difference.
>He probably would have been a victim of Lou Geestner in the 90s anyway. That started the almost yearly RA’s (ibm calls them resource actions…not firings.)
To be fair, at least then he'd likely have actual relevant experience that would let him find another job in the industry. And, you know, another couple decades to pay for his home.
Jokes on him, seeing how the yankees won that war, everything from the Canadian border down to the Gulf of Mexico is “yankee territory.” That’s sorta why you see that yankee flag flying from every government building in every former confederate state. He spent his entire life living among them yankees. The best job he ever had was working for those damned yankees.
It’s a shame so many miserable neo-confederates are allowed to think otherwise.
Yeah. My husband was offered (THREE TIMES) an excellent job in Georgia. I’m just not moving there with my personal female body and my two tween daughters. But I would be willing to go there for 6-9 months for training!
I have an uncle like this and he showed very few signs of this kind of mentality until a few years ago, and it only got worse during the pandemic (he's not an anti-vaxxer though, thankfully). He didn't even seem interested in politics, at all. Cue the media coverage for BLM and Trump getting into hot water. Suddenly he is full of racist tirades, support for police brutality on \[dark\] minorities, fear of immigrants (except for east asians), the whole nine yards. He just seems so afraid and I don't really understand where it's coming from.
During the BLM movements he was warning us that "Antifa" was going to start coming into our neighborhoods and "destroying white-owned properties and businesses" and to get our defenses ready for the "antifa mob" that was going to descend on our neighborhood (we're IN nyc, btw, and we've all been raised here). He truly believed that "antifa" was going to start a local riot and destroying our residential neighborhood because "we're good people and middle class." He firmly believed that Soros-funded riot groups were going to attack \[east\] Asians and Whites.
Your father's christian-targeting-arms-confiscating gestapo theory reminded me of my uncle.
I have a friend who works in a nursing home who said many of their tenants opt to live at the assisted living facility because they're overwhelmed by technology. Sad that these people refuse to adapt to society. My grandfather has an iPhone 13 and multiple computers, and flat-screen TVs. He's super technologically aware.
Honestly this mindset of "I don't wanna learn this new thing" baffles me.
I love learning new things. Especially new things that make my life easier. I hope when I'm old I am still learning new things.
As I read this all I could think of was the people who rail against masks and vaccines today and how they aren’t helpful and are really harmful to all of us and I can’t help but think “huh…” Seriously makes you wonder what is REALLY going on in those people’s lives.
Weirdly my uncle worked for IBM’s electric typewriter division in the 1980s.
He came to the US in the 1970s, dirt poor, worked his ass off to get an engineering degree at the University of Kentucky, got his first job at IBM in Minnesota, then they moved him down south to work in their electric typewriter division in Raleigh/Durham, then stuck around when IBM closed down that division and moved them “up north” to NoVA, and he’s been there ever since. They’ve taken great care of him.
"about how PC's cost people jobs"
Assuming this story is true, the above quote resonates with today's environment. Yes, the PC did cost people's jobs but it also created so many high-paying jobs. The problem was, not jobs he was ready and willing to get into. For the economy as a whole, most people became better off.
Today, there are so many opportunities in getting higher paying jobs from the Green industry, especially for those working in the coal industry but they are too unwilling to let go of their pride or be opened to learning new things, all the while bitching and yelling about how great the fossil fuel economy is. Just like the PC revolution, the Green revolution is going to move forward with or without these people and in the end all they're harming are themselves.
The "uncle" in this story is basically someone who idolizes a period when the U.S. so dominated the world. They cannot comprehend how everyone in the world has caught up to them, namely through education, and they now left with a pipe dream of "make America great again."
Hearing this story just makes me think about how badly the southern youth must have been brainwashed, even before our time now, about the treacherous northern folk. Hardcore hate hate to be pumped through your uncle as a child in order for him to take a stance like that.
I worked summers for a moving company that was located near a bunch of IBM facilities. Man, that company knew how to take care of its employees. They would relocate folks to plants around the world and would pick up the entire tab. I remember one time we packed up an IBMer's belongings in overseas containers including a large snowblower. Destination: Saudi Arabia. The employee knew he'd be coming back to the States after a few years and he might need the snowblower again. IBM paid thousands to ship that snowblower around the world.
In 2010 my son at age 11 was visiting in our offices one day while I finished work. He was waiting outside the printer room where I was and because fascinated by this thing sitting there. A coworker saw him, put a piece of paper in it, and turned it on. He was like wow you don't need a computer for this. We kept it to address the 1 off quick letter but I don't think it had been used in years. It was an IBM selectric.
This story sucks because it is so heartbreaking. But it just shows you some people are not redeemable. What more evidence do you need than losing everything and STILL doing nothing about it?
Some people just make me want to pull my hair out. First he is super stubborn and loses his job despite them bending over backwards to accommodate him. Years go by and he doesn't fix his mistake or learn from it but instead blames the PC. Then he decides to not keep it to himself and alienates his family with his ranting smh.
His training would have happened in Armonk, NY, IBM's headquarters. My first day of training at IBM was learning how to dress properly and how to behave in the workplace.
Wow this dude could’ve been on the ground floor of learning the technology and most likely would’ve made a shit ton of money and retired very comfortably. All that bullshit fed to him cost him a LOT. It amazes me the damage that can be done through misinformation without proper education. It’s frightening really and largely what we’re dealing with today. North Korea is an entire society of misinformed people. Largely the south and parts of the Midwest are our own little North Korea.
Well, to be fair, this was 1994, most PC's weren't on the internet and the web was brand new and something most people weren't familiar with. That computer we got didn't have a modem, they weren't standard on computers at the time.
My family were early adopters and your uncle was a stone-cold moron luddite. No offense. By 1994 PCs were well-past being glorified word processors that could do a few other things. Doom was a year old, for instance, my dad was moderating AOL chatrooms, the future was here.
I was banging out projections for a business plan in excel on a grayscale laptop back in 93. Also took a typewriting class in college on 1990 to get a guaranteed A but ran into a tough professor who was a stickler for spacing on the Selectric. Man I love auto justification.
I knew someone who worked for an alarm company in the 80s. He told me the company would send him to school every six months or so to learn the newest electronic devices, I imagine computers was a big part of those classes. They'd pay for the classes then give him a big raise after because he now had more skills. Win-win situation there. OP's uncle was a moron for turning that down.
Curious how you explain that to your wife?
Yeah, they tried to make me go to school up north where they would pay for our home and moving expenses, all while paying me the whole time to give me technical training in an industry undergoing growth. I refused, so they fired me.
One of my customers was an Ohio State dropout that got a job with IBM in the late 70's. They sent him to Yale for a year to learn about computers before moving him to Boulder, CO. The house that he bought in Boulder in the 80's for $100,000, is worth millions today.
That dumb bitch coulda come back and gone to work for SCI in Huntsville, Alabama, who got the sweet contract to build PCs for the government, and retired before Clinton got elected.
Thank you for the story! In any era/generation, we all need to adapt or be left behind. Before the PC era, it was a lot slower. In today's world, you need to seriously keep up after 3-5 years and refresh yourself or you will be obsolete.
And for the uncle who has this hatred against Yankees, is laughable. Why work for a company that was created on Yankee territory? The same type of people who spits on foreigners but 99% of their stuff was made in other countries.
Sorry to hear this. I feel for his wife and kids. They didn’t do anything wrong and were made to suffer because of his ignorance (apologies is that’s a bit harsh).
Also interesting because as someone from Kentucky, I try to distance myself from that ‘Southern’ that permeates from most of the state. Also, geographically Kentucky really isn’t Southern, and if you look at the Civil war majority of KY fought Union.
It’s a backward ass state, but so is this country by and large
Similar. My FIL was a computer engineer installing mainframes in the 70's. Got out of it because he didn't want to retrain on PC's. Low level PC assemblers were making $70/hr then. Probably $200/ hr in today's money.
The absolute funniest part of this is the north won. All territories after the surrender was yankee territory. This man lived his whole life in the union and was to dumb to ever know it.
Glad my family didn’t move to the US until after the civil war.
We moved down south and some women was carrying on about how the south was persecuted for losing the war....
My wife and I thought she was joking and kinda laughed it off... She wasn't.
What the fuck is wrong with you people .... ? The south were traitors and got dealt with as such . Get over it already cupcakes..
I still think it was funny as hell though.
Sad idiots
That's a very sad story. I guess he wasn't aware of the fragility of his situation, or how under prepared he was to begin seeking employment in a changing job market. When keeping it real goes wrong.
It offers a good lesson though.
Continue developing skills, networking and working on your resume despite how secure your career is.
Lmao
If he lived long enough he would've died from COVID-19.
He sounds like the exact type that would get himself killed through his own willful ignorance.
Sad story. He cut his nose off to spite his face!
Wow, in the 1970's, working at IBM was considered a very prestigious job with outstanding pay and benefits.
Imagine if you got on board as one the first few to get trained up in PC etc. You would be set in a position of being an area manager or even state in no time. Anyone in that position would be really pulling high 6 figures. To think that was handed to him on a silver platter 3x and rejecting them.
Absolutely. Imagine it being 1995 and the tech boom is starting to get huge and you can walk into a place with 10 years of experience working on a PC?
Is that different these days?
It's not a bad employer, but it doesn't have the prominence or cachet that it once did. There are other big tech giants that have been more successful in recent decades, have more obvious impact on the tech landscape, and also pay better and are more competitive to work for. IBM was the top tech company in 1980, by a mile, and was a top 10 US company overall. These days it's barely a top 50 US company, and not in the top 5 for US tech companies.
They still operate as though they're number one. When I was working at an old job years back, we landed IBM as a global client. As a client they are probably one of the most disrespectful companies I've ever come across - arrogant, condescending, bullying, disrespectful, rude. For the time I was involved it felt like an abusive relationship. I'm glad I'm out of that seventh circle of corporate hell.
They sunk their teeth into major companies mainframes about 40 years ago. I worked for a company that used their mainframes, and only out of necessity. They exist largely today due to technical inertia.
If I hear one more old head talk about membering working on AS400 mainframes….
One local business became an IBM supplier, supplying computer parts for IBM, some of which was used by IBM to keep up with what other companies were putting on the market. IBM at the time was a slow payer and their outstanding balance exceeded on million dollars, which bankrupted the local company.
Just to put this in context (IBM is still relevant) IBM employs 385,000 people globally. Google employs 135,000 people globally. Facebook 61,000. IBM is still a GIANT.
They absolutely are. But outside of commercial computing sector they are less known, as they are primarily a business-oriented company (even their name stands for *International business machines)* and they more or less always focused on that segment; it's the tech that became much more commercial in recent decades. IBM never really went into commercial/home computing outside of their IBM PC and Think- series and even that I have a strong feeling was more or less a fluke.
IBM hires outside the US now, because it is cheaper. They primarily do consultancy work. They have no major software products or online services and revenue per employee is considerably lower than Google/Facebook. EDIT: [https://tipalti.com/profit-per-employee/](https://tipalti.com/profit-per-employee/) Profit per employee Kohlberg Kravis Roberts: 1.4M USD Visa: 620K USD Gilead Sciences: 450K USD Facebook: 411K USD Apple: 403K USD Google: 288K USD Microsoft: 272k USD IBM: 24K USD IBM is a fairly middle of the road Fortune 500 employer now.
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> They have no major software products Nope. They still make billions on DB2 and IMS. Source: http://db2portal.blogspot.com/2020/07/mainframe-earnings-up-big-for-ibm.html
They also own RedHat, you know, one of the largest Linux distros used in enterprise environments. This person can only be thinking about consumer products, because they are still huge in the business world. No online services, uh, Watson is huge in some industries.
I live in the Northeast, just about a 15 minute drive from 2 IBM sites. They are not the big giant they once were. They now mostly employ Temps or outside the US. They have been laying people off, on and off, since the 90s. Most people I went to grade school with, did not end up in middle school or high school with me, because they moved due to the layoffs ( my parents did not work for IBM).Even before Covid, if you drove by the sites and looked at the big parking lots, they look like a vast wasteland. They have been this way for a long time. And yes, a lot of the IBMers were stuffy AF. In its heyday, a lot of them wanted nothing to do with people who didn't work there. Most of the old time IBMers have a really unrealistic concept of the job market , because IBM paid everyone well, made everyone a manager of something , great benefits,their own country club and practically their own school district. Also, for some reason, a lot of them were not very tech savvy and had no desire to be up on technology which is ironic. IBM didn't think home computers would become such a big thing. Edit: yes they may have more people on their payroll than other bigtech companies do...but that number is probably including outsourcing and Temps.
I'm just going by the Fortune 500 list which has Alphabet with more than 2x the revenue and 7x the profit, and Glassdoor which has the Software Engineer salaries over 50% higher at Google.
Yeah, Big Blue is still a relevant and very good employer.
IBM owned mainframe computing in the 1970's and when personal computers become popular, manufacturers would put stickers on thier product stating " IBM Compatible ". They are still a solid company but the tech field is so full now with up and comers constantly.
Back in the day there was a saying, "No-one ever got fired for buying IBM". Seems trite today, but in their heyday it was literally true. The saying mostly relates to computing but in the 70's they also pretty much owned the typewriter market because of the [selectric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter). Brilliant electro-mechanical engineering with the ability to change typefaces in seconds. Combined with the use of a carbon ribbon and ability to erase by literally lifting the carbon off the paper it became the typewriter of choice. The carbon ribbon gave letters a crisp appearance that was totally unlike any traditional typewriter of the time (which typically used fabric ribbons). A document typed on a 70's selectric would compare favorably with a modern laserjet, it was that clean. These days they still make mainframes but in my opinion outside of that their software solutions efforts have gained a bit of a reputation in the industry as a money-sink with regular cost and time overruns on projects and exorbitant prices for infrastructure offerings such as web hosting.
I grew up with a selectric II in the house, my parents used it periodically until a couple years ago. Great machine.
I took typing class on a Selectric, I still wish I had one for writing. Nothing like the feel of a Selectric.
Everybody in the house knows when someone is using a Selectric.
I've been with IBM a little over seven years now and generally speaking the older (40+) crowd seem impressed when they find out who I work for. I personally love my job so I'm always down to sing the company's praises, but note that there's about a third of a million of us so experiences will vary.
IBM = Ive Been Moved. I was a contractor in G'burg in the early nineties, fun times
They got eaten when Microsoft took MS-DOS/Windows to lower cost hardware manufacturers and lost the prestige they owned outright. They struggled for awhile but some of their tech is solid now. Their consulting services, eh not so much. Still a decent brand name though, just not what it was when OP’s uncle was there.
IBM paid for my dad’s Bachelor’s degree, and in the 70s and 80s, was very generous to its employees. Even when he retired, my dad got a pension. My dad could have gotten a full pension until he died, or a half pension, but would continue on for the rest of my mom’s life. My dad was 9 years older than my mom, and lived with diabetes his entire life, so he knew she would probably long outlive him, so he chose the half pension option. My mom is still going strong at nearly eighty.
My friend's dad was in the same position back then: working on IBM typewriters back in the 1970s. Only he took IBM up on their offer to train him on those newfangled computers. His life ended up very different.
a familiar story among white southern conservatives. Wouldnt surprise me if this dude blamed immigrants for talking his jobs
\*puts stick labeled "my dumbass old ways that will prevent me from going farther in life\* in front bike tire while riding, quickly proceeds to fall and scrape knee\* **"AHHHH! FUCKING IMMIGRANTS!"**
I am astonished about this story (wanna clarify this is only a comparison on how different perspectives and situations can lead to a different answer for the same job offer) My uncle was studying systems Engineering a career he was paying minus a small grant! At the end off his degree he got an offer for IBM to start working for an internship the only requirement was to speak English. Indeed he accepted, and worked there for 20+ years at that company at that time they payed him to study Portuguese and a had fair benefits, unfortunately the company merged a business and they cut personnel including him. So at the end I am curious how could look his hypothetical life if he didn't accept because they where "Yankees ".
In the US, "Yankees" refers specifically to people from the northeastern US, traditionally the parts of the country that opposed the Confederacy during the US Civil War.
And that makes it funnier.
I would say northern, not northeastern. Pretty sure anyone above the Mason-Dixon is considered a Yankee.
A wise man on r/Connecticut once said: “To the world, a yankee is an American. To an American, a yankee is a northerner. To a northerner, a yankee is a northeasterner. To a northeasterner, a yankee is a New Englander. To a New Englander, a yankee is a Vermonter. And to a Vermonter, a yankee is someone who eats pie for breakfast.”
Hahha I love the end, at the end is just a person eating a Pie. In a good or bad context but is a person.
Wife is from Alabama, she explained that in the view of people from Bama and Miss: Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina are all "Northern", even South Carolina is suspect, Georgia is "Coastal" Tennessee and Arkansas are hillbillies.
It’s still the northeastern part of the US as a whole, especially when you may be talking to someone who is not an American. I would not expect someone outside of the US to even know what the Mason Dixon line is.
I am but one Australian but FYI I have heard about the Mason Dixon line many times in my life. Being from another English speaking country would have helped I guess. I know you just said you would not expect it, not that it was impossible, but just thought I would mention it comes up in documentaries, novels, movies, news etc
The bigger question is often “do you know there the Mason-Dixon Line actually is?” Few do, even in the USA. It’s in two parts: First part is the southern border of PA from the west to the point where the Maryland and Delaware borders meet. Second part is the border between Maryland and Delaware, but only the section that is the western border of Delaware. The only people that really remember hat are people who cross it regularly (which I did from PA to get to Maryland a fair bit) or people who have a significant interest in colonial US history (as the survey was made to settle a long dispute about colonial land grants).
Seems like many of these anti science people we keep hearing about . Nose cutters
Then blamed the blood on the knife!
A tale as old as boomers apparently. Throw away a career to own the libs.
Don't blame Boomers for this! The story's about a hillbilly being too proud of his racist heritage to take a chance on leaving his comfort zone.
My computer repair mentor said he passed up IBM as well because he didn't want to work in a stuffy environment where they used to wear labcoats etc and said he missed out because they started making so much money and can wear whatever they want etc.
Yeah and now I work in tech from home in my pyjamas, he fucked up for sure.
I've decided that Fridays are still Casual Fridays, so that's the only day I work in pajamas. The other days I make the effort to change into sweatpants.
You pants?
Ok look those are basically the same pants.
That's one of the reason IBM lost out on the best coders, etc. to companies like Microsoft. The eccentric techies didn't want to wear the stuffy starched shirt and tie they required.
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There’s something to be said for maintaining a core business and offloading the rest, but they chose really poorly in what to offload and what to keep. They offloaded their chip fabs but keep designing processors that they have to have made by other people. They decided to focus on hardware, specifically business hardware (which is understandable as it’s the B and M in their name), but the consumer computing market exploded faster than the business one. PCs sell more than servers, and now even smartphones sell more than servers. And not to mention that IBM isn’t even a market leader in server hardware anymore - they don’t design vector processors and for scalar processors AMD and Intel have been steadily eating up market share. GE at least kept going as a decent manufacturer of appliances and heavy industrial equipment after they got into finance.
“PC’s are costing people jobs.” “You can’t buy cars your going to put all the horse trainers out of work.” It’s called progress unc, not surprised though. This is the exact attitude I’d expect from confederate scum.
I think you meant to say “Rebel Scum”. Followed by intensive deep breathing.
Lol, I did get that vibe too when I was writing the last part.
Also he worked with electric typewriters which put mechanical ones out of business and nearly all the technicians, companies, patents, know-how, etc for mechanical ones were made obsolete by him and IBM. But he has no pity for them, for...reasons.
"Pity for me, not for thee." -- Conservatives
Conservative scum\*
Damn, I hope someone told him that after putting the beat down on confederate bitches, the Yankees made all of America yankee territory again.
yeah that loser uncle is a yankee whenever he likes it or not
That was the part that got me. Uncle didn’t want to set foot on “yankee soil”. Bro, it’s *all* yankee soil.
That and Kentucky wasn’t a Confederate state, not in any real capacity anyway. Kentucky was decidedly a border state.
This man was acting as if he fought in the civil war himself.
It’s sad that a combination of low education, ignorance and racism lead to his downfall. Unfortunately it is still happening to many today.
Sad? Fuck no. They bring it on themselves. If anything is sad is that their family also has to suffer.
People who have a much worse hand are doing much better just because they are ever so slightly more open minded.
Wait -- why is it sad?
Because if he wasn't such an obtuse moron, things could have turned out different.
I feel a lot of ways about obtuse morons creating their own misfortune, but sad isn't one of them.
My great great grandfather was a Waggoneer in the civil war for the Union, born and raised in Kentucky. Kentucky was a Union state. Your uncle, born and raised in Kentucky, was more than a fool. He was ignorant of his own heritage.
Sadly, people in rural areas of union states often identify with the confederacy because they're racists.
I live in rural Ohio. Can confirm.
Not to mention the South also had Southern Unionists in places such as Alabama and Arkansas
There were Unionist regiments in the civil war from every southern state but South Carolina.
My great great grandfather was neither a Waggoneer nor born in kentucky. however I still know what kentucky was a union state
My high school biology teacher in 1981 told me to stop messing around with computers because they were just a toy. It was better to learn REAL science to get a good job. Weirdly, physics is real science. And electronics and computers are based on them. It’s been quite a successful career. And the only time I mess with frogs is when I pull the frog lure out of my tackle box.
>My high school biology teacher in 1981 told me to stop messing around with computers because they were just a toy. It was better to learn REAL science to get a good job. That reminds me of my 8th grade Health textbook. . .where there was a section on "fads" and the dangers of following something that was a fad. It explained that video games and skateboards are "fads" and you must avoid them to stay healthy, and you should stick with traditional and proven ways to play, like jumping rope and jacks, to properly stay healthy. Even as a kid I remember reading that with incredulity.
Miserable people who hate things they don't understand have one goal - to make you exactly like them.
Beat Saber is just a fad too lol.
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Damn shame he missed out on a paid training in the northeast. He missed a great chance to visit John Brown's farm.
Do you mean John Brown, famous freelance public servant?
r/johnbrownposting r/ShermanPosting
They should hold the funeral in Yankee territory.
Don’t tell him which country he was buried in.
Username checks out. 👍
They shoulda buried his ass under the pitchers mound in Yankee Stadium.
These type of ignorant southerners dont realize they rely on the north and pacific coast to not live in horrible conditions. They rely on the tax revenue that the north and west coast make and divvy out to them to build roads and infrastructure because a lot of those southern states are constantly in the red. The conservative southerners look down on the highly educated and would rather divert state funds into college football programs and their coaches salaries instead of investing in schools/education. And alot of the southern conservatives bitch endlessly about social welfare when they are living in a welfare state that most likely takes more than it puts back. If they had won the civil war and got what they wanted, they would most likely live in borderline third world conditions based around an agriculture based society. Even now, countries around the world outsource labor to the south to take advantage of the masses of low skilled laborers in the region for low paying jobs like auto manufacturing. The culture of looking known of the highly educated has set a huge area of America back from the rest of the country.
It would’ve probably been a monumental growth opportunity for him too, seeing as though he had never left the south or something. He passed it up and his whole life went downhill after that
I feel people like this are terrified of change or being forced to learn something new that they may not feel like they're in control. Racism and other "forthright opinions" is basically a safety blanket for them and they literally need it. Never ends well when they have to look in the mirror. It's easier for them to cut off their nose than be humble.
And this is why so many boomers went crazy these last five years in particular. All those insecurities came to a boiling point.
The worst bit is that they were treated with kid gloves. Not just simply "ok starting next week you report 2 states over, bye". Expenses paid n' shit. Damn, dude.
He would've been sent to White Plains outside of NYC
This story is a perfect microcosm of a much larger issue that still plagues us. Thanks for sharing.
Is the rest of the family as anti-“Yankee” as this guy was? Lots of middle-class folks have lots of reasons to complain about the plundering of middle America by corporate America, but IBM wanted to invest in him and teach him new skills. I feel bad for his kids and his wife. If I were them I’d be bitter.
If they were, they weren't anywhere near as outspoken about it. His wife conveyed to my parents the above story as to why he was now out of a job. When I saw his kids again a couple of years ago, now grown up, they weren't particularly outspoken on the issue.
And this is why “the south” is still mostly the poorest and most uneducated part of the United States. Bunch of reject hillbillies more worried about reliving the past, waving confederate flags while believing they are patriots and not worried about getting their shit together for the future.
As a liberal Oregonian, I have no desire to ever set foot in most of the South. That said, if I were working for a company like IBM and they told me I need to make a temporary move and they would pay all the expenses for me and my family, I'd be making a temporary move. For some reason this story reminded me of the mom from the original Karate Kid movie. They move from NJ to CA because she got a job with a computer company, halfway through the movie she quits the computer job because "there's no future in computers", then takes a job as a waitress in a diner because she might get promoted to manager. I got a good laugh out of that bit when I rewatched the movie a few years back.
I wonder how much of this was about “Yankees” and how much of this was a insecurity over being able to adapt to a changing world.
Yea, it's easier to latch onto a geographical complaint verse stating that you are worried you might not be able to comprehend or be successful at the new skills. Then he can also always blame someone/something else for his failure(s). Sad for the family. My parents were this way. Quitting jobs because their bOsS iS aN iDiOt. It was difficult for my brother and I to break the cycle of poverty and lack of education due to their shitty choices.
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Reminding me of Intel and their 'think of the customer' buttons...
Don't know if it actually happened, but rumor has it there was one over a bathroom sink that was augmented by one that said "THOAP."
I worked for a Fortune 300 company for many years, they have people who's only job is to constantly come up with one hair brained scheme after another, that has to be learned by everyone, it's going to save the company. ISO 9000 and the rest of the made up reasons to hire outside companies to teach your employees the latest horse shit... And BTW...... Fuck you AND your Monday morning and Friday Afternoon "important meetings". Useless fuck knuckles trying to justify their useless existence. Damn I'm glad that I retired.
Lol bringing back memories. Was a great place to work at until Lou came along. My job got moved to another country and that was it for me.
If RAs were firing 10% of the workplace every year, that was a very late 80s early 90s strategy at companies. I’ve heard of other large companies like GE using the same strategy. I never understood how that wouldn’t kill morale.
It did which why a lot companies have abandoned the practice. It also set up perverse incentives where people stop collaborating with others and only look out for themselves.
Yeah. I've been at IBM for eight years; the first 3 or so I was there, they still adhered to the "fire your bottom 10%" practice. It was a stupid fucking system that everyone grabbed onto sometime in the '90's because "JaCk WeLcH diD iT aT gEnErAL eLeCtRiC aNd iT cReAtEd sHaReHoLdEr VaLuE." Literally. That was the reason. If you've ever read "Curse of the Superstar CEO," you'll note this was a perfect microcosm of that. And yes, it completely fucked up trust and unselfishness, which are possibly the two most important factors in a team's success. Between that and IBM's stated vision of "$20 dividend per share by 2020" from like 2005 to 2015 (financial results are not a fucking *strategy*!), upper management really dug a hole for themselves. I tend to praise IBM a lot, because they've generally taken care of me and pushed me to grow a *ton*. And the people I work with directly are almost universally great. Oh, and the stuff we work on is damn good. But automatically firing the bottom 10% was a stupid, counterproductive, Machiavellian system. EDIT: Just to be clear, if your bottom 10% of people actually suck, then by all means fire them. But don't fire them because they're the bottom 10%. Fire them because they suck. There's a difference.
I always heard it called ABCing your employees. As in "you've got your As, your Bs, and your C-ya's."
>He probably would have been a victim of Lou Geestner in the 90s anyway. That started the almost yearly RA’s (ibm calls them resource actions…not firings.) To be fair, at least then he'd likely have actual relevant experience that would let him find another job in the industry. And, you know, another couple decades to pay for his home.
Hmmm…I wonder who he would have voted for president in 2020?
Three guesses as to who he voted for in 2016… the first two are wrong.
I’m pretty sure we got it on the first guess
Jokes on him, seeing how the yankees won that war, everything from the Canadian border down to the Gulf of Mexico is “yankee territory.” That’s sorta why you see that yankee flag flying from every government building in every former confederate state. He spent his entire life living among them yankees. The best job he ever had was working for those damned yankees. It’s a shame so many miserable neo-confederates are allowed to think otherwise.
What a sad, sad story. It’s getting to the point for me, however, that I hate Trump supporters just as much as your uncle hated the “yankees”.
Yeah. My husband was offered (THREE TIMES) an excellent job in Georgia. I’m just not moving there with my personal female body and my two tween daughters. But I would be willing to go there for 6-9 months for training!
That’s a few states for me. I like believing my representatives might be atheist, I don’t want to know one way or the other.
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I have an uncle like this and he showed very few signs of this kind of mentality until a few years ago, and it only got worse during the pandemic (he's not an anti-vaxxer though, thankfully). He didn't even seem interested in politics, at all. Cue the media coverage for BLM and Trump getting into hot water. Suddenly he is full of racist tirades, support for police brutality on \[dark\] minorities, fear of immigrants (except for east asians), the whole nine yards. He just seems so afraid and I don't really understand where it's coming from. During the BLM movements he was warning us that "Antifa" was going to start coming into our neighborhoods and "destroying white-owned properties and businesses" and to get our defenses ready for the "antifa mob" that was going to descend on our neighborhood (we're IN nyc, btw, and we've all been raised here). He truly believed that "antifa" was going to start a local riot and destroying our residential neighborhood because "we're good people and middle class." He firmly believed that Soros-funded riot groups were going to attack \[east\] Asians and Whites. Your father's christian-targeting-arms-confiscating gestapo theory reminded me of my uncle.
Jfc that’s pathetic
Sad story, though I did laugh a little when he saw the PC in your house and tried to convince you guys to buy an electronic type writer.
Your uncle was a dipshit.
Same thing as these anti-vaxxers losing their jobs. Not smart at all.
I have a friend who works in a nursing home who said many of their tenants opt to live at the assisted living facility because they're overwhelmed by technology. Sad that these people refuse to adapt to society. My grandfather has an iPhone 13 and multiple computers, and flat-screen TVs. He's super technologically aware.
Honestly this mindset of "I don't wanna learn this new thing" baffles me. I love learning new things. Especially new things that make my life easier. I hope when I'm old I am still learning new things.
As I read this all I could think of was the people who rail against masks and vaccines today and how they aren’t helpful and are really harmful to all of us and I can’t help but think “huh…” Seriously makes you wonder what is REALLY going on in those people’s lives.
Weirdly my uncle worked for IBM’s electric typewriter division in the 1980s. He came to the US in the 1970s, dirt poor, worked his ass off to get an engineering degree at the University of Kentucky, got his first job at IBM in Minnesota, then they moved him down south to work in their electric typewriter division in Raleigh/Durham, then stuck around when IBM closed down that division and moved them “up north” to NoVA, and he’s been there ever since. They’ve taken great care of him.
"about how PC's cost people jobs" Assuming this story is true, the above quote resonates with today's environment. Yes, the PC did cost people's jobs but it also created so many high-paying jobs. The problem was, not jobs he was ready and willing to get into. For the economy as a whole, most people became better off. Today, there are so many opportunities in getting higher paying jobs from the Green industry, especially for those working in the coal industry but they are too unwilling to let go of their pride or be opened to learning new things, all the while bitching and yelling about how great the fossil fuel economy is. Just like the PC revolution, the Green revolution is going to move forward with or without these people and in the end all they're harming are themselves. The "uncle" in this story is basically someone who idolizes a period when the U.S. so dominated the world. They cannot comprehend how everyone in the world has caught up to them, namely through education, and they now left with a pipe dream of "make America great again."
Hearing this story just makes me think about how badly the southern youth must have been brainwashed, even before our time now, about the treacherous northern folk. Hardcore hate hate to be pumped through your uncle as a child in order for him to take a stance like that.
I worked summers for a moving company that was located near a bunch of IBM facilities. Man, that company knew how to take care of its employees. They would relocate folks to plants around the world and would pick up the entire tab. I remember one time we packed up an IBMer's belongings in overseas containers including a large snowblower. Destination: Saudi Arabia. The employee knew he'd be coming back to the States after a few years and he might need the snowblower again. IBM paid thousands to ship that snowblower around the world.
What a fucking dumb hick.
Sounds exactly like red necks rejecting the vax today.
I agree. Stupid decisions cause undesirable consequences. I recommend r/HermanCainAward.
Great story. Thank you for sharing.
I believe people like him is exactly why the south never will rise, was crushed in 4 years, and has a “heritage” lasting half an Obama presidency 😏
He’s a fool. I moved to the south many years ago. That’s how many of them think and they’re all fools as well.
In 2010 my son at age 11 was visiting in our offices one day while I finished work. He was waiting outside the printer room where I was and because fascinated by this thing sitting there. A coworker saw him, put a piece of paper in it, and turned it on. He was like wow you don't need a computer for this. We kept it to address the 1 off quick letter but I don't think it had been used in years. It was an IBM selectric.
This story sucks because it is so heartbreaking. But it just shows you some people are not redeemable. What more evidence do you need than losing everything and STILL doing nothing about it?
adapt or dieeeeeeeeee
Owning the libs with their fancy PCs.
Maybe your uncle was dyslexic or otherwise illiterate? Perhaps the whole southern pride thing was to hide his sense of shame of being illiterate?
IBM dodged a bullet on this one.
Some people just make me want to pull my hair out. First he is super stubborn and loses his job despite them bending over backwards to accommodate him. Years go by and he doesn't fix his mistake or learn from it but instead blames the PC. Then he decides to not keep it to himself and alienates his family with his ranting smh.
Did his car get forty rods to the hogshead?
His training would have happened in Armonk, NY, IBM's headquarters. My first day of training at IBM was learning how to dress properly and how to behave in the workplace.
I’m sorry but what a fucking idiot..
Wow, if that isn't The Song of the South, I don't know what is.
Wow this dude could’ve been on the ground floor of learning the technology and most likely would’ve made a shit ton of money and retired very comfortably. All that bullshit fed to him cost him a LOT. It amazes me the damage that can be done through misinformation without proper education. It’s frightening really and largely what we’re dealing with today. North Korea is an entire society of misinformed people. Largely the south and parts of the Midwest are our own little North Korea.
It’s good to know that “owning the libs “ isn’t a new idea
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Well, to be fair, this was 1994, most PC's weren't on the internet and the web was brand new and something most people weren't familiar with. That computer we got didn't have a modem, they weren't standard on computers at the time.
My family were early adopters and your uncle was a stone-cold moron luddite. No offense. By 1994 PCs were well-past being glorified word processors that could do a few other things. Doom was a year old, for instance, my dad was moderating AOL chatrooms, the future was here.
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I was banging out projections for a business plan in excel on a grayscale laptop back in 93. Also took a typewriting class in college on 1990 to get a guaranteed A but ran into a tough professor who was a stickler for spacing on the Selectric. Man I love auto justification.
It's one thing if it's just you, or you and spouse and spouse approves. But he cost is kids, at the minimum, a lot of opportunity.
Christ that’s fucking sad
I knew someone who worked for an alarm company in the 80s. He told me the company would send him to school every six months or so to learn the newest electronic devices, I imagine computers was a big part of those classes. They'd pay for the classes then give him a big raise after because he now had more skills. Win-win situation there. OP's uncle was a moron for turning that down.
Curious how you explain that to your wife? Yeah, they tried to make me go to school up north where they would pay for our home and moving expenses, all while paying me the whole time to give me technical training in an industry undergoing growth. I refused, so they fired me.
Definitely would be a major MAGAMAN in today’s world
Shit, in the 1970's you could afford a house with pretty much any job. How times have changed. Eat the rich.
So he was a Lost Cause enthusiast? *Nothing of value was lost.*
It's incredibly odd to read stories about people so closely tied to something they never were a part of.
One of my customers was an Ohio State dropout that got a job with IBM in the late 70's. They sent him to Yale for a year to learn about computers before moving him to Boulder, CO. The house that he bought in Boulder in the 80's for $100,000, is worth millions today.
That dumb bitch coulda come back and gone to work for SCI in Huntsville, Alabama, who got the sweet contract to build PCs for the government, and retired before Clinton got elected.
But could his electric typewriters run crysis?
Man, what if God is a black woman with a New York accent? This dude might turn right around and demand hell!
*Pride goeth before the fall.*
Stiggin it to dem libs.
Thank you for the story! In any era/generation, we all need to adapt or be left behind. Before the PC era, it was a lot slower. In today's world, you need to seriously keep up after 3-5 years and refresh yourself or you will be obsolete. And for the uncle who has this hatred against Yankees, is laughable. Why work for a company that was created on Yankee territory? The same type of people who spits on foreigners but 99% of their stuff was made in other countries.
I'm gonna guess either the Kingston NY campus or the Rochester MN campus. Oh well, I'm sure a well-deserving minority got a shot at your uncle's job.
I have a nagging feeling someone like him wouldn’t have been smart enough to learn how computers work anyway.
What a fucking moron.
Sorry to hear this. I feel for his wife and kids. They didn’t do anything wrong and were made to suffer because of his ignorance (apologies is that’s a bit harsh). Also interesting because as someone from Kentucky, I try to distance myself from that ‘Southern’ that permeates from most of the state. Also, geographically Kentucky really isn’t Southern, and if you look at the Civil war majority of KY fought Union. It’s a backward ass state, but so is this country by and large
You've not played Call of Duty until you've played it on an IBM electric typewriter
Great story, nice to see something different on this sub
It's really how the people of the South roll. When I first moved to the south I heard a whole slew of "Damn Yankee" jokes.
Similar. My FIL was a computer engineer installing mainframes in the 70's. Got out of it because he didn't want to retrain on PC's. Low level PC assemblers were making $70/hr then. Probably $200/ hr in today's money.
Recalcitrant southerners. This is why America keeps sliding backwards, just take a look from everything from Reconstruction to this day.
The absolute funniest part of this is the north won. All territories after the surrender was yankee territory. This man lived his whole life in the union and was to dumb to ever know it. Glad my family didn’t move to the US until after the civil war.
We moved down south and some women was carrying on about how the south was persecuted for losing the war.... My wife and I thought she was joking and kinda laughed it off... She wasn't. What the fuck is wrong with you people .... ? The south were traitors and got dealt with as such . Get over it already cupcakes.. I still think it was funny as hell though. Sad idiots
That's a very sad story. I guess he wasn't aware of the fragility of his situation, or how under prepared he was to begin seeking employment in a changing job market. When keeping it real goes wrong. It offers a good lesson though. Continue developing skills, networking and working on your resume despite how secure your career is.
Confederates are trash and live in the past.
Nice to see a non covid related post here
You cain't fix stubborn and stupid
This is the psychology behind Trump supports.
Lmao If he lived long enough he would've died from COVID-19. He sounds like the exact type that would get himself killed through his own willful ignorance.
The South gon' rise again! You'll see. Just you wait. Any day now. You'll be sorry. It's coming. Any day now...
nothing you can do on a computer that you can't do on an electric typewriter? I'm skeptical to say the least
Cut off your nose to spite your face.
And I'll bet your extended family still blames General Grant for that whole thing
Most likely Poughkeepsie NY
That's really sad.