Well the topic of computer languages is far off the subject of pensions... The computer language "C" was quickly adopted whereas the bloated PL/1 language was not. People stayed on COBOL instead. Some argue that PLAS, could have become what C/C++ is today. But IBM had a different view of compilers: They were for making money. There's a whole history on OS/2, and how Microsoft capitalized on IBM's short-sighted greed. How can any company get rich on a product (like Windows) that cost $40.00 in those days? IBM management thought. Bill Gates apparently knew money could be made... apparently a fair amount of money!
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--- In ibmpensionissues@..., pvsutera <no_reply@...> wrote:
The business case was IBM was making 32 million a year on mainframe licenses for APL2 which was popular with Wall Street and universities. So with just a handful of people, we put APL2 on other platforms for SAA. So the business case was that 10 people could make 32 million dollars more than 20 years ago. We also ran our manufacturing lines and production lines using APL programs. In addition, there was some hardware-drag because of vector processing. At the time, mainframes were slow and the vector processor sped up number crunching. APL2 could use the vector processor with no change to the code. Fortran code needed to be changed to vectorize loops, and I worked on changing customer Fortran code for that too. A person could learn to write APL2 code without understanding assembler code, so it was great for liberal arts majors.
--- In ibmpensionissues@..., Just Puttin' <JustPutt2@> wrote:
I remember APL1 quite well, started by Ken Iverson. ??Unfortunately, as good as it was as a developers/designer language, it never made it outside of IBM. ??What was the business case for working on APL2? ??APL1 was just not going anywhere in the outside world,,, Hell we were having a helluva time getting anyone to even listen to a short pitch on PL/1
Sometimes,, GREAT PEOPLE are in the RIGHT job, working for the company, ??for which they are NOT best suited.
I personally found that several times in my IBM career. ??Sorry, you had an unfortunate experience.
??
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From: pvsutera <no_reply@...>
To: ibmpensionissues@...
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2013 10:14 PM
Subject: [ibmpensionissues] Re: "Poof" goes your Future Health Account !
??
He was laid off in 2002, not in the 1990s. The bloated IBM you speak of is the current IBM! In the early-90s I was in APL2 development. We had a department of 12 and made 32 million dollars a year. Nonetheless, we were warned there would be cuts in '94, and I leapfrogged out of there and saved my skin for another 19+ years. Maybe the appender was a part of this bloat, maybe he was not. But losing a few thousand dollars of health benefits per person is chicken feed for a company that commonly squanders billions on stock-buybacks with little effect on price, I might add. Let's look at the real bloat first.
--- In ibmpensionissues@..., Just Puttin' <JustPutt2@> wrote:
Has it ever occurred to you that you might have been a part of the "Bloated IBM, from the mid '80s on to the mid '90s. ????There must have been close to 100,000 employees doing non-productive work or working on non-profitable products, in that era. ????The company almost collapse from the obsolete products and onerous labor burden, associated with those products.
Stop bitching if you weren't there through those years.
????
________________________________
From: pvsutera <no_reply@...>
To: ibmpensionissues@...
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2013 9:44 PM
Subject: [ibmpensionissues] Re: "Poof" goes your Future Health Account !
????
I knew about all the FHA stuff. I didn't know 15,000 people were terminated in 2002. I should have known as I had a neighbor who was
affected. And not a surprise that Sam had just taken the helm and started the R/A ball rolling. As far as I know there were no large job actions between January 1995, until the 2002 firings you mentioned. We only saw temp employees lose their jobs. Not that Gerstner wouldn't have fired these people if he hadn't retired (he was 60), but Palmisano was the architect of IBM's second wave of massive US firings. I believe that IBM has fired more people than any other corporation on the face of the earth. And some of the early '90s voluntary transition programs had some strong-arm tactics too.
--- In ibmpensionissues@..., "Christopher Novak" <cnovak@> wrote:
I was 39 when they switched plans.. 18yrs of service but only 39 so
I got the new plan. Can't believe this is legal. Wouldn't this be
age discrimination? Met company requirements to retire but they
say not old enough to collect the medical money? Telling me I have
to wait till I'm 55 makes sense but forfeit it all has to be
against the law... Some law.. Anyone know if anyone ever
challenged this in court? I would suspect IBM had it's attorneys
lock this down but curious. I would bet that if this got in front
of a jury they would side with the employee.. But guessing that
will never happen.
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Others have written that IBM's new 401K practice of annual instead of semi-monthly match gives IBM a financial incentive to fire employees with at least part of the employee's severance funded by canceling IBM's accrued liability of the individual's 401K match.
Eligibility for the Future Health Account gives the same incentive. 15,000 IBM'ers were fired in 2002. I was 47, with 24.5 years of service, and even with 5+5 (add 5 years to age, and 5 years to service to get to either 55 or 30), my numbers of 52 & 29.5 meant that I was unable to bridge to retirement. Altho I retained my Pension 1, "poof" went my FHA (2002 value about $25K). I'm sure some personnel accountant figured that erasing that future liability funded other immediate severance costs.
Individual litigation is expensive; short of a class action or Department of Justice/Labor interest in these things, it'll probably never be tested in court.
"At Will" employment is supposed to be equal between employer and employee. I can understand losing a promised benefit had I left voluntarily or been terminated 'for cause' (NOT usually the case in a "resource action". However I think the deck is stacked against the employee when the employer can reduce termination costs by NOT having to pay promised benefits when they fire employees.
