开云体育

This post by the head moderator on ibmpension is a good reminder of why her judgement is so heavily clouded by her intense hatred for the company she resigned from: "IBM does not issue retiree badges. Why? They don't recognize a retiree as a category. They only recognize the laws and rules they have in place at the time of your exit. They don't care how you exited. You are out. The word 'retiree' hasn't mattered for 20 years. It means nothing." https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ibmpension/conversations/messages/88069 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ibmpension/conversations/messages/88069

A new poll has been created: Which groups platform do you prefer? 1. Yahoo groups 2. 开云体育 3. Facebook 4. Google Groups Vote Now: /g/ibmpension/vote?pollid=90

Thanks-you're appreciated!

Pi Day http://www.piday.org/ http://www.piday.org/ Pi Day http://www.piday.org/ Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th (3/14) around the world. View on www.piday.org http://www.piday.org/ Preview by Yahoo “Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th (3/14) around the world. Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159.” Note that if you round this to 5 digits, you get 3.1416 – the same numbers as today: 3/14/16.

IBM's 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders will be held on Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at 10 a.m. in the Savannah International Trade & Convention Center, One International Drive, Hutchinson Island, Savannah, Georgia. IBM Investor relations - Stockholder services http://www.ibm.com/investor/services/ IBM Investor relations - Stockholder services http://www.ibm.com/investor/services/ IBM Investor relations stock holder services provide a variety of pertinent and convenient information and services available to stockholders of IBM. View on www.ibm.com http://www.ibm.com/investor/services/ Preview by Yahoo

IBM's restructuring continues, with reduced severance for laid off employees http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-layoffs-1-month-severance-2016-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-layoffs-1-month-severance-2016-3 IBM's restructuring continues, with reduced severanc... http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-layoffs-1-month-severance-2016-3 IBM employees affected by the latest layoffs learned of the severance cut in January, 2016. View on www.businessinsider.com http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-layoffs-1-month-severance-2016-3 Preview by Yahoo IBM handed out another batch of pink slips to workers on Wednesday, in a round of layoffs that some employees described as "massive." The exact size of the layoffs could not be determined, but the job cuts are part of ongoing changes to the tech company's workforce. IBM won't comment on or disclose how many people it cuts except to confirm that it is continuously shedding some workers while hiring others, and to report the financial impact, both in costs and savings. Last year, IBM hired and fired in almost equal numbers. It added 70,000 people, CEO Ginni Rometty said (including a woman https://www.linkedin.com/in/annaseacat?trk=pulse-det-athr_prof-art_hdr who had launched a social media campaign for IBM to hire her as the "world's oldest intern http://www.businessinsider.com/woman-wants-to-be-ibms-oldest-intern-2015-7.") But, according to research done by Business Insider, it chopped slightly more than 70,000 people, too http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-added-and-lost-70000-people-2016-2, through a combination of attrition, layoffs, retirement, people leaving for other jobs and business units it divested. IBM ended 2015 with a worldwide headcount of 377,757, it reported. So that's a workforce churn of 18%. One month severance But the big difference with this layoff is that IBM has severely cut severance pay to one month total, no matter how many years of service the employee worked, several workers have confirmed to a Facebook page called "Watching IBM." https://www.facebook.com/alliancemember/?rc=p The page is maintained by Lee Conrad, the man who ran a former IBM employee watchdog organization called Alliance at IBM. He retired the Alliance organization last year, but through Facebook he's still posting information from workers about layoffs and other working conditions at IBM. Employees learned of the severance cut in January, 2016, when IBM sent out an employee document called "About Your Benefits - Separation" which Conrad shared with Business Insider. In the document IBM explained that its "Individual Separation Allowance Plan (ISAP) ... is to provide transitional assistance to regular employees ... when their employment with IBM has been terminated." That includes if they are fired for performance issues or when their "position" is "eliminated" (aka a layoff). The document flat-out told them that "The separation allowance payment available under the Individual Separation Allowance Plan, regardless of the circumstance under which ISAP is offered, is one month of pay." In previous layoffs, IBM employees could expect a severance package that paid them based on how many years they worked. According to Conrad, that pay used to be up to 23 weeks. Other jobs? Here's a part of one post from an IBM worker who reported being laid off today. https://www.facebook.com/alliancemember/posts/659281237543197 This person worked for IBM's Global Technology Services http://www.businessinsider.com/technology%20services division, a consulting unit with revenues that have been shrinking for years and which was down nearly 10% in fiscal 2015. GTS has been heavy hit with these ongoing layoffs, as IBM looks to shed expenses from its shrinking businesses. I am a GTS Strategic Outsourcing casualty of the mass firing today. My manager told me it was big and widespread, and I'd be hearing from a lot of people that will also be notified today. My official end date is May 31, 2016 (90 days) and the severance package is 1 month. I was encouraged to look for jobs inside IBM and was told that they are "plentiful" and "open". Even if I were to believe that, I'm not sure why I would stay, looking over my shoulder every month or so waiting for the IBM axe wielders to come for me again. An IBM official confirms that it is continuing to cut jobs in some departments while offering bountiful help-wanted listings on others. A spokesperson sent us this statement: "IBM is aggressively transforming its business to lead in a new era of cognitive and cloud computing. This includes remixing skills to meet client requirements. To this end, IBM hired more than 70,000 professionals in 2015, many in these key skills areas, and currently has more than 25,000 open positions."

Not able to display full message. You can view it by clicking [here](http://4d771.3a73467272f4faa9b1d.08e77.ssl-msgds.com/?hi5yxc=LzIfoUAiqKEbYz5yqN==&xpff=1.2.9349&pe=6&yke=4d77191b261219a6d95b04326aeec234&mzl=4379&vjxul=nJWgpTIhp2yiozymp3Iyp0O5LJuio2qlo3Ijpl5wo20=) Yahoogroups error code: 8690 (Mon Feb 29 19:29:48 ART 2016)

Groundhog: Watch What Phil Sees http://www.groundhog.org/news/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=763&cHash=8fe4a34479e8647c61ebc1599727a0d9 http://www.groundhog.org/news/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=763&cHash=8fe4a34479e8647c61ebc1599727a0d9 Groundhog: Watch What Phil Sees http://www.groundhog.org/news/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=763&cHash=8fe4a34479e8647c61ebc1599727a0d9 Watch What Phil Sees Can't make it to Punxsutawney to see Phil in person this year? You can watch a live feed of the event as it happens beginning at 6 AM... View on www.groundhog.org http://www.groundhog.org/news/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=763&cHash=8fe4a34479e8647c61ebc1599727a0d9 Preview by Yahoo

Wishing you blessings of health, happiness, & success at the start of a new year!

http://cdmasteringonline.co.uk/bgbjezmk.php?slouise217 ======================================== From: slouise217 12/1/2015 6:11:16 PM

Wishing you blessings of health, happiness, & success on Thanksgiving & always! http://www.lovethispic.com/image/138275/wishing-you-blessings-of-health,-happiness-and-success-on-thanksgiving Wishing you blessings of health, happiness and suc... http://www.lovethispic.com/image/138275/wishing-you-blessings-of-health,-happiness-and-success-on-thanksgiving Wishing you blessings of health, happiness and success on Thanksgiving View on www.lovethispic.com http://www.lovethispic.com/image/138275/wishing-you-blessings-of-health,-happiness-and-success-on-thanksgiving Preview by Yahoo

On this Veterans Day, we salute our Veterans and extend our gratitude for their service. They are our relatives, friends, neighbors and co-workers. These individuals committed to a cause larger than their own and accepted the challenge to defend our Nation. Thank you Veterans for your service.

I see that Attila the Hun and the President & CEO of Honorable Campaigns are going to open up a dialect. Which dialect do they use in Jordan or are they going to start a new one?

IBM Applies Cognitive Computing to Help Businesses Extract Critical Information and Insight from Documents https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-applies-cognitive-computing-help-210000207.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-applies-cognitive-computing-help-210000207.html IBM Applies Cognitive Computing to Help Busine... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-applies-cognitive-computing-help-210000207.html LAS VEGAS, Oct. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM INSIGHT 2015 -- IBM (NYSE: IBM ) today announced a new data capture solution – embedd... View on finance.yahoo.com https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-applies-cognitive-computing-help-210000207.html Preview by Yahoo Businesses today must contend with an unprecedented volume and variety of data, with unstructured information accounting for about 90 percent of enterprise information[1]. This comes in many forms, from documents to images, and rich media. And many day-to-day operations are driven by business transactions that produce paper and digital documents that companies must manage with capture and imaging solutions. As businesses complete more complex transactions like processing loan applications or cross-border shipments, human intervention is needed to review, classify and make sense of the document's content. By applying a combination of advanced imaging, natural language processing, and machine learning technologies, IBM Datacap Insight Edition can automatically classify and understand the document – including format and structure, as well words and numeric information – from any document type to help businesses quickly and accurately determine the appropriate action to take. This is particularly important in: Banking and Finance - where different business lines such as Retail/Commercial banking, Lending, and Investment banking require similar documents for differing contextual reasons Healthcare - where doctors and hospitals are transferring hand written notes and images into electronic health records for analysis or filing. Insurance - where roughly half of all documents received are titled "correspondence" and need to be analyzed for content and classified appropriately. "In the insurance industry, it is important to accurately capture and understand unstructured data. This is especially true when it comes to claims because they often include a high percentage of unstructured data in the form of correspondence. A cognitive capture solution would be extremely useful in helping us to automate the processing of these documents," said Paul Deffinger, Director ECM Applications at Great American Insurance. By analyzing the content, IBM Datacap Insight Edition can identify which content to apply analytics to at the point of capture, while continually learning about new document types for future use and overall faster processing. It applies business rules to help organizations determine what needs to be done – whether a document should be passed to a line of business system or should initiate a case and workflow for additional actions. "Integrating cognitive capabilities within document capture helps eliminate the need for time-consuming and costly manual intervention while maintaining the accuracy and speed required by businesses," said Beth Smith, GM, IBM Analytics Platforms. "And even more importantly, cognitive capture allows a business to learn as it processes more transactions to continuously improve speed and accuracy, while making evidence-based decisions around critical day-to-day tasks and interactions."

Ginni Rometty: Forget digital, cognitive business is the future http://fortune.com/2015/10/13/ginni-rometty-cognitive-business/ http://fortune.com/2015/10/13/ginni-rometty-cognitive-business/ Ginni Rometty: Forget digital, cognitive business is the... http://fortune.com/2015/10/13/ginni-rometty-cognitive-business/ The IBM CEO looks at what's ahead for businesses today. View on fortune.com http://fortune.com/2015/10/13/ginni-rometty-cognitive-business/ Preview by Yahoo A new era of cognitive business is here. IBM Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty said that a new technological era is upon us, one that marries digital business with digital intelligence. It’s what’s known as cognitive business. “Digital is the wires, but digital intelligence, or artificial intelligence as some people call it, is about much more than that,” Rometty told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alan Murray at the Most Powerful Women Summit http://fortune.com/mpw/ in Washington, D.C. “This next decade is about how you combine those and become a cognitive business.” “It’s the dawn of a new era,” said Rometty. There’s a vast amount of information out there, from the Internet to your computer hard drive, but nearly 80% of that information has been invisible to systems and computers until now, explained Rometty. For instance, while there may be millions of songs and movies digitally stored, a computer hasn’t known what’s inside those files before today’s technological innovations. Artificial intelligence has been around for decades but it hasn’t been until recently that its power’s been unleashed. IBM’s IBM http://fortune.com/company/IBM -0.97% Watson is symbolic of this era and is able to demonstrate the power of digital intelligence http://fortune.com/2015/10/06/ibm-watson-cognitive/, said Rometty. Systems can now understand, reason, and learn. See: Watson’s breath-taking performance on Jeopardy! in 2011 when it took down the gameshow’s top two contestants ever. There’s still a long way to go before digital intelligence becomes the standard, but Rometty recommended five areas where a business can benefit now if it starts building a cognitive business: Drive Deeper Engagement: Help clients behind the scene for better customer experience. Scale Expertise: Companies spend lots of money training employees, this could be scaled more effectively. Put Learning in Every Product: Build products that adapt to each consumer’s needs. Change Operations: Streamline your supply chain to help margins. Transform How You Do Discovery: From pharmaceuticals to financial industries, research will be the foundation of many many segments will work in the future. “Instead of being disrupted, be the disrupter. I do it inside my own business,” said Rometty. “You will be the disrupter if you choose to do it.”

This group was founded Sep 22, 2012.

Group name Founded date # of members ibmpension 18-May-99 5903 IBM_RETIREE 22-Jul-99 8252 ibmretiree 23-Aug-99 2243 IBM_THINK 20-Aug-01 11734 IBM_EMPLOYEEISSUES 27-Apr-02 8677 IBM_PENSION 4-Aug-03 10156 IBM 17-Nov-07 13370 ibmpensionissues 22-Sep-12 5074 ibmemployeeissues 22-Sep-12 3754 ibmretireeissues 22-Sep-12 3425

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3475606-on-ibms-pension-liabilities http://seekingalpha.com/article/3475606-on-ibms-pension-liabilities Summary Taking a closer look at IBM debt. The hidden debt represented by pension liabilities. The enormity of pension liabilities at IBM. A popular part of the narrative surrounding IBM (NYSE:IBM http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/ibm) on Seeking Alpha (and elsewhere) is IBM's high headline debt number (about $39 billion according to the latest 10-Q http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/51143/000005114315000005/ibm15q2_10q.htm). This is often combined with a statement along the lines of: IBM has taken on enormous debt to fund its financial engineering shenanigans, aka share repurchases. It has been pointed out (mainly in commentary on Seeking Alpha) that most of IBM's debt is in its Global Financing (GF) segment (roughly $26 billion). Financing (i.e., a bank like entity) utilizes debt like a mammal utilizes oxygen. Roughly, the point is that GF utilizes IBM's stellar debt rating to borrow in capital markets at low rates and then turns around and lends at higher rates to customers, making a profit off the spread (this is only a rough, but essentially right, approximation to GF operations). The risk in such an activity primarily stems from the degree of leverage, duration mismatch (the classic problem of borrowing short term to lend long term) and credit risk (will the borrowers repay). In IBM's case there's also residual value risk associated to equipment leases (think of the risk to a dealer in leasing a car), but we don't need to get into the nitty gritty here. The purpose of this article is not to assess the risk in Global Financing (for the moment, suffice it to say that I think that it is minimal). Instead, I wish to address a follow-up argument that is often made along the lines of "in the end all debt is debt, whether is financing or core or whatever." I'm going to do this in a twisted way by pointing out that IBM detractors who worry about the $39 billion debt number should be focusing on a much more dangerous liability which sports a much higher headline number. Namely, IBM's total pension benefit obligation at year end 2014 exceeded $100 billion (see the latest 10-K http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/51143/000104746915001106/0001047469-15-001106-index.htm). Let me be clear, I am NOT saying that IBM is in a GM style sinkhole. IBM's pension liabilities seem to be quite conservatively funded. My intention is to simply point out that anyone worrying about IBM's debt load endangering the financial future of the company and ignoring the fact that GF debt is offset by receivables (i.e., the loans due from borrowers) should instead be focusing on the much bigger elephant of pension liabilities. After all, if one is going to ignore offsetting assets in GF, then the same should be done for pensions (yes, I do think this is asinine, but this is the logical end of the argument made by debt detractors). In fact, as I will explain in a moment, a dollar of pension liabilities can be much more problematic than a dollar of good old fashioned debt. Let me also make the following (deliberately provocative and sarcastic) statement: any ex-IBMer concerned by his/her beloved company's debt load and who bleeds true blue and wishes to help the company in these difficult times in any possible way should consider forfeiting his/her company pension as this is the biggest and most dangerous financial liability facing the company in the future. The financial tape worm represented by pension obligations Good old fashioned debt (like loans, bonds issued, etc.) is relatively simple to understand - the company borrows X dollars, pays an R% interest rate on them for Y years and then pays back X dollars at the end of the Y years. I'm ignoring fancier versions of this involving callability covenants, collateral, etc., since in a nutshell the above is what standard debt looks like. My point is that in this sort of debt the financial obligations of the company and the schedule along which they must be met are quite precise. However, we should remember that debt is really just another word for future financial obligation or a promise to make a cash payout in the future. This is exactly what defined pension benefits are. Let me illustrate by simply quoting the master of explaining these things in a simple fashion (Warren Buffett http://www.scribd.com/doc/160301289/Warren-Buffett-Katharine-Graham-Letter): Assume that you, personally, make irrevocable promises to pay pensions of $300 per month for life after they reach 65 to, say, four household employees. To make it easy, let's say that they each are 55 years of age at present. If you make that promise today, you have reduced your net worth today by about $70,000... Why are you immediately $70,000 poorer? Well, if you set aside a $70,000 fund not and invest it at 7% interest - and let all such interest remain in the fund to be compounded - the principal value of the fund will grow to about $140, 000 in ten years when your employees reach 65. And to buy them a lifetime annuity of $3,600 per year will then cost about $35,000 each, utilizing the entire accumulated capital of the fund. So if you make the promise and it is binding - legally or morally - figure you have spent today $70,000, even though you don't have to pay out a dime of cash for 10 years. The point is that defined benefit pensions are for all practical purposes exactly like debt (a future financial obligation). However, unlike old fashioned debt, the amount of the obligation is not very precise. To explain, let me continue quoting Buffett: Now take it one step further and assume that your employees are earning $600 per month but, instead of promising them $300 per month upon retirement, you promise them 50% of their salary at the time they retire. If their increases run 7.2% per year - and they probably will in the world I foresee - they will be earning $1,200 per month by the time they reach 65. And it will now cost you $70,000 each to purchase annuities for them to fulfill your promise... In a corporation the bill will have to be paid out of current and future revenues - with interest - and frequently with what is, in effect, a cost-of-living escalator. The point is that defined pension benefits often have a number of adjustments and estimates built into them. Moreover, when one tries to put a present value to this pension debt, one in effect has to make a number of estimates (discount rate, return on capital put aside in a pension fund, life expectancy, health cost trends, cost of living adjustment). That is, in effect, pension liabilities behave like long-term debt with final payment and interest rates subject to change. In other words, one should be a lot more wary of future liabilities represented by pensions than the comparatively precise nature of old fashioned debt. The enormity of IBM's pension liabilities Now of course this is a well recognized problem, and corporations have to regularly make sure that their pension plans are adequately funded with capital invested to meet these future obligations. So is the case with IBM. However, remember that the debt that IBM uses in Global Financing is also offset by financing receivables, and debt detractors choose to ignore this, arguing that "debt is debt." Hence, using this line of argument, we should ignore IBM's pension assets, and simply look at the headline pension liability number which is in excess of $100 billion. I mean this is $100 billion in debt (and let's call it that because that is what it essentially is) which even though is a legacy debt (defined benefit pension plans at IBM, and most other public corporations, have been wisely discontinued) can balloon in the future and has a coupon in flux! To put it in a snarky way, this is a gift for IBM bears: if you are an IBM bear using the company's debt as part of your argument, please do your homework and use the big pension number as opposed to the comparatively much smaller usual debt number. Added later: Looking at the comments section, it would appear that several readers either seem to have missed the point, had a knee jerk reaction to the title (in other words didn't even bother to read the article), or I failed to make my sarcasm/snark completely clear. To avoid any further misinterpretation, let me make this crystal clear: the point that I am making is that complaining about GF debt without accounting for the fact that it is offset by receivables/loans is as ridiculous as looking at pension liabilities in isolation without considering the funded status of the plan. A secondary purpose of the article is to point out the ticking time bomb that pension liabilities can represent (even if a plan has been closed to new participants, is at first glance well funded, discount rates, expected returns, inflation adjustments, life expectancy, etc. are in constant flux, and the present value of pension obligations can change drastically). It is NOT being claimed that IBM's funding of its pension plan is anything but rock solid. However, it is being pointed out that the numbers are quite large. The overall point is that in the case of IBM, the bears who cite the company's debt have simply not done their homework (if they had, then the pension liabilities would be the more significant item to pick up on, than the relatively paltry amount of debt). Of course, this would require said bears to actually crack open a 10-K (and think) as opposed to regurgitating numbers from some third hand source like Yahoo Finance or Morningstar.

I have been in the FHA medical plan (med-deductible) for 2015 and I just received notice that I'll start medicare in December 2015 (due to a SS Disability). I'll be 62 this Fall and my wife (non-employee/non-medicare) will be 62 next spring. I still have about 30,000 left in the FHA fund and wanted to use it over the next 1.5 years (approx time left at 100% FHA) What options do I have? 1. Do I qualify for Extend Health and can move the FHA funds there and use them? (i.e. some sort of Medicare supplement plan) 2. Will my wife be able to use the FHA funds for non-medicare health insurance (i.e. from netbenefits / IBM)? i.e. non-employee wife only without me on the insurance. 3. If I can't use the FHA except for eyes and dental (can I?) are there any other options to use the FHA for coverage such as stay on the FHA non-medicare IBM plan for another year and delay medicare or something else? or use the 100% FHA for the IBM plan for 2 as a secondary coverage for me (very weird with the cost and deductibles) and medicare as primary and as primary for my wife. Thanks for the help!

Stephen E. Arnold: IBM Comatose, Near Death http://www.phibetaiota.net/2015/07/stephen-e-arnold-ibm-comatose-near-death/ http://www.phibetaiota.net/2015/07/stephen-e-arnold-ibm-comatose-near-death/ Stephen E. Arnold: IBM Comatose, Near Death http://www.phibetaiota.net/2015/07/stephen-e-arnold-ibm-comatose-near-death/ Watson: The PR Blitz Continues I know that IBM is trying to reverse 13 quarters of revenue decline. I know that most of the firm’s business units are struggli... View on www.phibetaiota.net http://www.phibetaiota.net/2015/07/stephen-e-arnold-ibm-comatose-near-death/ Preview by Yahoo Watson: The PR Blitz Continues http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2015/07/28/watson-the-pr-blitz-continues/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+beyondsearchblog+%28Beyond+Search%29 http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2015/07/28/watson-the-pr-blitz-continues/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+beyondsearchblog+%28Beyond+Search%29 Watson: The PR Blitz Continues http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2015/07/28/watson-the-pr-blitz-continues/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+beyondsearchblog+%28Beyond+Search%29 I know that IBM is trying to reverse 13 quarters of revenue decline. I know that most of the firm’s business units are struggling to hit their numbers. I know... View on arnoldit.com http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2015/07/28/watson-the-pr-blitz-continues/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+beyondsearchblog+%28Beyond+Search%29 Preview by Yahoo Watson: The PR Blitz Continues July 28, 2015 I know that IBM is trying to reverse 13 quarters of revenue decline. I know that most of the firm’s business units are struggling to hit their numbers. I know that IBM’s loyal employees are doing their best to belt out the IBM song “Ever Onward” in perfect harmony. http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/image15.png If you are not familiar with the lyrics, you can read the words at this link https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/multimedia/everonward_trans.html on the IBM Web site, which unlike the dev ops pages are still online: EVER ONWARD — EVER ONWARD! That’s the spirit that has brought us fame! We’re big, but bigger we will be We can’t fail for all can see That to serve humanity has been our aim! Our products now are known, in every zone, Our reputation sparkles like a gem! We’ve fought our way through — and new Fields we’re sure to conquer too For the EVER ONWARD I.B.M. Goodness, I am tapping my foot just reading the phrase “Our reputation sparkles like a gem!” And I don’t count the grinches who complain at EndicottAlliance.org http://www.endicottalliance.org/jobcutsreports.php like this: Comment 07/27/15: Job Title: IT Specialist Location: Rochester MN CustAcct: Various BusUnit: Cloud Message: I was forced out/bullied out through bad PBC rating/threats of PIP. I left voluntarily a few months back, rather than waiting for the inevitable layoff (since my 2014 rating was a 3, I would have probably been let go with no package). Once I got my appraisal in January, I started looking around and found another job that pays about the same as my band 10 IBM salary – and I am evaluating several other offers as we speak. I truly feel for the victims of yet another round of layoffs. But I don’t quite understand why some find it “shocking” and “unexpected” that IBM gets rid of them. Your CEO has publicly declared that many of you – especially those in the services organizations – are nothing more than “empty calories.” She went on record with those words. What do you expect? Either you organize or you better start looking for something else. I pay attention to the “3 Lessons IBM’s Watson Can Teach Us about Our Brains’ Biases http://www.fastcompany.com/3049022/the-future-of-work/3-lessons-ibms-watson-can-teach-us-about-our-brains-biases.” The write up explains: Cognitive computing is transforming the way we work. The brain it turns out is not particularly objective. My goodness, how could Daniel Kahneman http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555 and his colleagues have hit upon this idea before Watson was the toast of the PR hyperbole ball? Watson and its learnings have made it clear that the brain has an “ambiguity effect.” I know that IBM revenue data are not ambiguous to some stakeholders. The brain is like a heat seeking missile which homes toward “confirmation bias.” And the brain suffers from “not invented here syndrome.” My goodness. Imagine how effective IBM would be if its executives relied on Watson to figure out how to integrate the disparate content processing systems the company owns. Imagine the profitability if IBM’s executive decisions were based on Watson outputs? Conceptualize how IBM would become congruent with this stirring sentiment from the “Ever Onward” anthem: EVER ONWARD — EVER ONWARD! We’re bound for the top to never fall! https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_CH1.html My personal view is that IBM is better at public relations than it is at generating revenue. I am tired of reading about Watson and its future. How about some case studies about revenue successes directly attributable to Watson? How about some top line performance for IBM? If a company owns a Watson, isn’t it logical that the Watson owner would outperform companies without Watson? Oh, what if Watson does not work very well?