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back to article IBM's tops sales staff face long haul...to Hawaii

IBM is whisking its biggest sales hitters in Global Tech Services to Hawaii as a pat them on the back for their efforts, while others in the division head out the door on stat redundancy terms. In a 5 April internal blog post, Martin Blackburn, COO for GTS Europe, confirmed that UK and Ireland’s “top performers” were selected …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I "won" - but I sure as hell am not going

    I am one of the incredibly few techies who won (the majority as rightfully point out are sales folk). Suffice to say, I told them I'm not going and I agree it is incredibly poor taste.

    It's split in 3 waves, so Ginni gets damn near a full fortnight in Hawaii. However us poor schmucks face long-haul flights (economy class). And days 1 and 4 of the trip are travel. And days 2 and 3 involve conferences (for tax reasons).

    Yeah, a real award. It's like it was designed by Catbert. I won this award in-spite of IBM - not because of it. Definitely not proud to be associated as an IBMer. I work for the company - but I sure as heck am not choosing to be here and will escape as soon as possible.

    26 2 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I "won" - but I sure as hell am not going

      Yes it's hard to be enthusiastic about anything when you've spent three years dreading any contact from your manager.

      5 0 Reply
    2. Bob Vistakin
      Reply Icon
      Devil

      Re: I "won" - but I sure as hell am not going

      Lepoards and spots.

      4 0 Reply
      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: I "won" - but I sure as hell am not going

        > Lepoards and spots

        I don't see what the Holocaust data-processing machinery sold to a rabidly nationalistic regime has to with this.

        (Sadly, today you will find yourself at the business end of a lawsuit should you decide to BDS the "only democracy in the Middle East", i.e. proto-Naziland. Imagine a law that forced you to trade with Nazi Germany because not doing would have been racist and 'anti-germanic'? We sure have come a long way.)

        This world is going places. But that's just by the by.

        1 3 Reply
    3. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
      Reply Icon
      Pint

      Re: I "won" - but I sure as hell am not going

      AC, think of yourself as just having been bought a round of [see icon].

      9 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I "won" - but I sure as hell am not going

        OP here - thanks for the virtual pint. That actually means *far* more to me than the stupid bloody award.

        The insanity is also compounded because I'm simultaneously being threatened by Project Saturn so who knows how much longer I'll have a job. I would not be surprised if some people turned up at Hawaii and found their awards were pink slips or P45s.

        There is no real recognition or reward in the company. Ginni is a cancer and is destroying IBM.

        However one thing is guaranteed - *when* I get fired (whether it is in this round or a future round), then I'll have no fear anymore which means no more hiding as AC. And be assured that I would be making a *lot* of noise internally. I'm soooo looking forward to posting truthful comments on Ginnis blog. Given the usual amount of sickening brown nosing that normally appears there, I suspect it might be a shock to her.

        Of course she probably has it pre-filtered through her Watson Reality Distortion Field(TM)

        12 1 Reply
        1. Mark Cathcart
          Reply Icon

          Re: I "won" - but I sure as hell am not going

          To be fair, unless your are using Tor or a machine completely seperate machine/network, they already have the ability to identify you, if they wanted.

          I had the same, I once had a short meeting with Linda Sanford at IBM Hursley after making contributions here, admittedly in my case it was the email relay logs that tripped me up, but as I said at the the time, of I'd not wanted to be caught, I wouldn't have been.

          Times have changed, in the old days you never got an invite to a sales convention if you were predisposed to not attending. As a former ibm Distinguished Engineer and member of the Academy of Technology, I never got invited loads of times :)

          2 0 Reply
        2. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I "won" - but I sure as hell am not going

          I jumped 18 months ago when the voluntary redundancies were going. The best decision I ever made. I know people who missed the voluntary round and still jumped ship as it was so awful to work there.

          I had a bet (and lost) that Ginni would be gone by Xmas last year. I am surprised that she's survived so long. Given the decline in the share price, a third or so down over the last few years and the lack of growth, I though she'd be gone looong ago. Never underestimate the ability of senior execs to hang on and get bonuses whilst the company crashes around them.

          IBM still makes great hardware (I have a soft spot for the p and Z-Series) and some of the people are brilliant, indeed most of the staff were good. The issue is the senior management and the constant quest to extract more and more blood out of a stone. We could only deliver so much profit on a job, shouting and abusing the staff to get more, wasn't going to help.

          4 0 Reply
    4. Mark 85
      Reply Icon

      Re: I "won" - but I sure as hell am not going

      You actually may get to "keep" your job by not going. I worked at one place that sponsored a junket and those that went were deemed "disposable" since they had time to go on it. Those us who were working at deadlines and didn't go kept our jobs. Hindsight, I'm not sure who got the better deal.....

      5 0 Reply
  2. John 104

    That is really deplorable behavior. Kudos to you, AC, for not going.

    7 0 Reply

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fuck IBM

    That is all

    0 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fuck IBM

      But anon, that will give you a Big Blue dick.

      0 1 Reply
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    First commenter is correct though - they have no choice in going. A few years back a colleague won similar award. When due to go on the trip we were in the middle of a critsit and he was going to stay and help fix the issue we were working on as he was the lead engineer. He was made to go as our manager was a political animal, travelled cattle class etc. Because his focus was more on the customer's problem than showing up to make the executives look good at a junket he was targeted for removal during the next cull.

    The Dilbert strip from 9th October 2003 seems somewhat applicable here.

    PHB: The management retreat in Hawaii was productive.

    PHB: We calculated how many employees we needed to downsize to pay for the trip.

    PHB: Don't blame me, Ted. I voted against the third helicopter ride.

    2 0 Reply
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Are they trying to replicate Symantec ?

    That's the exact same crap that went on / still goes on in Symantec! Fuck over a bunch of folks, keep the near constant threat of more fuckings, then rent a cruise liner like last year and send all Sales/SEs/Mktg on a cruise in the Mediterranean.

    Thank fuck I got my P45 and a nice payoff from Symantec as I feel very sorry for the IBM folks.

    3 0 Reply
  7. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Yeah but... no but...

    “offensive in the extreme when GTS is laying off so many people with statutory packages as they claimed enhanced payments were not affordable”.

    Yeah but, it's a different cost centre so it's all right innit?

    2 0 Reply
  8. Miss Lincolnshire

    Unbelievable

    IBM is making HPE look well run

    Believe me it's not.

    1 0 Reply
    1. spold Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Unbelievable

      Perhaps the best get put on a plane to Shenzhen to advise Huawei. I made that trip myself, a VP there said "yes we took your processes and improved them - ours are better than IBM's now". IBM sold the best of its intellectual capital to them (as consulting) and helped create that monster. Sadly it is now doing a better job than IBM itself. I thought they might take it over and rename it HBM, however having sucked it's spicy brains and the rest being crap I doubt they would be interested...

      0 0 Reply
  9. spold Silver badge

    Your mileage may vary...

    For 10%: cocktail party to the left, rest: volcano tour to the right.

    I'm guessing if you set your out-of-office to "In Hawaii!" it might take colleagues a while to notice you are missing...

    0 0 Reply

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