It was June 2011, in Melbourne, Australia, and I had just received a job offer to work at IBM (starting January 2012) as a Graduate I.T. Project Coordinator. It was a special moment for me, having the opportunity to work for a historic company who had just turned 100 that year, something pretty rare in the I.T. world.
 
It is common for large organisations to offer you a position within their ranks 6-7 months before you actually start. Unfortunately, after the offer, I had to decline the interviews for every call I got for jobs I had applied for before the IBM offer. I mean, I didn’t HAVE TO, but I thought IBM was the best option at the time.
 
Fast forward a year, and I was starting to really hate my job. I always have a positive attitude and I am always motivated when it comes to working in a field that I love, but the IBM experience taught me a number of things, such as:
 
• Your duties will likely be different to what your job title is;
• Working from home, even when encouraged by your company, isn’t really as good as it sounds;
• There are a lot of dinosaurs in management who are stuck in the 90’s;
• Having a manager in another state is terrible for motivation;
• 2-hour Friday lunches are overrated;
• Do not try and improve a system or a process. The "IBM Way" is the only way that works. On numerous occasions, my recommendations stayed in the meeting room or as an unopened email;
• In large organisations, there are many employees who do as little work as possible, which is often overlooked by management. On multiple occasions I would stay back whilst people in the same team would be “working” from home (or the beach);
• There is a good chance that someone from management will be at the golf course when you urgently need a signature; and
• From what I saw, 95% of people that left during my time at IBM were interns, graduates, entry-level and middle management employees. Executives and upper management almost never leave.
 
I lasted at IBM for 18 months and I gave 110% every day. Even when I worked from home. Even when I was sick. Even when I had lost any motivation I had left doing repetitive tasks and chasing management around asking for work to do. I met at least 200 people during my tenure there. I would be surprised if 20 of them are still there, 3 years later. From what I've seen on LinkedIn, the vast majority of them are actually the same "dinosaurs" I mentioned earlier

Un drôle de match a commencé en Suisse. D'un côté, les nouveaux retraités, issus du baby-boom, la période la plus féconde de l'histoire. Ils raccrochent, depuis cinq ans, par cohortes entières, avec des conditions de départ héritées de l'âge d'or de l'économie helvétique. De l'autre, la génération montante, relativement peu nombreuse, qui affronte un monde du travail toujours plus dur, un coût de la vie jamais atteint, et qui est destinée à financer l'assurance vieillesse des premiers... Le pays saura-t-il éviter un conflit de génération?

It was June 2011, in Melbourne, Australia, and I had just received a job offer to work at IBM (starting January 2012) as a Graduate I.T. Project Coordinator. It was a special moment for me, having the opportunity to work for a historic company who had just turned 100 that year, something pretty rare in the I.T. world.
 
It is common for large organisations to offer you a position within their ranks 6-7 months before you actually start. Unfortunately, after the offer, I had to decline the interviews for every call I got for jobs I had applied for before the IBM offer. I mean, I didn’t HAVE TO, but I thought IBM was the best option at the time.
 
Fast forward a year, and I was starting to really hate my job. I always have a positive attitude and I am always motivated when it comes to working in a field that I love, but the IBM experience taught me a number of things, such as:
 
• Your duties will likely be different to what your job title is;
• Working from home, even when encouraged by your company, isn’t really as good as it sounds;
• There are a lot of dinosaurs in management who are stuck in the 90’s;
• Having a manager in another state is terrible for motivation;
• 2-hour Friday lunches are overrated;
• Do not try and improve a system or a process. The "IBM Way" is the only way that works. On numerous occasions, my recommendations stayed in the meeting room or as an unopened email;
• In large organisations, there are many employees who do as little work as possible, which is often overlooked by management. On multiple occasions I would stay back whilst people in the same team would be “working” from home (or the beach);
• There is a good chance that someone from management will be at the golf course when you urgently need a signature; and
• From what I saw, 95% of people that left during my time at IBM were interns, graduates, entry-level and middle management employees. Executives and upper management almost never leave.
 
I lasted at IBM for 18 months and I gave 110% every day. Even when I worked from home. Even when I was sick. Even when I had lost any motivation I had left doing repetitive tasks and chasing management around asking for work to do. I met at least 200 people during my tenure there. I would be surprised if 20 of them are still there, 3 years later. From what I've seen on LinkedIn, the vast majority of them are actually the same "dinosaurs" I mentioned earlier