In Reply to: Re: Subject: Fw: Letter To Palmisano posted by UK News on 15 January 2004 at 16:09:35:
: You will find that Eddie Nixon wrote to Gerstner some years ago I believe saying much the same thing and appealing to Mr. Gerstner's decency. Eddie found out no doubt just what he was dealing with. Still It is very nice to know that at one time the company meant what it said.
I think that the company did mean what it said in the second half of the 1960s, the 1970s and first half of the 1980s when it had plenty of money to play with. I remember, round about 1970, we used to talk a lot - interminably - about IBM's high standards etc. One day we asked an experienced marketing manager, who'd been around, what he felt was the key guiding principle of IBM. I guess we expected something to warm our hearts - respect for the individual, stuff like that - for we were all young. What he replied was "Survival, at any cost". We thought he was just being cynical.
As one who was told (no witnesses of course) early in 1993, less than two months after I'd received my award for 25 years of service - that I'd be fired if I didn't take the May 5 Early Retirement Package, I survived long enough to discover the truth of his statement.