Finally, my throat feels better! Perfect timing as we go into the weekend. Kasey and I went to Target and I bought some new clothes, just a few things I needed, like socks and undershirts. I wasn’t able to find any button-ups I liked, our local Target’s clothing section was a mess.
We loaded up the bed of the truck with donations to goodwill, it’s time to start slimming down the stuff and figuring out what we’d like to take on the road with us. My biggest project is going to be sorting tools, electronics such as wires, PCBs, and maker stuff. It’s really difficult to get rid of tools, they are just so handy and always usable!
I know it’s easy for people to say they really like the new shiny, but damn, I do really enjoy this Jeep. For the same car payment as the Tesla, it’s just so more functional and I’m looking forward to the snow this winter. The last unanswered question is how slow will the RV be pulling itself, loaded, and the Jeep? Yes, I need to visit some scales to ensure what’s safe to tug around.
Nothing will make you want to install a dash cam more than watching idiots in cars on YouTube. I picked up a front and rear combo cam, the biggest thing I missed from the Tesla. I also picked up an aux panel switch kit.
It’s been 5 days since I started this draft. The baseplate and tow bar is installed!
I still have brake wiring, brake light wiring to go. I chose an invisibrake kit, a permanently installed braking system and the install is going to be involved. Should take me this weekend to get done. I don’t know how anyone would consider towing without supplemental brakes, the RV is heavy enough to stop as it is.
I’m reflecting on some of the reasons I left IBM today. It was six years of service and I was nervous to leave after being at a company for so long. IBM, and my previous boss really took care of me. It was my first startup experience, acquisition and “big job” if that makes sense.
I really kicked ass and contributed in big ways early on. I was the first person hired after the official acquisition, no equity for me, but I have a feeling that my boss at the time really helped put me in a good salary bracket. I heard over time that others made much less for the same role.
The final straw was new management coming in and conflicting management styles. I was asked to submit a doctor’s note to reschedule a 1:1 meeting so I could attend my weekly therapy session, how absurd is that? It immediately threw me back to working a minimum wage fast food job, no thank you.
But IBM had many other ethical issues. Recently, news broke that the board was committing fraud by fudging sales numbers to get bonuses. In the last few years they did a fake “return to office” effort right before COVID to terminate many of their aging workforce, that age discrimination class action is still being fought in court today.
It just feels so ironic considering all of the ethics training we are required to take every year, maybe it’s because IBM needs it. Experiences working at an IBM call center on the Apple account were equally unethical, many were fired just to scam Apple out of hiring bonuses for new headcount instead of receiving raises. This was a close to minimum wage job, too. One employment contractor got health insurance, we did not and when pointed out, we had a pizza party to make up for it, LOL.
I really enjoyed my coworkers and the skills I learned, some really good people. My experiences were good for me to grow professionally and I left things in a good place. As much as IBM struggles and is the underdog in the cloud market, I feel as if they will always be lagging behind with their fragmentation of systems and inability for any one person to meaningfully contribute.
Little things are highly irritating. I shouldn’t have to sign back into slack every other day, it leads me to miss messages and DMs. I shouldn’t have to use several discrete support systems because we can’t use just one fucking support system. And I think one of the most irritating things is the expectation to cross train across teams and learn many systems, each of which someone could get a DBA and spend a lifetime of learning just one.
The teams are also constantly chronically understaffed as IBM doesn’t have the budget to hire, even when people leave. This puts them in a negative death spiral as customers have bad experiences with support, so they leave, IBM looses budget so they don’t hire, or only hire interns/college kids, then more leave as we provide even more piss poor support.
I just don’t understand and it’s never made sense.
Oh, and they fired my boss back in the day so they didn’t have to pay out his equity after the acquisition, I feel. They nailed him for some “security breach” which sounds like to me was him just doing an SOC audit or something. I don’t know the details. I just know that he got shafted, hard. I should reach out and thank him for helping hire me and coming down to Indiana to meet now that I don’t have a conflict of interest.
Anyway, time to get some breakfast and get this wiring done!
Ross Fisher 