Perhaps I'm starting to get old, but I seem to remember the good old days when companies were less concerned with skills and more concerned with hiring honest, hard working employees, and then TRAINING them. Not only did you end up with employees with the exact skills you needed, you also got employees who were loyal to the company and weren't going to leave for greener pastures at the slightest drop of a hat.

I suspect that the business executives knew all along that this was going to be the long-term outcome when they replaced lifetime career employees with "fluid players". But the short term monetary incentives were just too much for them to turn down at the time, and nothing beyond next quarter's numbers matter to them anyway.

And if this is one of the Google cars posting messages, I sure hope it's paying attention to the road right now.

The Console font indicates that this is a response from a computer. Is this one of the Google cars posting messages?

It wouldn't be that strange. Europa is theorized to have a liquid ocean due to tidal heating.

I'll let everyone in on a little secret. IBM is getting rid of most of its software developers because it wants to get out of the software development business. The reason is because they, for a variety of reasons, produce mediocre software, and the executives know it.

IBM's strength is its sales channels. It can command high prices for it's software because it is a trusted brand, and it's very good at strong-arming customers into purchasing expensive complicated solutions once they get their foot in the door.

IBM's new software business model is as follows....
1) Find holes in their "portfolio" for providing end-to-end solutions for customers.
2) Purchase existing companies where that software is already implemented (e.g. Rational, ILOG, Green Hat, Cognos, Buildforge, Telelogic, etc...)
3) Sell said software at much higher prices than the original company could have ever gotten away with.
4) Reduce headcount by eliminating developers from purchased company, replacing them with offshore developers whose only purpose is to "maintain" the newly acquired software. Also, eliminate less-profitable niche products and lay off those developers except for the cream of the crop.
5) Reap huge profits.
6) Repeat.

Check out the list of companies they've acquired...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_IBM#Acquisitions_since_1999

So don't think that the executives at IBM are idiots. They're not. They've found a way to squeeze tons of profits from existing software companies. They have no reason to care about employee morale. They don't need developers. They've got too many as it is from all of these acquired companies. Bad morale means employees will leave on their own, meaning they don't have to pay severance.

Also, IBM typically purchases companies for a handful of their product line. That leaves lots of smaller software products that IBM simply has no use for (not a large enough market, duplication of product lines, etc...). Often, "rebalancing" means chopping these products out of existence. IBM has literally THOUSANDS of these small niche products that it wants to eliminate.

So for developers, it sucks, because the IBM executives have no need for you anymore. There's no reason for IBM to produce its own software anymore. Why risk starting development on a complex product when you can just purchase the finished product? You're nothing more than a "resource" that they have too much of and which needs to be reduced through "resource actions".

But for executives and shareholders, it's a wonderful arrangement. Don't be fooled....IBM can be profitable doing this for a very long time. Please keep in mind that IBM reducing US headcount from 130k to 90k is misleading. That number does not include the huge number of employees that they've absorbed through acquisitions. They've laid off many more than 40k US employees, and they have no reason to stop now.

Oh...I forgot the best part...

4) Profit! (for federal government)

1) Get rid of pennies, nickels, and quarters.
2) Replace 50c coins with something nickel-sized. (dollar coins are already quarter-sized)
3) Switch to a deci-dollar based system (e.g. $0.1)

Voila, you have a coins of $0.1 (dime sized), $0.5 (nickel sized), $1.0 (quarter sized) where the coin size is proportional to value. And you just reduced the number of coins in half.

So a planet with about the same surface gravity as Earth, and no iron core. Sounds like a good chance this planet has no magnetic field, and therefore no atmosphere either.

The fact that "everybody is doing it" is irrelevant. People made the same claims about Nike too. But bad press and market pressure made Nike change their ways. Overall, this led to better work conditions for Nike workers.

If you want to improve working conditions for everyone, you've got to strike someone first. Apple has benefited immensely from Chinese labor. Once Apple has caved and improved work conditions for their employees, THEN you can go after the rest (by threatening to only buy Apple products if they don't mend their ways).

It's called leverage.

Even if it is adopted in a place like China, don't expect it to make a difference in the US. As you've already pointed out, intercity travel is fast and comfortable in Europe using trains, but Americans are blissfully unaware of anything that occurs outside of the states.