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IBM Training Employees To Leave IBM? 277

Posted by Zonk from the community-service dept.
lucabrasi999 writes "IBM just launched a new program that will encourage some employees to earn teaching certificates and degrees. IBM will help defray the costs of these new degrees. With those newly earned degrees, the IBM employee would then become a 'former' IBM employee who moves onto a career as a public school math or science teacher. While it seems odd that IBM would encourage employees to switch careers, the point is that IBM is trying to help offset an expected shortage in the number of math and science teachers in the United States." From the article: "While many companies encourage their employees to tutor schoolchildren or do other things to get involved in education, IBM believes it is the first to guide workers toward switching into a teaching career. The company expects older workers nearing retirement to be the most likely candidates, partly because they would have more financial wherewithal to take the pay cut that becoming a teacher likely would entail."
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IBM Training Employees To Leave IBM? More

IBM Training Employees To Leave IBM?

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  • PR (Score:5, Insightful)

    by daniil ( 775990 ) <evilbj8rn@hotmail.com> on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:17PM (#13580225) Journal
    My guess is, they're just trying to pick up some good karma, "encouraging" people to pick up a teaching career and leave, instead of just laying them off life HP did. That way, they'll be able to cut their employment costs, at the same time still retaining a positive image.

    • Re:PR (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hendridm ( 302246 )
      It can't hurt to have individuals who are tech savvy and sympathetic to IBM in many schools, either.

    • Re:PR (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Namronorman ( 901664 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:30PM (#13580369)
      I honestly don't think so. As the article said, the most likely candidates will be the ones near retirement.

      As much as you and I may fear it, today's generation is tommorow's work force, and a lot of that work will have to do with math and science. I know when I was in school, math and science classes seemed to be lacking, or sometimes more advanced classes weren't even available. This might not show an immediate success, but over time it could change a lot of people's minds about math and science and open a way for people who want to learn these subjects more.
      • As the article said, the most likely candidates will be the ones near retirement.

        And just "letting go" people nearing retirement would hurt their 'positive' image even more...

        • Are you talking about employees losing their pensions if they leave IBM? Some pension plans may be structured that way; if you leave before retirement age, you forfeit the whole pension. With other plans, you keep your pension benefits if you're fully vested by the time you leave. You still begin collecting at the specified retirement age, but you could leave to work somewhere else until age 65. TFA doesn't say anything about pensions.
    • ... but if that is the case, it's the slickest corporate move I've seen anyway. No matter how you cut it, IBM is doing something good.
      • And it sounds really good to me, too!

        I'd love it if my company offered to pay for my doctorate and said "here, go teach high school kids." (At least I'd love it in about 10 or 15 years, after I had more savings and no kid in college.)

        This is a really, really smart program. Too bad my old IBM buddy retired two weeks ago -- I'd ask him if he'd heard about this program. I'll just have to ask his replacement.

    • Re:PR (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dr. Evil ( 3501 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:32PM (#13580386)

      Schoolteachers with real-world work experience are very valuable.

      Most teachers never... ever... left the school system.

      • Re:PR (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Foobar of Borg ( 690622 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:43PM (#13580494)
        Very true. The best teachers I ever had in college (engineering) had real world experience. I think it is actually the best kind of career to have after you work in industry for about 20 to 30 years. You don't have to work too hard when your body is older and can't take as much stress. Both you and the people you teach are much better off for it.

        • Less Stress??? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Snorpus ( 566772 )
          You don't have to work too hard when your body is older and can't take as much stress.

          If you can't take as much stress, I don't think that teaching in a public school is the right move to make.

          • Re:Less Stress??? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by unother ( 712929 ) <myself@NOSpam.kreig.me> on Friday September 16, 2005 @09:55PM (#13581989) Homepage
            Word.

            I don't think people are realizing exactly how burdensome bureaucratic the public school system is becoming. It's largely an issue of the ongoing means-testing of student bodies. Curricula is passing out of control of individuals and into overseer bodies. While some might believe this "enforces standards", it merely means the individual teacher becomes a functionary and a babysitter.

          • Re:Less Stress??? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Grishnakh ( 216268 )
            Absolutely. And not just in public schools, either, where teachers are really just babysitters for misbehaving (and sometimes violent) kids.

            In college, they will not last long if they attempt to do a good job teaching classes and helping students learn the material. What makes a successful professor is research and publishing. "Publish or perish". Plus they have to play a bunch of stupid political games with the other profs and the administration. Being a college professor isn't some nice cushy job whe

      • Most teachers never... ever... left the school system.

        That's because in K-12, the teachers' union has a lock. Only certified educators need apply. There was a recent proposal to bring in retired professionals to help alleviate the claimed teacher shortage. There was nothing but howls of outrage from the teachers and their handlers. Considering that some of my kids' teachers have been unable to spell or write a complete sentence, I don't see that the certification has much worth. That said, there are

      • Re:PR (Score:2)

        by mikael ( 484 )
        Same here - the best teachers I had were those who had worked in research institutes, had been laid off, but were doing teaching until something better came along.

        But the strangest time was having an English teacher who later become our Computer Theory lecturer.

    • Maybe (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      But it's worth remembering that one of the "heroes" of the Industrial Revolution, Robert Owen, worked on the basis that an educated workforce produces more, faster and cheaper.

      Sponsoring individual students, however, is hit-or-miss and expensive. On the other hand, sponsoring a teacher (who may well have a class of anywhere between several dozen to several hundred) is cheap, efficient and much more likely to produce "good results" (in terms of useful employees).

      My guess is that IBM is planning on pushing th

    • this way when they lay them off to deny them their retirement packages, they can maintain their image ;)
    • Not only that, but if they will higher-end teaching positions with profs that preach the virtues of IBM products... well

      1 IBM employee lost to teaching... 100s of possible customers at a rate of 30+/semester

      Sounds pretty smart to me.

  • Random thought... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:18PM (#13580228) Journal
    Lately, it seems more and more to me that IBM is taking Google's place as the "Don't be evil" company.

    With moves like this and their support of the open source scene, you'd think that they'd be Slashdot's new baby by now. :)

    • Re:Random thought... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:24PM (#13580308) Journal
      I agree that this is the most cuddly downsizing ever, but am still not sure that IBM deserves quite as much love for this as they're getting.

      Anyway, until they drive a stake through the heart of Lotus Notes they can't claim to have fully abandoned evil...

    • Re:Random thought... (Score:5, Funny)

      by hendridm ( 302246 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:26PM (#13580335) Homepage
      With moves like this and their support of the open source scene, you'd think that they'd be Slashdot's new baby by now.

      We're still recovering from Lotus Notes.

    • I don't think "Don't be evil" and "IBM" can be used in the same sentence. IBM is trying to place nice to get people to like them again. It is simply an evil way to trick you into thinking they are not evil. Who knows though. Perhaps they were at one point not evil and were simply pretending to be evil in order to get the bad boy admits on their side, and now are again going back to their non-evil ways. Personally I wouldn't trust them either way.
      • You don't have to trust them.

        Of course if IBM wants to be the nice guy, and help people get and hold new jobs, why shouldn't they get some respect for it.

        Of course I will be keeping the other eye on them to make sure they don't become evil once again.

  • Just amazing... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ajiva ( 156759 )
    This is just amazing! While other companies encourage employees to get advance degrees to help yourself, no other company encourges employees to get advance degrees to help others. Excellent!
    • Since when is a teaching degree considered 'Advanced'? It's generally been well understood for some decades that it's somewhat less work than an English degree, and other than the monopoly guaranteed job field, somewhat less useful.

  • Well (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Crowhead ( 577505 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:18PM (#13580239)
    That's nicer than firing them.

    • Re:Well (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fiannaFailMan ( 702447 )
      That's nicer than firing them.
      And probably cheaper than laying them off.

      • Re:Well (Score:2)

        by mikael ( 484 )
        And far cheaper than paying pensions for people on early retirement. My uncle was laid off by IBM in the mid 1980's when he was in his 50's, so he took early retirement. 20 years on, he's still going strong.

    • Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GrouchoMarx ( 153170 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:51PM (#13580570) Homepage
      That's nicer than firing them.

      And that's precisely the idea. IBM figures if they "encourage" their most senior and skilled (read: most expensive) employees to go elsewhere, they can downsize without the PR unpleasantness of layoffs. It's the same logic as "early retirement" programs, but rather than buying out a contract you pay someone to go into teaching instead.

      Frankly, IBM can have all the good PR they want from this move. Helping your employees to get another job before you fire them is great from a social responsibilty standpoint, and helping them into teaching, a field that always needs *experienced* people in it, is even better. Sure, IBM is doing it for primarily financial reasons but everyone wins in the end, so I'm perfectly fine with that.

  • Go IBM. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:19PM (#13580244)
    If there's anything America needs, it's more science teachers.
    • Unfortunately, that's not the reality. A friend of mine graduated with a teaching degree in Chemistry. She got a job teaching high school. She was laid-off after a year (her contract wasn't renewed). Why? Because of budget cuts. Football and baseball programs get the money these days instead of music or science.

  • Altruistic... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:19PM (#13580247) Homepage Journal
    This definitely sounds like one of the most altruistic actions of a company I've ever heard. This will certainly lead to some happier employees. But it can also lead to more college professors having IBM experience, which could lead to students better educated to work at IBM. Not only does it help the industry, in the very long term it can come back to help IBM. This seems like fantastic foresight on IBM's part.
    • This definitely sounds like one of the most altruistic actions of a company I've ever heard.

      You've got to be kidding me if you're saying you believe that.

      This will certainly lead to some happier employees.

      This will certainly lead to LESS employees, which is what IBM wants.

      But it can also lead to more college professors having IBM experience, which could lead to students better educated to work at IBM.

      You don't want to work for IBM, trust me.

      Not only does it help the industry, in the very long term it can c
    • Not only does it help the industry, in the very long term it can come back to help IBM.

      Which makes it a shrewd investment, not altruism. Not to take the warm-and-fuzzy off of it, or anything... but that's exactly what I would expect and hope a company of that size to be keeping in mind. They need a prosperous, educated, technically savvy population for their business model to succeed, so they're taking steps to help shape that future. That other people will benefit in terms of their own quality of life i

  • Shortage (Score:4, Insightful)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:21PM (#13580271)
    Shortage is IBM's mainframe skills, not math and science in research. IBM is running on its last generation of mainframe employees. Many of which will retire in no more than 10 years. You want a job? Get into mainframes and you'll be looking at 60-80k salary easy. The companies deploying mainframes aren't going to discontinue anytime.

    • Re:Shortage (Score:5, Informative)

      by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:27PM (#13580348) Homepage Journal
      Shortage is IBM's mainframe skills... IBM is running on its last generation of mainframe employees.

      I'm not sure where you get your info, but a few weeks ago I met a handful of young IBM workers from their mainframe department. They each work in different teams and told me there are both young and old. There's simply an age gap due to the 10 years of not hiring in the NY state area. But there are plenty of young employees working on ancient systems. These weren't kids installing linux, either. They were talking Z/OS and encryption.
  • "The company expects older workers nearing retirement to be the most likely candidates, partly because they would have more financial wherewithal to take the pay cut that becoming a teacher likely would entail."


    This is really just a cost-cutting maneuver to encourage older employees to leave, similar to early retirement payouts.

  • Investing in the Future (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tiberius_Fel ( 770739 ) <fel AT empirereborn DOT net> on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:21PM (#13580278)
    Well, maybe they view it as a bit of an investment. Put some of their workers into teaching now, so that the upcoming generation(s) of people are well-educated in science, math, engineering, etc. by people with degrees and real-life experience. Then IBM has a better talent pool to pick from in the future, theoretically.

  • Sometimes, there's just no other choice. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by topical_surfactant ( 906185 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:21PM (#13580279)
    My (engineer) father was axed from his company one year before retirement. No one wants to hire an aging engineer in this market, so he took up high-school teaching as a last resort. It was a huge pay cut, but at least he could maintain medical benefits. He has an 70 mile commute every morning, since entry-level teachers were not in high demand.
    • He has an 70 mile commute every morning

      Why doesn't he just move? And how to you pronounce the word seven?
    • Part of my cricicism on the school system is their treatment of very smart and highly experienced professionals as "novices". I'd rather have a 68yr old IBM TJ Watson vet with a PhD teaching a class than some 22yr old floozy with a 2yr associate's degree in "education".
      • I have a 68 year old ex-IBM employee with 2 PhDs from UC Berkeley and the guy is the worst teacher ever. He can't even teach introduction to programming. A trained monkey could do the job better than him. His education and career work is amazing, but he still doesn't know how to teach.
  • What a great way to get aging (i.e., expensive health benefits) workers off your payroll, but make them productive members of society in another role.

    We have approx 76 mln pre-k - 12 [answers.com] students in the US. Do we really need 250k math & science teachers?

    Assume 1 teacher can teach 4 classes per year to 20 students per class and that means that 20mln students aren't getting the math & science education they need? over 1 in 4? wow!

    • Slight correction... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bullitB ( 447519 )
      We have 76 million students from preschool to college, not K-12. So that includes about 15 million undergrads. Throw in a few million from preschool (I think kids can wait until they're 5 before learning arithmetic), and the K-12 student population looks a little less dire, pretty much accounting for your missing 20 million.

      Frankly, I'm much more concerned about the quality of teachers than the amount of them. I would love to see more teachers come from industry instead of directly out of university.
      • I said pre-k - 12

        My recollection of being an undergrad was that I didn't have to take math/science courses if I didn't choose to (i.e., liberal arts student). Are you saying that there are undergrads who want to take math/science course, but cannot due to a lack of teachers (note, this is not the same as not being able to get the afternoon class because one likes to sleep late).
    • Try 5 classes per year to 35 students per class, and you're more in the ballpark for k-12. Now redo the math. That's approx. 1 in 1.74.

      In a country where almost half the teachers are coaches, this should not be surprising.

  • The first? (Score:4, Informative)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:23PM (#13580295)
    IBM believes it is the first to guide workers toward switching into a teaching career

    The DoD and DoE has had this for years.
    Troops to Teachers [proudtoserveagain.com]

    Still...not too shabby.

  • and if they were really smart... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They would set up "The IBM Teaching Foundation" and pay the people who take them up on this offer the difference between their last annual salary at IBM and their new teaching position.

    Surely they could afford to take some of their billions in annual profit and fund the new foundation. http://www.intltwins.org/ [intltwins.org]Twin, Triplet, or more?
    • Take money from their profit? Why would they do that?

      Set it up as a non-profit with a mission statement something along the lines of `improving the state of science and engineering teaching' by providing a financial incentives to qualified engineers and scientists who go into teaching, and who stay in teaching. Then they can offset the donations against tax.

  • What effect will this have on the employees' pension plans? Anyone know? It seems like IBM might have an incentive to do this to help ease the pain of paying pension as older employees retire. I don't know anything about their arrangements and rules. I'm not saying IBM is doing this out of evil but rather that it could be an arrangement that benefits both IBM and its older employees and not to mention students in the US. It seems a plan like this just to benefit American students is too long term for a

  • Pay is the issue. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:25PM (#13580319) Homepage
    The battlefield is littered with proposals to improve the dismal state of K-12 math and science education in America. I don't see how this proposal would work any better than the others.

    The biggest issue is pay. K-12 teaching is a low-paid, low-status job, and in high school, it involves dealing with a lot of hassles from the 50% of the students who don't want to be there, and are just being warehoused by the government until they turn 18. Often the people who go into K-12 teaching are liberal arts majors who were mediocre students in college, and decided relatively late in the game to become teachers, because they weren't really qualified to do much else. For those people, the pay and job conditions might be OK, but people who are actually qualified to teach math or science have better options.

    The effective government monopoly on education is preventing math and science teachers from being paid anything more in line with what they could get in a free market, and it also turns schools into assembly lines that produce students who pretend to have learned math and science, but actually couldn't calculate their way out of a paper sack. Part of the psychology of a government monopoly is to drag everybody down to the level of the lowest common denominator. Here, that means the lowest common denominator for both students and teachers.

    • I totally disagree. I believe one of the reasons education has problem finding people is because of the myth perpetuated by Teacher Unions, that teachers are poorly paid. In Southern California, the starting salary for a primary school teacher is 42-45k(working only 9 months), that's way above the starting salary for college grad. And their salary doesn't cap until it reaches almost 6 figures. I started my career making only 35k.
      • I totally disagree. I believe one of the reasons education has problem finding people is because of the myth perpetuated by Teacher Unions, that teachers are poorly paid. In Southern California, the starting salary for a primary school teacher is 42-45k(working only 9 months), that's way above the starting salary for college grad. And their salary doesn't cap until it reaches almost 6 figures. I started my career making only 35k.
        We live in a capitalist society. In a capitalist society, the value of a comm
    • it involves dealing with a lot of hassles from the 50% of the students who don't want to be there, and are just being warehoused by the government until they turn 18.

      Depends on the classes you end up teaching. My son is in four AP courses this year, and way more than half of those AP kids want to be in them (competition being what it is.) I suppose if you're stuck teaching remedial math or the "required-to-pass-the-grad-standards-Science-clas s " you're going to encounter a lot of unhappy kids. But if y

    • Re:Pay is the issue. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Da_Biz ( 267075 )
      The biggest issue is pay.

      Perhaps, but I think it depends on where you are in the US. In Portland, the biggest gripe I have heard from several teacher friends of mine is the fact that the union actively protects bad teachers. By bad, I mean incompetent, uncaring, and sometimes even openly racist or sexist. The whole circumstance is very demoralizing.

      The other big issue my teacher friends have is the impressive amount of money devoted to standardized testing and bloated administration in Portland schools.

  • Pretty fitting if you think about it. Earlier this year, IBM encouraged Apple to switch to Intel x86 based processors. Draw your own conclusion if that means the PowerPC series of chips is reaching its retirement years... :)

  • Too bad the Gov. won't step up like this. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Declarent ( 628681 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:25PM (#13580323)
    I don't know about you guys, but every year a greater percentage of the engineers that I work with are Indian or Asian. A few decades ago, we were world technology leaders, all with home grown talent.

    Now we're less educated than ever before.

    The government could double the existing education budget and fix our school systems, get more teachers, and build the infrastructure that has been lost and not rebuilt for decades. There are plenty of places that we spend money that aren't as important.

    At least IBM sees the crisis as it looms over us, if the government doesn't. An educated populace means there's a country worth defending, move a tiny portion of the defense budget to education, dammit!

    Kudos, IBM. At least somebody has an eye on the ball.

    • Re:Too bad the Gov. won't step up like this. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jherek Carnelian ( 831679 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @06:37PM (#13580954)
      every year a greater percentage of the engineers that I work with are Indian or Asian. A few decades ago, we were world technology leaders, all with home grown talent.

      Now we're less educated than ever before.

      Almost all of those immigrant engineers have degrees from American universities and as long as the majority continue to settle here and become permanent residents, then they are us.

  • See through the smoke, people. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by i41Overlord ( 829913 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:26PM (#13580324)
    What IBM is doing is encouraging people to get jobs elsewhere, because it is their goal to replace those people with cheap labor from third world countries anyway. It's better for your image to educate someone and "let them leave" than to announce layoffs and hire people from India.

    The fact is that IBM would like American and European labor to exit the company so they can pick up Indian and Chinese labor. They want us out, and they're trying to do it nicely.

    There's no altruism here.

  • I RTFA when it was posted in FRAK (Score:5, Informative)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:28PM (#13580351)
    Before it was Slashdoted, and it seems like a Short and long term win win Situation:

    IBM Wins, short term: Good karma, and reducing (somewhat) their headcount.

    Employee wins: A new career, pursued while still having IBM benefits (like health plan) and partial salary, because they will be in a leave of absence.

    IBM wins, long term: Continuin g supply of skilled workforce

    Society wins: Teachers.

    This is a sort of thing that companies have been doing for a lon time, but this is a very innovative way for them to do it... kudos to IBM.

    In Venezuela we dub this "La cajita feliz" (the happy meal, a reference to McDonalds kids lunch). When you offer incentives to the employees to leave on their own will, therefore reducing headcount without layoffs.

    Our PTT, CANTV, did this. In HP now, to reach their staffing targets, they anounced a change of the early retirement policy, and many employees arte taking advantage before the deadline, so, in the end, they will reduce the workforce by some number X of employees, but they will have laid off a number less than x, the others leaving on their own volition....

     
  • Considering some of the fine grade of "people" I've met in the IT field, this is nothing new - I've been encouraging many of them to change careers for years now!

  • it could be bigger (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jtroutman ( 121577 )
    Imagine a society wherein people did this regularly. Instead of going to school to be a teacher and getting most of your experience from that, teachers were retirees who had worked in the field they were teaching. This wasn't the case for me until college and then only with certain professors. I can only imagine how much more interesting it would have been if my highschool chemistry teacher had been an engineer at DuPont instead of a woman who had specialized in English when getting her teaching degree.
  • Zonk, IBM wants the older workers to switch careers, not just anyone.

    It wouldn't make sense that IBM would ask their most productive workers to leave work. They just want the deadwood out.

  • Sounds like the company is trying to... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GecKo213 ( 890491 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:37PM (#13580437) Homepage
    ...give itself a haircut. All the old grey hairs are getting the axe. They don't want to have to deal with their shit anymore so they give them an "alternative" to being let go for being old and slow.
    • My grandfather is/was a chemical engineer (pot ash stuff). He's been axed at least a dozen times, and quit another half dozen times from various jobs in the industry. He's been officially in retirement for ten years, but companies all over the world keep hiring him as a consultant. He now earns more yearly (inflation adjusted) then he did in his prime. He may be "old and slow", hard of hearing, partially blind, etc, but they still need his knowledge base. If they (the general pot ash industry) had a program
  • I was under the impression that changing careers to be a teacher later in life is a bad idea from a retirement fund standpoint. Many (most?) public school teachers don't pay into Social Security; they pay into an investment fund (similar to the the way members of Congress do it). This won't amount to much unless you start teaching when you're young, and Social Security benefits go down when you start putting money away like this.
    • If it's a choice between a "forced downsizing" or a "voluntary early retirement to go teach", the long term investment incentives would probably be overridden by the more immediate need to find a job. And the more people they can encourage to voluntarily leave, the fewer they have to force out.

      Yeah, they're not going to get a livable wage from the school's retirement fund, and they know that. Most of the retiring IBMmers I know (mid 50s) already have pretty nice pensions and retirement packages set up f

  • the IBM employee would [move] onto a career as a public school math or science teacher.

    Why does this remind me of the Peace Corps? E.g., I wonder if the new science teachers will be warned of the hazards of certain public schools... or state legislatures...

  • Teachers get paid "teh suck". Public education in this country (US-centric, sorry) was hijacked by the federal government so now all the money that used to be available for actual teachers now goes to federal bureaucrats that try to maintain teaching quality from state-to-state and unionized secretaries that have had their job for the last 60 years.

    So you get school superintendents that get paid 70k, school principals that get paid 50k, and teachers that get paid 20-30k. A dual-teaching-income house in the
  • I'd question whether there is a need for more math & science teachers in the 1st world. My experience at school was that there were few who took an active interest in maths & sciences and those who did where called nerds, who thrived by their own initiative.

    It may well be that those who can manage grade school sciences will do so no matter the number of teachers available.

    As a society we may benefit more by making math & science teachers available to those few who show the ability and willingne

  • I'm one of several people who got a job with IBM, mastered our skill area, and then moved on to other companies willing to pay the market rate. So yes, I was trained by IBM to leave IBM.

    (Psst, hey IBM! I would have stayed for the mere price of a modest raise the last two years I was there. You know, something better than 0.0%. Hm, no raise when you work in the most profitable division of the company? Why should I have stayed?)
  • Sure, employees benefit if they are considering a career change to teaching. And yes, it has been spun to seem like an altruistic move on the part of IBM, although it might indeed have a beneficial effect on education.

    One thing this does for IBM, however, is to reduce the average cost of an employee. Hiring fresh grads, or the barely experienced, is much cheaper than retaining the high-paid dinosaurs.

    If IBM can slowly trim the high-paid of its workforce with good feelings on both sides, wonderful.
  • Shareholder lawsuit coming in 5, 4, 3, 2. . .

  • IBM just launched a new program that will encourage some employees to earn teaching certificates and degrees. IBM will help defray the costs of these new degrees. With those newly earned degrees, the IBM employee would then become a 'former' IBM employee who moves onto a career as a public school math or science teacher. While it seems odd that IBM would encourage employees to switch careers, the point is that IBM is trying to help offset an expected shortage in the number of math and science teachers in th
  • I don't think the "likely" is an appropriately strong word to describe the chances that the person will receive a paycut going from a development job to a public teaching post. Perhaps calling it a "certain" paycut or "drastic" paycut is more realistic.

    When I was in college, I got a secondary education ("high school") degree in addition to my computer science major. Throughout most of my schooling, I assumed that I would end up as a teacher rather than a software developer. In fact, it wasn't until I did
  • For years I've been considering to start teaching. I just love explaining science stuff. Used to be the scare of the secretaries at the office where I worked who had to type text they didn't understand, and didn't want to understand. When I nevertheless explained it to them they said: Hey, it isn't that difficult. So, maybe I've got a knack for it.

    What is the science teacher market, these days like in the US? Any chance for fairly fluent, but non-native speakers of English?

    Bert
  • Even if I have a great teacher that instills in me a love of math and science, if I can't find a job that pays in those areas, I'm still going to become a lawyer (probably getting into IP law because I love science and math). College costs too much these days to allow one to wait for a slow payoff or to study the things you love without any thought as to how to monetize the experience. As such, if IBM really wants to increase the number of people going into science and technology, shouldn't they be lookin

  • No more math teachers (Score:5, Funny)

    by xchino ( 591175 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @06:14PM (#13580765)
    Look, there's already an estimated 50,000 math teachers in the US. This move by IBM may add another 5,000. Who the hell needs 75,000 math teachers?
  • It's a bunch of IBM sleeper cells [wikipedia.org]!
  • If we really wanted to have enough qualified people to teach math and science (or anything else, for that matter), we wouldn't pay them like chumps. I am by no means saying that they *are* chumps, but we sure do pay them that way.
  • Especially of the older, more highly-paid employees if you're planning to cut staff. It's a good idea, personnel cuts aren't painful and everybody wins.

  • By far the most honorable practice I could witness (Score:3, Insightful)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @07:36PM (#13581348) Homepage
    This will remain in my mind as possibly the best way a company can divest of employees short of finding another job for them. And some of the reality here is that there ARE fewer and fewer tech jobs in this country. Helping them to switch careers to one where there is presently a heavy need is a very positive move for the country and for the people. Some might scoff and assume it's some PR stunt but I really doubt it. Everyone knows that we have extremely short memories and would forget about any mass firings/layoffs/terminations when the next news story hits.

    That said, you can expect their stock values to decline because we all know that doing 'good things' is a waste of resources and drains profit potential... and we all know profit is everything right?

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