Endorsements 100% influence opinions.

The title of this story includes the words "far right" however based on reading this article there is no such proof. Maybe it was this group, maybe it was a criminal group that recently crossed the boarder, maybe it was some kids doing dumb things, the list goes on. The reader these days has to be wise and intelligent enough to take the speculation out of such stories, which is hard for many, and just read the facts.

I mainly rent from National Enterprise (weekly), however on a recent personal trip I rented from Hertz. I had a very bad experience, very similar to this story I was charged for ~ 3 gallons of fuel (at $10 per gallon) but I filled the tank just a few miles from the airport. As I attempted to contact Hertz I found there phone system and customer service to be horrible, it wasn't till I reached out to their corporate office that I was able to speak with someone and even still the service was poor. I'm done with Hertz. I see a lot of companies providing very poor customer service and pushing away from human interaction, for me that isn't the service I'm looking for so I'll seek other options.

I always find these stories interesting. I'm not aware of the specific details other than what was mentioned the article, but I always fall back to what is the market paying. If, as an employee, Amazon is underpaying the employee (as compared to the market) simply leave and make the market rate. If on the other hand Amazon isn't underpaying and paying at or near the market and the employee just "feels" like they should make more, well that's not a good place to be...

If you are in the US, and many other countries, this behavior and style of assuming the employer treats the employees unfairly and that the employees should only do the bare minimum is very common and if that is an environment that works well for you a Union "organization" might be a nice fit. If on the other hand you both sides (employer and employee) assume they will treat each other with respect and work together as a team and have a fair relationship there are also many wonderful places to work. One simply must choose your employees and employer accordingly.

What's the tail number on that bogey?

Very good points I completely agree.

Historically IBM was a power player in the industry, no one would deny that. Large organizations such as IBM are at a significant disadvantage in terms of being nimble and quick to adjust with the technology evolution. Regardless of the specific area of analysis e.g. Cloud, storage, compute, etc. these are highly dynamic and competitive markets; IBM just hasn't moved fast enough, in my opinion, and as a result we see them consistently behind. I know several IBM employees well, and they are wonderful people but typically caught up on a much bigger eco system and not able to get the organization on track. Many may disagree with me on this, but as I watch other organizations such as Google, Amazon, etc. build and expand their massive campuses and have employees come together and work, IBM has seemed to take the opposite approach and shut down (once massive campuses) and have employees work from home. I believe that a large part of an organization's success is the willingness and desire for the employees to be excited and an active part of the the success or failure; it's much easier to get passionate in person about the company as compared to working from home. Sure I get that Amazon, and the likes have plenty of people that work from home, but looking at the averages it's much lower percent as compared to IBM (my observation). Change is good, if what they are doing isn't working (it isn't) - do something different...

Everyone can do better, it's a matter of if they want to; e.g. spending time with mentors learning new valuable skills, furthering education both formally and informally etc. I would advise rather than spending energy focusing on a "corrupt system" just decide what you want to do and figure the steps to get there.

Articles like this are always interesting as industries and competitive jobs are very similar in terms of pay, work environment, breaks, etc. Also keep in mind the actions of an single or small group of employees don't necessary represent the company i.e. in the example did the company give the employee guidance to ignore transportation laws, of course not. Clearly we all want folks to be safe on the job, that is very important. If your employeer doesn't treat you in a way that you feel acceptable and you have "better" options elsewhere then you should simply leave.

IBM should try and use Watson to predict their company revenue, as the current method seems to be producing exaggerated figures.