Their initials, not their beliefs, i mean 
If you take the computer HAL from 2001, and move the letters up one, you get IBM. Was this intentional? Come to think of it, what does HAL stand for?
IBM = International Business Machines corp. (as google will happily confirm)
HAL = Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer
As for IBM = HAL + 111, I think this has been determined to be a coincidence.
IBM satnds for International Business Machines, i believe.
As for the HAL thing, as far as i know Stanley Kubrick has always strenuously denied that there was any connection between HAL and IBM.
Here’s one cite:
Here’s another:
But, as this website says:
gee, i always thought it stood for
It’s a Big Mistake
I heard that they frequently relocated employees, so internally people said it stood for “I’ve Been Moved.”
Here in Boca Raton there used to be a big IBM presence, and they transferred the employees all over the place frequently. The joke around here was that it stood for “I’ve Been Moved”.
My partner works for IBM., I"m looking at their annual report. IBM is still International Business Machines Corporation. I assume this question was posed because some companies whose initials USED to stand for something, but don’t anymore. ATT was American Telephone and Telegraph for instance. The company was the just changed to ATT.
BTW, he has only been moved once from Phoenix to Dallas. I’ll pray for another transfer!
My son says that Hyatt stands for Have Your Ass There Tomorrow. (He’s only been moved once)
The “I’ve Been Moved” terms come from a specific IBM policy (and an unofficial, probably illegal, but reputed practice by some IBM managers).
Until recent years, IBM had a specific corporate policy that employees would never be laid off, no matter how bad the current economic conditions. (It certainly helped in employee morale & loyalty.)
But it left IBM managers without one of the tricks commonly used by managers when they wanted to get rid of an employee they disliked (but who had not done any wrongful act that would allow them to fire him). This trick is to ‘re-organize’ the department, which just happens to result in that position being eliminated, so the employee is unfortunately laid off. But IBM policy forbid layoffs.
So since IBM employees were often moved as needed, some IBM managers came up with a way to use this to get rid of employees they disliked. They would assign the employee to a new position which required them to move. (Often, to a rather remote & undesirable location.) Then a few months later, when the employee had gone thru all the hassle of selling their house, buying a new one, moving, getting their kids started in new schools, etc., the managers would move them again. Repeat this every year or so until the employee resigns. (It usually only took 3-4 moves in a 5-year period to accomplish this.)
So to IBM’ers, the “I’ve Been Moved” refers both to the frequent moves of employees, and to this rumored sneaky way to force an employee to resign.
Considering the average costs of a corporate relocation package, that seems an unwise managerial practice.
IBM is also a common acronym used in the Magic community for “International Brotherhood of Magicians”.
How so?
If you are convinced this is a bad employee, and is costing the company money or customers, isn’t it worth the cost of a relocation? And he might even work out better in a new location, with a new manager. (Or he might just respond to the ‘hint’ of these sudden moves.) Remember that the company won’t allow layoffs, and he carefully hasn’t done anything bad enough to warrant firing.
Besides, relocation packages aren’t charged to the location an employee is leaving. They are usually charged either to the arriving location, or charged to a general overhead corporate relocation account.
Do you have any cite for this? It’s no secret that IBM often requires its employees to make frequent moves however I have difficulty believing that they would go through so much trouble just to encourage some employees to quit. Are we to believe that they both care about employees morale yet abuse them in such a public and elaborate manner?
Incidentally, the OP seems to be implying that IBM was named after HAL, rather than the reverse. The International Business Machines company significantly predates Clarke’s book, and in fact computers in general. Their first products were things like punch-card counters, typewriters, teletypes, and the like.
IBM = Itty Bitty Machines
(In contrast to their early competitors in the “BUNCH”:
Burroughs
Univac
National Cash Register
Control Data Corporation
Honeywell.)
Well, i don’t know anything at all about this, but based on the way that it’s been described in this thread, it could be a difference between head office policy (support employee morale) and everyday middle management decisions (get rid of crappy employees in any way possible).
I don’t see any conflict. The accusation was that certain managers would move people to force them to quit, not that the corporate bigwigs condoned the practice. On preview, what mhendo said.
Not that it would surprise me if the higher-ups winked at the practice. It wouldn’t be the first time that a big company had internally conflicting policies, official or unofficial.
As for morale, despite the noises that many companies make regarding employee morale, they can’t be so stupid that they don’t realize the effects most of their employee related decisions have (can they?). I can only conclude that laments on lack of morale are simply disingenuous attempts to pretend they care. A typical response is to lay the blame back on the employee. For example, one of the goals given to my group, on which we would be rated, was to “have fun”. See, that way if we didn’t it was our fault. :smack:
Regarding the non-layoff policy, it did work, at least in part, despite the abuses of some managers. Talk to some IBM employees that were with the company in the 70s and 80s. There was a very strong sense of company loyalty.
This would require a long term coordinated effort by higher ups. It would rarely fall to a single manager to maintain responsibility over a worker through 4 changes of job role. Especially if those jobs were hundreds or thousands of miles away. Thus it would require multiple managers agreeing to tank this one worker, in secret. I don’t see that happening often enough to be part of the culture.
I think it’s more likely that lousy workers got shuttled around from place to place because managers were pushing to get them moved anywhere away from their department. A job opening comes available and they figure out a way to get their “empty suit” transferred to it.
The Wall Street Journal still refers to the company as International Business Machines on first reference in an article.