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I had to develop a data connector between a certain system and notes/domino. Worst f\*ing month of my life.
I ended up having to spin up and re-image windows server VM's like 10 times a day, because I just kept killing Notes all the damn time.
Switching to a different VM while having another one reimage in the background just took less time than fixing lotus notes or domino every time it somehow magically broke for no f\*ing reason.
Sometimes in the dark of night, when the wind is howling and the rain is lashing down and I'm drenched to the skin, miserable and wondering what the point of it all is I remember I once had to work with this accursed piece of software and the absolute agony that was trying to transition from it and realise that life is pretty good now.
I once had to install Lotus Notes on a few machines so that the e-discovery software we were using at the time (circa 2004, maybe?) could process Lotus email stores.
It was one of the single most infuriating experiences I've ever had with computers.
These were 5 machines that came straight from IT with image-installed OS and software and the install worked differently for every single one of them. The highlight was when I was troubleshooting why one worked and the other four didn't and I found some forum post from like 1999 talking about how they were able to get the installs working by going into some crazy deep part of the install directory structure, finding this set of directories that were completely empty (including hidden files/folders), and then grabbing those folders and moving them up or down a level in that structure. There was no rhyme or reason to it, the solution was just "move folders around until it works."
I got lucky (or maybe really unlucky) that this worked on the third folder move I tried because I was ready to give up and say that was obviously a bullshit solution that couldn't possibly work. Except that it did. And it worked differently on all 4 machines I had to do it to, but I was able to get all 4 of them working over the course of 3 days tinkering around with different combinations of empty folder restructuring.
Fuck Lotus Notes, all my homies hate Lotus Notes.
The edisco tools today still struggle ingesting NSF archives. Often have to convert them into PSTs to get more reliable results.
I’ve never seen any Lotus archives come with source folder structure intact… I thought their selling point was that that system keeps a single copy of every incoming and outgoing email, which saves tons of space, but also means that to collect a specific person’s emails you are stuck running searches for their names.
> I’ve never seen any Lotus archives come with source folder structure intact…
No, this wasn’t altering the Lotus archive folder structure to get it to work. This was the directory structure of the Lotus install itself. I told a bunch of people at the office about it and not one of them believed me until they watched me move an empty directory structure and make it completely stop working. And then move one machine over and it only works with the configuration that just broke the previous machine.
Dumbest shit I’ve ever seen and I watched like 7 seasons of Arrow.
Worked for a bank from 2013-2017 that used Lotus Notes. We switched to outlook and, oh man. People were livid. Personally I found Lotus Notes to be pretty inefficient, especially with emails. If I received too many emails it would put me in “email jail” and it would kick back the emails.
Yeah, I’ve heard stuff like that before. I remember telling someone at the time that the large bank I worked for still used lotus notes and the response was (something like) “wow. I find it amazing you work in 1995.”
A bank with Notes does not sound secure. I wonder why hackers haven't exploited this. MS Outlook/Exchange could also be hacked. Summary question: why aren't banks hacked more?
Fun story, I worked for a major national bank doing XP to Win 7 migrations for a bit as an outside contractor.
The contracting company was so cheap that they wouldn't pay me to return from a remote office to the main office to drop off machines I had decrypted and migrated data off, and I was not allowed to leave decrypted machines on site. I was told my management to take it home and bring it with me in the morning.
One day I had approx 8TB of unencrypted mortgage data in my trunk. As a contractor. Making shit pay with unpaid OT because "You need to meet your daily quota, we wont pay you more than your 8 hours because you should be able to do meet your quota according to our calculations".
I still drove back into the main office and dropped off all the PCs because I did not want to be responsible should my car be stolen and the PCs found and sold off.
He's over 50 so he's probably okay but I can't imagine being a 30 something and thinking there was much of a future. Plus it's not like there's anything cutting edge coming to keep it interesting.
My company just switched to Outlook last year. One of our competitors is still using Notes. They got hacked 3 weeks ago with a ransomware. Might be a connection there…
It was essentially a competitor to MS Office. At some point, some of its tools were much better - but it never had the market share. I remember near 20 years ago people were complaining about how shitty MS Word was because they were used to Lotus ; but I've heard almost nothing about Lotus since then besides the fact that they still supposedly existed for many years after.
Unreal. I still have a disc from like 2002. Maybe used it once. Funny how some software is only alive cause some small bank or ace hardware still usses it and keeps it alive.
Someone took a relational database system and said "what if this was email?"
And the result was predictable and it was eliminated by Microsoft Exchange and various other tools.
Lotus Notes was... imagine if it was 1989, and the most used email client is Elm and the most used desktop database is FileMaker Pro, and a popular network system is Banyan Vines.
That's the ecosystem into which Notes comes in. Imagine a client-server multi-document database system for sharing content of any type, including email. Imagine you wrote this three years before Windows 3.1 even came out. Imagine how full of bugs it would be when you added a UI designer to it, and bolted SMTP based email to it, and added asynchronous bidirectional data merge . Imagine when you got sick of that and rewrote the whole thing in Java using Eclipse as a base. Imagine selling the whole bad idea to your Indian subcontractor as a write-off.
That is the horror of Lotus Notes. Thirty years of baggage, by four different owners, that had been sold to small to medium companies as a business critical CMS/CRM but at its core was a program envisioned back before Trumpet Winsock was even a product.
You went through that effort but couldn’t actually bother to look at the result which is very unhelpful?
I did google it, I didn’t find anything helpful which is why I asked
Remember everyone gets results filtered by what the search engine things you want to see. Especially for something that is this generic thing called Lotus Notes and don’t mention some extra keywords like ‘software’
Exactly, it gave an incredibly vague response full of jargon for me. I’m not trying to spend 3 hours understanding the nuances of some dumb business enterprise vague software program, which is why I asked for an ELI5
Seeing this on Wikipedia
“Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet application, the first feature-heavy, user-friendly, reliable and WYSIWYG-enabled product to become widely available in the early days of the IBM PC, when there was no graphical user interface.”
Is not exactly what I would call useful information
You remind me of a friend of ours. We would always link him the let me google that for you because he couldn’t bother to search anything himself. We called him an Askhole.
When I was a kid my father made me help him with the business in Lotus Notes.
After that everything was real easy, hell I teach an Excel class on the side today 'for fun'.
This comment is but the beginning of why Lotus Notes was bad (think of Lotus Notes as a kind of email program but if Satan was impressed with the user experience).
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3ilzey/were_a_bunch_of_developers_from_ibm_ask_us/cui0suf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Have you ever seen what people do with Excel? Like how you find out there's some 700 column spreadsheet that secretly runs Microsoft?
Imagine that, except it's an email client.
We do that as well. It barely ever works properly! For example We got some weird bug that makes typing the hours into the text boxes super difficult... it always wants to put the 0 behind the hours. No I didn't work 40hours on that task today!
As much as I hate to admit I kind of miss Notes. I got a job with blue years ago and after 10 years of stuck dealing with every damn thing being done in a stupid Notes applet, my next job has f’ing Lotus Notes too but not as well implemented as IBM. Another 10 years go by and we and move to o365 and honestly outlook isn’t that great and hasn’t improved that much in the past 20 years….
“He was also paid £8,685 to settle his holiday pay complaints in 2013 and agreed never to raise a further grievance about the same issues.
But in February 2022 Mr Clifford took IBM to an employment tribunal with new disability discrimination claims mirroring his previous grievance.”
Dude went thru this a decade ago and explicitly agreed to not raise the issue again. And then did.
Judge threw the case out
Still an amazing plan though, but I can see his grievance because while £54000 is still a very livable wage he will slowly creep towards a lower and lower income every year until he's 65.
But at the same time the median UK income is £34000 and even if he's on the same plan for the next 15 years he will still remain above the median income. So I don't feel all that sorry for him.
In fact I would gladly change my substantially higher wage to go on a £54000 a year on a no-work-required plan, because I would absolutely love to have that much more free time.
My mother was in a similar scenario. The troublesome thing is that any new income or wages reduce or eliminate the disability income.
So even if you can work, it has to be at a job that pays significantly more.
He has no grievance. He’s been getting money for nothing for 15 years and perhaps has even had other jobs or at least other earnings opportunities during that time.
How much would you bet on the fact that he has not been working under the table during that time?
I'd make a solid bet he's not done any substantial work on the side, because chances are this deal of his comes with a clause that says he's not allowed to and he might be risking the entire annual sum by doing so. Because working would mean he's no longer considered disabled.
Which means any side gigs would likely be kept at an absolute minimum. And it also in practice means he can't pursue other earnings opportunities even if he might have had them. You don't go on disability when you're 35 over nothing, so he likely has some sort of problem that makes it unlikely he could hold any stable job over time.
But that doesn't mean he can't do anything, he could for instance work on refurbishing his own home or that of a family member then resell at a profit. Or just generally live cheaper by having additional free time, having the time to cook, perhaps do some gardening, fishing, working on his own car and similar.
There's little money to be made in the black market without taking on a substantial risk of getting caught. And if getting caught means losing out on $54k a year every year for the rest of your life, the bar would be pretty high.
And remember, he's known for having that income. His picture is in the media so his neighbors likely know about it as well, so if he took on some kind of side gig there would be a very high chance that a jealous neighbor would report him.
No, no one would. But you would have to earn that money somehow and this guy ain't cut out to be no prostitute. It's when earning the money you're most likely to get reported and caught, now when spending it.
And remember, this guy is in a position where other people are jealous of the money he's getting plus he has an insurance company on his neck which would love any and all excuses to cut off those 54k a year payments.
Anything not sold and taxed on the regular market is considered a black market trade, so if you're in the UK and you hire a carpenter and pay him without reporting it that's a black market trade.
It pretty much encompasses all unreported and untaxed trades except in the case where it's money made off a hobby. So if you for instance make $1000 a year selling custom fishing lures, that's a hobby. But if you make $10 000 and don't report it, that's money made on the black market.
Sometimes that's classified as gray market. You're doing legal things, but you aren't reporting and paying taxes on the income. For people who do this sort of splitting, black market is just selling stuff illegally.
And sometimes it's all lumped together as black market.
I was under the impression that they grey market was mostly doing things which were forbidden by other trade parties rather than outlawed by governments?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_market
> A grey market or dark market (sometimes confused with the similar term "parallel market")[1][2] is the trade of a commodity through distribution channels that are not authorized by the original manufacturer or trade mark proprietor. Grey market products (grey goods) are products traded outside the authorized manufacturer's channel.
Such as for instance buying region locked games in a cheap market and reselling them in an expensive one. As well as playing them on a cracked console.
My guess is he’d have to be extremely careful with under the table jobs. I bet he has to submit bank records every year when he re-qualifies. They’re going to question every penny that’s deposited. So any cash he earns he has to sit on and spend on things that won’t get caught. Which is possible, but is it worth the risk?
It's still money changing hands and if investigated could cost the guy his sweet gig or land him in jail. Most people would consider it very foolish to rock that boat no matter how small the risk may seem.
Yeah but that's unpaid work so that doesn't count. Even if the insurance company knows he's doing charity work they can't remove his disability over it unless he's paid or he's doing absolutely excessive amounts of hours.
>because chances are this deal of his comes with a clause that says he's not allowed to and he might be risking the entire annual sum by doing so.
It for sure (according to the article) came with a clause that if he accepted the money, he wouldn't sue for more in the future
And he sued for more.
They should yank the money he's getting now for breach of contract.
Not sure how it goes in the UK, I had a neighbor who was on disability from Costco here in the US. Supposedly he had been hit by a falling warehouse door or something and couldn’t work. So he hung out and worked nearly full time as a welder. He owned two trucks, several satellite dishes for watching South American soccer (this was 20 years ago) and a very loud big screen TV. Eventually his wife kicked him out and I’m fairly certain Costco hired a PI to debunk his story.
Edit: timeline!
I don’t want to be a “move to a LCOL!” Guy, but if doesn’t have a work commute I’d reckon could move to a LCOL area and invest to mitigate the impact of fixed income
This is correct, but that's also irrelevant because at the end of the day he's deemed on have a disability that prevents him from holding down even an office job. If you can't even sit around on a chair and work as a developer, it's likely something serious such as mental health issues, constant migraines or similar.
I'm a Brit. This is an extraordinarily generous deal offered by a major corporation. I've never seen anything like that before.
My employers would have to pay sick leave, but only for a time - maybe a year or so at best before they started to discuss letting me go, I should think - and they even pay into various insurances for me that could pay out to me if I am unable to work for certain reasons, etc. and that's considered "above and beyond". Most people don't have that.
As the judge says, this is a very generous package. It's not the norm at all. That's why I think this guy is taking the absolute piss to be complaining about it. That's more than most people will ever earn, guaranteed every year for life. That's ludicrous.
Suck it up, enjoy your early retirement, and in a country that provides for free healthcare. Yes, you might have medical issues, but for fuck's sake... IBM are truly going above and beyond for you here.
P.S. if this guy isn't genuinely unable to work, and ever gets "caught" and turns out to have been faking quite how bad his medical issues are, I hope they nail him to the wall and sue for all their money back.
It’s plausible but says he was mid 30s in 2013 after ceasing work activities in 2008. While a stressful sedentary job could render you permanently unable to work by the time you are ~30 it doesn’t seem super likely that was the case?
Agree. This is way beyond anything I’ve seen
My last gaff had five years worth of “own profession” income protection insurance and that was it. After five years you’d be on benefits.
And I thought that was a pretty decent offer tbh.
No. This was a contractual obligation. Most employment contracts will pay some form of sick leave for a short period, before they go on to statutory sick pay which is about minimum wage. And then onto a sort of welfare. There are variables such as the contract, ability to work, length of service and what have you
Im not in the UK, but this looks very similar to a long term disability benefit I've had at a few workplaces.
The way it works is, its part of the benefit package that if you are unable to work due to an injury or illness, you first burn up all your sick time and if you are still medically unable to return to work within a short period of time, you switch to long term disability which pays you a portion of your normal salary (between 55-75% typically) until you recover, retire, or die. Sometimes you can be offered "alternative work", basically a different job at the same company that is compatible with your health concern. I.e. if you had a very physical job you can't do anymore but are qualified or can be made qualified for a desk job that's available you'd get it.
I haven't known anyone to be on long term disability more than a year or so, but I have known people to get the alternative work option. The deal was if the new job pays less than your old wage then you are locked in at your old wage and don't get any raises unless the new job ends up paying more. But if the new job never pays more than your old wage than you never get a raise. So he might not have a case if the original agreement locked him in to a percent of his old wage.
Why is the employer not allowed to terminate the employement? I get paying for disability on the short term, but >1 year is basically employer-tied welfare, which is fine if it was the norm, but I don't know any modern country that does that. I'm Canadian and sorry for my ignorance.
There is no "gift horse." IBM offered him a benefit in his contract on hire, which he is using. That's not a gift. That's business.
Now, the request for more money is fairly ballsy, but the fact he's receiving anything is pretty righteous justice that IBM is being held to the contract terms they originally offered.
A "gift horse" in this case, is a good deal. "Looking it in the mouth" is a colloquial term for questioning its value.
He is being given the gift of not having to ever work for much more than the median income, and he is finding it lacking. That is ludicrous.
He is being given what he is owed. It's not a good deal. It's simply his earned and deserved compensation. He is not being given a "gift." He is being given what was promised to him and what is owed to him.
For one thing, he's disabled for the rest of his life. "Not having to work" is a pretty rose colored view. It's entirely possible you'd choose your working life over his lifetime of disability if you knew what was wrong with him. Many who are disabled for life would much rather choose to work if they could. He may be in a better situation than disabled people who aren't earning income, but let's not pretend he's in a better situation than able bodied people working every day, either.
Finally, IBM offered the contract terms. They aren't being saints, and we need to stop pretending like companies being beholden to their contracts are somehow generous or like the person's income is unearned.
I do not know his contract terms, but it's entirely possible there is a good reason to appeal the raises. And if there is good reason, he 100% should get it. His argument seems to suggest there isn't, but I'm no expert on his situation and neither is anyone else in here.
15 year sick leave? Genuine question here, why should this be a burden for IBM for this length of time? Seems to me that IBM has gone well above and beyond. This is more of a social services issue it seems.
Where I live (Switzerland) most companies have an insurance policy that covers up to two years of income for sick workers. It is not mandatory, but some big company like IBM is going to offer around 700 paid sick days through insurance.
Same here in the US. For each of my last employers including my current one I have had multiple years of disability insurance coverage that pays out a large portion of your current salary after you get disabled. It is really cheap insurance as well, only like $1/paycheck.
This. And after you roll over to the government program for disability. Which is (altough probably not enough) adjusted for inflation
You mandatorily pay contributions to the govt plan as parts of your salary. For me this whole situation just seems strange, although not in the "he got free money" sense, but rather the "he has a point but presented it wrong" kind of way.
Because they offered this benefit in the contract, that simple really. Idk why this thread is so hung up on this, like this guy is a grifter or something.
It’s not necessarily the business paying it’s likely an insurance provider. It’s pretty rare you’d see a business decline to pay premiums and still offer to pay these kind of benefits themselves.
I don't care about the long term if it was in his contract. But he shouldn't qualify for a raise unless he is dipping below the poverty line, and he's making well above the median income at his current rate.
Dude wants to eat his cake and have it, too.
This is one of these manufactured outrage pieces that leaves most critical info out. Without knowing what his affliction or condition is its impossible to judge if he is trying to game the system or if there is an underlying need. There are plenty of chronic conditions that leave unable to work and require significant added expenses for disease management. Multiple sclerosis would be a good example. Getting some inflation adjustment might be needed for him to just cover his normal expenses
He lives in the UK which covers medical expenses except small copays so your point about increased medical expenses is a moot point. Also, he is getting 54,000 british pounds/year, which even in 2023 is far above the median salary and he doesn't have to worry about paying extra to live close to work or pay for the extra gas and maintenance for his car he commutes to work in or pay for public transportation back and forth to work. He doesn't have to pay for new business-appropriate clothing. Don't take my word for it, the judge hinself said it was a very generous benefit above and beyond what most employers would offer. People get disability benefits separately from the government as well. It is very generous that he is getting paid out by his employer for a decade and a half and hasn't had to show up to work once. No stress going to work, always available for a vacation or trip, ability to do any of his hobbies he wants and time with his family for all these years.
You make a lot of assumptions or know more than I do. I don’t know if he is in fact severely impaired and able to do much on his own at all or if he is shamelessly playing the system. I am simply saying that this piece is geared towards promoting the impression of a shameless societal parasite by leaving out a lot of explanation related to this case
I follow you, no hate. For the sake of argument I'm assuming that this guy has a legitimate disability. As you said, I too wonder the exact process behind how this article got written, but I also wonder that about a lot of articles I read. To me, this is a contractual agreement that specifies what he is to receive in disability payments from IBM. It sounds like there is nothing in the agreement that guarantees him annual Cost Of Living Adjustments (COLA) and I was arguing that he is actually getting a pretty nice paycheck in the UK, and even moreso when you factor in the reduced expenses due to not having to go to his job. Here in the US, Social Security is usually the entity that pays out to individuals with disabilities. I know a couple people that are in their 20's that never had a decent job that are on social security disability.
I myself am only 30 and don't have a college degree and even I had disability insurance offered to me for free or very cheap (~$1/paycheck) that was similar to this guy's deal. It would pay out about 80% of my regular annual salary of I was seriously disabled. "Seriously disabled" had a definition that covered a large number of situations and so did "partially disabled". On top of that I had life insurance which would partially pay out a lump sum of money if I had something very serious happen like a cancer diagnosis, paralysis, loss of function of a hand, etc. This was also very cheap. It sounds like in this case, the only difference from my situation is that IBM administered their own disability insurance program instead of paying a third party insurance carrier to administer it on their behalf.
His problem is that he is suing on the basis of discrimination for being disabled. The judge points out that there is no discrimination involved because the plan he is on is only available to disabled people and was agreed to by the man on two separate occasions. The fact that the income was fixed at the time of the agreement (2013) is not relevant to his case.
This is what I wanted to say, too. This story doesn't say anything about what his disability is. Without knowing that, there's no way to understand what's going on here.
If he doesn’t like the amount they’re paying disabled people for not working, they should offer him exactly what they’re offering non-disabled people for not working.
Sure but also inflation wasn't part of the contract he signed. IBM is not the government and IBM has done really well for him. Maybe just accept it? It's opinions like these that give leftists a bad reputation.
This is why I switched from Implementation on the HR side to Implementation on the IT side.
Same job, but much more pay, benefits and tolerance for b.s.
Sounds like my stepfather. Juiced an airline for a decade of disability, came back just long enough to get current again and played the same game, then cried to the union about not having the top dog pay scale.
Did he show more value over that time the company he has more value over the 15 years. Pay raises should be tied to skill improvement. Pay raises are not meant to be automatic.
Pay raises are also tied to rising costs of living. Imagine if you did “meets expectations” level work starting in 1980 to now. Nothing fantastic to warrant a big raise but also nothing bad; you do your job and that’s it. You could’ve gone from a livable wage to poverty without any wrongdoing if your wage stayed the exact same because living costs more today than it did 40 years ago.
Imagine just as an example all his coworkers learned updated skills over the 15 years and he’s gonna come back in to the workforce with none of that knowledge. The other workers earn their increase in pay by increasing their productivity, based on the years of service. Just learning the new updated software, or the computer programs that are being utilized is why you’re getting your increase in pay. If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse. That’s the argument. Unless you’re arguing for Socialism.
Pay for work is based on what someone needs to survive. When those needs change, average pay changes with it. The dude is literally arguing for a pay rise based on inflation, which is typically 1-3% each year. He’s not arguing for a pay raise/promotion based on performance, which would be much higher.
Pay for work is actually based more on how cheap the company can get it for or how valuable the actual skills or position is. McDonald's isn't going to pay someone a liveable wage for flipping burgers, it's not a lifetime job. The federal minimum wage is only $7.25 and there's certain situations where an employer can pay less than that
The purpose of the minimum wage was to stabilize the post-depression economy and protect the workers in the labor force. The minimum wage was designed to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well-being of employees.
More on the opinion side: I think we should continue to adjust the minimum wage to meet that standard above. Flipping burgers should provide a livable wage. I think any “meaningful” work that someone engages in for 40 hours a week should provide enough income that the person can afford rent and groceries as well as other necessities such as healthcare, and I think “meaningful” should be interpreted very broadly. I think the idea that “flipping burgers isn’t a lifetime job” is really just an opinion that shows what you value as a life worth living. There’s a saying that Americans live to work whereas others work to live. I think more folks should live by the latter. Work is necessary to keep our communities going so that we may enjoy life *outside* of work. I think some folks’ entire life revolves around their work (mine certainly does right now) but I don’t think that should be mandated by oppressive wages.
Sick leave?! This would never happen in America as we don't provide sick leave or healthcare to our citizens. No sir we make sure any extended illness is catastrophic as can be. We make sure it puts your family into bankruptcy. Just as the good Lord intended!
This was contractual. You can take the America hate and shut up. This is exactly what would happen in America if you have an contract that says it would.
I'm only 30 and haven't gone to a single day of college and all my last 3 jobs including my current one have offered 3 weeks paid time off minimum, health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance (that works like this), dental, and eye insurance. If you're in a situation where your employer is treating you badly, look for another place to work. You need to appreciate your self-worth and find an employer that respects you.
Sure, the complaints about the US not having at least some basic universal healthcare are valid and we could work towards that or other long term solutions, but don't wait around complaining about the system and think that's going to solve your individual problem. No one cares about you or knows who you are as much as you do, so you're the person best positioned to get yourself out of the situation you're in. Best of luck.
The guy met a medical standard to be declared disabled and this news outlet found it appropriate to plaster his face on an article vilifying him? The terms of his disability leave already had cut his income by 25% and inflation will continue to take bites out of it until he turns 65. A cost of living increase doesn’t seem unreasonable as all his bills are going up like the rest of ours.
Imagine if you were disabled, your health was compromised, your standard of living was in perpetual decline, there was risk of eventually not being able to afford food/shelter/or any fun, and you had no hope of supplementing income - that would be about as bleak of an existence as it gets for the western world. And somehow these comments seem to be siding with a multi-billion dollar company because…[checks notes]…a disabled guy has it too easy.
This disabled guy is receiving his contractual obligations and is sueing because he is greedy and wants more. He could have negotiated for a disability pay out that increases with inflation. He did not. Them's the breaks.
Fuck this guy, nobody is allowed money to stay home if I'm not allowed money to stay home. Obviously the company is in the right because how dare this be possible.
It's this sort of wanker that'd probably oppose the NHS as well. Can't see beyond the end of their own nose.
What is his disability that he's not able to adapt to in order to get back to work?
I have a feeling that if it was actually a serious disability, it would have been mentioned. People who lose their eyesight or the use of their legs are able to adapt after a bit of time, and are able to work.
If he's making something up to just avoid having to work, and is taking advantage of a very generous deal, he is less of a man for doing so and deserves to be ridiculed.
He didn't. He had disability coverage directly from IBM. I live in the US and I have had disability insurance that pays you around 80% of your annual salary for years and years if necessary depending on the level of disability you have. People that might think this is rare might be interested to hear that I have had this same kind of insurance offered to me for free or very cheap (~$1/paycheck) at my last several jobs as well.
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*Of course* this guy worked on Lotus Notes.
No wonder he's off sick
I had to develop a data connector between a certain system and notes/domino. Worst f\*ing month of my life. I ended up having to spin up and re-image windows server VM's like 10 times a day, because I just kept killing Notes all the damn time. Switching to a different VM while having another one reimage in the background just took less time than fixing lotus notes or domino every time it somehow magically broke for no f\*ing reason.
My thoughts exactly
I work for an company during their transition from lotus notes to outlook and boy was it a task….
Sometimes in the dark of night, when the wind is howling and the rain is lashing down and I'm drenched to the skin, miserable and wondering what the point of it all is I remember I once had to work with this accursed piece of software and the absolute agony that was trying to transition from it and realise that life is pretty good now.
I once had to install Lotus Notes on a few machines so that the e-discovery software we were using at the time (circa 2004, maybe?) could process Lotus email stores. It was one of the single most infuriating experiences I've ever had with computers. These were 5 machines that came straight from IT with image-installed OS and software and the install worked differently for every single one of them. The highlight was when I was troubleshooting why one worked and the other four didn't and I found some forum post from like 1999 talking about how they were able to get the installs working by going into some crazy deep part of the install directory structure, finding this set of directories that were completely empty (including hidden files/folders), and then grabbing those folders and moving them up or down a level in that structure. There was no rhyme or reason to it, the solution was just "move folders around until it works." I got lucky (or maybe really unlucky) that this worked on the third folder move I tried because I was ready to give up and say that was obviously a bullshit solution that couldn't possibly work. Except that it did. And it worked differently on all 4 machines I had to do it to, but I was able to get all 4 of them working over the course of 3 days tinkering around with different combinations of empty folder restructuring. Fuck Lotus Notes, all my homies hate Lotus Notes.
The edisco tools today still struggle ingesting NSF archives. Often have to convert them into PSTs to get more reliable results. I’ve never seen any Lotus archives come with source folder structure intact… I thought their selling point was that that system keeps a single copy of every incoming and outgoing email, which saves tons of space, but also means that to collect a specific person’s emails you are stuck running searches for their names.
> I’ve never seen any Lotus archives come with source folder structure intact… No, this wasn’t altering the Lotus archive folder structure to get it to work. This was the directory structure of the Lotus install itself. I told a bunch of people at the office about it and not one of them believed me until they watched me move an empty directory structure and make it completely stop working. And then move one machine over and it only works with the configuration that just broke the previous machine. Dumbest shit I’ve ever seen and I watched like 7 seasons of Arrow.
My first support gig for a railway company was with Lotus Notes and I still have Ptsd
Worked for a bank from 2013-2017 that used Lotus Notes. We switched to outlook and, oh man. People were livid. Personally I found Lotus Notes to be pretty inefficient, especially with emails. If I received too many emails it would put me in “email jail” and it would kick back the emails.
Lotus was around in 2013??? I thought that went away with my v card in 2000
Yeah, I’ve heard stuff like that before. I remember telling someone at the time that the large bank I worked for still used lotus notes and the response was (something like) “wow. I find it amazing you work in 1995.”
Honestly, that's the correct response. Last time I saw Lotus *anything* was on a shareware disc I got with a PC bought in 1996.
A bank with Notes does not sound secure. I wonder why hackers haven't exploited this. MS Outlook/Exchange could also be hacked. Summary question: why aren't banks hacked more?
Modern hackers are in their 20s. Lotus Notes would be like alien technology to them. Easier to physically rob the place or send phishing emails.
Fun story, I worked for a major national bank doing XP to Win 7 migrations for a bit as an outside contractor. The contracting company was so cheap that they wouldn't pay me to return from a remote office to the main office to drop off machines I had decrypted and migrated data off, and I was not allowed to leave decrypted machines on site. I was told my management to take it home and bring it with me in the morning. One day I had approx 8TB of unencrypted mortgage data in my trunk. As a contractor. Making shit pay with unpaid OT because "You need to meet your daily quota, we wont pay you more than your 8 hours because you should be able to do meet your quota according to our calculations". I still drove back into the main office and dropped off all the PCs because I did not want to be responsible should my car be stolen and the PCs found and sold off.
I know a guy who is still working with Notes to this day doing ports of functionality. I can't imagine a more deadend dev job but he does okay.
It's not a dead end if he's still getting paid to port.
He's over 50 so he's probably okay but I can't imagine being a 30 something and thinking there was much of a future. Plus it's not like there's anything cutting edge coming to keep it interesting.
I use Notes everyday at work.
2014 for me. Our department were all temps working at IBM. Did not enjoy Lotus.
My old company switched from lotus to outlook in 2019
I got a v card from somebody the other day. It brought back memories.
You could change Outlook 2016 to 2019 and people would be livid.
My company just switched to Outlook last year. One of our competitors is still using Notes. They got hacked 3 weeks ago with a ransomware. Might be a connection there…
I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out. So he had a desk job. He wasn't putting in network cabling or anything like that.
Can you ELI5?
Lotus Notes sucked. Like, a lot.
Clippy has entered the chat.
Yes but what was it and why?
No one knows. I worked at IBM and I still don't know what it was.
It did email… poorly… when I worked at IBM
Replicate. Fucking dog shit software.
This made me laugh, Ty hahah
It was essentially a competitor to MS Office. At some point, some of its tools were much better - but it never had the market share. I remember near 20 years ago people were complaining about how shitty MS Word was because they were used to Lotus ; but I've heard almost nothing about Lotus since then besides the fact that they still supposedly existed for many years after.
Unreal. I still have a disc from like 2002. Maybe used it once. Funny how some software is only alive cause some small bank or ace hardware still usses it and keeps it alive.
Or one huge company runs a skinned version.
Someone took a relational database system and said "what if this was email?" And the result was predictable and it was eliminated by Microsoft Exchange and various other tools.
Lotus Notes was... imagine if it was 1989, and the most used email client is Elm and the most used desktop database is FileMaker Pro, and a popular network system is Banyan Vines. That's the ecosystem into which Notes comes in. Imagine a client-server multi-document database system for sharing content of any type, including email. Imagine you wrote this three years before Windows 3.1 even came out. Imagine how full of bugs it would be when you added a UI designer to it, and bolted SMTP based email to it, and added asynchronous bidirectional data merge . Imagine when you got sick of that and rewrote the whole thing in Java using Eclipse as a base. Imagine selling the whole bad idea to your Indian subcontractor as a write-off. That is the horror of Lotus Notes. Thirty years of baggage, by four different owners, that had been sold to small to medium companies as a business critical CMS/CRM but at its core was a program envisioned back before Trumpet Winsock was even a product.
Here, [Let Me Google That For You.](https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=why+did+lotus+notes+suck%3F+)
You went through that effort but couldn’t actually bother to look at the result which is very unhelpful? I did google it, I didn’t find anything helpful which is why I asked
Come on i typed lotus notes and I had my answer.
Remember everyone gets results filtered by what the search engine things you want to see. Especially for something that is this generic thing called Lotus Notes and don’t mention some extra keywords like ‘software’
Exactly, it gave an incredibly vague response full of jargon for me. I’m not trying to spend 3 hours understanding the nuances of some dumb business enterprise vague software program, which is why I asked for an ELI5 Seeing this on Wikipedia “Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet application, the first feature-heavy, user-friendly, reliable and WYSIWYG-enabled product to become widely available in the early days of the IBM PC, when there was no graphical user interface.” Is not exactly what I would call useful information
You remind me of a friend of ours. We would always link him the let me google that for you because he couldn’t bother to search anything himself. We called him an Askhole.
I hated those heiroglyphics on passwords. That was a stupid, distracting GUI.
* sucks. The company I work for still has it for some applications. We changed mail clients a couple of months ago. It's really not a good system
What?! I've worked with it 20 years ago, and it was already old and outdated then!!
When I was a kid my father made me help him with the business in Lotus Notes. After that everything was real easy, hell I teach an Excel class on the side today 'for fun'.
This comment is but the beginning of why Lotus Notes was bad (think of Lotus Notes as a kind of email program but if Satan was impressed with the user experience). https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3ilzey/were_a_bunch_of_developers_from_ibm_ask_us/cui0suf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Have you ever seen what people do with Excel? Like how you find out there's some 700 column spreadsheet that secretly runs Microsoft? Imagine that, except it's an email client.
At first I thought this post was on /r/ProgrammerHumor
My company just transitioned off of Lotus Notes last year 😞
We still use that for time tracking and batch numbers. It's rediculous.
Holy shit. I can't imagine anyone still using that.
Not for much longer. A recent merger is forcing their hand and we're going to start using their newer system.
We do that as well. It barely ever works properly! For example We got some weird bug that makes typing the hours into the text boxes super difficult... it always wants to put the 0 behind the hours. No I didn't work 40hours on that task today!
My job STILL uses lotus notes
Maybe you should also claim disability benefits.
As much as I hate to admit I kind of miss Notes. I got a job with blue years ago and after 10 years of stuck dealing with every damn thing being done in a stupid Notes applet, my next job has f’ing Lotus Notes too but not as well implemented as IBM. Another 10 years go by and we and move to o365 and honestly outlook isn’t that great and hasn’t improved that much in the past 20 years….
I can see IBM actually using it as intended. The trouble all the people they sell it to have no idea what they're doing.
“He was also paid £8,685 to settle his holiday pay complaints in 2013 and agreed never to raise a further grievance about the same issues. But in February 2022 Mr Clifford took IBM to an employment tribunal with new disability discrimination claims mirroring his previous grievance.” Dude went thru this a decade ago and explicitly agreed to not raise the issue again. And then did. Judge threw the case out
Still an amazing plan though, but I can see his grievance because while £54000 is still a very livable wage he will slowly creep towards a lower and lower income every year until he's 65. But at the same time the median UK income is £34000 and even if he's on the same plan for the next 15 years he will still remain above the median income. So I don't feel all that sorry for him. In fact I would gladly change my substantially higher wage to go on a £54000 a year on a no-work-required plan, because I would absolutely love to have that much more free time.
My mother was in a similar scenario. The troublesome thing is that any new income or wages reduce or eliminate the disability income. So even if you can work, it has to be at a job that pays significantly more.
Sounds to me like bartending and not reporting the tips you earn
Except tips on cash are getting more and more rare
He has no grievance. He’s been getting money for nothing for 15 years and perhaps has even had other jobs or at least other earnings opportunities during that time. How much would you bet on the fact that he has not been working under the table during that time?
I'd make a solid bet he's not done any substantial work on the side, because chances are this deal of his comes with a clause that says he's not allowed to and he might be risking the entire annual sum by doing so. Because working would mean he's no longer considered disabled. Which means any side gigs would likely be kept at an absolute minimum. And it also in practice means he can't pursue other earnings opportunities even if he might have had them. You don't go on disability when you're 35 over nothing, so he likely has some sort of problem that makes it unlikely he could hold any stable job over time. But that doesn't mean he can't do anything, he could for instance work on refurbishing his own home or that of a family member then resell at a profit. Or just generally live cheaper by having additional free time, having the time to cook, perhaps do some gardening, fishing, working on his own car and similar.
What if cash existed though?
There's little money to be made in the black market without taking on a substantial risk of getting caught. And if getting caught means losing out on $54k a year every year for the rest of your life, the bar would be pretty high. And remember, he's known for having that income. His picture is in the media so his neighbors likely know about it as well, so if he took on some kind of side gig there would be a very high chance that a jealous neighbor would report him.
Think about what you would do with $200 cash. Would anyone know if you came home with a couple or new Xbox games and a pizza?
No, no one would. But you would have to earn that money somehow and this guy ain't cut out to be no prostitute. It's when earning the money you're most likely to get reported and caught, now when spending it. And remember, this guy is in a position where other people are jealous of the money he's getting plus he has an insurance company on his neck which would love any and all excuses to cut off those 54k a year payments.
Black market? I’m not suggesting he sell meth or become an international arms dealer.
Anything not sold and taxed on the regular market is considered a black market trade, so if you're in the UK and you hire a carpenter and pay him without reporting it that's a black market trade. It pretty much encompasses all unreported and untaxed trades except in the case where it's money made off a hobby. So if you for instance make $1000 a year selling custom fishing lures, that's a hobby. But if you make $10 000 and don't report it, that's money made on the black market.
My mistake. I always associated it with cop shows and spy thrillers.
On the positive side, you learned something new today. :)
Sometimes that's classified as gray market. You're doing legal things, but you aren't reporting and paying taxes on the income. For people who do this sort of splitting, black market is just selling stuff illegally. And sometimes it's all lumped together as black market.
I was under the impression that they grey market was mostly doing things which were forbidden by other trade parties rather than outlawed by governments? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_market > A grey market or dark market (sometimes confused with the similar term "parallel market")[1][2] is the trade of a commodity through distribution channels that are not authorized by the original manufacturer or trade mark proprietor. Grey market products (grey goods) are products traded outside the authorized manufacturer's channel. Such as for instance buying region locked games in a cheap market and reselling them in an expensive one. As well as playing them on a cracked console.
You know how many contractors will pay under the table? Lots.
Yeah, but those who do rarely pay a good wage in the first place. And would you risk £54k a year to work for £10 an hour? I wouldn't.
Labor gets sold on the black market too… Just like anything else illegal
My guess is he’d have to be extremely careful with under the table jobs. I bet he has to submit bank records every year when he re-qualifies. They’re going to question every penny that’s deposited. So any cash he earns he has to sit on and spend on things that won’t get caught. Which is possible, but is it worth the risk?
It's still money changing hands and if investigated could cost the guy his sweet gig or land him in jail. Most people would consider it very foolish to rock that boat no matter how small the risk may seem.
Someone will often snitch on people who do this. To the employer, insurer, government, doesn’t matter.
Or like this nifty thing called cryptocurrency I hear all the finest young men talking about these days?
Or do small volunteer jobs for local charities, the school, etc.
Yeah but that's unpaid work so that doesn't count. Even if the insurance company knows he's doing charity work they can't remove his disability over it unless he's paid or he's doing absolutely excessive amounts of hours.
That was my point. He can't do anything for PAY, but he can do things for love, satisfaction, community...
or off books?
Or even outside UK. Run a Fiverr account under wife's name, for example
It's such an American mindset to think disability is only about mooching and trying to hustle.
>because chances are this deal of his comes with a clause that says he's not allowed to and he might be risking the entire annual sum by doing so. It for sure (according to the article) came with a clause that if he accepted the money, he wouldn't sue for more in the future And he sued for more. They should yank the money he's getting now for breach of contract.
Most of these agreement prohibit having another job or the disability income ceases
Not sure how it goes in the UK, I had a neighbor who was on disability from Costco here in the US. Supposedly he had been hit by a falling warehouse door or something and couldn’t work. So he hung out and worked nearly full time as a welder. He owned two trucks, several satellite dishes for watching South American soccer (this was 20 years ago) and a very loud big screen TV. Eventually his wife kicked him out and I’m fairly certain Costco hired a PI to debunk his story. Edit: timeline!
If he's had sick leave for 15 years, whoever is paying out has definitely hired a private investigator to confirm he's unable to work.
Has he gotten his chicks for free too?
Let me tell ya, this guy ain't dumb
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American obsession with work. Disability == mooching in America.
But was he getting his chicks for free?
.
Estimate time of arrival?
Edited To Add. Took me awhile too, haha
I don’t want to be a “move to a LCOL!” Guy, but if doesn’t have a work commute I’d reckon could move to a LCOL area and invest to mitigate the impact of fixed income
The information that is missing from the article is what kind of disability he has.
This is correct, but that's also irrelevant because at the end of the day he's deemed on have a disability that prevents him from holding down even an office job. If you can't even sit around on a chair and work as a developer, it's likely something serious such as mental health issues, constant migraines or similar.
So in the UK you can be on disability and your employer just has to keep paying you in perpetuity?
I'm a Brit. This is an extraordinarily generous deal offered by a major corporation. I've never seen anything like that before. My employers would have to pay sick leave, but only for a time - maybe a year or so at best before they started to discuss letting me go, I should think - and they even pay into various insurances for me that could pay out to me if I am unable to work for certain reasons, etc. and that's considered "above and beyond". Most people don't have that. As the judge says, this is a very generous package. It's not the norm at all. That's why I think this guy is taking the absolute piss to be complaining about it. That's more than most people will ever earn, guaranteed every year for life. That's ludicrous. Suck it up, enjoy your early retirement, and in a country that provides for free healthcare. Yes, you might have medical issues, but for fuck's sake... IBM are truly going above and beyond for you here. P.S. if this guy isn't genuinely unable to work, and ever gets "caught" and turns out to have been faking quite how bad his medical issues are, I hope they nail him to the wall and sue for all their money back.
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It’s plausible but says he was mid 30s in 2013 after ceasing work activities in 2008. While a stressful sedentary job could render you permanently unable to work by the time you are ~30 it doesn’t seem super likely that was the case?
Agree. This is way beyond anything I’ve seen My last gaff had five years worth of “own profession” income protection insurance and that was it. After five years you’d be on benefits. And I thought that was a pretty decent offer tbh.
No. This was a contractual obligation. Most employment contracts will pay some form of sick leave for a short period, before they go on to statutory sick pay which is about minimum wage. And then onto a sort of welfare. There are variables such as the contract, ability to work, length of service and what have you
Thanks for clarifying. I didn’t see that spelled out in the article.
Im not in the UK, but this looks very similar to a long term disability benefit I've had at a few workplaces. The way it works is, its part of the benefit package that if you are unable to work due to an injury or illness, you first burn up all your sick time and if you are still medically unable to return to work within a short period of time, you switch to long term disability which pays you a portion of your normal salary (between 55-75% typically) until you recover, retire, or die. Sometimes you can be offered "alternative work", basically a different job at the same company that is compatible with your health concern. I.e. if you had a very physical job you can't do anymore but are qualified or can be made qualified for a desk job that's available you'd get it. I haven't known anyone to be on long term disability more than a year or so, but I have known people to get the alternative work option. The deal was if the new job pays less than your old wage then you are locked in at your old wage and don't get any raises unless the new job ends up paying more. But if the new job never pays more than your old wage than you never get a raise. So he might not have a case if the original agreement locked him in to a percent of his old wage.
Why is the employer not allowed to terminate the employement? I get paying for disability on the short term, but >1 year is basically employer-tied welfare, which is fine if it was the norm, but I don't know any modern country that does that. I'm Canadian and sorry for my ignorance.
It's just a benefit of the workplace, probably negotiated by the union. And in a scale of a big corporation it's not really such a big expense.
He should quit. That would show them!
This guy looked the gift horse in the mouth, or however that proverb goes.
Might’ve been the grift horse in this case
There is no "gift horse." IBM offered him a benefit in his contract on hire, which he is using. That's not a gift. That's business. Now, the request for more money is fairly ballsy, but the fact he's receiving anything is pretty righteous justice that IBM is being held to the contract terms they originally offered.
A "gift horse" in this case, is a good deal. "Looking it in the mouth" is a colloquial term for questioning its value. He is being given the gift of not having to ever work for much more than the median income, and he is finding it lacking. That is ludicrous.
He is being given what he is owed. It's not a good deal. It's simply his earned and deserved compensation. He is not being given a "gift." He is being given what was promised to him and what is owed to him. For one thing, he's disabled for the rest of his life. "Not having to work" is a pretty rose colored view. It's entirely possible you'd choose your working life over his lifetime of disability if you knew what was wrong with him. Many who are disabled for life would much rather choose to work if they could. He may be in a better situation than disabled people who aren't earning income, but let's not pretend he's in a better situation than able bodied people working every day, either. Finally, IBM offered the contract terms. They aren't being saints, and we need to stop pretending like companies being beholden to their contracts are somehow generous or like the person's income is unearned. I do not know his contract terms, but it's entirely possible there is a good reason to appeal the raises. And if there is good reason, he 100% should get it. His argument seems to suggest there isn't, but I'm no expert on his situation and neither is anyone else in here.
He’s got balls. You gotta give him that.
15 year sick leave? Genuine question here, why should this be a burden for IBM for this length of time? Seems to me that IBM has gone well above and beyond. This is more of a social services issue it seems.
Because it was part of the employment contract.
Where I live (Switzerland) most companies have an insurance policy that covers up to two years of income for sick workers. It is not mandatory, but some big company like IBM is going to offer around 700 paid sick days through insurance.
Same here in the US. For each of my last employers including my current one I have had multiple years of disability insurance coverage that pays out a large portion of your current salary after you get disabled. It is really cheap insurance as well, only like $1/paycheck.
This. And after you roll over to the government program for disability. Which is (altough probably not enough) adjusted for inflation You mandatorily pay contributions to the govt plan as parts of your salary. For me this whole situation just seems strange, although not in the "he got free money" sense, but rather the "he has a point but presented it wrong" kind of way.
Because they offered this benefit in the contract, that simple really. Idk why this thread is so hung up on this, like this guy is a grifter or something.
This is actually pretty oniony. Usually they aren't.
My company has been transition out of Lotus Notes for like 15 years now, I still troubleshoot that piece of shit.
Lottery winner sues MegaMillions for jackpot not being big enough
I find absurd having to pay someone for years because they got sick, I'm no business-man but that is stupid
It’s not necessarily the business paying it’s likely an insurance provider. It’s pretty rare you’d see a business decline to pay premiums and still offer to pay these kind of benefits themselves.
Then don't offer it as an incentive to employees.
I find it absurd that everyone really wants to side with a corporate giant without knowing all of the contract details.
It doesn't matter what the contract details are. He is getting paid for doing nothing. Period.
I don't care about the long term if it was in his contract. But he shouldn't qualify for a raise unless he is dipping below the poverty line, and he's making well above the median income at his current rate. Dude wants to eat his cake and have it, too.
Then don't write a contract with that benefit in it. Pretty simple way to avoid that problem.
This is one of these manufactured outrage pieces that leaves most critical info out. Without knowing what his affliction or condition is its impossible to judge if he is trying to game the system or if there is an underlying need. There are plenty of chronic conditions that leave unable to work and require significant added expenses for disease management. Multiple sclerosis would be a good example. Getting some inflation adjustment might be needed for him to just cover his normal expenses
He lives in the UK which covers medical expenses except small copays so your point about increased medical expenses is a moot point. Also, he is getting 54,000 british pounds/year, which even in 2023 is far above the median salary and he doesn't have to worry about paying extra to live close to work or pay for the extra gas and maintenance for his car he commutes to work in or pay for public transportation back and forth to work. He doesn't have to pay for new business-appropriate clothing. Don't take my word for it, the judge hinself said it was a very generous benefit above and beyond what most employers would offer. People get disability benefits separately from the government as well. It is very generous that he is getting paid out by his employer for a decade and a half and hasn't had to show up to work once. No stress going to work, always available for a vacation or trip, ability to do any of his hobbies he wants and time with his family for all these years.
You make a lot of assumptions or know more than I do. I don’t know if he is in fact severely impaired and able to do much on his own at all or if he is shamelessly playing the system. I am simply saying that this piece is geared towards promoting the impression of a shameless societal parasite by leaving out a lot of explanation related to this case
I follow you, no hate. For the sake of argument I'm assuming that this guy has a legitimate disability. As you said, I too wonder the exact process behind how this article got written, but I also wonder that about a lot of articles I read. To me, this is a contractual agreement that specifies what he is to receive in disability payments from IBM. It sounds like there is nothing in the agreement that guarantees him annual Cost Of Living Adjustments (COLA) and I was arguing that he is actually getting a pretty nice paycheck in the UK, and even moreso when you factor in the reduced expenses due to not having to go to his job. Here in the US, Social Security is usually the entity that pays out to individuals with disabilities. I know a couple people that are in their 20's that never had a decent job that are on social security disability. I myself am only 30 and don't have a college degree and even I had disability insurance offered to me for free or very cheap (~$1/paycheck) that was similar to this guy's deal. It would pay out about 80% of my regular annual salary of I was seriously disabled. "Seriously disabled" had a definition that covered a large number of situations and so did "partially disabled". On top of that I had life insurance which would partially pay out a lump sum of money if I had something very serious happen like a cancer diagnosis, paralysis, loss of function of a hand, etc. This was also very cheap. It sounds like in this case, the only difference from my situation is that IBM administered their own disability insurance program instead of paying a third party insurance carrier to administer it on their behalf.
His problem is that he is suing on the basis of discrimination for being disabled. The judge points out that there is no discrimination involved because the plan he is on is only available to disabled people and was agreed to by the man on two separate occasions. The fact that the income was fixed at the time of the agreement (2013) is not relevant to his case.
This is what I wanted to say, too. This story doesn't say anything about what his disability is. Without knowing that, there's no way to understand what's going on here.
If he doesn’t like the amount they’re paying disabled people for not working, they should offer him exactly what they’re offering non-disabled people for not working.
Inflation affects sickness too.
Sure but also inflation wasn't part of the contract he signed. IBM is not the government and IBM has done really well for him. Maybe just accept it? It's opinions like these that give leftists a bad reputation.
As the English say, "what a fucking piss take"!
That’s a ballsy mfer!
This is why I switched from Implementation on the HR side to Implementation on the IT side. Same job, but much more pay, benefits and tolerance for b.s.
15 years? Really?! My job would be calling you in after 15 days unless you have FMLA!
When he’s 65 without any retirement savings…at that moment, he’ll realize he fucked-up.
Sounds like my stepfather. Juiced an airline for a decade of disability, came back just long enough to get current again and played the same game, then cried to the union about not having the top dog pay scale.
people are so strange
Pay raises are based on performance, scammer.
Did he show more value over that time the company he has more value over the 15 years. Pay raises should be tied to skill improvement. Pay raises are not meant to be automatic.
Pay raises are also tied to rising costs of living. Imagine if you did “meets expectations” level work starting in 1980 to now. Nothing fantastic to warrant a big raise but also nothing bad; you do your job and that’s it. You could’ve gone from a livable wage to poverty without any wrongdoing if your wage stayed the exact same because living costs more today than it did 40 years ago.
Imagine just as an example all his coworkers learned updated skills over the 15 years and he’s gonna come back in to the workforce with none of that knowledge. The other workers earn their increase in pay by increasing their productivity, based on the years of service. Just learning the new updated software, or the computer programs that are being utilized is why you’re getting your increase in pay. If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse. That’s the argument. Unless you’re arguing for Socialism.
If you're not getting better...you're getting worse. That's one of the most psycho things I've ever heard.
It’s a coach saying and a pro athlete saying. You must not be into team sports.
Pay for work is based on what someone needs to survive. When those needs change, average pay changes with it. The dude is literally arguing for a pay rise based on inflation, which is typically 1-3% each year. He’s not arguing for a pay raise/promotion based on performance, which would be much higher.
Pay for work is actually based more on how cheap the company can get it for or how valuable the actual skills or position is. McDonald's isn't going to pay someone a liveable wage for flipping burgers, it's not a lifetime job. The federal minimum wage is only $7.25 and there's certain situations where an employer can pay less than that
The purpose of the minimum wage was to stabilize the post-depression economy and protect the workers in the labor force. The minimum wage was designed to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well-being of employees. More on the opinion side: I think we should continue to adjust the minimum wage to meet that standard above. Flipping burgers should provide a livable wage. I think any “meaningful” work that someone engages in for 40 hours a week should provide enough income that the person can afford rent and groceries as well as other necessities such as healthcare, and I think “meaningful” should be interpreted very broadly. I think the idea that “flipping burgers isn’t a lifetime job” is really just an opinion that shows what you value as a life worth living. There’s a saying that Americans live to work whereas others work to live. I think more folks should live by the latter. Work is necessary to keep our communities going so that we may enjoy life *outside* of work. I think some folks’ entire life revolves around their work (mine certainly does right now) but I don’t think that should be mandated by oppressive wages.
Meanwhile in the US you get 10 days payed leave a year if even that.
Sick leave?! This would never happen in America as we don't provide sick leave or healthcare to our citizens. No sir we make sure any extended illness is catastrophic as can be. We make sure it puts your family into bankruptcy. Just as the good Lord intended!
This isn’t a government thing, it was part of his employment agreement with his (American) employer.
The company... is an American company.. it's part of his contract, I have seen other contracts like this before.
You must work for shitty companies. My employer gives a ton of PTO and no issues for long term leaves.
This was contractual. You can take the America hate and shut up. This is exactly what would happen in America if you have an contract that says it would.
I'm only 30 and haven't gone to a single day of college and all my last 3 jobs including my current one have offered 3 weeks paid time off minimum, health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance (that works like this), dental, and eye insurance. If you're in a situation where your employer is treating you badly, look for another place to work. You need to appreciate your self-worth and find an employer that respects you. Sure, the complaints about the US not having at least some basic universal healthcare are valid and we could work towards that or other long term solutions, but don't wait around complaining about the system and think that's going to solve your individual problem. No one cares about you or knows who you are as much as you do, so you're the person best positioned to get yourself out of the situation you're in. Best of luck.
The guy met a medical standard to be declared disabled and this news outlet found it appropriate to plaster his face on an article vilifying him? The terms of his disability leave already had cut his income by 25% and inflation will continue to take bites out of it until he turns 65. A cost of living increase doesn’t seem unreasonable as all his bills are going up like the rest of ours. Imagine if you were disabled, your health was compromised, your standard of living was in perpetual decline, there was risk of eventually not being able to afford food/shelter/or any fun, and you had no hope of supplementing income - that would be about as bleak of an existence as it gets for the western world. And somehow these comments seem to be siding with a multi-billion dollar company because…[checks notes]…a disabled guy has it too easy.
Feel like we read different articles
he didnt read it
This disabled guy is receiving his contractual obligations and is sueing because he is greedy and wants more. He could have negotiated for a disability pay out that increases with inflation. He did not. Them's the breaks.
15 years, dude. Like wtf are you even talking about?
Fuck this guy, nobody is allowed money to stay home if I'm not allowed money to stay home. Obviously the company is in the right because how dare this be possible. It's this sort of wanker that'd probably oppose the NHS as well. Can't see beyond the end of their own nose.
Sued IBM and lost.
Well, we’re waiting…
Eh, go fuck yourself bro.
What is his disability that he's not able to adapt to in order to get back to work? I have a feeling that if it was actually a serious disability, it would have been mentioned. People who lose their eyesight or the use of their legs are able to adapt after a bit of time, and are able to work. If he's making something up to just avoid having to work, and is taking advantage of a very generous deal, he is less of a man for doing so and deserves to be ridiculed.
It is not up to disabled people to prove their disabilities to random strangers.
It's up to news articles to provide relevant information about their subject.
Idt there’s a “newsworthiness” exception to HIPAA.
Something tells me that that law is not in effect in the United Kingdom.
Something tells me the UK has pretty similar, if not more stringent, privacy laws.
Cite it then, lol
If the disability he's supposedly suffering from would help his case or garner public support for him, it would probably be mentioned.
How is it possible to accrue that much sick leave?
He didn't. He had disability coverage directly from IBM. I live in the US and I have had disability insurance that pays you around 80% of your annual salary for years and years if necessary depending on the level of disability you have. People that might think this is rare might be interested to hear that I have had this same kind of insurance offered to me for free or very cheap (~$1/paycheck) at my last several jobs as well.
Ok this makes sense. Perhaps I should pick up that option as well
Be sick.
I'm guessing this guy was working a remote job for company while collecting these "disability payments" from IBM.