Re: This IBM is still weird to me.
I would never have called my dad, stodgy, but he was one of those IBM-for-lifer's who joined IBM in his early 20's and was with them over 30 years when he retired. At the time, instead of laying off older workers, they would offer nice early retirement packages. My dad took one of those packages and had a happy retirement spanning more years than he worked there.
He got out just in time, just as the Harvard MBAs were taking over. That's what happened to IBM.