Month: June 2007

Bush has “taken the lead” on climate change

Well, at least according to Tony Snow this morning. I was in the locker room at the gym (which has TVs in it — totally bizzare to me) and Mr. Snow was on talking about the the G8 summit. The man actually said the following:

SNOW: The President has in fact, contrary to stereotype, been actively engaged in trying to fight climate change and will continue to do so.

REPORTER: The one area that is notably absent and that even Shell Oil and other major players are calling for is a global mandatory emissions cap and trade program. Unless do you this on an international basis, it’s not in the long-term economic interest of the United States, which seems to be one of your arguments that somehow will benefit the United States in the long-term.

SNOW: Well, what the United States has done is we have actually taken the lead on those kinds of innovations.

(courtesy of Think Progress)

I almost bursted out laughing right there. Meg theorized either he was on drugs or it was the cancer treatments.

IBM releases salary adjustments

Today IBM released the result of this year’s salary plan (ie: raises) to the masses. I had high hopes since we (IBM and Tivoli) had such a great 2006.

This year the bucket that my team’s salary adjustments came from (at whatever level that is determined) wasn’t all that big to begin with. To complicate matters more, IBM decided to focus on adjusting folks Market Reference Point (MRP)1 this year at the expense of rewarding their top contributors. What this means is that everyone that was below 100% of their MRP had a good chance of getting something to get them closer to 100%. After the MRP adjustments were determined, that money was taken out of the bucket and whatever was left was to give Performance raises based on your PBC rating. Performance raises are generally handed out to folks with a PBC rating of 1, 2+, and often 2. This year the money remaining for the Performance raises was so small that they were only able to give Performance raises for people who made a 1 and some of the 2+s.

Overall my odds were pretty good. Moving to Denver decreased my MRP to 88% so I could expect an MRP increase. In addition I received a 1 for 2006 so I was expecting a decent Performance raise as well.

Based on what I received the bucket must have been microscopic in size. I really can’t complain – I still have a job (layoffs occurred within Tivoli just last week) and received at least a small raise. Still, the number pales in comparison to my previous salary adjustments. My manager also said that my percentage increase was the highest at my second-line manager’s level which makes me happy (see, even though the number is small they do still like me) and sad (geeze, that’s the best IBM can do for their employees?). Oh well – it’ll be enough to cover Benjamin’s college books.

[1] MRP is based on three factors: band, location, and the pay range given those two criteria. If, at a given band and location, you have an MRP of 100%, then you are in the dead center of the pay range for that band/location pair. If you have an MRP of 80%, then you are paid 80% of the average pay at that band/level. Denver has a higher cost of living than Austin (Denver is at the IBM “national” level and Austin is at the IBM “regional” level) which bumps the 100% MRP mark up by $9,600/year going from Austin to Denver.