I was born and lived 30 years in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. After studies I started working for IBM as a C#/Java developer and stayed there for 5 years. Nice years. I have learned a lot, met great people, traveled around the world. Not to forget, I have earned some money. Nice money.

IBM has a pretty huge centre in Bratislava with about 3500 employees. Vast majority of them are busy with direct cardiopulmonary resuscitation to keep processes of the global monster alive. Sweat, blood and tears everywhere. But they also get some money. Nice money.

Even though negativism and complaining are typical Slovakian features, it hurts to see such a huge crowd of desperate young people. They express meaninglessness of their jobs in doses I just can’t absorb. Typically they are freshly graduated, can speak at least English, often German. They are full of potential. But they need money to live.

Average salary in my beautiful country is 789 EUR. A western company can beat it easily and still be profitable. I don’t want to blame IBM. Not at all. It’s perfectly reasonable what they do and very convenient for us. But we must know when to get off. Otherwise the monster will eat us alive. It will suck life out of our body and will let our corpses float in grey zone of endless legacy bullshit.

I am happy to have IBM in Bratislava. Don’t get me wrong. And this is not just about IBM. We have Accenture, HP, Dell, SAP a other stuff like that. Whenever something bad happens, I can work there and get the bloody money we all need. Nice money. But I’ll fight till my last penny to stay away.