@Zb. You can be RA’ed at the drop of a hat. All that has to happen is technology changes and IBM decides to buy that technology vs developing it themselves (wrong place wrong time), IBM decides your area of expertise has become a commodity (intel pc’s and later on servers), someone in the world will do your job for 1/2 your salary (most of the admin jobs in NA and Europe), IBM decides to sell off your division because it’s become non-strategic (GTS, and Watson Health), you get several promotions and become too expensive (experienced legacy employees in NA and Northern Europe), your chain of command finds an AI program to replace you (most of the middleware SW offerings from IBM), etc etc etc. All of the above have reduced Northen Europe and NA headcount by 2/3rds over the last 10 years and I don’t see that slowing down. IBM will eat you up, and sp-t you out when you become a cost and march forward without ever looking back. ITs the nature of corporate life, and no amount of badges will save you from that. My advise to you is find a “niche” that IBM can’t live without and can’t buy, and then become its in house expert. That will deliver you more job security than 10,000 hours of think 40 education or badges. I wish you good luck with your career with IBM