What do you guys think about Bluepoints?
10 replies (most recent on top)
If Ginni were on Undercover Boss:
GINNI: Dear Boned you have shown me how your loyalty to IBM has served our billion dollar revenue customer well by unselfishly working ungodly unpaid hours in the evening and on the weekends. Not to mention oncall duty, sacraficing YOUR family and personal time so that I can become filthy rich. We have stopped contributing to your pension and cash balance plans. We cut the Future Health Account, we cut our 401k contribution, we cut the annual bonus pay and duped you to think we would give you quarterly bonuses. We make you pay for your own work expenses. We have never considered that perhaps my dear Mr Blew the cost of living goes up and at the very least provided you with a raise in salary every few years or so. Boned, you have shown me the intense stress and aggravation you have endored on a daily basis, mainly because of the stupid a$$ IBM SOPs that are mostly useless and redundant, but keeps many of our useless over paid do nothing executives employed. On behalf of the IBM Corporation My Dear Mr.Blew I am extremely proud to say that we are going to award you 40 Blue Points! A generous perk on our part for all that you do!!! Sob sob.....
Hey look how awesome we are giving you tickets like the chuckie cheese machines, get enough and you can get some gum, and oh by the way, if you look deep enough we will even tax your paycheck for you , Spare me the insult !
I guess this question is coming from HR, "testing the water" to see if they can pay out bluepoints instead of vacation and severance pay.
I get about 112 (weird) every year, just decided to donate them each year, rather then be frustrated trying to get some overprice piece of c-ap.
My thoughts are that I used to get BluePoints a lot but they stopped in 2017. I didn’t think they existed anymore.
I had ~2500 after I was retired. I used them up about 1 1/2 years later. Nothing special - Honestly, had a hard time finding something to spend them on.
I've been avidly collating Blue Points for years after many hours of sweat and tears, working on some of IBM's most prestigious, multi-million dollar projects. Next month, I aim to cash-in and become the proud owner of an IBM logoed pencil sharpener.
You can get 2000 blue points in lieu of a retirement dinner. I did that and bought an Apple IPAD. Best retirement gift ever
Pros: you can accumulate them over time, they are even valid if you leave IBM (or so does the site say).
Cons: they are distributed very inconsistently. Sometimes, the manager "awards" you ridiculous 100 points for a hard work on a project for several months. Sometimes, you get nothing. But sometimes, there are organized events where you can receive 500 points just by clicking through a trivia several times until you get it right. And then, some departments allow even the regular employees send BP to the others - but only in some departments. Never have seen any option to obtain a really interesting number of Bluepoints.
So it is like with any other benefits in IBM - only for the selected lucky few.
Bluepoints are a joke, if you want a leaf blower you need to be there 50 years to get enough points