Tripping through IBM’s astonishingly insane 1937 corporate songbook (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Tripping through IBM’s astonishingly insane 1937 corporate songbook (2014)

arstechnica.com

59 pointsrbanffy38 comments

Reading the ridiculous lyrics and am just relieved that we don't have anything as obviously insane as this nowadays, especially with modern team building inventions like getting managers to express themselves by drawing with crayons and crafts, confess and acknowledge their faults and privileges, and participate in group mindfulness and empathy theraputic exercises.

This is of course bizarre, except...singing will make you a better salesman. I say salesman because the effect of the vocal exercise on a man's voice has a natural effect on the people around him. You will never see as much command and charisma as a choirmaster or an old stage actor.

Anyway, I'm late for our sales kick off meeting, HR has told us our team is doing something called yoni sunning..?

Yoni in Hindi means vagina. Coupled with sunning, infer what you may.

Edit: Holy hell, it actually means opening up your legs in full sunshine lol

> am just relieved that we don't have anything as obviously insane as this nowadays

Maybe not at IBM, but...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWUhqoAGsfk

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B1v6cqDcXQ

Then:

  We don't pretend we're gay.
  We always feel that way,
  Because we're filling the world with sunshine.
  With I.B.M. machines,

Now:

"change the world with our blockchain-enabled soylent cupcake delivery and nutrition analytics platform".

https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ

Japanese companies have these. Every worker standing in line in the morning while the boss hoists the company flag and then everybody sings the company song did not go well in their European and North American offices.

I wonder what the participants in such ceremonies actually think of them.

Are they genuinely that enthusiastic about their company and their superiors, or are they just conforming and putting on a show because they feel they have to?

Seemed to be fine at Walmart.

> The last vestige of Watson’s musical IBM died in 2001, when the company disbanded its symphony orchestra.

This downsizing of company perks is getting out of hand. Next thing you know they will be removing the caviars from the champagne bar.

IBM spent money on crazy stuff in the olden times. Early in my career I went to a 3 day dog and pony show at an IBM hotel outside of NYC.

I’m pretty sure the whole thing was an end run around ethics rules. My employer “paid” for the hotel, and the meals were charged at the GSA unreceipted per diem rate, so total cost was a bargain at <$100 night with steak dinners morning noon and night.

Literally dogs and horses? With the level of craziness under discussion here I can't quite tell.

Oh no, just a fancy sales pitch :)

Are not those run by voulanteers? My company has an orchestra but it is not like they are paid for it. The only commitment is using the auditorium for concerts two times a year and practice.

I believe some of the better hospitals still have small orchestras, chamber ensembles, etc, again as voluntary organizations. There are sometimes fundraising events when these ensembles come together from around a city, in order to put on a concert.

I guess things like high school bands and orchestras can be viewed as vestiges of a time when adults used to do the same sorts of things.

The whole idea of symphonic music -- the level of coordination it requires -- is striking. Music is present in all cultures, but how many cultures form bands of 100+ people?

Having an orchestra would have been cool. The company I worked for in 2000 had a smoking club and ham radio club. Same members in both. Hmm.

No big deal, just head over to the caviar bar. They still serve champagne too.

Makes sense. The champagne bar being vegan has been a demand for quite some time.

It's not just IBM who seem to like this kind of thing we also have entries from :-

Ernst & Young https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaIq9o1H1yo , PWC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM0k-VyJ1NE , KPMG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44We3OlEQMo and Deloitte https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smpbcGt-urQ

I have a bit of a collection of hacker/IT documentaries. In one of them I remember a former IBM employee sang the songs during an interview.

This was for me (as a non-native English speaker) the first time I learned that 'gay' used to mean something completely different.

https://youtu.be/ySqEvijSDGE?t=229

In case anyone else is interested, that is from the PBS documentary "Triumph of the Nerds", an absolutely brilliant historical record of the personal computer.

Holy hell, I remember seeing this scene on TV! It always stuck in my mind. Thanks for reassuring me that it was not, in fact, a fever dream.

Yes, that is the one!

"sang the songs during an interview"

For a moment there I thought this was some terrible new approach to technical interviews.

This reminds me of 19th century sailing. Manning a multi-mast sailing ship is a fairly technical job and a good singing voice was desirable. Song is a great way to get groups of men to work in concert.

Don't give anyone ideas!

Maybe in the style of the music from Anathem you could be asked to sing FizzBuzz?

http://synthesist.net/music/anathem/

I sadly can't google a video, but that reminds me of the scene in "American factory" in China:

https://ubiquarian.net/2020/01/film-review-american-factory-...

> American supervisors invited to Fuyao’s homeland are subjected to performances by Chinese workers from the local factory. A young woman sings about productivity and hard work to generic C-pop.. A dance troupe does their thing with neon-silhouetted products from Fuyao Glass. Americans, all wearing red scarves like their Chinese associates, try not to recoil in horror as little Chinese girls dance in near-perfect formations to yet another pop number about company loyalty. Later, young couples rapidly become man and wife in groups at the celebration.

Does anybody remember a page on, I think, CNET which had all the worst corporate anthems ever? The KPMG one was the worst.

I match your corporate psalms:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdZ7DQkvyew

And raise you these geek anthems:

White and Nerdy - Weird Al Yankovic

She blinded me with Science - Thomas Dolby

if you've ever been to a big company team building off-site you would know that not much has changed since 1937 in this regard. the company and all managers always expect you to be HYPED during office hours

Corporate life can be traumatic sometimes. I can only imagine how employees at IBM felt and they were asked to sing one of these songs.

Given that IBM had saved them from the Depression, and given the way people in those days formed voluntary civic associations -- probably a lot of them fell in earnestly with the crowd. I think company loyalty was real. You worked there your whole life and retired with a pension.

(And things like forming a large congregation and singing were not alien to these people. Most of them did that every Sunday. Which itself is remarkable. The only other global religion that comes close to this level of collective mass-participation is Islam. It's built into the architecture of the different religions' temples! Who else has row upon row of pews?! I digress...)

(Even sports teams! You see remnants of this too, with older people being avid fans of their city's baseball or football team... yet to a younger person this is at best a marker of low class and at worst a kind of prelude to authoritarian populism... The collective political protest is the one ritual coming-together we really have...)

(Or college "fight songs" and the like? Most again are from, I'd say, 1920-1940...)

Anyway... Surely there was, at the same time, self-interested scheming -- John goes home to his wife Betty, and they talk about how they really need to invite the Joneses over for dinner (because Mr. Jones is John's supervisor), and by the way you should really make sure your shoes are polished, John, because what will other people think?

I don't know if the more cynical or at least individualistic mood really took off until after the war, with people like Vonnegut (Player Piano is basically about IBM), Heller, and so on.

Mostly I think these were depression-era people, and depression-era people were grateful for a job. If you have relatives still around from that time (or who were children at the start of WW2), you might still see a little of this attitude.

Walmart still do this sort of thing, apparently, or at least did as of quite recently.

Given that Watson came from John Patterson's NCR, this isn't surprising.

Thanks, that's interesting. Googled:

https://www.dayton.com/lifestyles/things-you-didn-know-about...

If I remember correctly General Mills had a songbook that was even more insane.

1937? So, while they were helping Germany organise the holocaust?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

I thought the same thing.

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