I went to a dinner event at IBM yesterday. More specifically, it was a recruiting event for women in tech.

They ran out of food by the time I got to the table, which made me sad.

What happened was that IBM’s own employees, both male and female, came in and pilfered the food under the guise of networking. Look, I was a grad student for six years, I know how these things work.

Why were IBM employees acting like hungry students?

Because IBM is a real company, dammit.

IBM isn’t some Silicon Valley startup with venture-backed funding to burn. Nor is it bubble-inflated Google/Facebook with cash spewing from every orifice.

It’s lean, it’s mean, it’s been around since 1880 and acts its damn age.

Each attendee received company schwag to excite us about the prospect of working at IBM. This was my schwag:

A VC-funded startup down the street gives branded Cabernet to its visitors, but IBM says Fuck That, we get our company schwag from the Five and dime like sensible adults.

Look at what IBM pays its Bay Area employees.

Google pays similarly-experienced employees nearly twice as much. What waste! IBM assigns salaries based on last century’s market rates because IBM is playing the long game, bitches.

As for food? IBM keeps its workforce hungry, because hungry people are scrappy. IBM employees have gravel in their gut and spit in their eye. That much was clear from the way they vultured in on the girls’ dinner table.

In a nuclear apocalypse, IBM employees would eat those soft and squishy Googlers for breakfast.

Okay, I went to last night’s event because I’m genuinely interested in some of the stuff IBM is doing. Open-source technology for smart contracts on the blockchain. Artificial General Intelligence with Watson.

But maybe they need to rethink their recruiting strategy.