Michael Burry
· Cassandra Unchained
· June 29, 2026 at 20:56
· ⏱ 4 min read
| Read on Substack ↗
Summary
This is a purely autobiographical reflection by Michael Burry on his 1987–1989 summer internships at IBM, describing his work stress-testing hard disk drives and the bureaucratic environment. There is no current market thesis, trade recommendation, or actionable insight for investors.
•Burry earned $7.425/hour at IBM, up from $2.85/hour at a high school gas station job.
•He worked on stress-testing 14-inch hard disk drives (HDAs) by injecting contaminants and tracking failure on golden ferric oxide disks.
•He used APL (A Programming Language) on an IBM 3270 terminal with a special clunky keyboard for matrix math.
•IBM had 18 levels of management; the 10,000-person Cottle Road campus was run by a 3rd-level manager with 15 levels above him.
•Burry's data was handwritten on graph paper, then entered via APL; one analysis was flown directly to CEO John Akers.
•The campus felt like a small city built on old orchards, with a lively cafeteria, manufacturing buildings, and many German PhDs working on theoretical projects.