A 30-year company veteran would have started in the 1980s when the mainframe was the thing, and COBOL, PL/1, PASCAL, and FORTRAN were still the languages, plus JES/JCL for the job scheduling. That was a time of specialty skill that commanded college degrees and high salaries.
For those who stayed and made a career in a company's IT department, contributing significantly to a company's presence and growth in an increasingly global and technical world over the last 30 years of technology revolution, it is a sad way to be recognized for a dedicated career to be unceremoniously dumped onto the street with yesterday's Tomorrowland burgers.
-PJ
Yes, company loyalty should be a two way street, however, that seems to have gone out the window long ago. Revenge is a dish best served cold: I knew of a corporate financial manager who was let go just before he turned 60 at which point he would have qualified for the company pension. It was a closely held company, two principals of which he was neither. But he knew where the bodies were buried. He turned them in for the tax reward on about 10 million of diverted revenues. He got his share they got a cell plus a huge tax penalty.