This article first appeared in ‘Profile’ the house journal of ITT Europe Inc, Avenue Louise 480, B‐1050 Brussels. ‘Profile’ is a quarterly, available in English, French, German, Italian or Spanish versions. Retraining skilled blue‐collar shop floor workers to become whiter‐than‐white computer programmers is a big step which not many companies would contemplate. But it has paid off for Bell Telephone writes ALAIN CHEVENIER of Europolitique. And the ‘retrainees’ are clearly happy, too.