After 28 years working for IBM, then 8 years as a freelance consultant, and a few years of retirement, it is interesting to look back and try to document what one would learn through all this time. You should flavor this with the background of the writer and the point of view that I entered the workplace with. After being raised in a family that believed that if you worked hard enough, and long enough, that the rewards would come to you. Sure, they knew that there were some employers and businesses that would take advantage of you, but over all, the heads down work hard ethic ruled. Since I didn't want to get into management and have to worry about other people's problems, I told myself that if I were good enough, that I could be super successful and not have to cross into the management field. By successful, I mean that the financial rewards would be adequate and my personal satisfaction would be great.
On my first day with IBM, I remember so vividly the PROPAGANDA that we were fed for several hours. You have a job for life with one of the best companies that exists. The company has NEVER laid off anyone because of bad times in the economy. You will have health insurance paid by the company for LIFE!!!! The company is one big family and we take care of family. The problem is that I believed them.
For several years, the image of the company was as it had been painted on that opening day. When the first daughter was born, I'm not sure there was any money I had to pay on the medical bills. We received a silver spoon from the chairman of the board welcoming her to the IBM family. There were family picnics each spring and a very nice Christmas party for the kids. There were family dinners for the adults after each large successful project completion. When the second daughter was born roughly three years later, there was no silver spoon though.
Life was exciting and good as far as I knew. The pay was certainly better than the $4300/year that I had made the previous year teaching school. For the first year of employment, we were paid by the hour, and that was great because we were working so much overtime. About the end of the first year, I was promoted to the exempt status, but expected to continue to get the job done. Working on the space program during this time was somewhat like being the old west and frontier days. IBM had just come out with the 360 large mainframe computers. There was no terminal input, or internet, or multiprocessing. Only one user could be on the system at a time, and that meant either setting up a complex set of inputs-which most people couldn't do-or be there in person to load the programs that were punched on cards into the system. So, the systems were scheduled 24 hours a day 7 days a week and were only shut down for like Christmas. There was also some of the smartest people in the world working on the project both for IBM and the other contractors, and surprising enough, some didn't even have college degrees. This whole time in my life was a blur of work, work, work without much thought as to how I was being treated overall. Before the landing happened, several of the contractors began laying people off, but IBM didn't let any go. They did transfer some of the best and brightest to Atlantic City to build the air traffic control system that was used for many years.
After the first landing, the space missions became somewhat routine until Apollo 13 which the movie depicts very well, down to the kinds of cars the astronauts drove. A parallel project started and was to support the Skylab mission. After the success that had been achieved in the lunar landing, many of us were totally over confident and was SURE there wasn't anything we couldn't do[I speak for companies here as well.] The Skylab mission was much different than the regular lunar missions because it went up once and then was reused by several teams of astronauts. The complexities and having multiple vendors attempting to use some of the first data base managers made the task seem impossible. I remember working 5 1/2 months with only one week-end off during this time. Seventy hour weeks were common and I was on call 24 hours a day--which I didn't get credit for. At the very last hour, everything came together and the mission flew and was declared a success.
For all the overtime worked, someone in the company decided that we would be given comp time. So, the rule was that each employee would be given a day off for every 100 hours of overtime worked. The week off was welcomed, but I was wondering if there was going to be any financial rewards for pulling off a miracle. About a year and a half later, I was called into one of them manger's office and given a check for $1500 for my contribution. It was a little late but better than never coming at all.
After 8 years in the space business, I decided to try other projects. These included helping build a refinery control system for Exxon, doing 2 years of classified work, working at the laboratory where the sonar software for the US Navy was built, joining a research group to create the perfect operating system[that never happened], an assignment in Germany, a session in Special bids, and a chair assignment with the IBM Corporate audit. During this time, I remained true to my technical nature, but also studied human nature along the way and became very aware of who and how the movers and shakers were doing the moving. I became very aware that being a white male was the last on the pecking order for advancement in the company, regardless of talent or contribution.
After 28 years, I found myself on a project that had just been canceled. We were told that we had to either find a job or we could take an early out package and leave. Since I thought the early out was a good reason to take the package--which let me keep my retirement benefits--and go work for myself. The package was that the employee would be given 2 weeks pay for each year of service but that we would have to sign an agreement that we would not bring suit against the company for any type of discrimination. I had been raised that you NEVER get something for nothing, but remember signing that release and the check being handed to me. It surely felt as if it were something for nothing. Of course, there was a surprise. Upon examining the check, I found that social security and federal withholdings had been withheld, even though this was not earned income and was given because of my signing the release. The company's response was that they wanted to be safe and not take any chances with the government. I was told I could go after the government to get my money back. You don't have to ask how that effort went.
After leaving IBM, my business education really began. I worked for IBM, Loral, and SAIC as a contractor. After seeing some of the contracts and what these companies were billing my time for, I decided to start asking for my fair share of what they were and had been making by using me. I saw projects where 3 or 4 people would be doing most of the work, but the customer would be paying for 30. I saw a project where people just arriving from India were used and billed at $100/hour and they got something like $20/hour and no benefits. I saw a minority fellow worker who usually didn't show up on Monday and usually disappeared on Thursday but was drawing full salary. I was on a project where more than one of the IBM employees couldn't pass the background screening that was required. Overall, I believe that the 8 years of consulting was much more interesting and educational than the first 28 years. It was also MUCH more rewarding financially than the first 28 on a per year basis. Do I know all there is about consulting? Absolutely not, but during that time, there were many lessons learned.
So, if the lessons could be summed up quickly, which they can't, there are 2 types of people in a company. There are those that sell it and then those who make it. Those that sell it in many cases don't have a clue as to the degree of difficulty that the making of the product will take. They get their rewards and ride off into the sunset. [They will tell you, we killed the bear; now it's yours to skin.] In the IBM world, they had this event every year called a "Golden Circle" where the top management and best marketers went for a reward for a good year. This would be several days in like Hawaii or Aruba or some other exotic place. For the technical troops like me, we got the big ZIPPO. Our reward for doing a good job was just more hard work.
I believed for a long time that if you were outstanding technically, that the promotions and financial benefits would take care of themselves. That was WRONG!!! I was involved in more than one discussion regarding the split that a person should take between being political and technical. For most of the time I was with IBM, I thought that a 90% technical/10% political split was where a technical specialist should be. The 10% would know and recognize the political implications of the business world but not spend a lot of time playing the political game. Later in my time with IBM, I began believing that if someone wanted to advance in the company, the only way to do that was to get into management and go about the reverse of what I had believed, i.e. being 10-20% technical and 80-90% political.
The other thing I observed that being a good speaker was a very big benefit. If you could organize and sell an idea or concept, then you had a large advantage over someone who may have had a brilliant idea, but less of a presenter.
Even though I never made the "Gold Circle" that I mentioned earlier, there was always one thing I was invited to. I would be invited if there was a project disaster where they were behind schedule and/or over budget which was usually the case on large complex projects. Things haven't changed on many of the large projects and those that involve the government in today's world. The thing that has changed is that the project managers seem to be better equipped to keep the status under wraps so that most don't get as much publicity as they once would have. If you read Who is the cowboy? you'll probably understand how I was involved.
So, where do I go from here in this story? When I first left IBM, I was somewhat
bitter as to how we parted ways. I took some time and attempted to capture my thoughts
and feelings and memories about the time I had spent there. I investigated publishing
those notes in a Book about being Inside Big Blue, but backed off after seeing what
it would cost. At this time, I'm thinking about taking two different approaches to
following up with this effort. One aspect would be to document what has happened during
the eight years of consulting and what I learned during that time. The second thing
being explored is looking into the feasibility of making the book available via the
internet in either a Word Document or PDF file so as to alleviate the costs of
publishing and the uncertainty of how many copies would ever sell. If you have any
thoughts or interest, I'd be happy to hear from you. Please put something into your
subject line that shows it isn't from a spammer.
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