One Billion Seconds with IBM

One bright August morning a nervous young man stood at the entrance to the IBM UK head office wondering what his first day of work might reveal.?

Precisely one billion seconds later I am posting this article.??Yes, precisely.??That geeky behaviour is partly why I joined and remain here today, but it’s only one facet of the story. As a child who loved to code at a time when schools had no computers, my career path was inevitable, and the complete illegibility of my handwriting naturally prioritised employers with keyboards.

So, I have now worked for IBM for exactly one billion seconds. In more conventional units that’s 31 years, 8 months, 8 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes and 40 seconds. You might be thinking that you could not possibly do the same job for 31+ years. Neither could I.??My attention span is low and I still daydream in any meeting, presentation or zoom call that goes beyond 15 minutes.??But every day has been different, challenging and rewarding and I have never been bored for any one of those billion seconds.

So what do I do???In fact what does IBM do???It depends on when you asked. IBM is 110 years old (over 3 billion seconds) and has continually evolved technology and business trends, from typewriters to PC’s, bar codes, mainframes, storage, software, cloud, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. The answer keeps advancing. Today an IBMer may tell you we do hybrid cloud and AI for the virtual enterprise, but I’d like to simplify with an answer that makes sense whenever you asked the question.

IBM applies technology to transform human experiences, today and tomorrow.??For good.?

This is true and has always been so. What’s different is that we used to give technology to people and train them how to use it.??These days we’re training the technology to understand and support humans.??

Today’s IBM is about Technology and Consulting.??That’s a challenge to competitors as our technology teams happily work with any consulting organisation (including our own) and our consulting teams happily work with any technology (including our own).??Any competitors are probably also trusted and valued business partners. Add in IBM’s world leading research organisation driving new tech and you have a company that is not quite like any other.?

That’s one reason why I’m still here.

The power of ethics

My answer to what IBM does included “For good”.??IBM basically has a good heart. We apply tech to do good things and help our clients to do the same. You can find lots of articles on what IBM has invented and contributed to the evolution of society, medicine, finance, ecology and much more. Dig a little deeper into our workforce history and you’ll find ground-breaking early examples of equality and diversity in gender, race, sexual orientation and general non-prejudice well ahead of wider societal moves.??And this comes not from just policy or training, but primarily from good people who behave in this way because it’s just right.

That’s another reason why I’m still here. IBMers have good hearts. This comes out in ethical behaviour and positive support for each other and our clients, but it also runs deeper.??I spent one hundred million of my billion seconds supporting my first wife through a dignified battle with cancer.??I transitioned from husband to carer to widower and single parent.??Throughout this difficult time the support from the IBM organisation was just right.??Some of it was good policy but most of it was good people.?

I joined as a shy, introverted, self-conscious programmer. I now lead Mobile and Extended Reality globally for IBM Consulting. What happened?

Oh boy, could I code!??I’d been doing so since I was 10 years old and had code published in magazines (yes, that was a thing).??Coding in a team was initially alien to me and so was designing things first. So I would write and test the code and then submit the design for review, faster than others could design. Those who worked with me may now realise why my code always worked first time, and why I was so glad when agile techniques caught up. My tech career flourished and I progressed to team leader and architect.??

DR Jeckel and Mr. Pizazz

One day my project manager asked me if I was interested in joining a Scottish folk music group. Not being Scottish or liking folk music I of course said yes, and went home to teach myself to play the mandolin over the weekend.??What followed was a period of acquiring and teaching myself to play 34 different musical instruments and a taste for performing in public.

I had always hated and feared doing presentations at work, embarrassed by being on show and delivering content that I was not engaged with.??So I started treating every work presentation as a performance, delivering messages in a way that would entertain and hold even my low attention span, and engage any size of audience. It got noticed. The thing I hated and feared became a thing I loved to do.?

So I got great pleasure in programming through the night to produce the most elegant code, but also in traveling the world, dancing on stage with robots, co-presenting with artificial intelligence, and playing four harmonicas simultaneously to bemused but delighted client board rooms. I’m either an introverted extrovert or an extraverted introvert. Fortunately, both are embraced at IBM.?

So that’s another reason I stayed.?

Embracing the client

I went on to lead teams and portfolios for major clients in Telecommunications, Retail and Industrial sectors. When IBM engages with a client you fully embrace the client’s business and industry, and it feels like I have worked as an employee for each one of those companies. I discovered that I get pleasure in seeing our clients’ businesses flourish and transform because of what our teams are doing, and inspiring, coaching and watching people grow on their career journeys.?

It turns out that I like doing lots of things. None of us are one dimensional. When your likes are numerous and diverse it becomes impossible to have a role that contains them all, but I appreciate being in an organisation that allows me to constantly evolve, discover, recognise the strengths of myself and others and build diverse and effective teams. IBM does that incredibly well, with our own people, our partners and our clients. In my view IBM is essentially an outstanding people business that is also really, really good with tech.?

IBM is also truly global. The culture, ethics and process I describe applies to every IBMer on the planet, and that’s not a claim most global companies can truly make. I have held many international or global roles and have learned that people and cultures around the world are all unique but also the same. Good is good wherever you are, and so is IBM.??That’s the fourth reason I stayed.

Should I stay or should I go?

So have I ever considered leaving???Yes, five times, but never because I was unhappy. Each time a recruiter would call asking if I was interested in a job with a competitor or partner (see above for why these things are the same).

One of those times IBM lined up an independent coach to help guide me. Not to retain me, but to truly help guide my thinking towards the right choice for me.??Now I hate being coached but she was great. She made me ignore negative thoughts about staying or worries in taking the new role.??Just to focus on what it would?feel?like in 5 year’s time if everything went perfectly well in the new job, what would I be doing????And the same if I stayed with IBM.??I was genuinely shocked as I realised that the potential within IBM was better than the best case if I left, if only I could just get perceived negatives out of my way.

Mr. Mobile

So I stayed. And dear reader I am now doing the exact role I imagined. And it is awesome.??I lead Mobile and XR (Extended Reality) for IBM Consulting globally, inspiring clients across industries to enable their employees and customers to embrace the next generation of experiences; transforming how people work and engage through mobile and emerging technology.??This is the human connection to tech, cloud and artificial intelligence. I have brilliant teams who design for human beings and then apply the right technology to transform work or personal experiences. I love it because it’s tangible. For example, we have apps that transform the work of airline employees.??On a flight back to London I asked one of the cabin crew how important the app was to her day. She was ecstatic about being freed up to spend more time focussing on passengers, and thanked me for making her flight more comfortable…?

I am proud to be a Partner in IBM. To get here there is quite rightly a comprehensive, long, diligent process. One senior executive was pivotal to my progress, but not for the reasons you might imagine.??On discovering my intentions she took me to one side and said “Tony, if you become a partner you will be swimming with the sharks. You are too nice.??You are a dolphin”.??Now I appreciate her genuine concern that I may??have struggled to compete due to my helpful, positive nature, and my adversity to conflict, but instead my reaction was “Yay! I’m a dolphin!”??and my resolve to get to the water was doubled.

So dear reader.??I became an IBM partner and embraced the full ecosystem of the consulting ocean. Please don’t be alarmed that most IBM partners are indeed sharks. Just google “are sharks bad?” and you will realise they are amazing people with the good hearts I described. But I’m not alone. There are a lot of dolphins here too. We need both, and that’s one of the reasons the IBM culture and business is so well balanced.?

The final reason I stayed is self-evident. Several years ago I realised just how big a billon is, calculated the exact second when I might reach this milestone and vowed to post an article at that exact moment.

I can’t claim every second has been wonderful. I did frown once back in the 90’s. But every day I have laughed and had scary problems that I don’t know how to solve. Sometimes simultaneously.

I am obliged to issue a disclaimer, that the views expressed in this article are my own, they may not represent the views of the IBM Corporation and no-one from IBM has pre-reviewed or sanctioned this article. (But hey, I’ve done the billion, what’s the worst that could happen?)

So, do I now immediately hand in my notice???No way.??Why would I want to be anywhere else? And when you work for with IBM you have the potential to be anywhere else and still here. Maybe I’ll post something else when I get to twenty million minutes (you do the math).

If you take nothing else from this post, just remember 5 things.

1. To become a billionaire making $1 per donut then you need to sell one every second for nearly 32 years, assuming you don’t sleep, eat or stop for any other reason.
2. The shyest person in the world can stand in front of 2,000 people, perform like a pro and love it.?
3. Always make career decisions based on positive potential rather than fears and worries?
4. IBM is good.
5. ?Only work for a company where dolphins thrive.