How an internship turned into a twenty-five year journey

When I applied for an internship at IBM, least I expected was a long-term career at Big Blue.

 

My first summer job involved porting a commercial application from IBM System/36 to IBM AS/400 using RPG and the command language (QWRKSPLF, anyone?), copying and labelling the 8” release master floppy disks for another product and passing the quality assurance leader’s fierce interrogation on database normalization up to the fifth normal form.

At the end of the two month cycle, I had a job offer in the mail to work in IBM’s Information Systems AD/M group, passed the interview and was ready to start the new academic year as a part time employee.

Today I celebrate a milestone in my career, my quarter century anniversary. Working at IBM has been an exciting, instructional, challenging, rewarding and sometimes crazy experience. I have been an application developer, course instructor, product tester, customer support engineer, infrastructure architect and corporate webmaster (aka webworm), team leader, manager, and enterprise architect.

I still have a copy of the original job offer, the small blue employee handbook which outlined the company believes and policies, the internal “facebook” booklet and an office cupboard filled with books, papers and various memorabilia, from conferences badges to award certificates and my first patent plaque.

What’s more important than the “stuff” are the connections with the many smart, dedicated and supportive people whom I met and had the pleasure to work with over the years, locally and around the world. 

Thank you to all my colleagues and friends who have made my first twenty-five years special!