Wayne Anderson's answers

My desk was tucked away in each building that I worked. The view from my desk in the first office was actually rather remarkable as my office mate taught art at one time and had arrayed his desk with various forms of art work. In the second office, my officemate and I were both bordered by windowless walls, Availible to our sight in that environment was our Laptop, VoIP phone, the wall, some overhead cabinet space, a whiteboard, and our door. A view unremarkable, to be sure, but still better than having to work from a cube farm or from public space....

Take the time to relax, do not allow the width and breadth of the campus and data centers to overwhelm you when you make your start on the IBM Boulder campus. An understanding of the layout and memorizing server locations will come to you over time as you work there.

Also, make sure that in everything you do at IBM, you follow CYA. Cover Your... well... you know. Its unfortunate that anyone has to do that because it implies there are trust issues in the way a company works but the simple fact of the matter is that most people there wil be recording conversations in the form of saved email or IM logs. Make sure you are doing the same to document requests,etc that come in. If you get a verbal request to do something, make sure it is backed up by a written record (email) before you actually do it because I have seen multiple situations where the technical endpoint gets burned when a higher level PM or account person repudiates that they initiated an action....

While working with a couple of the engineers on a late-night issue brought up by a customer, we started to chat about some of the recent developments in the particular business unit that we worked for while we waited for a courier to bring us a part from the local IBM distribution center. I had noticed that one of the networking contacts that we had dealt with for much of the time I was with IBM was gone. As the gentleman I was working with was the networking team lead for the unit, I asked him about why we had not seen that particular individual.

Of all the reasons in the world, apparently this guy had not shown up for 10 days and hence had been terminated. In all the rest of the time that I was with IBM no one heard anything further from that individual and he was asumed to have been arrested.... again. Apparently while employed the engineer was arrested for various charges related to drunken intoxication in public, missed two days of work, and then returned.

Probably one of the funniest things I have had the opportunity to hear about while working in what is stereotypically expected to be a serious professional environment....

In the case of being located via a third party placement, essentially you interview with the outside staffing company first. They locate you, they usually complete a phone interview followed by some sort of technical screen and/or personality (in-person) interview to ensure that you are a candidate that the staffing firm feels would represent the quality of availible candidates well. You are then submitted as a resource to IBM with your personell package and the cost proposal from the staffing firm.

From your perspective, usually the next step is a narrowing by the individual IBM team in some fashion. In my case at the time it was an in person interview where they started telling us point blank that we werent there to h ave to prove our technical prowess, that hs already been vetted by others and by our references and we wouldnt be at that interview unless a lot of people agreed we had the technical capability to do the job. The imporant thing that they were looking for was team chemistry. Are you someone who can get along with the team in sometimes stressful circumstances, long hours, on call situations. Can they feel that you are someone who wants to be part of the team or do you want to play it lone ranger. This interview was rather unorthodox as I had approached the interview in the standard suit and tie and my interviewers were potential peers who were business casual.... at best.

I cannot say that this is the way that the process will be conducted for every candidate, but rather can only relate the process as I observed during my work with the company....

IBM is an entirely business casual environment unless you work in a customer-contact position such as sales or direct on-site consulting. IBM has this ongoing image as a hold-over from the 80s when everyone involved with computers was a buttoned down conservative wearing a suit and tie and that is just not the case anymore....

With IBM, there are usually two primary induction paths. First, you complete an internship or make contact with IBM at the collegiate recruiting level. In this way most actual IBM employees are hired. Second, you are located by a contractor recruiter and work as a subcontractor for IBM until your manager can sufficiently justify bringing you on as a temporary or long term supplemental employee. The status is not as secure as one might hope, as a supplemental employee has all of the drawbacks in terms of job vulnerability without the perks of overtime or a strong benefits package. Finally, with several years of work and a supportive manager, you can be brought inside as a "blue" full-time employee of IBM, at which time benefits such as training, the full health/dental/401k package, and team events/bonuses become availible.

It is true that IBM HR does maintain an active recruiting practice but in terms of the ratio of employees hired this way as opposed to either of the other two staffing methods, the chances of this are fairly slim in my experience....

The daily commute for me was about 45 minutes to the Boulder, Colorado IBM Global Services facility. The campus is located between several major towns so it required crossing several major arteries each day to arrive at the facility. If you live in the boulder area or longmont, your commute will be fairly quickly. If you live anywhere else in the metro denver or greeley areas, you are guaranteed to be making a daily commute of 35-45 or even more minutes. When I started the job, I was living in Greeley, CO which resulted in a commute of roughly an hour each way. While this is not really a huge number in terms of the expectations of metropolitan areas like Washington DC, Seattle, or Dalls, an hour commute is huge in the state of Colorado....

The amount of coffee consumed depends on the amount of coffee availible. IBM is a highly corporate environment where you are, for the most part, high utlization. Under those circumstances, you find something that will keep you moving forward. For some people, thats the snack machine by the elevators. For some, thats having 50 people on sametime and chatting with at least one of them at any given time. For me, that was caffeine.

Invariably, I had some manner of purchased beverage at or around my desk, at one point bringing in 12 packs of soda to reduce the percieved cost.

I suppose that were I to quantify it in equivalent cups of coffee I would certainly have to indicate 4-7 depending on the day and what was going on at the time....

At the Boulder, Colorado facility, the lunch area is a conglomeration of franchises and local catering. A mexican place, Wok&Roll Express, Subway, once-in-a-while chef line-presented preparation, a "homestyle meals" catering place, and a salad bar are all availible for you adjacent to the open cafeteria. The structure of the complex and the way the security gates are, you have the freedom to spend your lunch in any of the courtyards or on the grounds without actually leaving the complex. During the spring, IBM starts seeing ping pong games in session on the multiple ping pong tables positioned in courtyards around the complex....

IBM does not really directly provide much of a positive point to do your best work for them. One of the few things that can help motivate you is the fact that the work you do, at some point, Makes a Difference. I have seen projects that directly effect services that thousands of people use every day. This sort of work can be a bit of a pat on the head knowing that System X is something that you worked on that is now used by hundreds of thousands of people....