Forgotten Voice

I joined IBM Hursley, along with many other graduate recruits, in the summer of 1977. It was with great pride that I had been given a job in an organisation that at the time had an almost mythical reputation for excellence. IBM was different and everyone knew it, inside and outside the company. It was said that a yellow IBM badge was all that you needed to get through immigration in most countries. It was said that if IBM continued to grow in the way that it had done in the previous 20 years, by the end of the century everyone in the world would work for IBM.

Even the recruitment process seemed different. On the milk round at my University, I sat outside the office where Julian Peppercorn from IBM Personnel in Portsmouth was selecting candidates for later interviews. Twenty minutes after my allotted appointment there was no sign of activity, so I cautiously knocked and opened the office door. Mr Peppercorn was chatting to another candidate. I apologised, explaining that I wondered if there had been a mistake with my appointment.

The interview itself was different. I was asked about my likes and dislikes, and to talk about some rather weird propositions including some obvious untruths. Unlike other firms, I was not asked to sell myself, to complete a team task nor to “describe a situation in which…”. I had had interviews with ICL, EMI and Racal (later Vodafone) so I knew the form.

It seemed that I was the sort of person that IBM was looking for and I was invited to a day of interviews at Hursley. IBM would pay all expenses including taxi fares and its switchboard would accept reverse charge calls without question. On the day, Hursley was different. At the reception desk was a little old lady, clearly in her late sixties or early seventies, who seemed more like a family member than the overdressed young women who usually greeted people in other firms. After chats with various managers, I was offered a job in Special Engineering reporting to Mike Garrett, based, I think, on programming aptitude tests and the evidence of my previous programming work as an industrial trainee at KEF Electronics in Maidstone.

The starting day for graduate recruits was 7th August and we all arrived to be given a day of briefings. Our first task was to absorb some of the IBM culture. We were told about the extraordinary achievements of IBM and IBMers over the preceding half century. We were told how Thomas Watson Jr had transformed IBM from a manufacturer of punch card machines, weighing machines and industrial clocks into the world’s greatest computer company. We were told about the Quaker values on which the company was founded and how these values empowered employees to deliver superior service to customers. We were told that IBM exhorted employees to stop and Think and that IBM valued Wild Ducks (who deviated from conventional thinking). There was even a copy of the “IBM Songbook” around, although this was already considered a relic of a lost culture.

IBM didn’t manage by rules, it had guidelines. We learned that IBM means service to customers and that IBM valued respect for individuals and the pursuit of excellence. Everyone was expected to use their judgement to do what was right for the business and be accountable for the results of their actions. IBM recruited the best and paid the best and it would be stupid to tie excellent employees down with excessive rules and bureaucracy.

IBM hired graduates for their personal and technical development potential, not their specific technology knowledge and would provide all the training that was needed. IBM was true to its word, and in my early years in IBM, I typically went on three to four weeks of training per year. I learned about IBM Systems Network Architecture, IBM System 360 Assembler, IBM PL1, IBM PLS and Structured Programming. I was sent on a two week course at Oxford on Advanced Programming given by Professor Cliff Jones, where I learned about the delights of formal software specification languages and proofs of program correctness. Industry standards played little part in IBM development. After a year in IBM, I was encouraged by Pete (J D) Peterson, my then manager, to undertake a two year part time MSc in Systems Engineering, an experience that I relished.

The only contracts I was asked to sign were a non-disclosure agreement for IBM Confidential information and a contract assigning Intellectual Property rights to IBM. I was given an employee handbook that was largely about the extraordinary benefits of working for IBM. IBM had a full employment practice and redeployed employees rather than making them redundant. If you worked with competence and diligence, as an engineer you could expect to receive regular promotions and salary increases for the first ten years of your IBM career1. As an example of IBM’s generosity, IBM UK had circumvented wage and price controls in the early 1970s by changing salaries from payment in arrears to payment in advance, thereby giving IBM employees an extra month’s pay. In compensation, IBM expected total dedication and very high ethical standards. You could be fired for stealing an item of stationery and we were told that there were cases where this had happened.

Nearly everyone working in Hursley was an IBM employee, including groundsmen, secretaries, cleaners and tea ladies and they shared many of the same benefits. There was a real sense of community. Each week saw the publication of an edition of Developments, a magazine internal to Hursley that included family news about Hursley employees, news about the announcement of Hursley developed products, employee small ads and social events and activities. The IBM Club played a major role in many IBMers’ lives, as it still does.

Each year, IBM held a family dinner to thank significant others for tolerating the demands placed on their spouses and partners. One year we went to a medieval banquet at Beaulieu Abbey. Another year it was a trip to the theatre in Salisbury accompanied by a meal. Every few years, IBM Hursley held a family open day that was much anticipated and enjoyed. On the field were attractions such as a falconry display and there were family sports events while in the unlocked buildings each department put on demonstrations of their technology. It was at such an event that I and my family first played a computer game and used a mouse. Everyone received a packed picnic lunch courtesy of IBM. At one such event I met Professor Eric Laithwaite of Imperial College, the inventor of the linear induction motor, a Royal Institution lecturer and TV science celebrity. The culture in IBM particularly in Hursley was male dominated. While there were a few women in programming, nearly all the managers and engineers were men. Management meetings were held in smoke filled rooms and a team trip to a pub at lunchtime was not unusual. Many of the senior managers and engineers had been in the military earlier in their careers. My first manager, Mike Garrett, had worked on radar for the Royal Navy. Someone from Product Test had participated in Britain’s testing of nuclear weapons in the Pacific. Another had worked on Leo, the world’s first business computer developed by the Lions Corner Shop chain of tea shops.

As in the military, a manager’s key concern was the welfare and development of employees. Managers’ typically had between five and ten employees, so that managers had the time to development meaningful relationships with their employees2. Managers were expected to hold weekly team meetings at which team topics of all kinds would be discussed. Tea, coffee and biscuits would be provided by tea ladies who would also arrive with their trolley at everyone’s desks every morning and afternoon for tea and coffee. Managers’ performance was assessed in part by an annual employee opinion survey that provided some incentive for managers to do the right thing by their employees. Occasional skip interviews were scheduled with second line managers. Managers’ doors were always open. You could appeal to any manager you wished at any level in the organisation above you and expect to be treated fairly and courteously. In the main, the people I worked with in Hursley were intelligent, articulate, knowledgeable, honest, fair minded and trustworthy. At the time, I did not appreciate what a privilege that was. With advancing years I have observed what appears to me to be a general decline in ethical standards everywhere in society. I’ve come to believe that IBM must have consciously recruited staff with the objective of developing a somewhat reserved but ethical social culture. Even IBM salespeople I met in the 1970s and 1980s tended to be modest and thoughtful rather than pushy and extrovert.

An early experience reinforced my admiration for the leadership qualities of IBM Senior Managers. I was working on my own in the air conditioned lab at the back of X block and without warning the Lab Director and Division Vice President John (later Sir John) Fairclough walked in to ask me about my project. He had nobody with him but had clearly been well briefed and he respectfully asked intelligent and knowledgeable questions about what I was doing. He then thanked me for my work and walked out. You might say that it was an easy management trick, but for him to take the trouble to find out what was happening from those directly working on a project is a mark of leadership excellence. John went on to become the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser where he was an outspoken and influential figure arguing in favour of engineering as a means of creating wealth for the nation.