Why IBM

There is an old story about two people working on a railroad track in the heat of the summer. As they are working on laying the track, a person drives by in a car. She stops and yells out the window, “Tom, is that you?” Tom, standing on the railroad, replies, “Mary, it’s great to see you. It must have been 20 years…How are you?”

When Mary leaves, the other worker turns to Tom and says, “that was the owner of the railroad, she is worth millions, how do you know her?” Tom says, “Mary and I started working on the railroad the same day, laying track just up the road.” The only difference between Mary and me is that I came to work for $1.25 an hour and she came to work for the railroad. 

The lesson: the mission matters.

I’ve worked for IBM for 22 years. There have been good times, there have been less good times, and I’m optimistic that there are even better times ahead. 

IBM has done a lot of good for the world. Whether its early inventions that are fundamental to the world as we know it, our track record on diversity and inclusion, or our willingness to try hard things (and fail at times). I believe we are a good company with great people. Now, I’m sure, someone will want to take shots at IBM based on this post (not sure why some people have pent up frustrations with us), but we will persist as we always have. 

The future of IBM is here. Over the last four years, we have invested ~$60B to reshape our role in business and technology. That ~$60B is a mix of organic investment, reprioritization, acquisitions, and investments in our people and real estate. Progress, not perfection. 

Today’s IBM is about Technology and Consulting. For a client, that means the technology they need to stay competitive, along with the skills needed to implement it and adapt processes and skills. The technology strategy and focus is simple and can be drawn as so:

The consulting strategy is about Business Transformation and Hybrid Cloud and supports, but is not captive to, IBM technology. We work with many partners such as SAP, Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft, AWS, and Oracle to name a few.

This brings us to the third dimension of our company strategy: Ecosystem. We are building a vibrant ecosystem of software partners, cloud partners, global systems integrators, resellers, and value-added distributors. We have a long way to go here, but early successes can be seen with companies like EY, Palantir, Deloitte, MongoDB, Cloudera, Box, and many others. 

When I talk to potential employees, I say the same thing: in your career, you can rent a legacy, or you can build a legacy. IBM offers the latter. Anyone that joins us can be a part of revitalizing this great company and lead the positive change that we are making in the world. The hardest moves are out of the way; those are the difficult steps that we took over the last four years. The fun is now beginning. 

There are many companies to work for in technology and consulting. But I choose IBM every day because it’s different. It’s different because of our role in the world, it’s different because of the people, and it’s different because it’s fun to do something that many view as difficult: creating a new legacy.

If you want to come here for two-three years and be a part of the movement, that is great. If you want to build a longer career here, even better. If you want to see the world, do many roles and build your whole career here, wonderful. If you want to come back, the door is always open.

No matter who you are, you should come here at some point. And now is a great time. Let’s create.