Tag: social values 2.0

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Startup Life

It was a good Dip – but a Dip nonetheless

I started off writing my farewell email to my IBM social network but then thought it would make a better post and help drive traffic at the same time 🙂

Cover of "The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches ...

I’m fascinated by social software and the content that runs through it. This is where I want to immerse the next chapter of my career.

To all the IBMers I socialized with …

On the very first page of Seth Godin‘s “The Dip”, he writes:

Most of the time, we deal with obstacles by persevering. Sometimes we get get discouraged and turn to inspirational writing, like stuff from Vince Lombardi: “Quitters never win and winners never quit.” Bad advice. Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.

I joined IBM three years ago by quitting a start-up. I was the CTO for an online education company that, to this day, I’ve yet to see anything come close to as good as what we had back then. But, three years had gone by and I only got paid for the first one. Things were going from bad to worse and I just had to quit.

Luckily for me (here’s some thoughts on the meaning of “lucky”), I quickly landed a job in the Montreal Rational Software Lab.

Two years later, our only product was heading into maintenance mode and it was obvious that there wouldn’t be much need for my services in the near future. Any other company would have fired me right then and there. But not IBM. I spent the last year improving my skills and increasing my social network looking for work. I tried outside my Brand and when that door shut (gosh darn Global Financial Crisis), I even tried creating two new positions inside Rational. I thought the positions were necessary to the business and equally as important, necessary to me.

I’m fascinated by social software and the content that runs through it. This is where I want to immerse the next chapter of my career and am currently making headway to do just that. Doing anything else just to stay an IBM employee, would be a disservice to IBM and myself. And so Friday 06 Feb 2009 marks the end of this sprint at IBM.

I’m grateful to the greater IBM and it’s values, and to all those in my social network who helped me in one way, or, another with their own values. I wish everyone the best of luck moving forward in these challenging, yet exhilarating times, and hope to meet up again one day.

I’d be honored by any of you who’d like to stay in touch.

You can read my blog and maybe even leave a comment every now and then. By the way, some of you have already been mentioned in Getting my affairs in order – If this were Twitter, I’d just say “Thanks”, or, No one could accuse Big Blue (IBM) of being cold, even at -19c/-5f outside. Please don’t forget to subscribe by pointing your news readers to my news feed. (If you’re not sure what that’s all about, take a look at My Five Ws of RSS in less than 10 minutes (video included).) If you prefer, you could simply subscribe to my blog by email. You could read My Five Ws of Twitter in less than 10 minutes (video included) and then Follow me. If you prefer the more enterprise-like method, you could connect with me on LinkedIn – maybe even give me a recommendation. And finally, there’s always the classic anti-social route – just give me a call at +1-514-990-1697 🙂

Respectfully,
Steven Milstein

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Categories
Startup Life

No one could accuse Big Blue (IBM) of being cold, even at -19°C/-5°F outside

Forever The Happy IBMer
Forever The Happy IBMer

The rumors were true. There are layoffs & I’m among them. I have until 6 Feb 2009 to find a new job within IBM, or, yada yada yada. This is the second of two posts I’d like to share with you about my experience inside Big Blue. It’s all good. Here is a cleansed version of my 25 Sep 2008 internal blog. (All internal links have been removed.)

More on IBM Values

Reasonability prevails
A pattern was developing in my job search.  It started back in the summer – Q3 2008, when I heard how I could potentially fit into a Product Manager role but there was a hiring freeze. As a result, my profile would be moved to the “keeper pile” & I should get back to them in Q1 2009. While it was nice to know I was a “keeper”, Q1 2009 was not going to work for me. Another potential opportunity ended with a reason code of “we can only hire within our group”. Not good. The third point in this pattern emerged when I spoke to another unrelated manager – John Steinbacher, who stated – with all sincerity, that my being given six weeks to find work in Q4 is pretty much a death sentence. Barring a few exceptions, the standard practice is to lock down all spending – including hiring in every Q4. So it was suggested to me to ask for everyone to be reasonable.

And that’s what I did. I spoke to my manager Robert St-Laurent and then spoke to his new pier Christopher Flynn – who just happened to be visiting the Montreal lab on the following day. After confirming with Robert, Chris agreed that it wasn’t reasonable to expect someone to find a job in Q4 when he wasn’t even allowed to buy a pencil. So, I now have until end of Jan 2009 to find a new job, or, else yada, yada, yada. Of course in the meantime, I’m going to have to earn my keep while I continue the job search & we’re now in the process of defining exactly what that is.

So once again, my faith in IBM management and IBM Values has been boosted. Thanks to all for their respective reasonability & John for encouraging me to push back!

By the way, there really is something called Our Values at Work on being an IBMer. The proof is in the post 🙂

Next up
With 6 Feb 2009 coming up fast and a global financial crisis settling in, my next post will be about my evaluating where I am & how I plan / theorize how to get to where I want to be.

Reflection
Do you think social networking tools like your blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or, some other web 2.0 tool would facilitate you moving on, or, distract you?

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Startup Life

Getting my affairs in order – If this were Twitter, I’d just say “Thanks”

My First Profile Image - The Happy IBMer
My First Profile Image - The Happy IBMer

Social Values 2.0
Its more about the folks in your social network than the technology that enables your social network. Its the value they can spontaneously and casually generate with a simple click of a button.

The rumors were true. There are layoffs & I’m among them. I have until 6 Feb 2009 to find a new job within IBM, or, yada yada yada. This is the first of two posts I’d like to share with you about my experience inside Big Blue. It’s all good. Here is a cleansed version of my 19 Sep 2008 internal blog. (All internal links have been removed.)

I hear the train a comin’
About mid-September 2008, I was informed my current role as Lead Business Analyst (aka Product Manager) in Rational Portfolio Manager (RPM) has been discontinued. I have until the end of October 2008 to find a new job inside Big Blue, or else, yada, yada, yada. Now the truth is, this wasn’t a big surprise to me. RPM sales to new customers was halted back in Q1 2008 and for now, there will be no further releases – just iFixes. So managing requirements & providing demos is just not something the business needs.

Gotta get out of this place
So back in Q1 2008, I started improving my skill-sets and finding news ones. There’s loads of stuff out there & I chose to invest my time in learning about Agile software development. Almost immediately, I got into Outside-in Software Development: A Practical Approach to Building Successful Stakeholder-Based Products by John Sweitzer and Carl Kessler of IBM SWG. It’s a great read & if you’ve been in software development long enough, can easily relate to the experiences they write about. I was so inspired by the book, that I decided I needed to put my Agile education and outside-in software development knowledge to practice. Unfortunately, this was not going to happen back in RPM-land.

So on the advice of my manager Robert St-Laurent, I looked into “Blue Opportunities” (a way to temporarily join another team to gain new experiences) to see if there was anyone out there looking for this kind of help. I couldn’t find what I was looking for so, I simply created my own custom made opportunity. All I had to do was shop it around and see if I could get any takers. But where? These development practices seemed so foreign from where I was coming from. So I took a shot and sent an email to Carl Kessler, John Sweitzer & Scott Ambler asking if they knew of any teams already well experienced in outside-in agile software development & if they would be OK with me shadowing the process and more specifically the product manager/owner.

Now this was a sort of Hail Mary for me but, you never know if you don’t ask. Less than two hours later, Carl Kessler answers me & within days I’m hooked up with the Search and Discovery, ECM team from Information Management shadowing Jake Levirne & Rishi Patel. In the end, I had a better understanding of their environment and provided them with a proof-of-concept where I mapped their current tools & process into that of the Rational Team Concert (beta 3 at the time).

Funny, eh?
Trying to leverage my experience, I used my new found connections to go after a few new product manager/owner opportunities with the IM group. I thought it went well but nothing materialized & heard recently that they were not able to hire outside of IM. Get it? The group practising outside-in development couldn’t hire from outside. 🙂 Nonetheless, it was a phenomenal experience & to this day I get great mileage out of the whole story.

Giveback
If you’re interested, I blogged (internally) the entire Blue Opportunity, presented a Lunch & Learn back in the RPM lab and just a few days ago, was given the opportunity to repeat (no pun intended) the Lunch & Learn at the Disciplined Agile Development Work