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The Maverick and His Machine
At age 40, Watson was thrown a curve ball that, like that first sentence says, nearly ruined him. In fact, it sent him so low that this shaped his character more than anything that had happened to him earlier in his lifetime. It sent him to the lower depths and resulted in him being given the reigns of an equally down-in-the dumps loser business just to get rid of him. He was banished to a corporate Siberia. He was considered a loser, and given a loser's position in a loser's business.
It's at this point that he reshaped and remade that company into what is today known as IBM. The blue suits and white shirts that were the uniform of IBM men became so because he wore one every day. There was no written rule that employees had to wear them; they did it because he did it. That says something: he led by example and his employees admired him.
Just as an aside, it seems that Watson's big thing was that things didn't happen (or went wrong) because people didn't think hard enough. To encourage employees to think he had big "THINK" signs put all over the company. This evolved into "Think" buttons, and employees were even allowed and encouraged to kick back and think. Eventually, small notepads were emblazoned with "Think" and they were called "Thinkpads." Hence, the name of the laptop.
THINK, by the way, is the reason that the company created so many technological innovations.
Now, just because Watson started IBM and largely shaped it into one of the most successful companies in the world doesn't mean he was a saint. Some of the most interesting parts of the book have to do with his home life and how he treated his wife and kids. It seems that he was somewhat of a manipulator who knew how to shape people by breaking them and remaking them.
One story about his son (who would later become CEO of the company) shows Watson's mean streak. It seems that, early in the younger Watson's career, after dinner together at home, the elder asked him what his impression was of one of his executives.
The younger Watson dutifully answered, seeking to impress his father with his skill at observing people. The elder paused and then berated the young man for daring to form an opinion about a seasoned executive who had years of experience behind him. Who did the young man think he was to judge someone who had been in the business since before he was born?
While this isn't the stuff of Ward Cleaver, Watson was, all the same, a courageous and enterprising individual who took risks and (most of the time) succeeded. Especially engrossing is the episode during the depression when IBM was in danger of bankruptcy and shutting its doors. Watson, contrary to what most intelligent people would do, gave a rousing talk to his top executives, telling them that instead of cutting back on manufacturing and personnel, they should increase both.
Luckily (for Watson), a few months later, Pearl Harbor happened and, with the sharp increase in troops, materials and logistics, the U.S. government needed "calculating machines" and needed them fast. While major competitors like NCR and Burroughs had to ramp up production to meet demand, IBM, with its ready stockpile of machines won the contract and delivered, saving them from possible bankruptcy.
There is a lot more I could say about the book but because I don't want to spoil anything, I won't go into it here. However, if you're a Big Blue fan (and I am), you might want to follow up this read with Lou Gerstner, Jr.'s book, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance. It's a great read about how, for the second time in its history, the company was saved from becoming history.
You can purchase The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson, Sr. and the Making of IBM from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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I'd not have been surprised if IBM already had good intelligence that WWII would involve the US sooner rather than later. Pearl Harbour was a surprise but it hardly came from nowhere.
To encourage employees to think he had big "THINK" signs put all over the company
Dont forget, you're here forever!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Then there was the round-the-world tech support, which is so reminisent of today's outsource-to-India trend.
I like what I read about IBM these days, but haven't been in a position to buy from them lately, so don't have much current knowlege.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"Luckily (for Watson), a few months later, Pearl Harbor happened ..."
Wrong! Long before that, FDR's New Deal and the new Social Security Administration were the source of IBM's turnaround during the depression.
... now back to the bit mines.
Think!
and
We forgive thoughtful mistakes.
They used to chant these at assemblies....
I think the reviewer got his facts a bit screwed up. The thing that saved IBM, after the depression started and it continued manufacturing, was the start of the Social Security System (I think in 1933; 1941 would have been a long time to wait...).
The WW II connection is that IBM turned over its manufacturing plants to the government to make war materiel at a 1% profit. Carbines, gun sights, small cannons, other things, were all made in IBM's plants in Poughkeepsie, Endicott, and elsehwere.
No, I'm thinking the true evil empire was ATT , I just remember IBM as making reliable equipment, their line printers, forgot the model number, but they would shake the second floor of a concrete and steel office building when they were running full on. I haven't seen computer equipment do that in a long while.
And that is a scary world to live in!
The civic folklore in Dayton revolves around the legacy of "Boss Kettering", NCR & John Patterson, the Wright Brothers, and other early innovators. Kids in school (at least in my age range, attending in the 1960s) were taught this "legacy".
In the context of the current scene this is an *incredible* irony.
Having been raised in the town but also having moved around the country quite a bit for a few years after college, I have come to a tentative conclusion: there are probably few places as xenophobic and conservative as Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio if you're in the technology field. This is not the place to be if you want to work for a world class development organization and if you want to advance your career.
I've worked in environments in this area where co-workers (in programming, etc) were literally driven screaming out of the building by incessant management sanctioned badgering. Working as a permanent employee in this area in technology feels like being a contractor anywhere else - you have to have an "exit strategy".
Anyone here pissed about being considered a "code grunt", a commodity? Dayton's been that way consistently since I can recall (late 70s). Growth of tech jobs in this area has been abysmally stagnant.
Employers, management and companies here almost go out of their way to express lack of respect for programmers and other IT people, and engineers. I have yet to witness one company here where a non management techie is not in some kind of fear for his job.
This isn't a new thing. Decent development jobs were very hard to come by here even in the boom years of the late 90's. What I read was happening on either coast in terms of pay scales sounded like science fiction.
My theory is that there is kind of a reverse economic incubator phenomenom going on in this part of Ohio. Just as Silicon Valley attracted top talent and became a growth engine because it was the place to be: Dayton drives out anyone in this industry who wants to work with new technology, or who even wants to simply be respected for their contribution.
Basically, only someone in a technology career who is a dumbass or someone who is politically motivated will be satisfied with the range of opportunities here. This jibes exactly with the managers and owners I've dealt with here. Turds and morons all, trying to sell and make do with obsolete technology and running the technlogy side of their shops either like kindergarten or like a gulag.
Oh, and many management people here are bred in the worker-hostile, unionized auto industry mold; they consider programmers line workers that they get to dick with in ways that they are restrained from abusing unionized blue collar workers.
A special word about NCR now: it's a nexus of stupid thinking on a local and instutional level. NCR has run its once-proud name into the craphole. Its managers are known as top bureaucrats, in the mold of the old Soviet Union.
And Lexis-Nexis, staffed by former NCR managers and execs? It *was* online content in the late 1980s. It *could* have owned the internet. Why not? The local Dayton stupdity field effect at work. Utterly stupid management that treated the internet in an old line "DP department" way as a sideshow, while trivial upstarts like Yahoo far surpassed them. The local culture would simply not permit the type of innovation that would have allowed Lexis to be a player.
I believe the local civic leaders are clueless about these issues. "World class" and Dayton do not belong on the same sentence. Only mindless commodity industries belong here.
PS: I am a contractor and I am constantly watching my ass... gave up on the local perm jobs (lies, all f***ing lies) 11 years ago.