Yesterday marked my 5 year anniversary with IBM.
Previous to joining IBM, I spent 4 years with The Post Office IT Services in the UK, starting on their graduate training programme and progressing to a lead role in the Middleware Development Group there. During the summer of 2001, a friend at IBM introduced me to his manager. All of a sudden, I was being offered a role with the London practice of the IBM Software Services team, since they were looking for MQ experience.
So, here I am, and the past 5 years have been pretty amazing. I’ve picked up a huge number of new skills, and broadened my knowledge across the IBM portfolio. I’ve become a consultant. I’ve spoken at conferences, worked with our development labs, and written books and articles. I’ve had the opportunity to try out a management role. I’ve seen several people join our team through acquisitions or horizontal moves, and supported or mentored a number of them through the process.
Over the past five years, I’ve worked with a range of customers and gained valuable experience and insights into their respective industries in doing so. One of the best parts of working in the services business is the variety of work, and the fact that I am frequently at the leading edge of what customers are doing with our technology.
I’ve built a great network. Since I started blogging, that has just continued to grow, and I now have some amazing friends across the globe.
One other important point is that I got married since I joined IBM, and we celebrate our third anniversary on Thursday! 🙂 I remember meeting a fantastic woman at a garden party in Oxford in the summer of 2001 and mentioning to her how I’d just been offered a job with IBM… somehow the two things have overlapped.
A week of anniversaries and celebrations – time to think about what has changed, and how I’ve grown in the past five years. I’ll be taking a few days off later in the week, so that should be a good opportunity to do so.
Whilst you are contemplating this post, you may want to take a look at my About page to find out more about my background.
Technorati tags: IBM, life, career, anniversary
i am joining IBM… as a chatup line? what were you thinking? what was *she* thinking? well done the both of you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LOL 😀
Just something that came up in conversation. As you note, against the odds, it seemed to work…
Thanks.
Pickup lines to remember. 🙂 Congratulations, Andy, on both anniversaries, and many, many more!
[…] Not to be outdone by Andy and Richard, today is the eigth anniversary of my joining IBM. Eight whole years… that’s longer than I was at secondary school for! Here goes with a little jaunt down memory lane… […]