The conversation flowed freely; so did the non-alcoholic beverages (IBM was paying, hence the restriction). I made a short (I hope) speech thanking everyone for coming, and I received my binder of farewell letters and my retirement gift brochure.

I didn’t open the binder until the next day; the first letter was from Sam Palmisano, congratulating me on my many years of service, and emphasizing how much IBM values its people. It was addressed to “Dr. David Singer”, which I found amusing.

The rest of the letters were from friends, and I appreciate every one of them, even the ones which remind me of potentially embarrassing moments which I thought were safely buried (did I really used to tape a “GO AWAY!” sign on my office door?).

I haven’t figured out what to select for a retirement gift; the options are varied but somewhat odd. Of course there’s the expected range of rings, watches, and clocks, but they also offer items like a griddler, a cordless scrubber, and a fax/copier. Nothing really resonates with me, but I’m sure I’ll figure out something before the deadline. Hmmm, maybe the soft serve ice cream maker….

But that was then. Today, of course, searching for answers is almost a reflex, so I highlighted “Legi Gregi” in that posting, right clicked, hit “Search Google”, and 400 milliseconds later, I had my answer (courtesy of an article Toni Dabbs wrote for TravelLady Magazine): “Legi Gregi” wasn’t a “who” at all; it means “for law and citizenry” in Latin.

I’m glad to be able to clear up the record.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, my first blog posting was on March 16, 2000, so I’ve been blogging just under 122 months so far.

The drive up the hill was beautiful, as always; I did have to stop at the gate and use the intercom to be admitted instead of being able to badge in, and that felt strange. Stopping at the reception desk was unusual; this marked the first time I’d had to use my retiree ID card (and it took me a few tries to figure out where I’d hidden it in my wallet). But after few moments, I had a bright yellow “IBM Retiree” badge on my lapel, and I was able to freely wander the halls (though I couldn’t open any badge-locked doors).

I’d arranged to meet my ex-assistant so that she could help ship some items to my ex-manager, so I walked all the way through the building to my ex-office, which, somewhat to my surprise, was undisturbed since I’d left. The office next to mine was also vacant (its occupant was also included in this year’s Resource Action, though he’d been extended for a couple of weeks) — that seemed very odd.

As I walked the halls, I kept running into people I’d worked with; they were busy, but everyone I saw wanted to know how I was doing. I was happy to be able to tell them that I’m doing OK.

And I am; I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when I first drove up to Almaden, but it’s just this place, you know?

I had a backup of my old MBP, but I didn’t want to use the Migration Assistant to copy everything over, since many of the apps were now irrelevant to me (and some had been irrelevant since the moment I installed them!). I took fairly careful notes and thought I’d post them here to help myself the next time I need to change Macs (and if they help others, so much the better).

The physical unboxing, of course, was up to Apple’s usual standards; unlike a ThinkPad, there’s no silly wordless poster — the box and the contents speak for themselves. And the first boot experience was, as usual, straightforward (though I do wonder why there’s no Hebrew “welcome” in the initial video).

Before I got to work, I ran Software Update, which found eight or nine updates, all of which were applied in a single reboot.

Then I started to work on my applications and data.

The very first thing I installed was 1Password — but then I realized that if I wanted to use my saved passwords, I needed Dropbox, so I installed it, let it copy things, and then finished setting up 1Password.

In previous migrations, I’d always installed Quicksilver next, but its future is uncertain, so I decided to wait until later in the process and see how well I could live without it.

The next step was to start looking at the apps in the old /Applications directory to decide their fate. I’d picked up a number of random apps over the years, many in bundles, and decided that I would only install the ones which I was actively using. So I have bid adieu for now to Acorn, Amazon MP3 Downloader, Audacity, Caffeine, DaisyDisk, DejaMenu, Flip4Mac, Google Earth, HandBrake, RealPlayer, Shovebox, TaskPaper, VLC, and WriteRoom. I wouldn’t be surprised to want some of these again soon, though.

It was also easy to say aloha to apps which I used because of my work at IBM, including Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Symphony, Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection, Mozilla Thunderbird, Second Life, and tn3270 X.

When it came to browsers, I was torn. Firefox has been my go-to browser for years, but it’s an awkward fit on the Mac since it doesn’t support Services; it also leaks memory like a sieve (though I guess it’s possible that the ton of extensions I’ve installed contribute to the leakage). I eventually decided not to install it for now and see if I can get by with Safari, OmniWeb and Google Chrome. I really like Chrome and would probably make it my default browser if 1Password supported it.

The apps I decided to migrate are AppZapper, Awaken, DEVONAgent, DEVONThink Pro Office, Evernote, Fluid, ForkLift, GPSBabel, Join Together, MailPlane, NetNewsWire, OmniFocus, OpenOffice, Parallels Desktop, PDFPen, PhoneView, Pixelmator, QuickTime Player 7, Skype, Snapz Pro X, Stanza, SuperDuper!, TextExpander, TextMate, Tweetie, WireTap Studio, and XMarks. In most cases, I downloaded a fresh copy, then used ForkLift to easily bring over the associated files in the ~/Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Application Support directories. In retrospect, I probably should have used AppZapper to identify all of those files instead of eyeballing it!

I expected to have to install Growl, but it came along automatically with some other program; I did have to reinstall the SmartSleep prefpane.

I installed two packages from their original DVDs: iWork ‘09 and the software bundle for the Fujitsu ScanSnap 1500; of course, I then went online to install updates for both of them.

I decided not to install the software bundle for my Epson Artisan 810 printer yet; instead, I turned it on and let the system find the right drivers. I’ll worry about the full bundle if I ever need it (and in the meantime, I have the Windows version on a different machine anyway).

The final piece of the migration involved data. My old mail files were in ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Mail Downloads (I’m not sure I needed the latter). My music was in ~/Music; my photos were in ~/Pictures. I also made sure to migrate ~/.profile and my ~/.ssh directory. And, of course, I had a lot of data in ~/Documents (including a Windows VM), though I did try to be selective in what I copied.

That marked the end of the migration, but I did decide to install a trial version of LaunchBar to see if it’ll replace Quicksilver in my heart and on my fingers.

Now, on to productive tasks!

I’d expected the faster processors, of course, and the automatic swap between the graphics processor wasn’t a huge shock, but I was surprised to learn that they’d added a 15″ model with more pixels onscreen. One of the few complaints I had in moving from my old ThinkPad to the MacBook Pro was the loss of vertical screen real estate — 900 pixels just aren’t that many, especially when using Lotus Notes. Lotus Notes isn’t a consideration now, of course, but I think it would be nice to have more vertical room anyway.

So I made a trip to the Apple Store to look at the new systems, especially the new display — but they didn’t have any on the floor yet! The manager told me that the first they knew of the machines was when the truck arrived, and that they hadn’t had the chance to update the floor displays. But she said they should have them out tomorrow — I’m hoping that includes the hi-res 15″ model.

I’m also undecided about the disk — the machine comes with a 5400rpm disk, but there’s an inexpensive upgrade to 7200rpm, or a rather pricey upgrade to SSD. I think I should pass on SSD at this point in the cycle, but 7200rpm is appealing — I just wonder about the impact on battery life. And I have to decide between the i5 and the i7; I’m leaning towards the i5 on the basis of price/performance.

Advice is welcome!

I’ve posted pictures to Flickr and Facebook; I also created a track log (which includes the Facebook photos, I think), using Trip Journal on my iPhone.

We hiked about 9 miles, with lots of climbing and descending. My legs haven’t recovered yet.

Great trip.

• First day at IBM: July 19, 1976, Boca Raton, Florida, General Products Division

My first job at IBM was on the team writing telecommunications code for the Series/1. I wasn’t enthralled, especially when it came to testing the code, because we had to short out the peripheral cards to load in our code, and I didn’t realize that there was only low voltage in the Series/1’s card case! And the idea of dealing with information that left the machine and might or might not return successfully was strange, too.

So after a few months, I made a deal with my management — if I would provide a complete unit test plan for the code I’d written, they’d transfer me to the Operating System group (just down the hall). They were happy to oblige, so I wrote the first of many productivity aids, one which read the structured assembler code and annotated it according to our unit test scheme (“Test Plan 7”). It took me a day or two to produce the test plan for all of my code, and away I went.

The Series/1 was an interesting beast; it had 64kb address spaces (we only used one in the first release of the OS) and not enough registers. It also had short and long forms of many instructions (the short form had, if I remember, 256 bytes of addressability from “here” — anything else took the long form). We were perpetually running out of room in the address space, and it struck me that it would be a good idea to have a peephole optimizer which would convert long form instructions to short form when possible. So I wrote it, learning PL/S in the process. And people loved it — it was in our “Quality Plan” almost immediately. That was the first time I really understood how much leverage smart tooling could provide.

I created quite a few other tools while I was in Series/1 development; I’m not sure why other people didn’t do the same thing, because I found that doing so always saved me time, and then providing the tools to my colleagues really provided a big payoff, at no extra effort. And I even got to learn new languages in the process (most of which I have, mercifully, forgotten), which I greatly enjoyed.

I mentioned that we were writing “structured assembler” code — this was in the days that using structured code instead of GOTO statements was considered an “Improved Programming Technique”. There were many “Improved Programming Techniques”, not all of which were used well.

In particular, we documented our code using a technique called HIPO — the documentation for HIPOs said, very clearly, that they were not used to document the logic of a module, just its overall function; however, our “Quality Plan” called for us to use HIPOs as flowcharts to document the logic. I found this silly (not to mention very tedious), and so I wrote my first memo at IBM: “HIPO: Threat or Menace” (playing off a National Lampoon cover), quoting the HIPO documentation to make my point. In those days, we actually hand-wrote memos, and the secretaries typed and distributed them — my department’s secretary tried very hard to get me to change the subject line, but I refused. In hindsight, the subject line probably didn’t help my case, but the HIPOs vanished.

It’s been a long time since anyone has had to type a memo for me; I can’t remember the last time I got a real hardcopy memo, for that matter. Email has taken the place of memos, and, for better or for worse, nobody else sees them before they go out to the world.

I wanted to find a way to reuse the subject line of my first memo in my last IBM email, but the joke wasn’t all that funny in 1976 and hasn’t improved with age. So my last email had a more personal subject: “33.7 years – that’s not too many”.

• Last day at IBM: March 31, 2010, San Jose, California, Business Transformation/IT

And you know what? I never did get to work on a compiler at IBM!

Mail for example.us is MX’ed to Google Apps servers; I’ve set up forwarding there for each of us to our real preferred GMail addresses. This has the advantage of letting me move from GMail if I want to, without anyone being the wiser.

But today, I discovered that Google isn’t consistent in its mail filtering. A friend at work thanked me for sending her the note and mentioned that she’d replied — but I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen her reply. And when I searched the GMail account, there was nothing from her. But when I looked at the mailbox on example.us, her note was there. And, in fact, there were several replies that hadn’t made it to GMail but were safely in the inbox for example.us.

So I guess I need to rethink my mail strategy and let mail for example.us stay there instead of forwarding it to GMail.

Life was easier when all my mail went to singer@almaden.ibm.com! (I’d worry about spammers getting that address, except that it’s been visible on the Web and well-spammed for many years, and, of course, it expires tomorrow.)

I was hesitant to do so, since the last thing I want to do is leak confidential or proprietary information, but it turns out I didn’t have to worry; IBM has published quite a bit about these topics, and I’m perfectly happy to point to what they’ve already shared. I haven’t explored these items very deeply, but they look like they might be useful.

Competencies

I’ll start with the Leadership Competencies. There are 11 of them:

• Client partnering
• Collaborative influence
• Developing IBM people and communities
• Earning trust
• Embracing challenge
• Enabling performance and growth
• Informed judgment
• Passion for IBM’s future
• Strategic risk taking
• Thinking horizontally

(Source: IBM Zurich Research)

Most of them would apply with slight changes to any large company (and probably to small companies, too). The most important, in my opinion, is “Passion for IBM’s future” — when someone loses that, it’s time to look elsewhere (or to find a way to recharge). Jay Conger at the Center for Effective Organizations at the Marshall School of Business at USC includes a useful diagram of the competencies in a broader presentation on leadership competencies in several organizations, and Fast Company wrote about the competencies in “IBM’s Management Makeover” in late 2007.

IBM also has a set of “Foundational Competencies” for “outstanding non-management employees”:

• Teamwork and collaboration
• Trustworthiness
• Communication
• Taking ownership
• Client focus
• Drive to achieve
• Passion for the business
• Creative problem solving
• Adaptability

(Source: IBM South Africa Graduates Facebook page)

Finally, Walter Pistarini in IBM Professional Development gave a presentation about both sets of competencies and IBM’s “Professions” to the World Computer Conference in Milan in September 2008.

Current IBMers should also note that there seems to be work in progress to merge the two set of competencies and produce one set of “IBM Competencies” for all IBMers; there is a presentation in the Media Library (inside the firewall)

Career Derailment Factors

There are about 30 derailment factors, which are grouped in 10 categories:

• Lack of Adaptability
• Lack of Self Awareness
• Lack of Work/Life Balance
• Lack of Self Control
• Lack of Interpersonal Acumen
• Lack of Independence
• Lack of Trustworthiness
• Lack of Strategic Perspective
• Lack of Backbone
• Lack of Organizational Acumen

I took the list from the slides which accompany the Derailment Factors – IBM episode of the OneSHPE podcast series on education, career, and engineering created by
IBM and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE).

And if you want to know even more, Audrey Murrell, Sheila Forte-Trammel, and Diana Bing have written Intelligent Mentoring: How IBM Creates Value through People, Knowledge, and Relationships, which discusses the Career Derailment Factors.

Some passed unnoticed, because I didn’t realize they were the last of their kind:

• I’ve already changed my intranet and Notes passwords for the last time
• I’ve already created my last PBC (Personal Business Commitments)
• I’ve already submitted my last TEA (Travel Expense Account)
• I’ve already ordered my last set of IBM business cards (and didn’t get a chance to use any of them!)

Some happened after I got the word:

• My office has been vacuumed for the last time (at least while it’s my office)
• I’ve qualified for the Fitness Rebate for the last time
• I joined my last “Community Builders” conference call

And some are yet to come:

• I have the opportunity to attend a final Architecture Review Board call on Wednesday
• I’ll be giving a last GTD-at-IBM presentation on Friday
• I could even attend a final CIO DE community meeting on March 31st

No, they’re not all significant, but they’re all steps towards what comes next. And so they matter.

Last week, I wanted to thank a colleague for help above and beyond the call of duty by sending her some wine. She lives just outside Des Moines, Iowa; fortunately, Iowa is a reasonable state as far as wine shipping laws go, but I thought I could do better than picking a big Internet wine merchant. I Googled and found Ingersoll Wine and Spirits, (who had a better selection of California and Oregon Pinot Gris on their Web site than either BevMo or Wine.com!). And they delivered in one day, far faster than I could have gotten delivery from a Web giant.

I’m glad that the Internet hasn’t quite managed to kill local merchants.

Even though I’d decided not to look for a new full-time position in IBM, there was one project that had recently heated up where I would be able to make a significant dent in a short time. So I asked my management to investigate extending my departure date for a month or two so I could attack that problem.

They investigated, but the answer was, as I expected, “no.” My manager gave me the word during our regular call today.

Even though I’d been expecting the news, hearing the final answer was still daunting.

So now I have a date certain for my retirement from IBM – March 31, 2010. My retirement celebration (my word, not IBM’s) will be a bit later. And I can turn my full attention to figuring out what comes next.

• I’m still happy with my decision not to pursue a new full-time position inside IBM
• I’m willing to take a look if a new full-time position (inside or outside IBM) pursues me
• I’m not sure when my last day at IBM will be
• I expect to be looking for real work once that last day is nailed down

I had a great weekend doing other things, instead of worrying about work.

Friday night, Diane and I went to ComedySportz to see the regular show (very good) and their special Shakespearian Midnight Show, Much Improv about Nothing (excellent). I wish the Midnight Show were earlier, though!

Saturday, we went to Torah Study (and finished studying the book of Ezra-Nehemiah) and then to services (where we finished Exodus). And then we enjoyed the nice weather for the rest of the day; I went looking for a kit to make a raised bed for my soon-to-happen garden but didn’t buy one (I’m thinking of the MiniFarmBox, since the local Ace Hardware store has it available — any comments are welcome!), and tried to order business cards at the local OfficeDepot but no one was at their service desk, so I gave up and ordered them online instead.

Sunday, I went to Prayerbook Hebrew class, then we both went to Talmud class to study the ethics of whistleblowing. Then we went to Savannah-Chanelle Winery with the Shir Hadash Sisterhood for a tour and tasting; they were selling the 2006 Pinot Noir and the 2007 Syrah at a very nice price in full cases, so we participated in an impromptu group buy of both. And then I went back to ComedySportz to support the other half of my Rec League class by watching their (very funny) final show of this series; we start classes again next week, so I suspect we’ll have a show in late April, which I’ll pimp incessantly on Twitter and Facebook.

Today, it was back to the office; I finally managed to watch the introductory video from Right Management (it requires Windows Live Player on Windows as far as I can tell; oh, well). I also did a good amount of cleanup of files I don’t need any more (and, for the most part, haven’t needed for several years), especially on servers. And I talked with several colleagues (not all of whom had heard my news yet, somewhat to my surprise).

Tomorrow…well, tomorrow is another day.

I was so intent on using the exact wording of my second-line manager’s question as an excuse to insert a reference to IBM’s Career Derailment Factors into the post that I didn’t realize that what I’d written would be confusing for anyone who wasn’t living in my head (or at least in the same house).

Today, though, two friends at work pinged me within a few minutes to ask whether I was OK and if I could explain what I’d written.

So I’ll try again (there were no other reportable developments today, so this gives me an excuse to post).

I’ve chosen not to look for a new full-time position at IBM; if a truly wonderful position came looking for me, I would certainly consider it, but it’d have to be right on target. Unless that happens, I’ll be retiring from IBM in the near future.

Note that I said “retiring from IBM”. I’m not ready to really retire, but I am sure that the grass is differently-colored on the other side of the firewall, and this gives me a great opportunity to find out what that color is.

I found a new one today.

After reaching out to my network in the wake of last week’s surprise, several people had identified one particular opportunity that was a plausible fit for me, and I’d asked my second-line manager to help connect me. I’d even sent her something which would pass as an internal résumé, at least for a first look. And she’d made contact and had a call scheduled with the executive who needed to fill the slot.

So I wasn’t surprised when she popped up on IM early this morning and asked a simple question: “I have a call with [redacted] – what do you want me to do (I can derail it, or push for it, or try to be neutral…..)”

I had a one word answer, straight from my gut:

“Derail.”

I don’t think she was surprised.

And I was relieved to make my decision explicit.

She and I talked for a while. Both of us came away from the conversation happier, and with a slightly-revised plan for the rest of my time at IBM. Later today, I talked with my first-line manager so I could make sure he knew what was going on, since he’ll have to make the first move to implement the plan.

Welcome to the endgame.

Links and Notes for IBMers

• IBM Leadership Competencies
• Derailment Factors

For those trying to follow along in BluePages, note that my first-line manager is in Canada and doesn’t show up in my “reports-to” chain.

I realized that while all that activity was necessary, it wasn’t sufficient, so I also blocked several hours of “Think Time” on my calendar for today. The plan was to stand in front of a whiteboard and write down positives and negatives of various options, make unanswered questions explicit, and ignore the world. I told a couple of colleagues that that was what I was going to do; I even blogged about it yesterday.

It didn’t happen.

Instead, I spent most of the day talking with people who’d also been affected (some directly, some by having their teams reduced), as well as several other colleagues in various parts of the business (at least two of whom had been my manager at one time or another). I also had a long session with IBM Benefits, so that I really understand what my choices and resources are if I do retire.

But what I really did was listen carefully to my gut.

Because it turns out that this decision isn’t going to be one I make entirely objectively, based on threats and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses, and financial considerations.

My gut has to be happy.

And it’s giving me a pretty clear message about what will make it happy; it’s a message which doesn’t require a whiteboard to analyze.

I’m going to sleep on that message tonight and make sure I’m reading it clearly.

Tomorrow could be interesting.

There was some very concrete advice (have a local phone number and a “professional” email address for the search process; never answer a call to your cell phone that might be search-related unless you can actually talk right then (otherwise, let it go to voicemail); remember that your résumé is a sales document), as well as some discussion which centered on my own needs, desires, and skills.

I came out of the session with a few must-dos (some of which are administrative in nature), the realization that I can’t hop along both the internal and external paths for very long, and some hints towards turning my bulleted list of accomplishments into a résumé. Not bad for a first step.

And then I came home and spent the rest of the day on the phone (even attending one conference call, which will be the last in that series for me). It’s helpful to get the perspective of folks who have been through this process, as well as those who are still safely ensconced inside the Blue Curtain.

Tomorrow, I plan to go to the office; I have a lot of “think time” booked on my calendar. I expect to turn off the phone and Sametime for most of the day, too.

I don’t think the timing could have been better. It was great to be able to concentrate on what was happening on stage right now so that I could respond and make the team look better. I probably could have done without one scene suggestion (“fired”), but even that one led to a very funny scene in the game of “I Can Do Better”.

Tomorrow, I get to continue my exploration of what lies ahead. I haven’t connected to the intranet this weekend, either (though I can’t blame a snowstorm and cable cut this time), but tomorrow morning, I’ll be curious to see what awaits in my inbox, and what options have opened or closed internally. I also have my first meeting with the placement firm tomorrow, which should be interesting and informative.

One thing that improv has taught me is that it’s not always wise to plan too far ahead, because you never know what curves your partners will throw at you, and trying to force the scene in the direction you want can hurt it and make you look silly. Tomorrow will be here soon enough; for now, I want to thank everyone who’s given me support or advice so far — you’re making me feel very good!