IBM is like no other company. The Rochester plant was so large that golf carts were used routinely in the hallways. There was an employee whose job was to post friendly notices in every entrance/exit throughout the complex (there were a lot!). In the morning it might be a reminder of an upcoming holiday or a suggestion to lift your car wiper blades since freezing rain is forecast. In the evening it might be a reminder to watch your step due to ice.
I learned quickly that corporate espionage was a major threat to IBM.
On my first day there was “breach of confidential material” warning on my desk when I came back from lunch. I left some papers and a calendar on my desk. My boss said IBM has a clear desk policy. Whenever stepping away I need to lock everything up, including the calendar.
When dealing with confidential documents, we had three choices: have it in hand, have it locked in your desk, or securely dispose of it. Throughout the hallways there were disposal stations. The lower part was a full-blown steel reinforced safe. The upper part was like a mail drop. Slide papers into a rotatable drum and they drop into the vault registering a deposit. Periodically a small vehicle would mate to the disposal station and automatically transfer the contents from one safe to the safe on board.
Backgrounder
In the middle of the 20th century, IBM was the most famous, the most admired, the most widely respected company in the world,” said Quinn Mills, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, and the author of “The IBM Lesson” and other books about its history and culture.
By the late 1960s, IBM had become the apex of how companies treated workers and thought of their roles in society.
Its culture was called “cradle to grave,” meaning if you got in, they would take care of you. There were lavish carnivals for workers and their families. Around the country, there were country clubs and golf courses where workers at all levels could play for virtually nothing.
The most famous of those values was what they called “respect for the individual,” and with it came one of the most astonishing policies in American business. For more than seven decades, IBM never laid off workers. If business changed, workers might be retrained and forced to adapt. There was the possibility of being moved across the country or overseas, giving IBM the internal moniker “I’ve Been Moved.”
But if you did your job, if you worked for IBM, you had job security. Founder Thomas Watson believed it was good for business.
“He believed people worked better when they were secure, not insecure,” Mills said. Watson “believed people would make a full commitment to the company if they knew they could count on the company to make a full commitment to them.”
It can be incredibly difficult to become an IBMer. Successful applicants would take up to seven months to get through the interview process and start work.
IBM Rochester
By 1980, the plant had grown to 2.3 million square feet with over 6,000 employees responsible for creating and building a wide range of computer systems and business machines sold to governments and business customers. The workforce had grown over 7,000 in 1985 and exceeded 8,000 in 1990 when President George H. Bush presented the Rochester facility with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. It was the highest honor in the nation for quality. Rochester was at the center of the IBM universe when it rolled out the hugely popular AS/400 series. By 1996, the company had shipped 400,000 of the business computer systems to sites throughout the world.