The reason I joined IBM in this role is that I do love hearing about customer problems. I was hired because I started programming when I was 8, spent 15 years i

The reason I joined IBM in this role is that I do love hearing about customer problems. I was hired because I started programming when I was 8, spent 15 years in engineering and engineering management roles mostly at startups, and because I really like to talk to people about the problems they face. I'm sure there are companies, and probably parts of IBM, that have to run their communication by legal, but I'm not part of that. It's just how I talk. I can't guarantee change on any particular issue, and it would ludicrous for me to act as if I speak for the nearly 400,000 IBM employees, so I temper what I say out of a desire to be honest. My purpose in this thread is to find people who want to share their experience and I assume, perhaps naively, that is part of the purpose of commenting online. No matter, the discussion in this thread has already been very valuable and I do appreciate everyone's comments, even throwaways.