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"So a rogue group in Boca Raton, Florida—far away from IBM headquarters—was allowed to use a radical strategy to design and produce a machine using largely off-

"So a rogue group in Boca Raton, Florida—far away from IBM headquarters—was allowed to use a radical strategy to design and produce a machine using largely off-the-shelf parts and a third-party CPU, operating system, and programming languages." At IBM around this time, Boca Raton was known as the place where people who weren't competent but couldn't be convinced to leave were transferred.

kls 7y ago
Yep never underestimate the capabilities and ingenuity of people, especially those with curiosity and time on their hands. They where basically sent to Boca to rot, so they really did not care what they did, they gave them a marginal budget and approved almost any project that did not increase headcount or budget. You would have thought IBM would have caught on then or at least after Bell Labs that incubators work and funding incubators is a good bet. The only strange part is incubators never seem to be able to retain their culture and seem to be temporal in nature.
- Asooka 7y ago
  > The only strange part is incubators never seem to be able to retain their culture and seem to be temporal in nature Because incubators work only as long as they're not administrated and controlled. The moment they produce a successful project that brings in money, you need to control the process and put administration in place.
  - kls 7y ago
    Not if you spin said project into an independent company, take the key players and replace then with energetic and creative individuals. Incubators need product guys that can see beyond the technicool aspect of the project and spin it into a company. The problem now days is there is just too much cargo-cult around incubation. There is a happy middle between Bell Labs and today fake it till you make it incubation. Don't get me wrong it takes some believing in yourself and I think Job's and Musk had and have the right amount. But believing and outright lying and borderline scamming is what we see more of today, with no technical assets and a story. Where in the days of Bell Labs you had the tech but no one to sell it into a product, much less an independent company.
astrodust 7y ago
"Competent" at IBM was defined around "being able to jump through the correct hoops after filling out the correct forms".
- bsder 7y ago
  Which is better than 90+% of the places people work. Most big companies I've worked for or experienced can't find the forms and wouldn't know what a hoop is if you shoved it up their ass. This is based on experience in the 1990's, so may not hold anymore. IBM normally at least had a procedure. Do you want to start a new project? Okay, fill in this form and give a presentation to that group next month. You've got about a 1 in 3 chance of 12-18 months of funding. We'll review your progress at that point as to whether to kill your project. That's better than almost anywhere I worked ever since other than startups at which I was a principal. IBM in the 1990's (remember--this is still mostly pre-internet) was still an amazing place if you were motivated. You could pick up the phone and call a world expert on just about any technical subject and just talk to them. There were lots of interesting projects still going on and someone who wasn't lazy could quite easily maneuver into them--even if you were just an intern or co-op. (As a co-op, I sat in an X-ray lithography class and lab! You couldn't buy that course at the time, for any amount of money let alone do stuff in the lab.) In the 1990's, IBM still also had lots of little enclaves of hypercompetency--generally composed of old greybeards who were within 10 years of retirement. And, if you were motivated, you could attach yourself to one of those and do amazing things. Or, you could go get an MBA and stab your way up the management chain. That was also a choice and option at IBM for those so inclined and motivated. The point was that in the 1990's, IBM would let you wallow in laziness if you wanted--the company wasn't going to give you motivation. But if you found your own motivation, it was really quite an amazing opportunity. (Story time: we were at a bar celebrating the fact that a friend's project shipped and he said: "I've been at IBM almost 12 years and I finally had a project ship." I stared at him in horror: "Dude, I've been here about 6 years and I've had all four of my projects ship. Perhaps you should pick projects that have customers instead of political connections.")
  - mcguire 7y ago
    I worked on the OS/2 Workplace Shell, Taligent, and Workplace OS. And later the XCP network protocol (and rode the Pervasive Computing division into the ground). :-(
yardie 7y ago
There was a brief moment in time when South Florida had a growing software industry. IBM had the T-REX campus (from the air the buildings were assembled in the shape of a dinosaur) where this thing called OS/2 was being developed. As a kid I got to beta test a lot of games and office apps on it. Then one day IBM moved everyone to North Carolina and half my friends disappeared over summer.

kls 7y ago

Yep never underestimate the capabilities and ingenuity of people, especially those with curiosity and time on their hands. They where basically sent to Boca to rot, so they really did not care what they did, they gave them a marginal budget and approved almost any project that did not increase headcount or budget. You would have thought IBM would have caught on then or at least after Bell Labs that incubators work and funding incubators is a good bet. The only strange part is incubators never seem to be able to retain their culture and seem to be temporal in nature.

Asooka 7y ago
> The only strange part is incubators never seem to be able to retain their culture and seem to be temporal in nature Because incubators work only as long as they're not administrated and controlled. The moment they produce a successful project that brings in money, you need to control the process and put administration in place.
- kls 7y ago
  Not if you spin said project into an independent company, take the key players and replace then with energetic and creative individuals. Incubators need product guys that can see beyond the technicool aspect of the project and spin it into a company. The problem now days is there is just too much cargo-cult around incubation. There is a happy middle between Bell Labs and today fake it till you make it incubation. Don't get me wrong it takes some believing in yourself and I think Job's and Musk had and have the right amount. But believing and outright lying and borderline scamming is what we see more of today, with no technical assets and a story. Where in the days of Bell Labs you had the tech but no one to sell it into a product, much less an independent company.

astrodust 7y ago

"Competent" at IBM was defined around "being able to jump through the correct hoops after filling out the correct forms".

bsder 7y ago
Which is better than 90+% of the places people work. Most big companies I've worked for or experienced can't find the forms and wouldn't know what a hoop is if you shoved it up their ass. This is based on experience in the 1990's, so may not hold anymore. IBM normally at least had a procedure. Do you want to start a new project? Okay, fill in this form and give a presentation to that group next month. You've got about a 1 in 3 chance of 12-18 months of funding. We'll review your progress at that point as to whether to kill your project. That's better than almost anywhere I worked ever since other than startups at which I was a principal. IBM in the 1990's (remember--this is still mostly pre-internet) was still an amazing place if you were motivated. You could pick up the phone and call a world expert on just about any technical subject and just talk to them. There were lots of interesting projects still going on and someone who wasn't lazy could quite easily maneuver into them--even if you were just an intern or co-op. (As a co-op, I sat in an X-ray lithography class and lab! You couldn't buy that course at the time, for any amount of money let alone do stuff in the lab.) In the 1990's, IBM still also had lots of little enclaves of hypercompetency--generally composed of old greybeards who were within 10 years of retirement. And, if you were motivated, you could attach yourself to one of those and do amazing things. Or, you could go get an MBA and stab your way up the management chain. That was also a choice and option at IBM for those so inclined and motivated. The point was that in the 1990's, IBM would let you wallow in laziness if you wanted--the company wasn't going to give you motivation. But if you found your own motivation, it was really quite an amazing opportunity. (Story time: we were at a bar celebrating the fact that a friend's project shipped and he said: "I've been at IBM almost 12 years and I finally had a project ship." I stared at him in horror: "Dude, I've been here about 6 years and I've had all four of my projects ship. Perhaps you should pick projects that have customers instead of political connections.")
- mcguire 7y ago
  I worked on the OS/2 Workplace Shell, Taligent, and Workplace OS. And later the XCP network protocol (and rode the Pervasive Computing division into the ground). :-(

yardie 7y ago

There was a brief moment in time when South Florida had a growing software industry. IBM had the T-REX campus (from the air the buildings were assembled in the shape of a dinosaur) where this thing called OS/2 was being developed. As a kid I got to beta test a lot of games and office apps on it. Then one day IBM moved everyone to North Carolina and half my friends disappeared over summer.