We are a dev team from IBM (many of us formerly UrbanCode), ask us anything!

What puts your cloud services apart from other generic ones we all know about?

IBM Bluemix and SoftLayer provide developers a platform to easily compose applications from a suite of services made available within the Bluemix catalog. The IBM services definitely separate our cloud services from generic ones. For example Cloundant, our DevOps Services, and the Watson services are ones that you generally will not find in other generic cloud solutions. Check out http://bluemix.net and http://hub.jazz.net for more information. You can also get more glimpses of our cloud strategy by checking out the tweets from #SWGAI. - Dan Berg

Does working on enterprise solutions ever take a toll on you? For skilled developers, it must be tempting to go to a Facebook or similar tech co. where it's all user based and things move very quickly

As a developer on enterprise software, you're actually closer to the end users than I imagine you would be at Facebook. Have you ever heard anyone getting on the phone with a Facebook or Google developer to walk through their problem and create a solution? There's certainly the perception of interfacing with huge entity, but often I'll get on the phone with an end user and watch them use the tool, either to learn from their use cases or to witness whatever issues they have. Things do move quickly from there, and often I'll get a patch out to a customer as soon as I know what the fix is. So the perception of enterprise companies being monolithic, faceless entities kind of falls away into the reality of their end users that are actually using your tool day in and day out. And that's a cool feeling, whether it's enterprise technology or Facebook - David

Working on enterprise software can actually be pretty interesting :) You get to experience the diverse views of different companies that use our software, what problems they have, and how we solve those problems. It's pretty cool to see a customer streamline their [previously painful] deployment process. - Nick Caley

UrbanCode was selling to the enterprise even as a startup! Development moved very quickly in the first few years that our products were out in the wild, because many of our feature requests by driven by customers - who wanted very quick turn-around times, especially during pre-sales!

Our feature release cycle is more stable with IBM, but we are still very customer-driven and sometimes we need to quickly respond to them.

Developing for the enterprise is not much different - they're people too! -Steve McGrew

Do you think you'll ever be part of a startup again? Or was it a one time thing for you

Although I didn't start either of them I've been involved in two start-ups, and have been acquired four times (twice by IBM!). One of the things I learnt through my career is to not over-plan or make any bold statements about what I will/won't do in the future. Not knowing what you'll be doing next year is surely part of the fun? NickP

Enterprise is fun. One of the shifts that you may see is that we're doing a lot more new products cloud-first where practical. That lets us get that consumer like feedback really quickly, mature the offering and then offer an on-prem type solution.

So yeah, it's a bummer that my parents don't really understand what my software does / is for. But I still get to make people's lives better. You know have every other Sunday and some Monday's your Bank's mobile app stops working? That's because they're terrible at changing software. We help them fix that which gets back to making millions of people's lives better (if indirectly). - eric

AWS just announced their a new services for code deployment. Are cloud based tools in your roadmap for DevOps?

We already have cloud deployment support via UrbanCode Deploy with Patterns. Supporting OpenStack HEAT and multiple cloud vendors. You can see a short demo here: http://ibm.co/1nNCZiP - Sanjeev Sharma

Bluemix is certainly a cloud-based tool that's very DevOpsy. For something like UrbanCode Deploy, you tend to want something that can manipulate servers that are internal, as well as deploy to the various clouds you target (including Bluemix and AWS). The InfoSec guys are happier to have that kind of controller in house than in one of those clouds. - Eric

Using UrbanCode Deploy to manage hybrid and multi-platform deployments is awesome! - Dan

The IBM DevOps solution also includes testing (RTW) and service virtualiztion (RTVS) which can be run in the cloud as well - Pete DiStefano

You bet!! Some of these same features already exist within #Bluemix as part of our IBM DevOps Services (hub.jazz.net). We have hosted source code repositories such as Git and we have a Delivery Pipeline service that automates the build and deployment process into Bluemix. We also have more such as our development planning (Track & Plan) service, Mobile Quality Assurance, app scan security scanning, performance monitoring, and many more.

Keep watching the Bluemix space as we will be adding many more exciting capabilities and services in the near future. - Dan

For the "formerly UrbanCode" people, what is it like to become part of Big Blue?

As a remote worker, it's been an interesting shift. IBM is so big and spread out that I've gone from being the weird guy not in the office, to being a lot more normal. I help train sales people, so it's been a wild experience going from working with a small crew who I all knew personally to trying to enable a massive world-wide sales force. It's super cool for someone from a small company when that many sales guys are excited about your stuff. - Eric Minick

Star Trek: Original, or Next Generation?

Next Generation

-All

Next Generation for sure - that is what I watched growing up. Jean-Luc Picard all the way. - Erin

I feel old. At least no one brought up Deep Space Nine. -- Peter

Ugh, thanks for making me feel old. I was on Grad School during TNG - Sanjeev

Original, of course. - Sanjeev

Has to be the original, or is that just showing my age! JohnC

What is one thing you actually dislike about working at IBM?

Using Lotus Notes -David

But look at what's coming. http://www.ibm.com/design/blog-iconic.shtml Really excited about IBM Mail Next. -Dan

Neat, I hadn't heard of this - David

Coach travel overseas but I can use my status to get upgrades. :) - Dan

I second that one ;)

+1 on that. Headed on a 23 hour flight(s) this weekend. - Sanjeev

In such a large company it can be hard to find the right person. And sometimes different parts of the org can be doing things that would be just perfect if they knew about each other - NickP

This is an interesting follow up to my question about a distributed work force. Thanks for the insight :)

There are challenges within a team about being distributed and then challenges for the organisation about having so many teams. Everyone can't spend all day finding out what other teams are doing as then nothing would get done but all large organizations face the challenge of trying to join things up. That's true regardless of whether everyone is in the same building or not. Nick Portalski

Some of the internal tools we use are a bit...dated. -Nick Caley

How much involvement did you have with Watson?

My development team works in a different product area than Watson - we are focused on the DevOps space. But the Watson team uses our tools internally to deploy the Watson application to their test environments. -Steve McGrew

There are many IBM internal teams using the UrbanCode products to be more efficient and drive consistent deployment processes. - Dan Berg

DevOps seems like repackaged Agile. Is there really a difference?

Yes there is. Agile's focus was on fixing the relationship between the business and development. Done really well, the cross-functional team concepts expanded to test and ops and looks like DevOps. But that was rare. DevOps is very, very focused on the relationship between Dev and Ops and (more broadly) on how the business delivers change from idea, to dev, to release, to learning in production. - Eric Minick

Agile didn't reach far enough outside of development. I've seen development teams get more effective while the other parts of software delivery -- testing, deployment, operations, even business planning -- are way behind. DevOps brings new lean practices across the board. -- Peter

Eric mentioned in a previous answer that you work with a world-wide work force. I work on a small team located in one area so communication is fast and easy. Are your teams spread out quite a bit? How has IBM been able to manage such a distributed workforce? Do you think that this is impacting efficiency or productivity?

I work in a completely different location than the development team and I can say that technology is the key to getting anything done fast - whether it be email, phone/video conference call, screen share, chat, etc. Being in the office and walking over to someone's office/cube will always be easier, but there are so many ways to communicate these days that its not a significant inhibitor.

Great question. I think the research is pretty clear that face to face communication is strongest and so there are some impacts. That's countered by being able to have those face to face conversations with customers around the world pretty easily because you have someone who lives nearby. Most of the dev teams I've seen are still sitting near each-other and get those benefits. They have white-boards with ideas and architectures and jokes. They have lunch together. But when its time to learn from customers, do sales, and market things get more distributed really fast. - Eric

I manage a dev team spread across China, the UK (two locations) and Canada with a test team in the US. So yes, the teams are spread out.

The timezone can play against you and for you; if something needs to be done overnight the US can ask China and by the time I'm awake (in the UK) it can be done. But then a reply can be an overnight exercise so you have to plan ahead a little.

You have to use tooling - work item tracking etc and be disciplined about updating them accurately so people know what's going on. We also use IM extensively, particularly group-IM chats to keep the team feeling like a team.

Does it impact efficiency or productivity? You can manage around that with specialities and ensuring remote teams feel empowered. Is it as efficient/productive as everyone in one location? No, it's not in my view. But everyone in one location wasn't going to happen so it's definitely more productive than fewer people overall.

I think the key thing is for each team to feel empowered, to have ownership, good tracking and planning and use whatever form of communication to have; including informal chats - the contents of our IM chat wall are sometimes NSFW! Helps the team feel like a team.

Nick Portalski

May I have an intership?

e: woops submitted too early.

What is the biggest trait and/or knowledge you look for in new hires? From the comp sci perspective.

We're hiring! Check out our careers page https://developer.ibm.com/urbancode/careers/ -Nick Caley

Edit: as for what we look for in co-ops and new grads: knowing the fundamentals of data structures and algorithms, but more important, is the willingness to learn. You will learn more in the first few months on the job than in the years you spent in college (coming from my experience as a former co-op). -Nick Caley

We have many opportunities around the world. For UrbanCode specifically, take a look at: https://developer.ibm.com/urbancode/careers/. For all around IBM check out: https://www-03.ibm.com/employment/us/un_interns_coops.shtml. -- Kim

Is working for IBM "modern"? I am asking because many job offers i read online were about rare old systems that i never knew anything about.

Last I checked we have running water which is nice because I don't have to go outside to use the bathroom anymore. :) - Dan

hahaha a pretty good answer i did not expect :D i meant it more in the way of having modern working environment and working with new technologies, as i can imagine that big companies do not migrate on the newest frameworks/libs/techs too early.. :)

This is not your grandfather's IBM. :) We are constantly using new technologies (Docker, NetflixOSS, CloudFoundry, OpenStack, etc.) and new programming languages as we find them to be valuable. We are not stuck in the trenches using old and irrelevant technologies (that's simply silly and boring). :) - Dan

Has IBM changed your "working culture" in a significant way?

As a former UrbanCoder, the biggest change for me was switching from Gmail to Lotus Notes. -Nick Caley

(I came in through the Green Hat acquisition 3 years ago)

No, I don't think it changed significantly. It did change but not in major ways. We kept some parts we liked, some of the cultures were the same and some we picked up from IBM. Some changes were for the better for our customers!

IBM's a big place so it depends which part acquires you and what the people are like. Even in such a large organisation it's always about the people and there is a (surprising?) culture of "Get it done" which is great.

It can be harder to make big changes or try things out but if you believe it's right it can often be done; you just have to persuade a few more people.

Obviously working cultures change over time for all sorts of reasons - often driven by technology. I joined through the Green Hat acquisition 3 years ago but I'm fairly sure the working culture in IBM now isn't the same as it was 10 years ago. I know it isn't the same now as it was 3 years ago.

Nick Portalski

Oh yeah, I forgot about Notes........

How long does it typically take an organization doing manual application deployments to implement an automation solution?

You can usually get something working well enough that you have a few apps deploying into several environments (including production) in a week or two. Where it gets fun is when your "organization" has 20,000 developers. Then, a pace of a few apps a week won't cut it. Templates and scripted configuration gets exciting. - Eric Minick

Please can you tell us some more information about IBM's Internet of things? There's been discussions about how this works. Can you clarify, will this run on the Bitcoin blockchain, or just on a chain created by IBM based on the original Blockchain?

There are three aspects to IBM's IoT strategy: 1. https://internetofthings.ibmcloud.com/ - IBM IoT Cloud Foundation which provides Cloud Services for IoT data 2. http://nodered.org - IBM Node-RED is a tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services 3. www.bluemix.net - IBM Bluemix PaaS, includes a IoT boilerplate to get you started on IoT app development -- Sanjeev Sharma

For us it is about contributing to the standards that are used and providing tools and services to support people working in that space. There are a number of Bluemix services that help users explore and learn how to connect device output to code and achieve great things. IoT isn't related to bitcoin, JohnC

What are your thoughts on the "sale" of the Essex, VT IBM plant to GlobalFoundries?

IBM's a big place and I don't know anyone in Essex, but certainly Global Foundries is more focused on that business. The official word is here: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/45110.wss -- Peter

How are all of you today?

http://24hoursofhappy.com (IBM does not endorse the singer, his lyrics, his music, his political views, his dress sense, his votes on 'The Voice'...) -- Sanjeev

I was doing great until Sanjeev posted that link :-) Seriously though, enjoying talking with everyone. JohnC

Doing pretty good here in beautiful downtown Cleveland - it's even snowing! -Nick Caley

In Stamford, CT at the #swgai. A bit tired after a long night with @jrmcgee. - Dan

I'm great - thanks for asking. This has been the most entertaining thing I've done today. Long flight home tonight :( Nick Portalski

Does DevOps work for everybody?

How do you respond to the argument that "Enterprise DevOps"doesn't make sense ? The writer argues that there shouldn't be a separation.

Giving a quick skim of the article, the author does make some good points that adding "enterprise" to the term "DevOps" feels redundant. I wouldn't go as far as to say it doesn't make sense, but it certainly feels extraneous. But maybe to people outside the core of the industry, having the extra information could further solidify the notion that these tools are more-or-less meant for large-scale operations with lots of moving parts. -David

edited: added name

If you don't have a big team, you'll never have a DevOps problem that requires a solution. DevOps is most exciting in the enterprise. Look, they're never going to be the "unicorns" like Etsy, but we (to steal Gene Kim's line) help put bumps on the heads of horses. - Eric

A decade or so ago, a friend had a major development project, and asked IBM to bid on it. The rep told him that IBM would only do it if they kept the rights to the code they generated and gave his company a non-exclusive license in perpetuity. His reaction was, "If we're going to pay for 100% of the development cost, we're going to own 100%of the code, too." Does IBM still have this provision on custom software?

For good and ill, we don't have anyone from legal with us. There's probably no blanket answer here. Probably depends on region, division, and what the software would be.

I don't work in that space so a tricky one to answer. In general I'd say that IBM has few blanket rules and things are done on a case by case basis. Nick Portalski

A while ago (2012) a study was published on XEN showing that it greatly increased cache misses. And CPU's could under heavy load spend >40% of their time waiting on RAM in highly virtualized systems.

Have you experienced this yourself?

I haven't experienced this myself, but to be fair, I don't use Xen much in my day to day work.

I enjoy programing and have learned some basic coding but I work in the medical field. What visions does IBM have for technologies in science and medicine? How can a young person as myself become a part of that?

Watson and genomic medicine link - Pete DiStefano http://www.zdnet.com/ibm-watson-lends-analytic-power-to-genomic-medicine-7000035207/

My colleagues are going to send you a bunch of cool IBM links. But we also work with a ton of medical device and medical records companies who write a ton of code. I'm sure those shops are looking for people with a blend of medical and tech skills. - Eric

There has been significant work with the Watson team focussing on the medical space http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-medical-doctor makes for interesting reading. Data analytics is a good area to be in. JohnC

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=IBM+Watson+medical

You can start by using Watson with Bluemix (bluemix.net) if you want to try out some of the Watson services. It's a great way to get involved and its best of all it doesn't cost anything (at least for the first 30 day). - Dan

We are trying to leverage the technology to help reduce the diagnosis time for medical professionals. Check out some of what is happening in our Watson division: http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/implement-watson.html

IBM had a 'Make it Wearable' competition recently--would would your entry be?

Edit: OOPS Intel** Thank you Nick

I bet nearly all those wearables will be talking to services running in (an IBM) cloud somewhere.

My entry to the Intel Make it Wearable competition....is a secret ;) Nick Portalski

I googled 10 top ideas that came to me after you asked. They all exist! :( - Sanjeev

Something that leverages IoT style production of data, Bluemix services and Watson analytics... to do what is another question, JohnC

What is your dress code at work?

No Dress code if I am working out of my home office ;) PD

Clothing required

Before the acquisition, the dress code at UrbanCode was "wear something". No one has mentioned anything different since, so I think that still stands. -Nick Caley

In the UK, myself and my teams are jeans/casual shirt/T-shirt. So generally pretty relaxed.

My team in Hursley have a tendency to wear shorts in summer. Which isn't always easy on the eye.....

Nick Portalski

Dress that allows and promotes efficient and reliable code :-) - Ashish

When not at a client site (where I adhere to their dress policies, if any), I work from a home office. There its 'whatever my wife finds acceptable...' - Sanjeev

I can't bring myself to wear kakis. :) I'm a jeans and t-shirt kinda a guy and that works just fine at IBM. - Dan

Got any entry level embedded systems developer jobs? :D

We have all sorts of jobs available. I don't know of anything specifically, but would encourage you to check out: https://www-03.ibm.com/employment/us/un_university_recruiting.shtml - Kim

It would depend where you are based, as an example https://www-03.ibm.com/employment/us/jobs/stg.html and if not follow the links from there.

What is most unique about IBM that other companies do not do?

The amount of pure science and long term R&D is pretty astounding. There aren't many companies willing to invest that way. - eric

Employ me ;)

(better answers to come hopefully!)

Nick Portalski

make videos with Atoms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0 -- Sanjeev

What do you think the most interesting thing IBM is creating for the near future?

Check out #swgai for some hints.... - Dan

1. What buzzwords (e.g. big data, agile, scrum) should we pay attention to and which ones should we ignore?
2. What project are you most proud of?
3. A joke I heard people make regarding what IBM claims to be able to solve: "You have information management issues? IBM will solve them. Got BPM issues? IBM will solve them. Russia and the USA are about to start WW3? IBM will solve it." What world problems are you actually solving / trying to solve though?

Eric answering

1) DevOps is big, and needs to play nice with Agile. Scrum is super common, but I wouldn't focus on that in particular.

2) I still have a soft spot for AnthillPro

3) The small problem I like solving most (rather than world problem) is that Ops people lose too many nights and weekends to doing releases. I want to give these guys and gals their lives back and let them see their families. That's what makes me feel best, world scale problems be damned.

What sort of stresses do you have when developing software?

Balancing between current customer demands and being inventive for the future, working with a worldwide team over multiple timezones. The stress is good, it helps drive us to succeed. JohnC

If the development/test team are worldwide then communication and timezone is always a concern; you want to wake up in the morning thinking that everyone has moved in the right direction today which can be a challenge.

Then the usual; can we get it ready on time? Will people use these features?

The big one (which I do like and it keeps me interested) is not knowing what's going to suddenly crop up late on a Friday afternoon from a customer, from sales or from your team. Be it a serious defect, a request for help, an architecture discussion with a customer - they're urgent and stressful but that's when you feel you've achieved something in a short space of time - Nick Portalski

I...B...M??? What is this thing you talk about?

It's a start-up....

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/

Nick Portalski

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jtNUGgmd4 - etm

Thanks for doing this. Assuming you had a small team before at UrbanCode with lot more control -

1. Are you facing any corporate culture shocks at the Big Blue due to its sheer size?

2. Are you getting any backlashes against continuous delivery of software especially in the most critical business units that are traditionally waterfall structured?

3. If someone answers yes to 2, what would be your argument for continuous delivery?

On #2, I think the key point to note is the difference between Continuous Deployment and Continuous Delivery. Continuous Delivery doesn’t mean every change is deployed to production ASAP. It means every change is proven to be deployable at any time. Are enterprises with waterfall or even agile need Continuous Delivery as they need to test and validate continuously. However they may not deploy Continuously every new feature out to production. See my blog post for more details: http://bit.ly/1GSLpM9 - Sanjeev Sharma

1) I think the biggest shock for me at least is the tracebility and tracking tools and how it fits in with your overall workflow. As a startup, you can just do what has to be done when it needs to get done. As a larger company, that is simply not feasible, and so there does need to be a record of what you do. As for control, aside from the aforementioned record keeping, the UrbanCode team has retained about as much control over the product as can be expected. We still come up with our own features and work on them as we see fit.

2) Absolutely. Mostly in large institutions (especially finance) there are strict policies around security and auditing. Most of the time, these companies still maintain their own server farms and have little desire to switch to cloud environments, for a lot of reasons. We're talking about companies that have been around for a very long time and have well established methods of operations.

3) This argument reads much like the argument for compilers. At first, some traditionalists were wary of compilers because they felt like this magic black box that just took code and converted it, and who knows what goes on in there! But, as time went on, people saw that the compilers weren't going to burn anything down and instead, were actually making peoples lives easier and allowed more and more people to begin programming. Continuous delivery gives you a kind of a heartbeat of your development/deployment status. Not only that, but if building, deploying, and delivering are painful operations that a company has to do, those operations shouldn't be put off and done infrequently; putting off deployments leads to large, complicated situations that are easy to break and hard to fix. Continuous delivery takes these potentially painful processes and chops them into bite-sized pieces that constantly run. If the small deployment fails, that's far less destructive than your massive deployment that's been gathering changes for months failing.

-David

Many of us who weren't part of UrbanCode joined IBM through other acquisitions (Rational, GreenHat, ...). Some things are different at IBM's scale but the new energy/technology/ideas are what keep IBM moving forward. IBM is transforming to address cloud, analytics, mobile, social and doing that requires a continuous delivery culture. -- Peter Klenk

For #2 we have many internal teams embracing DevOps practices including continuous delivery. Now that we are moving more and more functionality to the cloud as services we are finding a greater need to be agile and have rapid and reliable delivery processes. Actually, the acquisition of UrbanCode has greatly helped IBM internal teams to adopt continuous delivery as we have seen a strong adoption of UrbanCode internally. Just shows what a great tool can provide to a team. :)

On a side note, moving from delivering packaged solutions to hosting services is challenging and difficult but can be very rewarding as well (rapid feedback from customers is fantastic). - Dan

How is your work schedule, and did it changed after moving to IBM - Do you get to work more hours, less flexible? And what you think about the new office space and infrastructure available?

I would say that the schedule and work load is about the same, the flexibility is probably improved as there are more of us in the team now and we have a wider geographic coverage. JohnC

What does IBM do these days?

Dan Berg is listed as a "distinguished engineer."

What is tbe dif bt a distinguished and a regular engineer?

A Distinguished Engineer is someone who has made some remarkable contributions technically, but also plays a key role in strategy and business direction. It's the highest technical distinction within IBM aside from Fellow (of which there are just a couple dozen). http://www-07.ibm.com/employment/vn/ep/techprof.html - Eric Minick

"Distinguished" may be a bit of an over statement... :) - Dan Berg

How about illustrious?

I like it. :) - DB

How has office-life changed since being taken over by IBM?

Who are your more notable customers?

Sanjeev here. For customers we have large and small - including Nationwide Insurance, Fidelity worldwide and hundreds more. here are some customer case studies - http://bit.ly/1GSHFdI

Our clients cover many industries - Retail, Banking, Insurance, Government, etc - and are both small, mid-sized, and large enterprises. - Erin

wow, quite a team.

how many of you are college dropouts? high school dropouts?

Sorry, I have a BS in Electrical Engineering, an MS in Computer Science with a minor in Advanced Numerical Methods, and was a PhD Candidate in Computer Graphics and Animation - Sanjeev Sharma

That's impressive Sanjeev! BS in Computer Science from WPI, MBA from Bentley - Erin

I actually quit school and did freelance development because they wouldn't offer the courses that I wanted as part of their timetabling - eventually ended up putting myself through a BS Comp Sci course... JohnC

I've just got a BS in comp sci. But the UrbanCode team got into products to help with a college drop-out founder's propensity to ship consulting customers builds he did off his desktop. - Eric

I am not a college drop out :-). Did BS in Computer Science from India, then did my MS in CS from Boston University. --Padma

Nope, I managed to graduate, Computer Science and Engineering, MIT. -- Peter

What approach does IBM take for encouraging women in technology? Would you say women are represented well on your respective teams?

In a heavily male dominated industry, IBM has been encouraging and supporting the rise of woman in IT since the beginning of the company. I mean - look at our CEO! I have worked in testing, development, and product management and I can say that there has been a good representation of woman across all the organizations that I have been a part of. There are also many resources within the company that are dedicated to enhancing the role of woman in IT. Check this out - http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/witexhibit/wit_intro.html. and this http://www-03.ibm.com/employment/jobs/women_at_ibm.shtml -- Erin

Thanks to all the answers on this so far. I was hoping to get more of an engineering perspective - I have gathered that women are well represented in sales and management which is great. Thanks to Nick P for mentioning the growth in the UK - great news!

From an engineering perspective, my experience as been the same as Nick's - more men than woman, but we are always looking and welcome talented females to join our teams. -Erin

Since I joined IBM, I worked with lot of women who held different positions like Developer/Testers/Managers/Executives/Product Managers/ Program Managers/Program Manager & ofcourse our CEO is a Woman. I didn't find any hurdles in my carrier in IBM just because I am a women. Women are represented very well in our org, not only in US, but in other places like India/China.. --Padma

In my part of IBM women are represented well in the management chain - much more so than other large organisations I've worked at. My current and last boss are women and the person responsible for our integration into IBM was a woman. I can't speak for what has encouraged them though.

Within my own development team there are fewer women than men, which is a general trend reflected I think and reflects the ratios in university technology courses. When we joined IBM we had no women in the development team in the UK and we now have three so it's certainly been a positive trend.

Nick Portalski

IBM has a long history of women in technology (https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/witexhibit/wit_decade_2000.html) ... but for me specifically I get to work with a number of women daily in the development of many of our offerings. -- Kim

Do any of you know /u/shamallamallama? The questions sounded awfully canned and commercial-like. The timing was particularly coincidental, too.

Hand on heart, I don't. I only decided to join 30 mins before this started so there was nothing pre-canned about my answers. The IBM responders were all on a conf call during and from the surprise in everyone's voice when questions came in I'd be amazed if there was anything pre-canned. (Have you worked in a large org? Trust me, we're simply not organized enough to have sorted a load of pre-canned questions out....) NickP

How does IBM DevOps address database schemas? Are there solutions with UrbanCode?

I wrote an article on this! https://developer.ibm.com/urbancode/docs/database-deployments-urbancode-deploy/

tldr; Yes, through UrbanCode and partners. - Eric Minick

What are some of IBM's open source devops solutions?

IBM contributes to a ton of open source projects tied into DevOps. One of the most obvious is OpenStack (we're one of the larger contributors). Closer to development, Eclipse is huge and OSLC helps stitch things together.

For the Urbancode team, we are focused on integrating like crazy through our plugin frameworks. So we write a ton of integrations to open source tech from Git to Chef. And our plugin framework is open enough that clients, customers, and some of our engineers deliver plugins in an open source way. Many of which are here: https://hub.jazz.net/user/ucplugin -- Eric

From a continuous testing point of view, we can drive tests in open source frameworks (and non-IBM commercial solutions) from either the delivery pipeline or the Quality Management tool. We can even mix and match tests from multiple sources, e.g. Selenium for web and Rational Test Workbench for mobile and API, in a single test case.

^{Do you have IBM5100s?}

No, but there's an IBM Model M in the office. Buckling spring keyboards are fun to type on. -Steve McGrew

Not in the London office, but I did used to own a 5150 as my first PC. JohnC

I think they get sold on eBay as space heaters ;) - Sanjeev

Hey,

My friend is doing an internship with IBM soon. He wants to know what the likeliness is that it will effect a job contract with the company and if he'll have the chance to work with Watson.

Otherwise, any tips for him on working for IBM?

An internship is a great opportunity to network with various IBMers. From that angle it puts a face, experience and work experience to go with a resume when considering full time positions. In terms of his opportunity to work with Watson - it really depends on what organization he got an internship with. -- Kim

Second that - seems simple enough but network, network, network. Also, be willing (and excited) to tackle any challenge that is presented to you my your manager. -- Erin

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I don't think we are, but you are right! http://www.ibmlouisiana.com/jobs/ -- Peter