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1 in 329,373
Today marked the end of my second week down at IBM. So far things are going very well. The work is interesting, the people are intelligent and friendly and the coffee is offered in the cafeteria for a reasonable price (free). But while I settle into my little work community in the Advanced Technology Group, I can't help but think about the rest of the 330,000 IBM badge holders around the world.
Of all the things I was told on my first day; policies, procedures, values, none of them have stuck in my head like the number 330,000. I tried immediately to imagine a point of comparison. I've certainly never worked at an organization that was anywhere near that size. In fact, if I exclude the jobs I had while in school, IBM has over 15,000 times more people than the largest company in my resumé. The town I grew up in is an order of magnitude smaller with around 12,000 people. Even Cambridge is only around 101,000 people. It is hard to imagine being in the company of 330,000 people (pun sort of intended). What exactly would it look like, for instance, if someone called a company-wide meeting at IBM with all 329,373 employees? Like this? (Be sure to use the slider to zoom out)
Is that little pic numerically accurate? Pretty nifty if so.
yes, there are 329,373 little peeps in that picture. 329,373 being the number of employees ibm had in 2005.
Heh.. You work for the same company that Raj works for.
Your remember Raj, right? He was the guy at your former-former grad school that thought there was a big conspiracy against him. He was convinced that the department heads were using hidden web cameras to spy on him. Last I heard he was at IBM Zurich.
It’s a company big enough for all kinds, I guess.
yeah, i remember raj.
i should put an overlay on the graphic illustrating the calling tree for calls into the 800 number used to monitor when he takes his lunch. i don’t know how to feel about ending up in the same cloud of people as raj. although, i have to admit that raj was my favorite crazy person down at georgia tech.
Cool. When I worked for Big Blue in 1998-2000, my id number was all-numeric. I guess they’ve crossed that threshold in 6-character ID’s where you have to resort to alpha-numeric. Isn’t it amazing how they’re kinda still put-together even at that number of employees?
Oh, and while I was there, there was a resident crazy guy who actually gave us an infant carrier/carseat as a baby shower present. We were expecting Anna when I quit to work for Connexxia. He was a single guy in his forties. We were kinda surprised that any one person would give us a gift that expensive. He said he already had it, and thought we could use it.
Why did he already have it? He said that he figured that since he was in his forties and still not married, he should learn about car seats to impress the women he dated that already had kids.
Riiiiiight. Just what all of us would think. Uh, huh. Uhn-kay.
Glad to hear you’re enjoying it so far. Hope that Zoe, Trey and Steph are getting along famously, as well.
- Jim and the crew