Things Of Interest Blog

While I have owned a car for some months now I do not yet possess either a satellite navigator or a road atlas. As such, any time I make a journey to a place I have never been before, my standard operating procedure is to check the route closely using Google Maps' satellite view, often going so far as to analyse the layout of specific crossings and roundabouts, and then write the route out on a piece of paper and/or memorise it. So far this tactic - combined with allowing a generous fifteen minutes for "getting lost time" - has served me admirably.

On Friday 3rd July I and most of my fellow graduate software types found our way up to an ICBM location just inside the M25 for a day-long networking event. (Getting up earlier in the morning than usual, travelling to somewhere you've never been before, in unusually smart clothes, for a day-long timetabled series of activities? I had to pull myself out of "job interview" mode.)

The "Foundation" is the name of the process that all the non-software graduate intake of the Company go into. It's completely separate from the software engineering graduate process, which is good in some ways but has been considered to be detrimental in others, so the Company likes to give us opportunities to meet up with one another. Yes, there were lots of talks and lectures and activities and displays and stalls on the day - the "installation" where all this was taking place was a pretty big, pretty cool building - but the main focus of all of this was apparently to let us all talk to each other. Hah hah! How quaint. We are software engineers. We are, ironically, very bad at... "networking".

So first of all it was interesting to see just how many other people the Company had taken in this year. There's a sign up somewhere in my department which reads: "Admit it. You don't know what ICBM actually does." And to some extent it is true. There is much more in global services and marketing and stuff than there is in your actual software development. It's not a software outfit but a big, multi-tentacled monstrosity that I now work for. These are kids who probably wear suits and formal business dress every day of their lives. They really are on a different path from us. (Also. That qualifies as business dress these days?)

There were some talks. Bridget van Kralingen, who runs a big chunk of ICBM in Europe, talked about working out her work-life balance thing on a per-month basis because a per-week basis is just not practical for someone so busy. Paul Martynenko gave us the whole ICBM "Smarter Planet" spiel which basically boils down to realising Charles Stross' glorious if unlikely vision of the next ten years to as great a resolution as possible, largely through the technique of putting RFID tags in everything and everyone. He described using a PDA to detect and render the live 3D layout of electrical, plumbing and ventilation systems inside a building, just by scanning for RFID tags on the pipework in question: very smart. Smart parking meters were also brought up: very good. Then he fantasised briefly about a new, Big-Brother-style nonlinear form of fiction in which you followed specific characters' stories as they travelled from room to room, watching the whole course of events multiple times to get the entire picture - a storytelling technique I first saw used in 1992's Night Trap for the Sega Mega CD.

Nonlinear fiction does not work, and here is why: conservatively, it takes twice as much effort to create, and the mainstream consumer half as much time to experience.

Then there were some electives (i.e. they all run simultaneously and you pick a few). Andy Pinder gave us his complete C.V. and the only thing I learned was: "Realistically, you can leave ICBM and rejoin at a higher salary exactly once in your life". Rashik Parmar spoke about the benefits of having a good reputation and the damage that a bad one can do to you... somehow without giving any specific examples of moves he'd made to enhance his own, or mistakes he'd made. Then I ended up sat at a table in the cafeteria with the fifty or so other people who'd been pre-assigned to this particular activity, which seemingly involved answering exceedingly open-ended and ambiguous written questions about interface usability and things we'd like to see in the future. Half of the people at my table spent the time just gossiping among themselves. It was, again, not unlike an interview test, except lacking any kind of guidance, explanation or follow-up. Bafflingly pointless.

The guy who runs the Company in the UK and Ireland explained at length that he had had dinner with the Prime Minister a few nights ago, and that we (the graduates) were the future, and that ICBM's software division was currently among the best-performing in this region - thereby expertly avoiding the elephant in the room.

There was a pitched Oxford-style debate with the motion: "This house believes that mainframes are dinosaurs, and the future lies with Intel and Microsoft". The mainframes in question are of course the Company's Z-series, combined with the z/OS operating system. Obviously, the motion was defeated, but not before the advocates said that the Z machines needed to be taken out and a bullet put through them (newsflash: that would not kill them, they have redundant everything), and the opposition, due to their (justifiable) confidence of an overwhelming victory, went so far as to accuse Microsoft/Intel machines of smelling of... well. Regardless of my actual opinion, I voted for the motion, on the principle that the opposition had stooped to ad hominem attacks which I deemed unnecessary and unsportsmanlike.

And then, last thing before we were freed, the lady who apparently manages all the Foundation grads in some fashion got up and waffled on for 25 minutes. She pulled up wordy projector slides and then committed the cardinal sin of dragging us through every word of each one; and then presented some going-away presents to some people whom none of us from Hursley had ever met or heard of; and then showed an interminable slide show of all the Foundation grads having fun over the past year: you know, parties, formal dinners, group exercises, training, and so on. Sure looked like they had a lot of fun! Whoever they were.

In previous years, Interconnect has gone on for two or three days, with both accommodation and transport provided. That would have been nice. This, by comparison to the stories, was a pale comparison. Obviously there are reasons for that, but my only conclusion is that it wasn't a bad event, and it wasn't a complete waste of time, but for a number of reasons it left a sour taste in my mouth.

Back to Blog
Back to Things Of Interest

Discussion (11)

add comment

Site admin