After joining IBM as a supplemental hire three weeks ago, I am not the same person anymore. I have grown and expanded my knowledge in numerous ways since becoming an IBMer. On my first few days of work, I had nervous and bewildered feelings of entering my new home. However, those feelings quickly evolved into feelings of inspiration and excitement as I wake wake each morning and head into work. The transition from a background of internships, research, and education into the IBM workforce was seamless. Only a week into the job, and I knew I had made the correct career decision and the best decision of my life. Even better than my decision to attend the greatest university of them all, Texas A&M.
To begin, I was quickly staffed on developing a Mobile Banking application with a senior IT Architect, whose identity will be shortened to BH. The sheer potential of this project made my eyes light up with eagerness. The business applications for this project were straightforward. BH was working on a personal mobile application that functioned across platforms, such as iPhone, iPad, desktop, Android, etc. There were a few caveats that differentiated this type of work from others, including a SpeedCash withdrawal option and a premium retail advertisement inclusion. However, I spent my time familiarizing myself with the architecture of the application and how different modules functioned and communicated with one another. At the same time, I began developing portions of this project, such as enhancing the database and writing web service calls to the Next Best Action back end business logic. Although I would only be with BH's team for nine weeks until I transitioned to the Summit Program, I had a reason to look forward to coming to work and continuing my learning adventure.
As I built up my knowledge base around IBM's mobile and banking presence, more meetings commenced under the direction of BH. The associated culture is one of high intelligence, diligent work, and innovation. Rather than merely assigning developmental work to each team member, creativity was encouraged and expected. By the way the senior team members felt and thought about their ideas, I gained the sense that they are open and always interested to hear new ideas. My heart was ecstatically pounding. Even though I was only going to be assigned on this project for a short period of time, I discovered that I could contribute to the direction of the project. As soon as the meeting ended, I rushed back to my desk to jot down my thoughts and ideas. I would need to test them, but I was looking forward to creating my own value within the project itself and then receiving feedback from the team.
Although my tenure at IBM is short at this point in time, I know that this culture is the best place to grow my career. This intuition is built upon my recent experience of attending the DFW Technical Exchange. I had the opportunity to listen to several extremely interesting presentations about industry viewpoints and internal efficiency. I connected in a small atmosphere with profound experts in their respective industry. The conference drenched my internal flame with gasoline. I saw so much potential to generate my own ideas which will hopefully evolve into patents someday as well as collaborate with other IBMers on a wide variety of topics.
In conclusion, the culture at this phenomenal company has instilled a desire to innovate within. I am excited to begin my journey as an IBMer in order to create as much value as I can for my co-workers and for IBM itself. I am truly looking forward to making the world a better and smarter place.
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