I first met Eric as I was being introduced to folks in the VM Performance departments (yes departments - at the time there were two in Endicott and multiple ones in Kingston). He immediately busted on me because I went to Pitt and he was a Penn State grad, the two being major rivals at the time. I learned a lot from Eric about the discipline of measurements and analysis. A few years later Eric would move into management and I would be working for him. At the risk of giving him a big head, I consider him to be the most influential manager in my career.
Eric believed in me more than I believed in myself. He was the manager that decided I needed customer exposure and put me in to be a rep to SHARE, which would change me significantly. He's the model of the manager who challenged his people, but didn't set them up for failure. Years later we would joke about me going to SHARE and being so green. I asked him if he had realized how I was not ready to fill the shoes of Paul Van Leer. Eric said he knew it, but he also knew that I didn't realize what I was getting into yet, so it would be okay.
Eric would continue to push me, give me opportunities, but also be in my corner when needed. He helped me improve my communication, introduced me to other technical leaders, and when necessary, tell me to suck it up.
After managing VM Performance, I believe his next job was in the crit sit office (critical customer situations). We would occasionally work together on situations; and he would continue to encourage me. He would move around over the next ten or fifteen years, back into management, back out. Eventually he would find himself in performance again, only this time for z/OS.
I also credit Eric with being the key to IBM embracing the Internet. Now you may be saying "Whoa Bill, now that's a stretch!". Just give me a minute to explain. In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a very bright young man named David Grossman working in VM Performance. Coming out of Michigan, he was a Unix-weenie at heart, and a very self-motivated, hard worker. He would tell Eric that while he enjoyed the performance work, his heart wasn't really in it. Eric already knew that, but also knew that most managers would kill to have someone so talented. What happened was Dave gave Eric a number of quality years in VM, and then Eric worked hard to find him a great job as one of the IBM liaisons at Cornell University in a type of super computer or theory lab.
Hold on, I'm coming to the part about the internet. Dave was working away at Cornell in 1994 during the winter Olympics (Dave was also a great athlete, often riding bike between Endicott and Ithaca for fun after work). Dave discovered that a web site run by another company was taking the IBM Olympic data and serving it up on their own web site. That launched him into action to get IBM executive attention and ultimately IBM into the e-game. I can't do the story justice, but there was a excellent Harvard Business Review article that describes it all.
All of that as a result of mutual trust and loyalty between a manager and their employee.
Some of you might recognize the name Strom, as in Earl Strom, long time NBA official. In 1995, Eric gave the Hall of Fame acceptance speech for his father, who had passed away the year before. Eric recently found that someone put a copy of it on YouTube; and I watched it the other night. Eric spoke of his father's love of the game and his respect for the players and others involved in the game.
While I'm a horrible basketball player, I'd like to think Eric coached me some as a software engineer.
Love and respect in one's work is possible for NBA officials, and software engineers.
Love and respect. Trust and Loyalty.
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