I had various people showing me the ropes when I started with IBM: Greg Gasper, Eric Strom, Richard Shultz, and others. But I want to talk about Joe Tingley, as he had a significant impact on me, in multiple ways. The project where I learned the most with Joe was the introduction of AVS into, I believe VM/SP 6. AVS (APPC/VM VTAM Support) allowed programs utilizing APPC/VM for communication to work across VTAM, an SNA based network. At the time, IP was out there, but in business SNA was king. (Have I reached my quota of acronyms for the day?)
As this was new function, it was more difficult than just doing a comparison measurement. You never know how many measurements one will have to make to validate the line item. But it's usually safe to say that the most difficult measurement is the first one. That's an area where Joe always thrived, the difficult measurements and configurations. It was a challenge he fed off. So the first thing I learned from Joe was to not shy away from challenges.
As I mentioned, sometimes new code doesn't work. While Joe wasn't a programmer, he had a good vision for problem determination. How do you narrow down on the problem. He would encourage me to try to get down to as small a window on the problem: line of code, module, driver change, etc.. This became instilled in me and was beneficial, both for working on customer problems as well as new code. Developers always like you better when you can say "I think the problem is related to this segment of code in HCPxxx" rather than "it don't work good."
Often when working with Joe, I would hear "come on Wild Bill, we need to talk to fill in the blank." (Perhaps we'll explain that nickname another time.) Joe knew a lot of people and we'd go to them directly. I learned the importance of dialogue because often in these problems an email wasn't efficient. Email, in Joe's book, was for giving managers status. This also shortened the path in getting an answer to a problem that was blocking progress. It also helped me as a new person, because people got to meet me. That way I wasn't just a name on the copylist of an email.
The gaining efficiency by using the right communication method was indicative of Joe making the best use of all resources. He was very good at, let's call it scrounging or scavenging machine time, disk space, and other resources. He'd be very creative in that manner. Related to this was his work ethic. If there was 20 minutes left in a machine shot, some people would say, well that's not enough to do a whole lot, I'll try again another day. Joe would use that 20 minutes, and more if the next shift didn't show up on time. He worked hard, and played hard.
Joe would leave VM performance as we were scaled down, but eventually would come back to VM Development Lab doing both system test and performance. Again looking for a challenge, he took on the various cryptographic tests. He didn't call me Wild Bill as much but he still continued to encourage me. Joe would continue to work while fighting cancer. And he fought with an attitude that inspired many for several years.
In May of this year, Joe passed away. I consider him a hero, who is missed by family, friends, and co-workers. Thanks Joe for all you taught me.
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