I've worked with a large number of people over the years in the core VM performance team, but I believe Wes Ernsberger is one of the folks that is on top in the longevity list. Wes already had several years in performance when I joined IBM in 1985. That was in the peak of resources, when there were multiple departments committed to VM performance. The headcount for performance decreased significantly after the consolidation of VM from Kingston and Endicott to just Endicott. There would be more reductions during the gold rush also known as the client/server era. The 1990s would see an end to the IBM full employment practice. Reductions and re-balancing of resources in the mid to late 1990s would show the VM performance team drop to a six-pack, and then three: myself, Bill Guzior, and Wes Ernsberger. Fortunately Linux arrived and the team began to grow again, moving towards much healthier numbers.
The era of three was a very tightly-knit team. I remember we had a rule that both Wes and I weren't permitted to vacation at the same time, just so we could ensure coverage for problems. Wes and I would do the bulk of the design evaluation and data analysis. Bill G would keep the systems running and do the bulk of the measurements. VM wasn't strategic at the time, which had downsides. But we were also very free to lead ourselves, determine priorities, and do the most important things. I really enjoyed those years. Wes and Bill are great teammates.
Wes retired a number of years ago now. The first month he was gone, it was very common to hear "I miss Wes." in the hallways. Years later, I still find myself saying it on at least a monthly basis.
Occasionally there is someone in the Development Lab or else where that does something for performance. If it is truly heroic, we bestow upon them official VM Performance Hero Badges. I believe the last set we gave out was for the team that worked through the enhancements to Limit Shares (new SET SRM LIMITHARD settings). When Wes was leaving, I commented that he was beyond being a hero. He was a superhero. The kind that saves the day time and time again, but takes no credit and appears to be the guy next door.
Wes taught me several things, a couple through direct conversation, but mostly through example and being a role model.
A criticism of Wes when it came time to give out awards was often that he hadn't put in as much overtime as others that were up for an award. This was wrong for a couple reasons. Wes was incredible at projecting schedules. We would get a line item to evaluate. He'd look through the basics and start building a plan. He was thorough in this, thinking through the dependencies and factoring in contingencies. Time and time again he'd be very accurate. While others had to deal with the stress of churn in their schedules, Wes was calm and on track. As a result, he very seldom had to work huge amounts of overtime to make up for not planning well.
Related to his use of time, was Wes' work ethic. I have never worked with anyone with as high a true productivity rate. I don't recall Wes ever spending more than 10 or 15 minutes on a distraction such as hanging out at the coffee machine, talking about the football or baseball game from the night before, or just goofing off. It wasn't that Wes was anti-social, he was just focused on work while he was there. Five days a week, one of the first in the office. And then most often you could find him there for a couple hours on Saturday morning.
The idea of planning went beyond just schedules. I'm told that back when runs had to be done by turning over jobs to operators to run or run yourself during a weekly run window, Wes really made sure he had done everything right ahead of time to ensure he got the most out of that run window. Nothing would be worse than turning in a job and getting back the results to find there was a stupid mistake that ruined the run, meaning, you had to wait for the next window to re-run it.
Wes taught me a lot about design analysis. It was fun. Working with design early on to understand the goals and start to create building blocks to understand the potential performance, or lack thereof for a new line item. Through Wes I learned how to break things down into the basic components and build simple spreadsheet models of things. These were great tools for setting and refining expectations.
He really was a great teacher. When the performance team started growing in size again. Wes did a lot of the mentoring and teaching of new people on the team. Patient. He was so patient with everyone. He even built a plan prior to retirement about who would get each piece of his work. He walked everyone through the delegated tasks. I've never seen work transfer done so effectively. I can't thank him enough for that.
Wes had many other fine traits, but I'll end with one I admired the most: he was open to criticism or suggestions. For many of the years that I led the VM Performance Evaluation team, I would write up feedback on each of the team members. I'd provide that feedback to the member and their manager usually just prior to rankings, or "contribution assessment sessions". I felt it was a privilege and an obligation to do this for my team. I remember after doing this one year, Wes stopped over to my office. He thanked me for the positive words, and then asked, "What can I do better? I like knowing I'm doing good things, but knowing what I'm doing wrong is more valuable." And I knew he was serious. Likewise, he would let me know where I could improve as well. From that, we were a better team. VM was a better product. Earth was a safer planet for computing. And isn't that what being a superhero is all about?
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