Host Intro (Gene Kim)

Thank you, Paul.

I met our next speaker, Rosalind Radcliffe, in 2014 at the first DevOps Enterprise Summit. But it was later, in 2015, when I, like almost everyone in this community, was blown away when she presented on how modern technical practices could be done on the z/OS mainframe platform: things like continuous test and integration and so forth.

Jeff Gallimore summed it up so well at the time. He said it showed us that mainframe people weren't people to avoid, but they're actually software engineers just like us.

One of my favorite presentations ever was in 2016, when she co-presented with Rich Jackson, then a principal software engineer at Walmart, the world's largest company. It was this amazing story of how the mainframe team saved the day when they were able to build a caching service that could finally operate at Walmart scale, something the entire company had been struggling with for years.

Her evangelism and technical innovation led to her elevation from Distinguished Engineer to becoming a technical Fellow, the highest rank of individual contributors at IBM, of which there are only 84 active right now.

As I mentioned in Las Vegas in October, I have grown to love the talks we started to feature from people who I admire on career advice. So I asked Rosalind to share her journey, on what advice she would give to someone who wants to advance on the individual contributor ladder, or IC ladder, and why organizations have an IC ladder in the first place. I'm so glad that she said yes. Here's Rosalind.

Rosalind Radcliffe

Thank you, Gene. I'm really glad to be here, and thank you for letting me talk about my career and what I've done.

Let me start first with a little bit about IBM, just in case people don't recognize how much of a technology company it really is. IBM has been around for over a hundred years. We've been involved in all sorts of projects. You may know a little about the first U.S. Census equipment, if we think back; going to the moon, and providing the technology to help us get to the moon.

If we think about some other kinds of things we've done, IBM Research has done work to create the scanning tunneling microscope, so we could play with atoms. That's actually kind of fun. When Ginni first became CEO, they actually drew her name in atoms for her as a gift. Yeah, that's what you can do when you have a pure research division.

Technology has been so important and at the forefront: things like the big bets that we do, the big experiments like the 360 and building the new mainframe, but other things that are more fun like when IBM built Deep Blue to play chess, and when we built Watson to help show that we could win at Jeopardy, and that was really an amazing feat.

We've also done other things like create the Scantron test, those bubble tests that you take in school. Yeah, that came from IBM, whether you like it or not. Things like barcodes. Things like the work that we're doing with quantum to bring the next generation of computing; not that it's going to replace traditional computing, but that it'll work closely with traditional computing.

If we think about today, IBM builds lots of systems, we build lots of software, and we have the largest GitHub Enterprise on-prem that there is anywhere, with over a million repos. So we've got a lot of technology going on.

Since the very beginning, IBM has cared about its technologists. Technology is what has driven the company, and so we've always had this idea of individual contributors driving the capability: our research division, our development organizations, all through the company. We focus on technology to make sure we can drive that next innovation, we can do that next big thing, and we can really help the world become a better place to be.

One of the reasons I'm absolutely so proud to be an IBM Fellow is I am now in a group of very select people. I don't have a Turing Award or Nobel Prize, but there are five Turing Award winners and five Nobel Prizes among the IBM Fellows, and there have been only 331 Fellows over a hundred years.

The IBM Fellow process was created by Thomas Watson to make sure that we really recognized these contributions. We made sure we rewarded the best and the brightest of our population, to help them help the rest of IBM, help grow IBM in areas that are important. There are other companies that have similar Fellow programs to drive this kind of innovation, to drive and recognize.

The interesting thing about getting Fellow is it is in recognition of what we've done, but it is also a statement that we expect you to continue. Yes, you have accomplished wonderful things, but you can't sit on your laurels and do nothing. You have to keep doing that. It's to keep people energized as a technical person, to continue to be energized in our field and in the capabilities.

If you look at this chart, you'll see this is a representation of the various things that I've done in my career. I've been in IBM 35 years. I started straight out of college at IBM right after I got married. It was a fun summer: graduate, get married, start working. Very interesting time.

I came into working on Z development, which was something I'd never really seen before. I'd done some work in college on the Z, but it was new, and it was a totally different language and a totally different experience.

From that, I wanted to continue to do things a little different, and so I went into user interface design. Now, I was doing user interface design for the Z system, so yes, ISPF-based user interface, but it was user interface and it was important. This time 35 years ago, there was a lot going on in user interface design and how our interfaces should really work. Everybody was doing things differently: Unix systems, Windows was just starting, OS/2. We had these various different systems, and because there were so many differences, it was very hard for people to move between them.

I was lucky enough to be involved in trying to drive a user interface standard. I got to work with the IEEE and all of the big leaders in industry about user interface. I'm pretty young in my career at this point in time, and I'm dealing with very seasoned people helping define this user interface. But I did it. I worked through this effort. I helped push for the idea of standardization.

We were lucky IBM had patented a lot of the user interface, so we could say, "We'll let you use it. You can follow the standard and don't have to worry about somebody patenting in the way." One of the most important things that came out of that was the standardization for Control-C, Control-V, Control-X, and then that's one of my proudest accomplishments.

That was very different than working on assembler coding, which is what I was doing before, but it was really important for the industry and gave me a perspective of what someone can do when they're stubborn and willing to work through the challenges, and they have that technical perspective, they have that technical background, but also the understanding of users.

I've taken various different roles. I actually went into our sales and distribution organization for a while. Then I had my child and decided I needed something different, and I don't know why but I went into services after that. Probably not the best choice, but services was great from the standpoint of learning from our customers, learning how products work in their environments.

I ended up on a Y2K project. I know some people may not understand the significance of Y2K because you didn't live through it, but really and truly it was a major thing. If we hadn't fixed the systems, there would have been real problems. Machines would have stopped working. Things would have really had an impact.

What I discovered then was that was way too much travel, and so I needed to figure out something else. I actually had my second child and decided I really had to stop traveling. Let's move back into development. When I came back in, I started in a test role. I started in our customer test organization, really trying to simulate the real customer world in this environment.

I also had decided I really wanted to move up in my technical career. I wanted to get what IBM calls Senior Technical Staff Member. That's the highest technical contribution in IBM non-executive, and it's really important in recognizing people who have done significant technical contributions and give back to the community.

When I was back in development, but in test, I learned you really have to get back into true dev in order to get what you want.

After getting STSM, I looked around and was working in the systems management field, and then decided I really needed something different, something new. I really wanted to move to Distinguished Engineer, or DE. I wanted that because it was an executive position. It was the next step on the career ladder, and since it's an executive position, it also has more business authority associated to it.

I thought this next move would be really important for me in growing my career and allowing me to have more contributions for IBM, because what I was trying to do is make sure I'm driving the industry, I'm making changes. A perfect opportunity actually came up in another division. Normally you don't want to move divisions right before you're trying to make a career jump, but, you know, why not?

So I tried it: risky move. I moved into application development tooling, and this is where I started creating modern development tooling for z/OS and IBM i. It was a significant change. It was a huge opportunity for someone to do, and it seemed perfect. And so I jumped that change so I could work on my DE. I could make the kinds of impacts I needed to do, create a large industry around a change in order to justify that next step.

My systems management work had gotten me to my STSM. Now I needed something else. I needed that home run to drive to the next step. By moving and working on application development tooling, really bringing modern development practices, or beginning to bring modern development practices, to Z, I got my Distinguished Engineer.

One of the other things that came with Distinguished Engineer was my entry into the Academy of Technology. I'd worked with the Academy of Technology for years, but by becoming a DE and getting into the process more, I really wanted to be a member. Then I became appointed to the leadership team, which is a group that helps drive IBM's innovation, a set of technology people, all technologists, helping drive forward into new areas and think about new things we can do.

I got the opportunity to work on the corporate board, to help others as they move through their career and help the appointment of new DEs.

Throughout my career, I had spent time mentoring others and helping them move up in their career path, moving to STSM if that was what they wanted to do, moving on to be DE, and all this time providing guidance to mentees and to others about how they can be a true individual contributor and grow in their career.

That's really key as part of this. As an individual contributor who can focus on technology, focus on innovation, you can bring that value to your company. You can bring that technical knowledge without having to focus on people.

People are absolutely important and management is very important. But there are some of us, like me, who are better at driving technology, and by having our focus there, we can really dedicate our time to that.

As I moved on in this work of making the modern Z environment, having everyone recognize that it really could be mainstream, that it really could be handled in the same way we handle any other environment, I got the opportunity to speak at new events. Gene invited me to speak. It was lots of fun to talk about spinning up z/OS in the cloud and have a few shocked faces around; getting to talk to more people and having more people understand that anything's possible with this combination of capabilities.

Then, you know, the one pinnacle on top of it all is IBM Fellow. There, as Gene said, there are only 84 active Fellows today. It was the next career step I wanted to make. I really wanted to get to that step, and I wanted to do it for multiple reasons: individual contributor, driving technology, helping bring IBM forward. That's really important.

One of the reasons I've moved through my career was to be a role model, to help others see that anything's possible. I really wanted to get to IBM Fellow, but there are very few of them, and so I had to have a role that justified IBM Fellow. So I moved into our CIO's office, and I get to help with our DevSecOps transformation.

We're not a small organization in the CIO organization. We build and run the systems that run IBM: payroll, supply chain, all those kind of useful systems that we need to make sure keep running. Transforming this organization is now my challenge, my challenge as IBM Fellow.

If I look back at my career and the things I'm most proud of, I've already said UI standardization, and helping others get through their career to get to DE. Bringing the mainframe back to the mainstream. Client success is another one. I've worked with clients throughout my career, whether or not I was in development or services. Didn't matter. I tried to make sure I got to spend time with clients, which really helped my ability to provide the contributions.

The last, probably one of the important things, is the latest book that I've published, Enterprise Bug Busting. I've published others in IBM, but earlier on IBM was author. This time I got to be author, and that's kind of fun.

If we look at this career, there's not consistency. I didn't work in a single area to move up. I made changes because it's important that you work on things that make you happy. There are a few lessons I learned. I've already commented on: you need to be in dev if you're going to get a development promotion.

It's who knows you, not just who you know, but who knows you: who is there to support you, who is your sponsor. You need to make sure you have those sponsors.

It's also that you have to be happy. In any career, you have to focus on what makes you happy, because then you'll do the best that you can do for your company. This is one of the reasons why individual contributors are very valuable to companies. People doing what they love most and able to move forward makes people much better and helps drive innovation with the companies we need.

That's starting out with a little bit about me, or a lot about me and my career. I think it's important to set the context when we're talking about a technical career path.

What does this really mean? This is IBM's example. There are other companies who've decided this is also important and they have somewhat similar career paths. But if you look at this, you'll notice that people can actually move between the career paths early in their career, because for some it's very important for them to try out management. You get good experience by being a manager for a little while, even as a technologist, if it fits your personality. So it's good to be able to move between them.

But you do notice here, we have a true technical career path. As IBM Fellow, I'm equivalent to an IBM vice president. By allowing people to dedicate their time and grow their career at the same time, and not be limited in what they can do without going into management, you can let more people blossom. You can let more people drive innovation, and you can have this partnership between the technologist and the management side to help drive this forward.

I want to make one really important point: IBM is a technology company, so people who are managers, I'm not saying they're not technical. Most people in IBM are technical people. They just dedicate more of their time to people, growing people, managing people, and making sure the business and budget side of the world is handled.

While the technical career track, we get to focus on the rest of the function. What should we build? How should we build it? What's the best way to satisfy our clients' requirements? By allowing people to focus, we get a better environment for everyone. We get the ability for people to actually spend the time focusing.

Now, we've had people who are DEs and managers. It does happen. But it is very hard to be as good and spend as much time on technology if you also have management responsibility.

Managers are really important too, and there are people who make really good managers, and we should recognize and reward that as well. That is an important career path, but we need both. By having both, we can cause more innovation, and that's why we do this in IBM, and that's why some other companies have the same kind of career path.

You'll notice something: there are a number of titles that sit in some of these boxes. I wanted Senior Technical Staff Member because that's the role and career path I wanted, but we do have designers and they become principal designers. We have thought leader certified architects, certified data specialists. So we have a number of different ways that you can actually move up the career path.

I want to show this because I think it's really important. You also need to make it clear: what are the paths? How does someone move up in their career in their area of choice? If they want to be a developer, and development is their focus, what should they do from that career path? What is the right training? What is the right education? What are the right activities they should be doing, projects they should be doing?

You notice there are a bunch of different choices on this chart, and it doesn't cover everything, and everybody doesn't fit in a box, and you don't have to stay in one path. But by having some guidance, having some information to help people understand the paths, it makes it a lot easier.

I have to admit when I started in IBM, we didn't have this clarity around what are the paths to get up. This has come more recently. I've been there 35 years, so recent isn't recent when it's less than 35 years ago.

If we think about this, you can have an idea of what are the key things that IBM is looking for at each level, and what IBM thinks is important as part of your contribution to the company. Looking at these roles, and if you look behind this information, there's clear information about, as a technical leader, as a person in a technical job role, one of your roles is to mentor others, to help others grow in their field and in their career, so that we can help grow the next generation. We can help grow people in their career paths.

Another common thing among all of them is making sure we're building and sharing intellectual capital. That could be in form of patents. That could be in form of open source or inner source. That could be in form of reusable assets.

Another thing that IBM does is it recognizes and supports and wants people to be externally eminent, making sure we're sharing our information not just inside IBM, but externally to help the industry grow and help the industry move forward, really truly allowing the industry to grow and learn from what we've learned.

I said earlier open source and inner source. IBM has been contributing to open source for a very long time. It helps get people across companies to work together to drive this innovation, which is really important in our technology field. By having people who are individual contributors that don't have that additional management responsibility, we can spend more time doing those extra things. We can spend that time sharing and providing information.

When I think about my technical career and I think about the idea of having an individual contributor track, I think it's important for all of our technology companies. By the way, everybody is in a technology company. Banks are technology companies. The car companies, they talk about being technology companies because software is everywhere today.

Software matters in our day-to-day process. It is really important that we are letting people do their best, helping people drive the best that they can be to innovate in our world and make things better, make it easier for us to get things done. There's lots of things that we need to focus on: help with sustainability for our world, help reduce our use of energy. All sorts of things. Software is going to drive those changes.

So when we think about individual contributors having that career path, it really helps us have more energy devoted to solving the hardest problems.

When Gene asked me to do this session, I thought a lot about talking about my career, talking about individual contributors and how important that is. But I also wanted to take the time to talk about the fact that diversity also matters. I became an IBM Fellow partially to be a role model.

It is important to recognize that we do better by working together. We do better by recognizing people's differences and making sure we're not surrounded by people just like us, but that we surround ourselves with people who will challenge us.

I've been in my career in environments where I was the only female. That shouldn't be true in today's world. I've been in plenty of situations where there wasn't a lot of diversity in the room, and that's not good. Diversity drives better innovation in our companies.

So my ask: be an ally of others, whether or not that diversity is because we're female, or by race, or by neurodivergent, or whatever the difference is. We need to be allies and support others. Be a mentor. Be inclusive.

Really think about the fact that we do our best when we are happy. We do our best when we're focused on what we enjoy. Some people make really great managers, and they are really important. I've had some really good ones and some not so good ones in my career in IBM. Some people make really good technologists.

By partnering these together, we drive a better company. We drive better innovation, and we drive toward a better world. It is important that we're all working together, everyone working at their best.

Thank you.