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I started at IBM on Monday. It’s quite the corporate behemoth, and a very different work environment than I’m used to. With the team that I’m on, though, the general feeling is kind of like being on a Federation starship: you’re part of something huge and fairly bureaucratic, but your immediate group is a bubble of relative autonomy. There’s an extremely collaborative atmosphere. Everyone’s been really helpful to me so far, while I’ve been acclimating. It’s a really good group of people.

I’ve enjoyed the work itself too. I think I like editing more than writing, as it turns out. I’m off to a modestly decent start, and everyone seems pretty pleased with my work so far.

It seems like everyone I meet there asks me, “Have you ever worked for IBM before?” I’m starting to see why that’s such a common question; they do some things in kind of peculiar (or at least special) ways. They rely very heavily on Lotus Notes, for example (which is probably not so unusual for a company this size, but I swear that island in The Odyssey didn’t use this much Lotus. But then, it is IBM’s product after all). I guess it’s a testament to their organizational consistency that “working for IBM” is its own skill set.