Saturday, February 26, 2005
Fifteen
Fifteen years ago today I started at Lotus. I wasn't looking for a job; my tenure at Lotus was entirely due to the persistence of a headhunter. Eric left several messages on my answering machine but I didn't call him back. I didn't know him and didn't know how he'd gotten my phone number. At some point while expecting another call; I picked up the phone. It was Eric. He was calling about a job at Lotus on a team that was building a database product. I wasn't interested but we talked for a while. He called back a couple more times with other opportunities at Lotus. The position that got me into Lotus was on a "secret" project building a NeXT product — what became Lotus Improv.
Starting at Lotus was a pleasant surprise. People were genuinely happy to be working there. During my first week I ran into someone I had worked with at Applicon. He told me that he was working on this cool product that had recently been released called Notes. I didn't follow the PC Industry back then so I didn't know anything about Notes. My first question was whether it was similar to VAX NOTES which I'd used a few years earlier. In retrospect, I wasn't that far off the mark since Len Kawell had been involved in creating both products. (VAX NOTES was primitive by comparison).
I got my first exposure to Notes several months later. The first thing I saw in Notes was an internal Restaurant Review database called "DBSD Eats" with a smiling pig icon.
Notes seemed like an interesting product but I couldn't imagine at the time how big an impact it would have on my career.
The software business has changed radically since those days. Lotus has been a division of IBM for nearly ten years now. Many of the software vendors of the 80s and early 90s are gone. I believe that Lotus would have met the same fate if it hadn't been for Notes and if, as a result, IBM hadn't bought the company.
Starting at Lotus was a pleasant surprise. People were genuinely happy to be working there. During my first week I ran into someone I had worked with at Applicon. He told me that he was working on this cool product that had recently been released called Notes. I didn't follow the PC Industry back then so I didn't know anything about Notes. My first question was whether it was similar to VAX NOTES which I'd used a few years earlier. In retrospect, I wasn't that far off the mark since Len Kawell had been involved in creating both products. (VAX NOTES was primitive by comparison).
I got my first exposure to Notes several months later. The first thing I saw in Notes was an internal Restaurant Review database called "DBSD Eats" with a smiling pig icon.Notes seemed like an interesting product but I couldn't imagine at the time how big an impact it would have on my career.
The software business has changed radically since those days. Lotus has been a division of IBM for nearly ten years now. Many of the software vendors of the 80s and early 90s are gone. I believe that Lotus would have met the same fate if it hadn't been for Notes and if, as a result, IBM hadn't bought the company.
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