The Race For A New Game Machine:. David Shippy

bust and were drawing up plans to downsize. In addition, most of the top IBM microprocessor designers were committed to critical IBM server chips, the bread and butter of the company. “Not available” was the line Kahle heard over and over when he attempted to recruit his pals from former projects.

      This opened up an opportunity for external hiring.

      One human resources representative explained that IBM’s hiring practices moved in cycles, and she warned us it was best to take rapid action as soon as the external hiring window opened, because it could close at any moment. When Kahle pulled me through that window, no one was sure how many others were going to follow.

      Microprocessor design demands a team with highly specialized skills. While Jim Kahle and others focused on luring experienced engineers away from other high-tech companies, I withdrew to my sunny new cubicle to comb through a stack of resumes from engineers who expected to graduate from college in 2001. With the shape of the current economy, I knew I could afford to be picky and select only the best and the brightest from top-notch engineering schools. The lifeblood of the project as well as that of IBM rested on hiring top college grads who would bring fresh energy and insight to the company. I liked them because they were fearless. They didn’t know the meaning of the word impossible.

      Although IBMers historically conducted very polite, unobtrusive interviews, this did not always lead to finding the most qualified candidates. At Somerset, we brought young engineers before a committee of several interviewers at once and pounded the potential candidates with tough, hard-to-solve engineering problems. It was an effective method, but a bit ruthless. More than one contender left the room on the verge of tears.

      For the STI candidates, I adopted a toned down version of that style. I brought each one in for a series of individual forty-five-minute interviews with four or five technical leads and managers. Some of the interviewers conducted the same old traditional polite IBM interview, smiling while they struggled to glean hints of the candidate’s technical capabilities.

      I confronted my too mild fellow IBMers: “Come on! Challenge these guys! Your butts will be on the line if we hire nonperformers. We have to be looking for the cream of the crop.”

      When it was my turn, I grilled each applicant with several problem-solving exercises and asked specific engineering questions. While I listened to the responses, I tried to decide if I would enjoy working with the engineer on a daily basis. Better yet, would I enjoy drinking beer with him or her? Always an important criteria.

      After we completed each day’s interviews, the IBM team met for a lively discussion to sort through the results. Each one of us presented our impressions of the candidates and argued about their strengths and weaknesses.

      “Don’t the schools today teach these guys anything?” one interviewer complained after interviewing an inexperienced candidate.

      “Did you talk to the woman from Princeton? Or that youngster from Cal Tech?” another crowed, obviously in awe of the pedigrees.

      “Oh, yeah, I did. How about the one with the Ph.D. from Duke?” responded another like-minded fan of prestigious schools.

      I just wanted smart engineers who worked hard and fit in. With a thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote, we made the hiring decisions. When we disagreed, the discussions tended to drag on. Whenever I could, I shut down these arguments. “If you have any doubts about this candidate, let’s just pass,” I said, sliding the questionable resume into the trash. “Let’s move on.” There was too much other work to do.

      I really didn’t care which prestigious high-browed university they attended, though I did handpick a few graduates from prestigious universities such as Duke, Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Texas. We even hired a couple from my alma mater, the University of Kentucky. Where someone went to school is not as important as the person’s commitment to an education. You get out of it what you put into it. With the draw of the opportunity to work on the next PlayStation 3 chip, I was able to attract engineers from the very top of their classes. These young techies were born in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and they grew up playing video games. To many of the seasoned veterans on the team, these grads were just youngsters, barely older than some of their own kids. But they brought a new dynamic and energy to the team that couldn’t be created any other way. They were proud, outspoken, egotistical, very confident in their skills, and convinced that they had something unique to contribute. As lean as we were, several of these wonder kids quickly moved into critical roles, taking on far more responsibility and workload than some of their more senior colleagues. These youngsters may have held some totally unrealistic expectations of their careers—like believing they would move from junior engineer to CEO in a mere handful of years—but they remained resilient, willing to learn, and highly competitive.

      In addition to college graduates, another very attractive talent pool was the significant number of experienced engineers, like me, who left IBM at the height of the technology boom of 1998–2000 to find fame and fortune in the startups. Kahle and I conspired to hunt down some key former colleagues and make offers they couldn’t refuse. It was something of an uphill battle, because even if we could entice one of our buddies to return to the ship, it was always possible that the IBM executives would reject the request for authorization to hire. Many true-blue executives flatly disagreed with the practice of rehiring former employees, believing them to have been disloyal in their previous abandonment of the company. Fortunately, Akrout was not so adamantly opposed. He couldn’t afford to be.

      If we were to have any hope of filling out a team in time to meet Sony’s goal for a product launch in 2005, we were going to have to do whatever it took to bring in the talent. I leaned back in my chair and propped one sandaled foot on my desk, while I casually phoned a former IBMer, a guy I worked with several years before. We chatted for a while, bemoaning the demise of the startups, remembering the excitement and the dream we shared of the pot of gold just waiting for us to claim it. The potential certainly existed, and a few people we knew landed in startups that went public or were purchased by some bigger corporations.

      My friend sighed. “Some people got lucky, but most of us just got worn out. It was hard work, long hours, and, in the end, all you wanted was your paycheck, which was two months late.” He was more than happy to come in for an interview.

      The startups were drying up, innovative work was suddenly scarce in the industry, and the economy in general had tanked. Everyone was hungry for something exciting—and stable—to work on, and they recognized the game processor as a once-in-a-career opportunity. We had no trouble lining up eager engineers to interview. The promise of a new high-performance microprocessor design team allowed IBM to cherry-pick top talent from some of their competitors. Given the right incentives, good engineers were willing to go wherever the best work existed. Company loyalties didn’t have a chance against the spectrum of design work we offered.

      Each new addition to the STI team, whether an internally transferred loyal IBMer or a prodigal son/daughter returning to the fold, brought with them priceless contacts with other engineers who might be interested in hearing from IBM. It was always easier to convince potential candidates to join a team of old friends.

      Sony and Toshiba did not have as much luck filling out their part of the STI team and, like IBM, they were hampered by the staffing demands of other high-priority projects within their companies. Ongoing work on PlayStation 2 derivatives consumed a significant number of Sony’s workforce, while Toshiba was busy with their own products. Out of necessity, Akrout gave the order to continue bringing in IBMers to achieve the critical mass necessary for the STI team to achieve their goals.

      This led to an unequal split in the team, with IBM having approximately three-fourths of the resources. Akrout predicted the occurrence of this situation, but kept a low profile in front of his Japanese peers. Since each company contributed one-third of the funding, this resulted in a lucrative deal for IBM (three-fourths of the resources, but only one-third of the salary bill), and a good means for Akrout to continue to hold onto a larger pool of talent for any future IBM needs.

      While Sony and Toshiba did not contribute as many engineers as IBM, the ones they did bring into the Design Center were top notch. The problem, as might be expected with this