Question for Smitty...

[TellicoTurning]

Smitty, as an old IBM'er, do you know who 2PI or TwoPi (not sure of the name now).... they were one of the original developers of the desktop PC... they were a start up company out of Santa Clara when I worked with them. Story I got was they were IBM engineers who came up with the idea for the desk top PC... supposedly IBM managers pooh-pooh'd the idea that it would never work and wouldn't back them... when I met them they were developing a contract with backers out of Australia.

I worked for a company called Three Way Airfreight out of Sunnyvale, CA.., a division of Three Way Van Lines - when I worked for them they were the largest United Van Lines agent with close to 100 trucks running under their logo...they later went under the Ivory logo before Joe Bonino retired and closed the company down..... we hauled more electronics than household, but did have a household division. My clients as International airfreight manager was Tandem, Telex, Sperry Univac, Apple (they were just developing ideas... met both of the founders, but only briefly), Four Phase and 2PI plus a number of others I don't remember now. We did storage for Sperry Univac... in those days controllers looked like refrigerators and disc drives were washing machines... matter of fact, I wrenched my back one night loading a container with a couple of controllers and half dozen drives... was laid up for a week over that...

We shipped computers world wide for those companies... Tandem did one that was shipped to UK for Scotland Yard that took up a full 40' ocean container plus part of a 20'... it was supposed to go air, but a couple of the units were too large for an aircraft, so it went ocean. For international shipments I had to apply for export licenses from the Department of Commerce and Treasury. The application was about 6 pages long and required all kinds of info, such as the Baud rate, etc.... export licensing was a big thing back in the 70's... later they dropped most of the requirements and when I retired I only had to file for Treasury licenses for export of center fire fire arms... which is another story.


Anyway, back to 2-pi, since they were just starting up and their backers were out of Australia, most of their product also went down under.... don't know if they're still around or not... couldn't find anything on them on a web search.



BTW, my son worked for IBM for a couple of years out of Austin before he quit and started his own company. He worked for a small company that IBM bought out and they kept him on as a project manager for the project he was doing for that company. His biggest complaint was the number of meetings that IBM held in the course of a day...

 

[Smitty37]

Smitty, as an old IBM'er, do you know who 2PI or TwoPi (not sure of the name now).... they were one of the original developers of the desktop PC... they were a start up company out of Santa Clara when I worked with them. Story I got was they were IBM engineers who came up with the idea for the desk top PC... supposedly IBM managers pooh-pooh'd the idea that it would never work and wouldn't back them... when I met them they were developing a contract with backers out of Australia.

I worked for a company called Three Way Airfreight out of Sunnyvale, CA.., a division of Three Way Van Lines - when I worked for them they were the largest United Van Lines agent with close to 100 trucks running under their logo...they later went under the Ivory logo before Joe Bonino retired and closed the company down..... we hauled more electronics than household, but did have a household division. My clients as International airfreight manager was Tandem, Telex, Sperry Univac, Apple (they were just developing ideas... met both of the founders, but only briefly), Four Phase and 2PI plus a number of others I don't remember now. We did storage for Sperry Univac... in those days controllers looked like refrigerators and disc drives were washing machines... matter of fact, I wrenched my back one night loading a container with a couple of controllers and half dozen drives... was laid up for a week over that...

We shipped computers world wide for those companies... Tandem did one that was shipped to UK for Scotland Yard that took up a full 40' ocean container plus part of a 20'... it was supposed to go air, but a couple of the units were too large for an aircraft, so it went ocean. For international shipments I had to apply for export licenses from the Department of Commerce and Treasury. The application was about 6 pages long and required all kinds of info, such as the Baud rate, etc.... export licensing was a big thing back in the 70's... later they dropped most of the requirements and when I retired I only had to file for Treasury licenses for export of center fire fire arms... which is another story.


Anyway, back to 2-pi, since they were just starting up and their backers were out of Australia, most of their product also went down under.... don't know if they're still around or not... couldn't find anything on them on a web search.



BTW, my son worked for IBM for a couple of years out of Austin before he quit and started his own company. He worked for a small company that IBM bought out and they kept him on as a project manager for the project he was doing for that company. His biggest complaint was the number of meetings that IBM held in the course of a day...

I never heard of either but after October of 1967 I was working on Federal Systems and our business was entirely government contracts.

That being said I personally knew 3 IBMers who left Federal Systems Division and formed their own Software company. Initially they were successful and they were good----long term I don't know what happened to them.

We heard in the company grape vine about a fair number of IBM executives leaving the company to head other companies. That was not unexpected because there was a ceiling at IBM. Until Gerstner was brought in as CEO in 1993 no one at IBM was going to get to the top spot in the company unless they came up through marketing. Best anyone else could hope for was a Sr Vice-President job and they often got offers from other companies at the top job. Quite a few left.

IBM was always a target for head hunters looking for operations management or engineers and engineering management people. For the last 12 - 13 years I worked there I was approached at least once a year, and sometimes more often, by head hunters. Usually the approach was Generic but a couple of time a company had asked specifically that the head hunter approach me. I wasn't interested for a few personal reasons.

 

[TellicoTurning]

I couldn't find anything on them either, but remember visiting their offices in Santa Clara when they were doing their start up. With the exception of Apple, most of the companies I worked with at Three Way have all been merged or acquired with other companies. Some may not even be around any more.

Never had much truck with head hunters.. I may have been approached once or twice, but most of the time when I left a company it was through dissatisfaction on my part and I did my own hunting. I think I was approached directly by a couple of companies.. Three Way hired me away from TWA, initially interviewed me right on the warehouse floor at the airport, then invited me to their office.