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Graduates Make Their Mark in Computing

Tony Tait and Cowan Pickering are young New Zealanders in young professions in a young industry.

For the past five years they have worked for the IBM World Trade Corporation.

Still in their twenties, they have already attained the status, assumed the responsibilities and reached the income levels of many men, decades their seniors, in other fields. That's the way it is for people of ability in the world of computing.

Tony, 28, is a senior data processing consultant. Gowan, 27, recently became the corporation's New Zealand systems engineering manager.

Both of them deal with lop management of other concerns on policy matters involving large sums of money. Both of them are "ideas men" with the job of using analytical expertise to suggest data processing solutions to a client's organisational problems.

Tony examines a firm's operations to find out in what ways computer equipment might achieve greater speed and efficiency, financial economies or a means of doing work which might not otherwise be undertaken.

Gowan leads the big team of systems engineers (or analysts or advisers, as they are sometimes termed) who provide Tony and other IBM consultants with technical support for their proposals.

Both of them have travelled extensively overseas for the company. In fact, Tony returned only a few weeks ago from a world trip which he received as a fitting reward for being the year's foremost of the 4,500 consulting representatives employed by the corporation in more than a hundred countries. Gowan spent three months earlier this year in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, studying systems engineering management.

Both of them are university graduates. Tony gained his B.Com. at the Victoria University of Wellington in 1961. with accountancy as his major subject, and Gowan graduated B.Sc. in chemistry from the University of Canterbury in 1963.

Memories of their formal education are thus fresh enough to give them a full and sympathetic appreciation of the hopes and ambitions of the young undergraduate in search of a career.

"Anyone who has spent some years at a university should reasonably expect to do work which will strengthen his capacity to learn as well as offer him the scope to extend himself as much as he wishes," says Tony Tait

"I wanted a job in which I could dovetail direct use of my academic training with some sales experience in order to fit me for a management position.

"On completion of my degree I went overseas on a private trip for a year or so and then returned to New Zealand to seek such a job.

"I looked at two or three possibilities, including IBM, all of which had their own material and other satisfactions.

"But it was the IBM vacancy which seemed to offer the widest and most interesting and rewarding vistas.

"Subsequent personal experience with the company has more than confirmed that initial impression.''

Gowan Pickering says:

"I wish I had been acquainted with enough careers information to realise, while I was actually still at university, what worthwhile prospects there are for the graduate in the modern business world with an organisation such as IBM—well known, possessing great potential and the resources for developing that potential in accordance with properly formulated plans.

"I found all this out, of course, after I had decided to join the company. It is a move I have never regretted.

"If I were asked to advise forthcoming graduates about the choice of a career. I would suggest that they look for jobs where there are clearly-set objectives, which in turn become challenges, which in turn — when successfully met — generate rewards.

"I can vouch for the fact that objectives and challenges abound at IBM, and that these plus the subsequent material and non-material rewards add up to job satisfaction which would be pretty hard to match in other fields of work.

"Because of rapid developments within the computing industry generally, and because of the associated growth of IBM which—as a leader in the industry has sponsored so many of such developments—the scope for personal advancement is very great. Indeed, the only limitations to an individual's progress lie within the individual himself."

Tony's career started when he joined IBM in Welling ton. He was later posted to Auckland for a year and spent a subsequent twelve months in Sydney for specie training in quota sales an territory work. This stood him in more than merel good general stead for the duties he has undertake while based in Wellington for the past three years.

In Australia he became in. volved in the work of the company's airlines and bank ing group of consultants with contracts with the Common wealth Bank and Qantas an with installations for the Australian Reserve Bank. On his return to New Zealand he helped in the establishment of a new consortiun of New Zealand banks sharing a country-wide compute service and has specialised in this field since.