User Stories

Reading the other stories prompted me to add mine...

I joined SPSS in Feb 2001 - my manager at a previous employer had joined SPSS and then brought me over there with him - I was going to be working on helping with the port of SPSS to run on the IBM iSeries (nee AS/400). The second day of being there I was poached by another manager after finding the reason why Microsoft's Internet Explorer was failing to load a local link - the question was sent out by Jon Fry, who, because of me being such a SPSS newbie at the time, I had no idea who he was!

I worked then on the 'Smuggler' project with so many super talented people: ViAnn, Dick Lieber, Jay, etc. Ralph in an earlier story mentioned "I was used to being a big fish in a small pond, and these guys were so exponentially better than me it was embarrassing" I know exactly what he meant - to see these guys in a UI design meeting was enlightening to say the least. Sometimes those collective meetings got a bit shall we say 'animated' but the incredible thing was, once people left the meeting room there was never any continued arguments. Often you'd see two people who had been 'heatedly' arguing over a particular issue 5 minutes later outside chatting & laughing in a cigarette/coffee break.

After that project, I moved to the "Recommendation Engine" team and had the fantastic opportunity to again work directly with extremely talented staff - Andrew Walaszek, Dave Hess, Rama, etc. We were trying to create a shrink wrapped Recommendation driven website or rather a plugin-in for existing websites and we even had a very helpful customer (a local tea shop) that used the product. We also created a 'high speed scoring engine' that scored large volumes of cases so fast we initially thought it was broken 🙂

When that project wound down, I moved to the core SPSS development team and again was lucky to work with Jon Fry, Tex (from whom I inherited the licensing code and some other very clever FORTRAN code for other parts of the system [Exact Tests anyone?]), Kim Peck, Rick Oliver, Kevin Phelan, Jeff Sweeney, Curtis Browning etc, from whom I learned so very much.

Like many stories before mine, the core theme is how much of a honor/privilege it was to work at SPSS with such great people on a daily basis - a few more I've not already mentioned: Jing, Vikas, BJ Scherer, Jay Kosiba, Dave Watkins, and so many, many more on a less frequent basis.

One of my favorite moments to remember: while working with Andrew, being part of the team to do the technical due diligence for a couple of acquisitions that SPSS made; sitting around a table with Jack Noonan, Doug Dow, (and others from that high level) with their counter parts from the companies that SPSS was planning to acquire was, for a simple software developer like me, a surreal experience!!

I started working at SPSS in 1984, just as SPSS/PC was being released. Over the next 25 years I had the pleasure of working with so many bright and talented people who became my lifelong friends.

I arrived after the move to 444 North Michigan Ave. I remember the big green bar printer on our floor. If you wanted to print on a real sheet of paper, there was the pruoc command, which would route your output to a printer at the University of Chicago (print uoc). The next day it would show up in your mail slot like magic! Yes, we had physical mail slots and we used to get paper memos delivered there as well as those deliveries from UofC.

I remember conducting training seminars for SPSS/PC in which the first half day was devoted to teaching basic DOS commands because so many of the attendees had purchased a PC solely for the purpose of running SPSS on their own computer.

I remember long Friday parties with food trays and lots of beer. I remember the lock on the beer fridge. I remember an incident involving a big papier-mâché apple which belonged to a downstairs restaurant that mysteriously ended up in the elevator during one of those Friday parties. I remember a memo about footprints on the wall in Norman's office that also mysteriously appeared after a Friday party.

I remember how excited I was when Starbucks moved into 444 and how quickly I became hooked on my morning latte. Then I moved to Woking for 6 months to work on Clementine and Woking didn't have a Starbucks. But I quickly became re-addicted when I came back to Chicago.

I remember so many releases and working around the clock to get them finished on time. While it was exhausting it was also fun and exciting. I remember Tex remarking during one release that this must be just like being retired - Saturday and Sunday are just like every other day!

SPSS was my second home (at times it felt a bit more like my first home) and the the wonderful talented people I worked with are still my second family.

As a former employee I am so glad I was part of the SPSS-family for twelve years. I met so many nice colleagues through the years and have made friends for life - working for this international company gave me great experiences and I still "dream" of the 'good old days'.
As someone in the Swedish office once said - SPSS - Sexy People Selling Software - I think that was us!

I think we got this idea from Bob Gruen, but I take partial credit for implementing it: In the help index we included an entry for "loop, infinite; see infinite loop", and another entry for "infinite loop: see loop, infinite. We eventually had to remove them when some customer without a sense of humor complained about it.

This is the origin story of SPSS/PC. I was getting a lot of calls from users about when SPSS was going to be available on the PC. After the IBM pc/xt was introduced along with the "winchester" harddrive, I thought we had a chance to adapt SPSSG, a 100K stripped down version of the mainframe version of SPSS that Tex had developed. I talked to Bill Arendt about how it worked, using a common stored in memory, data stored on a drive, and different procedures that were swapped in and out of memory to execute commands. Bill took a look at the SPSSG architecture and thought that it would work. The interface was SPSS syntax commands and the output ASCII. We were targeting this to mainframe users who wanted to run SPSS on their PC. Bill recruited Dennis Bartley to work on the architecture for the product and Jean Jenkins to work on porting the procedures. It was a hard sell to Marketing that initially estimated we could probably sell less than 1000 copies of the product. We figured that we could probably get it up and running within six months but would take about a year to completely finish it. Fortunately, a FORTRAN compiler was available for the PC but was a bit buggy and managed to stymie us every now and then. Louise Rehling wanted it done by Christmas so we called it the XMAS project. We had two PCs to test it on and they were named Merry and Christmas. We finally got it done by June of the next year and overshot our 256K memory target and required a floating point accelerator chip. Most XT's only had 256K so we had to convince our beta testers to upgrade their XT's for memory and floating point chip. I remember trying to get the memory chips onto expansion cards as we got more machines. A definite PITA. I think we beat the original Marketing estimate in the first two months it was sold.

David Pittman hired me as PR Manager in 1996. I remember sitting in the lobby at 444 N. Michigan when I was waiting to meet with him and Shirley Ransome (the legendary velvety-voiced receptionist) told me “Dave is such a nice person.” I had no idea how life changing that job would be. BTW - I discovered Shirley was right, Dave *is* a nice person, a fantastic boss and continues to be a friend.

Five years into it, I knew I wanted to do something else instead of PR and Mark Battaglia created a job for me. He wanted someone to build a business plan for a user conference and asked me to take the role. Once I started working in events, I knew that’s where I belonged. We ran Data Mining Summits in Reston, VA and Paris. Then we created the SPSS Directions user conference which ran for several years in the US and Europe - Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, Athens, Amsterdam, Prague, Barcelona, Rome.

I loved the work and the travel, but what kept me with the company for so long was the people. I met some of my dearest and best friends at SPSS. To this day, I organize a holiday party in Dec/Jan where SPSSers get together. it’s truly amazing how everyone remarks that we still feel like family and that the SPSS experience was special and one-of-a-kind. I am forever grateful.

"Do you like talking on the phone and working with computers?"
That was my first engagement with SPSS when I applied for the job as a sales rep. I had no idea what I was getting into. A flat mate showed me a book describing SPSS PC + to help me prepare for my interview with the hiring manager. After I opened the book and saw all the formulas, I decided to read just the introduction text on the jacket. Needless to say, I was not well prepared. Somehow, I passed the interview and was invited to come in for three days to work without pay to see if I was a good fit in that environment.
It was fun training to sell SPSS's statistical software — with no clue what I was doing. The colleague who trained me laughed the entire time I was trying to create a sales conversation.
My second day on the job was also my 30th birthday, and I asked if I could leave a bit early — remember, I was working for no pay.
“Yes, no problem,” my colleague replied. After waiting for hours, I thought he would come back to me and let me know when I could leave, but nothing happened. So, I decided to ask again, as the clock struck 5 o’clock. He had completely forgotten about my request, and I was annoyed — how could he forget that I needed to celebrate my 30th birthday?! Grrrr.
My third day on the job, nothing special happened, except that my Windows computer slowed down more and more, and I had no idea why. After a while, I could barely work anymore and told my colleague about the problem. After examining the computer, he determined that MS Word was opened 12 plus times, and the CRM System A/S — some self-designed application with black background and white and blue letters — was opened a dozen times, too. The working memory could not handle the load, so it slowed down. I didn’t know to use Alt+Tab to switch between programs; no one told me.
Something similar happened at a later date, as I tried to write an offer using MS Word. While I was away from my computer, someone turned my font colour to white. As I typed, nothing appeared on the screen! White characters on a white background will do that, apparently. Again, I asked for help, while the team-mates laughed their heads off.
After all they hired me. I passed the working days trial, and the pendulum they used to find out if I was the right person circulated in the correct direction (this was told me much much later). I got the job!

SPSS Germany was located in two 4-5 rooms flats, 1st floor in the Steinsdorfstrasse in Munich, with bathroom, kitchen, balcony. The sales team 4 people - sat in a small room - just big enough for four desks. We got telephones without headset, so you clamp the earpiece between your head and shoulder. A real adventure was calling to Eastern Germany in the early 90s. You needed to type the phone number very very slow, even more slower, and made a break after every number. If you dialed too fast the line was busy and you could start again.
For offer creation I needed to print out every offer I wrote and present it to the colleague to get his corrections.
This was a good thing to start with. He wrote down his corrections, and I implemented them and printed it out again. Next proofreading session. After a week it gets cumbersome. And after a while my trainer found a hard time to find something he could correct. Finally he did not found anything anymore, still he told me, here is a paragraph too much - that was the time I told him, that I think I am good enough to do that on my own in the future. And so I did.
In the early 90s the sales reps did everything - offer creation, cold calling, first level support, and creation of licensecodes using an application in MS Dos. And the first time I heard the word “dongle”. Licensecodes were valid until 2013 which seems to be far far away in the future. And now that’s already 5 years ago.
The sales reps group I worked in, was only allowed to talk to small revenue customers. For clients, which seemed to make more money there was another sales team who sat in a separate room. As soon the amount of revenue got too high you had to hand that over to the other group. That was sometimes frustrating. I also let the sales manager know, that it would be good to know what the software exactly does, and how it works, and if I could have some training on it. But the answer of our sales manager was always, you do not have to understand the software, just sell it. Much later I got the trainings for the software I requested, and I was right, because I helped a lot to improve selling and performance.

SPSS Germany in the beginning was a full service company, from offer and invoice creation, telephone support, training and delivery. But again – the company was located in an appartement building, so whenever there was a delivery, the entire company (except some special people, who always duck out) needed to go outside and help to carry all the stuff inside – from copy paper, books, software - despite of rain, snow, sun.

SPSS was a great place to work. We got free breakfast, lunch and drinks. This time we got an italian cook. Unfortunately I often found her hair in my food. Not what I really expected. But the cooks at SPSS was a very special story.

We got flat hierarchy, but the one and only leader was the founder of SPSS Germany. Whatever she said, you better do not disagree – even if she insulted you, and told that this button on the copy machine is for the stupid. And she had bias against people with the zodiac sign Libra. Some men with that zodiac disappointed her – so were the rumours. But was that anything of my business?
After a long working day it was much appreciated it you stayed longer than 6pm. Not for work. Leadership and the higher sales reps plus some tech people often sat together and drank wine from Frankonia. No matter if you started work at 7am because you were super busy - that did not count at all - everything after 6pm was gold and much appreciated - and if you had plans to keep your job you would better join from time to time. So you sat there, listened to their stories, and hoped you could go as soon as possible without getting into much trouble.
SPSS grew more and more, and at some point we needed to move into bigger rooms. So after 1,5 years we moved to real office rooms just a few streets away in the so called Motorama. I was really happy they did engage a moving company. I suspected that we need to pack our stuff ourselves.
Motorama was the legendary milestone in the history of SPSS Germany. From an upcoming company, which distributed software in the daytime, to a party location after work. Now we got plenty of space, and a huge terrace to sit outside, for after-work-beer, barbeque lunch, icebar parties and snowball fights.
Nearly every week we found any reason to party. Birthdays, revenue, good weather. We got an extra fridge in the canteen, full of beer and wine. And if we ran out of drinks, the grocery stores in the basement floor were still open until 8pm - you just make sure you did not miss this deadline. Most of the time the parties ended at 21.00 h, but some never stopped. Sometimes you could find your colleagues sleeping below their desks, because they could not make their way home anymore, and missed the last train.
After such a night you need to start slow into your day – so not to forget out smokers room. This was a tiny little room, big enough for a beer bench and a little palm tree. That’s where you got your first cigarette after taken your free coffee, and spent a little time to read the newspaper. Or complete the crosswords. The little palm found a hard time in this room – the leaves were coloured yellow from all the smoke, but it survived it all. It has now a place at IBM.

Simply fascinating to see the technology shifts that SPSS went through and the never-ending success it is having.
I came to SPSS France in 2007 to fuel the new "enterprise" segment that SPSS had decided to attack. A fantastic Country Manager (David WIlliamson), an exceptional pre-sales team (Hervé Mignot), an inspiring marketing team (Hervé Dhelin) and of course GREAT products! In that new segment, we went from 0$ to several millions in 2 years, from 0 customer to hundreds of big loyal companies... A lot of fun working with European colleagues - and yes it can also be fun discussing with the Legal team based in the UK! The focus paid off. And then big IBM took over. I remember IBMers trying to understand what we were selling and how we were approaching business people in the marketing area for example. Some didn't understand (still don't probably) but they were all saying SPSS was like a tiger tooth. No customer complaint. No product defects. Happy and Loyal customers always eager to explore more and more data with the SPSS products. I am very thankful to all the people I met during these years at SPSS. I have met enthusiasts engineers, great salespeople, marketing innovators and so forth. By the way, I am still using SPSS Modeler (now on my MacBook) to analyse sales data and derive insights on my day to day job. Thank you SPSS and special thanks to the SPSS France wonderful team!

I can remember that when I started working at SPSS Poland I spent hours on Raynald Levesque's SPSS Tools and UCLA's (I guess) pages. I learned to love Syntax, and, later, when I discovered that data visualization does not end with bar charts, GPL. Today, I'm pushing SPSS's to the limits building new procedures for SPSS based solution - PS IMAGO PRO, looking for undocumented functions (for example who would think that there is Voronoi binning in SPSS?), teaching, and use it on daily basis.

Oh boy, where to start on a 20+ year involvement with SPSS the company and all the various products...!
I used the DOS version in school, where people would do all other parts of the project for you if you just knew how to use SPSS! When I joined SPSS in the Netherlands in 1997 there was luckily a Windows version, plus tons of other products that I had to learn to demo (QI Analyst anyone? What was that flowcharting product called again??). What a great group of people to start one’s professional life with!
Then later the move towards “enterprise” with the acqusitions of Clementine, DataDistilleries and more great and smart people, and the birth of PES and the development of our enterprise solutions framework just before we got acquired.
And the farewell tour by the leadership team was a great and emotional ending to that era.

And now every youngster is marvelling over “AI” technologies as if there was nothing before say 2010 ;-). Jack Noonan’s proverbial rocket has truly left the launching pad...

SPSS was the place where I grew up, professionally speaking. So many great Aha moments and teachers over the years. Fond memories

Joined SPSS as a developer/designer/statistician in 1983 after a 13 year academic career and soon found myself deep in the development of SPSS/PC. Created the Review editor/interface and did a lot of programming in Intel assembler and C. Retired 32 years later after working on pretty much everything. I told Louise Rehling when I was hired that I was a stayer.

SPSS survived and flourished when most of its contemporaries did not because of smart strategy and perhaps a bit of luck as well as having many smart and dedicated staff around the world.