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that the demand for programmers would only increase. With obvious
enthusiasm, Bemer described a near future in which computers
were much more than just scientifi c instruments, where “every major
city in the country will have its community computer,” and where
citizens and businesspeople of all sorts—“grocers, doctors, lawyers”—
would “all throw problems to the computer and will all have their
problems solved.” The key to achieving such a vision, of course, was the
availability of diverse and well-written computer programs. Therein lay
the rub for recruiters like Bemer: in response to the calls for computer
programmers he had circulated in the New York Times , Scientifi c
American , and the Los Angeles Times , he had received exactly seven
replies. That IBM considered this an excellent return on its invest-
ment highlights the peculiar nature of the emerging programming
profession.
Of the seven respondents to IBM's advertisements, fi ve were experi-
enced programmers lured away from competitors. This kind of poaching
occurred regularly in the computer industry, and although this was no
doubt a good thing from the point of view of these well-paid and highly
mobile employees, it only exacerbated the recruitment and retention
challenges faced by their employers. The other two were new trainees,
only one of whom proved suitable in the long-term. The fi rst was a chess
player who was really “interested only in playing chess,” and IBM soon
“let him go back to his board.” The second “knew almost nothing about
computing,” but allegedly had an IQ of 172, and according to Bemer,
“he had the kind of mind we like. . . . [He] taught himself to play the
piano when he was ten, working on the assumption that the note F was
E. Claims he played that way for years. God knows what his neighbors
went through, but you can see that it shows a nice independent talent
for the systematic translation of values.” 4
Eventually the ad campaign and subsequent New Yorker coverage did
net IBM additional promising programmer trainees, including an Oxford-
trained crystallographer, an English PhD candidate from Columbia
University, an ex-fashion model, a “proto-hippie,” and numerous chess
players, including Arthur Bisguier, the U.S. Open Chess champion,
Alex Bernstein, a U.S. Collegiate champion, and Sid Noble, the self-
proclaimed “chess champion of the French Riviera.” 5 The only charac-
teristics that these aspiring programmers appeared to have in common
were their top scores on a series of standard puzzle-based aptitude tests,
the ability to impress Bemer as being clever, and the chutzpah to respond
to vague but intriguing help-wanted ads.
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