Songs of the IBM

Not quite a secret: IBM's official archive has the 1935 edition as well as some .WAV files (!) and pictures. http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_room....

And explanatory text: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_intro...

A favorite of mine is the Sametime song!

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/stwiki.nsf/dx/Sametime_Song

As an IBM intern, nothing has made me happier than reading this.

Now I just wish HN had a downvote button so I could get it off the front page and make sure I'm the only one on my team who knows about it, haha

Here's a little more (well sort of) modern corporate anthem, from Sun.

http://anthems.zdnet.co.uk/anthems/sun.mp3

Lyrics here: http://www.zdnet.com/it-anthems-the-power-of-sun-3002133207/

There is a common pattern here: Leaderships like CEOs or presidents set up an inanimate conceptual objects such as companies or countries to symbolize their ideals. The primary objective seems to motivate rank and file to work for these symbols and indirectly for them by having rank and file believe that they represents those symbols. It's funny how subtly of leadership has common patterns across small startup to large countries to activists groups.

This practice is still common in China. If you walk early in the morning you can often see groups of employees in uniform singing or dancing.

I worked at a startup purchased by IBM and they had everyone sing a few of these songs during the first indoc session (year: 2010).

There goes my favorite trivia question. There are really few people at IBM who know about this past tradition. Actually, I don't know if there is still an IBM chorus, perhaps it is still being kept alive.

The docudrama 'The pirates of Silicon Valley' has a small clip with some IBM employees singing some song. I thought it was a one off thing.

Wow ! These songs remind me of "traditional school songs" that a lot of universities have.

Dude, that's pretty f~-d up right here! (c) Stan Marsh