There's some blasts from the past! Wife used to work at Tektronix, as well as most of my neighbors and friend's dads. And IBM / Hitachi big iron. Best peripheral ever invented for the PC.
Anybody else in High-Tech?
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arg I missed that milestone because it was my second career, but I am very jealous.
Skully
Member
I run my own I.T. consulting business.
I started out 30 years ago as a mainframe programmer working for Traveler's Insurance in Connecticut. Worked with Cobol / CICS, got lucky and transferred to a unit where I taught myself DB2 databases. This is back in the dumb terminal days, so when they dropped a PC on everyone's desk nobody knew what to do with them, so I taught myself that too. Leveraged that to move into client/server development in Visual Basic. From day 1 I was always under the threat of layoff due to ongoing corporate restructuring. I worked for 4 companies without ever changing my desk due to corporate mergers & spinoffs. After 7 years moved to California and worked for a great, family-owned international corporation doing client/server.
Five years in, the company goes public. Raises slashed, bonus cut, benefits shrunk. They offered me a voluntary separation option and I was first in line to take it. After 7 years at Travelers I knew where things were going, and the first packages are the best. Took the package and the big payout, but unfortunately that coincided with the dot-com bust. I couldn't find a job for half of what I was making before. So I started freelancing as a way to pay the bills.
So for the past 15 years I've worked for myself. Mostly desktop support, network & server support, hardware & software procurement. I used to do web design but quite honestly the market for it sucks these days. I run 3 servers in a datacenter that provide hosting and e-mail services still, as well as online backup services.
I've been pivoting on that point where my business can't really grow without adding people, but in order to support more people my business needs to grow. Not really into taking that risk, so I cruise along where I am. I'll never be rich, but I make a decent living and I'm comfortable where I am.
I started out 30 years ago as a mainframe programmer working for Traveler's Insurance in Connecticut. Worked with Cobol / CICS, got lucky and transferred to a unit where I taught myself DB2 databases. This is back in the dumb terminal days, so when they dropped a PC on everyone's desk nobody knew what to do with them, so I taught myself that too. Leveraged that to move into client/server development in Visual Basic. From day 1 I was always under the threat of layoff due to ongoing corporate restructuring. I worked for 4 companies without ever changing my desk due to corporate mergers & spinoffs. After 7 years moved to California and worked for a great, family-owned international corporation doing client/server.
Five years in, the company goes public. Raises slashed, bonus cut, benefits shrunk. They offered me a voluntary separation option and I was first in line to take it. After 7 years at Travelers I knew where things were going, and the first packages are the best. Took the package and the big payout, but unfortunately that coincided with the dot-com bust. I couldn't find a job for half of what I was making before. So I started freelancing as a way to pay the bills.
So for the past 15 years I've worked for myself. Mostly desktop support, network & server support, hardware & software procurement. I used to do web design but quite honestly the market for it sucks these days. I run 3 servers in a datacenter that provide hosting and e-mail services still, as well as online backup services.
I've been pivoting on that point where my business can't really grow without adding people, but in order to support more people my business needs to grow. Not really into taking that risk, so I cruise along where I am. I'll never be rich, but I make a decent living and I'm comfortable where I am.
It is fun reading other peoples stories. Mine is so different than most. It is interesting seeing the different roads others have taken and where they end up. I am pretty lucky where I am. I am still at the publicly traded corp with all of the cool .com perks, but I am really jealous of you guys that have made a go of it on your and have been successful. Thanks for your story.
So do I have you to thank for these stupid wax printers I have to fix all day for xerox now?
Turned a hobby as a kid into a high school coop gig, then turned that into a job for 7 years at a local computer shop where I learned a huge amount about troubleshooting and network management.
From there I went to a tech school to get some papers behind me and got into. Corporate IT. Mostly I do hardware break/fix but you never know when you need to prove that software is really the issue.
Jumped through a couple of it service providers over the last 21 years and now work for the largest national provider in Canada.
I keep trying to find another job I'd like to do but I just can't find anything that gives me the freedom of being a field service tech where I start the car and I'm in my office. I see my boss once ever couple of months and as long as the work gets done and the customers are happy, basically no one bugs me much. It's a hard thing to give up even if the pay is crap.
—
There must have been a time
when we could have said no.
I am (was) a systems admin for a municipal government. I was doing Windows server administration, VMware and infrastructure. Then our webmaster and CIO butted heads and he left. I was the only one not already overburdened with work and had web design experience (personal though, not professional) so the boss was like "guess what, you're now the webmaster". I was like uhhhh what? How much more do I get paid? "No extra" Pffft, no thanks. "You can work from home..." OH YEA, I'm the webmaster! 
They said don't sweat it, it's just temporary until we hire a replacement. They said that in 2012 lol
They said don't sweat it, it's just temporary until we hire a replacement. They said that in 2012 lol
tquig01
TJ Enthusiast
Joined the Army out of high school to afford college. Loved it so much I ran around the woods blowing things up for 14yrs until I zigged when I should have zagged and ended up having to leave. Got a CS degree while in though and have worked for the last 16yrs for a defense contractor managing everything from radar to unmanned platform development programs. Cool stuff, different kind of stress and I still miss the fun of fully automatic weapons!
A week like this one is when I wish I had a different job. On Wednesday (3/21) I start my PeopleSoft Financials upgrade and I will probably finish it some time on Friday night or Saturday. Round the clock (no sleep unless I pass out on my desk LOL) and I am sure by Friday morning coffee won't help LOL.
xackley
TJ Enthusiast
20 years as a boilermaker, finished computer programming degree in my late 30s, Next 24 years went from programming to network administrator. Went from learning on punched cards in the 70s to designing and controlling all the communications, storage, and security for a few dozen servers, and 900 stations. The training and experience as a Boilermaker was a great asset in learning to do something right the first time, and always having a safety net if things went wrong.
I can say that is a couple times a month for me. Well probably this week also. Got some late night high profile backups to do.
xackley
TJ Enthusiast
Programming as a student on punched card was exacting. You almost needed to get it right the first time, or the line and time allotted for the reader might make you late on your assignment. It is strange that they had to switch out a stack of platters on the IBM 360 to change which programming language it could handle.
Edit: As I remember it there were lights on the counsel of the 360 that really did blink. Or maybe my memory is warped by Star Trek.
Edit: As I remember it there were lights on the counsel of the 360 that really did blink. Or maybe my memory is warped by Star Trek.
I do late nights once a month via oncall rotation but this week is a upgrade and based on our test passes we are looking at 60 plus hours running time. I basically have to make sure I am done by Satuday so validation team can verify all is good.
Last time I did this was a few years back and by the second straight day and night I was a zombie lol
I work on iOS app development in SF so pretty emerged in the tech scene 
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