I started out in Telecommunications, maintaining an Operator Call Center, writing and running billing programs to collect revenue on the call traffic. That place worked me to the bone, but I loved almost every minute of it - it was my first truly responsible job where I was encouraged to act upon my own judgments. It was a "one-computer-guy-for-the-whole-company" kind of position, and I really enjoyed it!

My longest-standing job was at a small Aviation Consultancy. These guys had their own software package that handled nearly every aspect of aircraft maintenance and engineering, in a truly well-architected C/RDBMS system, consisting of over 200 programs. It was a work in progress, and cleverly divided into ten usable modules, so that modules could be "purchased" and used individually. This enabled the company to start earning revenue and support fees long before the product was completed. I was hired to develop additional programs for the system, and eventually I became the product's architect, and directed the system to completion.

I have worked in the semiconductor industry as well. A major chip manufacturer hired me as a contractor, and for them I developed a sophisticated Xt/Motif front-end that automated the interaction of a Process Control terminal application, the operation of various robotic tools involved in chip fabrication, and forwarded all results to statistical analysis program.

Then I did a couple small coding (C/C++) contracts for local employers, but they were nothing new. They were in no way an improvement in my career path, just more of what I had already done.

Y2K had the world in a panic, and my Y2K project was at a subsidiary of a major Wall Street brokerage. I led the conversion team from an old custom investment portfolio package on a Sequent (Informix 5.0) to a state-of-the-art Sun E4000 server (Informix 7.3), running a Y2K-ready updated version of the same investment software. The conversion involved hundreds of database schema changes, modifications to countless locally-written programs, scripts, and external interfaces, user training, and an intelligent database fragmentation scheme for performance. I even threw in a trade-confirmation system that interfaced to Bloomberg's live feed, and that piece eliminated many weekly hours of tedious and error-prone manual cross-checking.

Self-employment

In late 1999, my wife's health took a turn for the worse. I had always done varying amounts of computer programming on the side, in addition to the day jobs described above. Since I didn't feel I could leave her alone every day anymore, I tendered my resignation and turned all my part-time projects into full-time work. It was easier than I thought: I simply called my part-time clients, and asked them if they could use me more, and the answer was a resounding YES! So, I was very fortunate to be able to make the transition.

I was doing so many different kinds of work, from an embedded Linux ATM cash machine, to in-flight/on-the-airplane broadband networking, paid open source modifications, streaming media and player skins, trouble-ticket workflow, etc. It was the best time in my career, to be truly independent, and deal with clients on a peer-to-peer basis, rather than employer-employee. And of course, the money was fabulous!

Then at the end of 2000, the roof caved in. The economy took a very nasty downturn, and my projects finished up, but were not replaced by anything new. You see, I never really learned how to pursue new sales, or even to turn up new leads. I was lucky for business to find me, and so I didn't know how to find it for myself.

Five very dry months ensued, and I was forced to go back to work in the Telecom industry again, first as a contractor, and later (only because other contracts were still not available) I became an employee. The work itself is interesting enough, but there's not any variety.