Introduction
where I talk about my career
In the spring of 1979 I had serious plans to be the starting 2nd baseman for my high school baseball team. One of my friends was gunning (literally) for the shortstop position, which he locked up easily. Jeff and I would often practice together, since timing between SS and 2nd was a critical aspect of a strong infield defense. This one day it happened to be raining after school, so coach pointed at a bin of rubberized hardballs and sent us into the hallways to play catch.
Given the constraints of a high school hallway lined with metal lockers, Jeff and I took it upon ourselves to throw the craziest spinners and ricochet throws off walls, lockers, and the floor. As an infielder, this is an excellent way to manage unexpected bounces.
At one point, Jeff wound up a very hard throw that bounced right past my glove. I turned around and saw it bounce into a small room across from one of the math teachers. Jeff watched as I jogged into the room to retrieve the ball, but I never came out.
In this room were two old school paper terminals dialed into a DEC PDP 11/70 located in Milwaukee Public Schools HQ.
In front of both of these paper terminals were two students well-known for being smarter than pretty much everyone, Gary and Chuck. I asked what they were doing and Gary said, “Playing Dungeon,” and Chuck said, “Playing Adventure.”
I pulled up a chair to watch Chuck play this text adventure game and was … I don’t think there’s a word for it, but if lightning striking someone and changing their entire life in one split-second has a word, then that would be it.
I never did play on the high school baseball team. Jeff went on to play in a state championship. I became obsessed with programming computers. I spent the summer reading books. I took one class at my high school. I spent every free second in that little room. The math teacher, Ms. Searing, came into that little room one day after school and put a transfer application in front of me, completely filled out. From the 70’s through today, MPS’s Milwaukee Washington High School has had a computer specialty program where they teach computer skills. The transfer was from my school to WHS. I knew of two other Juneau students transfers, so I knew that it was possible.
But I also knew it was a two city bus trip in the morning and either a shuttle back to Juneau or two city buses home. I assumed my dad would say no. She persisted and just said directly, “You don’t belong here. You belong in the computer specialty program.”
So I took the application home and put it front of my dad. He put his glasses on, read the whole thing, looked up and asked, “You want to do this,” and I said, “Yes.”
He got a pen out and signed it.
Although I did not go to college, I had absorbed enough from WHS to be a competent programmer (BASIC and RPG II). I landed at a printing company in the print room boxing printed material and applying shipping labels. In late 1984, IBM PC’s started showing up in the office, including one stand alone in a room off the print room. I somewhat knew the CTO, so I mentioned in passing, “You know I know how to write code, right?”
I started my first salaried job in January of 1985 at $14,600/annual.
From that point on I worked at a service bureau (consulting firm that hosted applications that client’s dialed into), a towel & uniform rental company, before realizing that Milwaukee had little to offer my talents and creativity. In 1992, I saw an ad for a job fair near O’Hare in Chicago.
I drove down and there were exactly 50 companies hiring. Without any college, 49 of those companies literally turned their back on me. These were the 3-piece suit days and you just didn’t get hired in Chicago without some kind of pedigree.
I was halfway out the door and said, “You drove 90 miles, go talk to that little man with the green bar paper banner and an empty table.”
So I walked up to Irv Shapiro from Irv Shapiro & Associates and as I approached he asked, “So how are you today?”
I’d had a very bad time at this job fair, so the blunt honesty came right out, “I’m an expert BASIC programmer, but no one here gives a shit.”
Irv said, “You just found a job.”
I worked at ISA turned Metamor into 1996, then at a small firm for a year before discovering independent consulting. I was more or less independent for 20 years until the 1099 market dried up and you had to work on a W2. The rates dramatically dropped, so I ended up moving through several companies before landing a strong role at Rackspace Technology, where I am currently employed.
In my 37 years I’ve written BASIC, C, C#, Pascal, RPG II/III, worked on sequential file data systems, batch systems, relational database systems, networking protocols, banking, insurance, non-profits, and nearly every industry there is in the Chicago area. I’ve spent time in Accenture, Avanade, Amoco, Sara Lee, Allstate, Wells Fargo, Bank One, CDW, and more.
I’ve seen the advent of Visual Basic (I own the mail order only Version 1.0), the Internet, .NET, Java, microservices, and the cloud. I’ve encountered people passionate about dependency injection, object-relation mappers, code generation tools, Oracle, SQL Server, and a lot of very weird tools that have (thankfully) died (PowerBuilder).
Given all of this history, I have opinions. Lots of them. Many of them have been right. Many of them have been wrong (never thought Java would survive).
This newsletter is all about my opinions on technology. I hope you engage and debate my opinions so we all can learn.