After
graduating from high school with a 2.7/4 grade point (not particularly good; I
studied a lot, but not for school). My
mom sent me to Taylor University, in Upland Indiana starting in 1980/81 and I
worked for the university during the summers (programming in the IT department)
from my freshman through junior years.
An interesting thing happened during the summer of my junior year;
1) my
dad called and told me that business was bad so I needed to figure out a way to
either support myself of pay for college myself. It was 1983 and Jimmy Carter's
policies caused all the major pharmaceutical companies to cut R&D to almost
nothing.
2) The college IT department
had been concentrating on rewriting/modernizing the student information system
and was two years into the project.
My student
intern role in the previous and current summer was to maintain the old
system. The deans, VPs, and controller
respected me because I was effective at solving their problems, and because I
would often times work all night or all weekend when there was a crisis. They appreciated the effort and results. The director of IT transferred me to the new
system (under a lot of pressure to show results) and I worked on it for a month
and then there was my first career "surprise meeting” - I was invited to
join, and I didn't know why at the time. Here was a room full of the big bosses
- the guys in charge of all the departments I supported using the old system.
I
remember wondering "Why am I here?” - IT director made a mistake; he
didn't realize how unhappy the stakeholders were and he allowed them to invite
someone to "the meeting" who was too green to know when to shut up or
know what lie was supposed to be told.
They were meeting to review the progress of the new software and make
plans for when it would be available.
Again, "Why am I here?" - IT director gives the sales pitch,
and stakeholders ask questions. After
about 20 minutes of discussion, the controller turned to me and said,
"What do you think, James?" I'm sorry IT director, you should have
coached me or never let them ask me. I
said, "Well, I've worked on it for a month, so I'm familiar with what it's
trying to do - improve on the functions provided by the old system, but
<pause> I can't with a clear conscience recommend migrating to this new
system, if it's ever completed; I have friends in every one of your
departments; people I have helped do their job over the last couple of years,
and I don't want to see them more frustrated than they are now - in fact I'd
like to go back to improving the old system.
I don't think the new one will ever work." -
WOW - You could hear a
pin drop. I turned to look at the IT
director; pail white face, eyes full of anger.
I panned the room; lot's of people looking down, avoiding eye
contact. IT director tries to recover -
"James is only a junior and doesn't have a perspective on the full scope
or extent of our progress; I don't think his opinion represents the reality of
this project." I responded, "It's possible I'm completely wrong; I am
inexperienced." - for the stakeholders, those words fell on deft ears
though, as I represented a breath of fresh air after years of neglect; I had no
idea.
Needless to say, this message was not well received by anyone. The director of IT fired me an hour latter,
and then a couple of days latter he got fired and all of his staff quit. Needless to say, that left anyone who was
anybody at the school trying to figure out how to run the school. This was the first time I sent a message and
an executive got fired, not the last - it's happened a half a dozen times over
the years; mostly on purpose, this time by accident. Over the years I discovered that power, influence,
authority, and responsibility are not the same thing, and often found in
strange places.
They
promptly hired a new IT directory and me as his full time staff (with the
negotiated point that as long as the data processing for the school was
"happening", I could take as many classes as I wanted, tuition free,
and during working hours). The first
year was tough; I replaced five people and because the system was developed
in-house, you couldn't hire anyone who was up to speed; it was incredibly
fragile and about half the operations either didn't work at all or didn't work
well. I got tired of working so hard so
I automated the business processes and gave each department the power to fix
any common problem all by themselves.
This freed up most of my time and gave far greater power and
productivity to many of the employees in various departments. The new IT directory was hailed as
"remarkable" and I was considered the "Golden Child". I took every class that the University
offered that I was remotely interested in over the next four years, and spent
my free time programming for fun. I
wrote my own editor, a couple of compilers, half a dozen interpreters, and
significantly - a multi-session terminal control program that allowed an
operator to do several things at once.
We called it JOBHOG.
That was my
second job. My inspiration was the
mission of creating tools that empower people (especially myself); making their
world better. My hobby was applying
mathematical concepts to computer programs and learning to measure algorithm
performance. My boss was a seasoned ex
big bank executive and it was fun to be his right hand man. Years after I left he was a little chagrined
to admit that although I never seemed to be working on anything, he had to hire
three people to replace me AND he had to keep a close eye because things didn't
"just happen" any more. That
was funny.
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