My First Computer Jobs are probably the most memorable because the industry was so young and booming. And because I was so excited. I had just learned to program and was very excited to secure a job doing what I absolutely loved doing. What followed had many peaks and not too many valleys, but I loved every minute of it.
NIPSSA – My very first of computer jobs
Welcome to the world of acronyms. The US government is full of them and the military more so. This agency was a division of the Navy, not a dog food company. I applied for a GS-5 entry-level job. GS-5 is pretty low on the government pay scale. And I think I was one of over 200 people that apply for one of the jobs they were offering.
A series of tests came first, followed by personal interviews. They ended up hiring 10. Alas, I was not one of them BUT the interviewing supervisor liked me and offered me a steno job working in the department. I almost turned him down. I was working at a pretty easy steno job and really wanted to get into programming. But I continued to talk to this supervisor and finally, he promised me that he would help me learn the programming job IF I would do the steno job for one year.
He kept his word and included me in some of the training classes and gave me typing work preparing material for the classes. With the typing task, I was able to learn the material. And he started to give me small after hour programming tasks to do at night to learn more. It was a busy and interesting year and I watched the calendar for the end of year mark.
Year Two
Alas, just before my year was up, my supervisor’s boss decided he wanted me to be his secretary. He offered me an upgrade. It was a nightmare. First of all, I didn’t like the man. Secondly, his new office was a very small room with close quarters, no windows, AND he smoked smelly cigars that I was allergic to. And third, darn it, I wanted that computer trainee job. I sort of threw a small hissy fit and managed to stay in my original slot and became a programmer trainee at the end of the year. It meant another year at the GS-5 level, but it was worth it.
I worked my butt off over the next four years advancing up the ladder to GS-11. I had my own team of trainees and my own major project. It was great, but after five years in Washington, DC, away from all my friends and family in California, and with my son off in the Marine Corp, I gave in to loneliness and moved back to California.
Back to California – Searching for Computer Jobs #2
By the time I got back to California, I had pretty sound programming credentials, but there wasn’t yet a lot of computer jobs happening. The only government transfer job that was available was in Monterey, CA at the Weather Station there. I went for the interview but it really didn’t sound very interesting. Plus Monterey was 90 miles away from where my family was, so I would have still been alone. Although Monterey is a beautiful city. And I could stay on my government career track. They were offering a GS-13. Pluses and minuses to consider.
I continued to scour the want ads and the government positions but wasn’t finding much that looked interesting. Finally, I found a job opening at LMSC. Another acronym. That stands for Lockheed Missiles and Space Company. The Programming Department there was huge and the computer equipment and room even bigger. I think the department had over 100 programmers that were broken into teams of ten or so.
My computer jobs at LMSC
I had a group interview with five team leads. It was a bit confusing, and the actual work not very well defined. Of course, having to do with Missiles and Space, a lot was secured information. But they offered me a job. The pay offered way good and the location was perfect.
I stayed there for several years working on various projects, none too exciting, but I was programming and also getting into program designing. I can’t talk much about it all because of security, but we were attempting to combine a database to be used by both the Navy and the Air Force. And the meetings became hysterical. Of course, I had to keep a straight face, but they would go something like this.
I would say something like, “ok, let’s call this item a widget”. The Navy would say, “oh no, that can’t be a widget, a widget is round”. The Air Force would say “no, you’re crazy, that is a widget, you have to call yours something else”. It went on and on like this, week after week, and I don’t recall whether there was ever a final conclusion. I think I got moved off to another more pressing project.
My nightmare with the punch cards
At that time, input to computer programs was still being done with punched cards. But the cards had to punched by Union Operators. We, as programmers, had to code everything on “coding sheets”. All hand printed neatly into little boxes. After being able to punch my own cards at NIPSSA, this was torture, and invoked writers cramp. And worse yet was the fact that at the Navy, zeroes were always designated as zeroes with a line slashed thru them.
Well at LMSC, they did just the opposite. The letter O was designated on these coding sheets with a slash through it. Needless to say, I wrote hundreds of lines of code with the words “move” “compute” “sort” “go to” etc. all coded incorrectly on my coding sheets. And consequently all punched incorrectly on the cards. They had to be all re-punched and I was not allowed to do it. I had to re-code them on the sheet correctly. I ended up working a lot of late hours when I could sneak onto a keypunch machine and fix them. But I was only allowed to use that machine for 20-minutes at a time.
A Hardware Upgrade and Introduction to the CRT input device and IMS
It was indeed a very happy day for me when LMSC installed a new computer system that had keyboard input devices. This was to allow us to build the Navy/Air Force combined database system. The new system was called IMS and required another level of learning. It was a new programming platform and the computer system software was not yet very stable. I was assigned to the project early and ended up spending quite a bit of time with the system programmers during the installation/trial period. I was learning both the application programming and the system programming. When an opening came up in the system programming group, I was selected to fill it. It was a promotion, but very boring. I liked the application programming side of things better.
However, as it turned out both IMS and its counter-part CICS programmers became in high demand and I was “recruited” by another company at a pretty substantial pay increase. LMSC had been withholding my last pay increase because I needed a College Degree to move into that pay scale in their system. I was doing a higher-level job at a lower level pay, so I decided to take the new job offer.
Not the best choice of Computer Jobs
That next job turned out to be a bit of a bust. It was a start up company attempting to build and sell a computer to compete against IBM’s computer. I lasted there a year with totally unclear plans or direction as to what I was to be doing. The first month, I installed the IMS system onto their hardware, and got it running, but after that it was just a big question mark.
But then a really fun one
Then the recruiters came along again and offered me a job at another new company called ATARI. And that’s another story, so Go here to read it.
