After 43 years in IT, I retired from the industry in January, 2024. I had 6 full time jobs, lasting from just under 1 year (my first job after University) to over 15 years. My last job, at the Samsung Austin R&D Center, was just under 11 years before I retired.
There are many, many people that have helped me along the way - way too many to list here but my IT career really started at the University of Victoria. After I took a computer science elective in my first year in 1976, I was hooked. That first class taught me Geritol (a stripped down assembly language) and WatIV, a Fortran IV implementation from the University of Waterloo. My first two years of university were limited to punch cards.
I learned to be flexible and never really knew where the next adventure would take me. From VMS system administration to Linux to storage to VMware and back to storage, I went with the flow, trying to add value wherever I went. I am grateful that in 43 years, I was never laid off. I generally ignored year-long plans and went into each day with the philosophy of "what is the most important thing that my employer needs me to do today?" This allowed me to adapt to the changes we had to deal with.
I put in many, many, many extra hours trying to better myself, learning new things that weren't offered in courses, or in courses that my employer wouldn't pay me to take. Many parts of IT will never be a 9-5 job.
The things I worked on at the end of my career hadn't been invented yet when I earned my Computer Science degree - things like Linux, NFS storage, and solid state disk drives. My first job was at a bank, developing software in a now-dead programming language, APL, that basically did what Excel does today. PCs as we know them hadn't been released to the world. The Internet didn't exist. Dial-up modems were at 300 bits per second. Disk drives holding 80MB were the size of washing machines.
I lived with continuous change throughout my career. It kept my brain active and is what I loved most about IT. It's probably what I will miss the most. Only time will tell if the rate of rate of change for the new generation is as fast as what my generation went through.
To the next generation - good luck, and I hope IT treats you as well as it's treated me.
There are many, many people that have helped me along the way - way too many to list here but my IT career really started at the University of Victoria. After I took a computer science elective in my first year in 1976, I was hooked. That first class taught me Geritol (a stripped down assembly language) and WatIV, a Fortran IV implementation from the University of Waterloo. My first two years of university were limited to punch cards.
I learned to be flexible and never really knew where the next adventure would take me. From VMS system administration to Linux to storage to VMware and back to storage, I went with the flow, trying to add value wherever I went. I am grateful that in 43 years, I was never laid off. I generally ignored year-long plans and went into each day with the philosophy of "what is the most important thing that my employer needs me to do today?" This allowed me to adapt to the changes we had to deal with.
I put in many, many, many extra hours trying to better myself, learning new things that weren't offered in courses, or in courses that my employer wouldn't pay me to take. Many parts of IT will never be a 9-5 job.
The things I worked on at the end of my career hadn't been invented yet when I earned my Computer Science degree - things like Linux, NFS storage, and solid state disk drives. My first job was at a bank, developing software in a now-dead programming language, APL, that basically did what Excel does today. PCs as we know them hadn't been released to the world. The Internet didn't exist. Dial-up modems were at 300 bits per second. Disk drives holding 80MB were the size of washing machines.
I lived with continuous change throughout my career. It kept my brain active and is what I loved most about IT. It's probably what I will miss the most. Only time will tell if the rate of rate of change for the new generation is as fast as what my generation went through.
To the next generation - good luck, and I hope IT treats you as well as it's treated me.
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