Wittenberg University
Upon graduation from school, I obtained a job as a programmer at Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH. While there, I began my first professional programming. We used a Prime Computer (no longer around) and wrote everything in Prime Information (one of many flavors of the PICK database model). The software package we used was called Colleague and was written by a company called Datatel.
Sinclair Community College
From there, I got a new job at Sinclair
Community College in Dayton, OH.
This site was just about to begin migrating from a home grown database to
Colleague (the same software as was used at Wittenberg), so I was the
perfect addition to their team.
While I was eminently qualified for this job, I was bored by the lack of
responsibility, due to a highly structure organization that would not let
me work to my potential.
After a year and a half of feeling under-appreciated, I began looking for
a new job.
Stotts Friedman
My next employment was as the Data Processing Manager at a company called Stotts Friedman (also in Dayton, OH). While I was a manager, I had a department of one (me). Oh well, it was a good job. hen I got there, we immediately began migrating from their old database, to a package called Prelude (a PICK application that we ran on a McDonald Douglas computer. After getting the data all moved over, I began enhancing the programs and writing new routines. When the company was sold to Sager, I moved on to Ashwood Computer Co, the people who sold Stotts Friedman with their computer.
Ashwood Computer Co.
While at Ashwood, I did several computer installations, but spent 99%
of my time farmed out as a contractor to the Cincinnati
Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA).
While there, I enhanced numerous applications on the software they were using,
a package called ___.
It was an interesting time there, but it was a strange working relation.
I rarely saw the people I worked 'for' (my boss) because I was spending all
of my time with the people I worked 'with' (the client).
Overall, I found that the people who worked for CMHA's computer department were
pretty good people.
The surprising thing is that most of us were contractors.
CMHA did not have the money budgeted to pay for a good computer staff (we tend to cost more
than the average employee), so they hired contractors who were paid from a different
budget.
After 5 years, I was beginning to burn out. I was driving a lot of miles every day through Cincinnati rush hour and was concerned that the PICK database was, on a whole, declining in popularity. I felt I needed to move to an employer who would take me into more main stream databases (like Oracle or DB2). Surprisingly, I received two phone calls within days of each other. One was from a headhunter who was given my name, and the other was from a former co-worker at CMHA. The headhunter was looking for someone to be the #2 computer person at US Playing Card (the #1 manufacturer of playing cards in the world). The former co-worker was now working for IBM at a steel factory. After interviewing with both, I chose to go with...
IBM
of course!
I am now a programmer/analyst for IBM Global Services and work at
AK Steel in Middletown, OH.
I have been working there since May of 1998, and have been a key
player in the development of the Purchasing and Maintenance system
under a project called TEAMS.
We are re-writing the existing Purchasing and Maintenance software,
(a home-grown package which is written in UniVerse), using a product called BLACKSMITH.
BLACKSMITH is unique in that you can develop your applications in UniVerse,
yet save your data on multiple platforms.
In our case, we are saving data in both UniVerse files and Oracle tables.
Our goal is to migrate all data and functionality from SWAMI to TEAMS and
to have all data stored in Oracle.
Check 'n Go
After an 8-year stint with IBM, I spent a year at Check 'n Go,
the worlds largest payday loan company.
After an intense year which started with me as a contractor working with
their retail systems, I quickly was hired as the senior programmer.
I turned a nightmarish system into a stable, reliable easily maintainable one.
Then, to my shock, I was given a review that ranked me as "average".
It was at that moment that I began looking for a new place that would recognize
my contributions.
Amazingly, just after this, a former co-worker from CMHA (see above) called me
to see if I would be interested in a change, to a company called Dayton Superior.
After he put in a good word for me, I was given an interview.
When I asked how long it would be before I would hear from them, they said it
would be 2-3 weeks.
2 days later, they gave me a generous offer.
Dayton Superior
Thus far, this jobs has been great!