My first 7 jobs.....
So, one of the memes going around Facebook this week is to identify one's first seven jobs, marking them with the hashtag #first7jobs. Here are mine, with some explanation.
1) Newspaper carrier for the Buffalo Evening News (1977-81)
Back in the days of afternoon newspapers, teenagers such as myself would deliver newspapers door-to-door, and collect the weekly subscription fees. I delivered to my neighborhood on Parker Blvd. betwen Ellicott Creek Rd. and St. Clare Terrace (along with some houses on Ellicott Creek Rd.), and Parker Blvd. between St. Clare Terrace and Greenhaven Terrace. On Saturdays and Sundays, they published a morning paper, which I also delivered. Nowadays, papers are delivered in the early mornings by adults, using their automobiles.
2) Remote batch terminal operator, SUNY/Buffalo (1982-83)
I was the guy who loaded the punched card decks into the card reader, separated printouts as they came off the line printer, made sure the keypunch machines were working, and tried to keep the site neat and orderly. We had Harris 1600 series remote job entry equipment that communicated via the university's multiplexer network to the mainframe computers.
3) Graphics consultant, SUNY/Buffalo (1983-88)
This was a student assistant job, helping students (and faculty) with the various graphics packages and hardware we had at the time -- a Calcomp 936 plotter, Surface II, DIGRAF, DI-3000, Raster Technologies Model One, SAS/Graph, and TeX, to name but a few. We also had a Zeta 8 plotter, and eventually, we received 6 Sun workstations. (Old and obsolete technology by now.)
4) Programming intern, Allied Corp. (1986)
Thirty years ago this summer. A former boss of mine was now working at Allied Corp., and needed someone to work on a program that can be taken to trade shows, and to show that it was less expensive to use their brand of CFC solvents -- the Genetron product line. They gave me the equations; I wrote the Fortran code. Sadly, the program didn't do as well at trade shows as had been originally hoped, and the projet was scrapped.
5) SAS programmer for a doctoral dissertation student (1988-89)
My first job after graduation, and a freelance one. A graduate student was working on her doctoral disseration. The topic of the dissertation was to examine how undergraduate students learn. Students taking the "Methods of Inquiry"class took a survey about their study habits at the beginning of the class, and at the end of the class. My job was to take the survey results, display them in bar-chart format using SAS/Graph, and to help identify the key factors that were found to be most effective. (Apparently the class is still being taught, or had been as of 2006. See http://www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/archive/vol38/vol38n15/articles/FSEC.html.)
6) Night operator and data entry, Norrell Services (1989)
From what I remember, I worked jobs for two different clients through Norrell. For one of the clients, I went in on the weekends and performed tape backups of their computer on a weekly basis. For the other client, I did some data entry: typing in names and phone numbers from a telephone directory, in order to build a contact database for the client.
7) Programmer/Analyst, Battelle (1989-91)
My first "real" job (i.e. full-time). I was a subcontractor to TRW, which had a contract with the 88th Communications Group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to support one of their computer systems. They had between 20-30 locally-developed applications that were used by various system program offices (SPOs) in the Aeronautical Systems Center. They were written in Fortran and COBOL, interfaced with an Oracle database, and ran on a clustered environment running VAX/VMS (now OpenVMS). My job was to provide level-2 support on these applications: find the bugs, correct them, submit them to the software library, and prepare the required documentation (release notes, baseline change request).
1) Newspaper carrier for the Buffalo Evening News (1977-81)
Back in the days of afternoon newspapers, teenagers such as myself would deliver newspapers door-to-door, and collect the weekly subscription fees. I delivered to my neighborhood on Parker Blvd. betwen Ellicott Creek Rd. and St. Clare Terrace (along with some houses on Ellicott Creek Rd.), and Parker Blvd. between St. Clare Terrace and Greenhaven Terrace. On Saturdays and Sundays, they published a morning paper, which I also delivered. Nowadays, papers are delivered in the early mornings by adults, using their automobiles.
2) Remote batch terminal operator, SUNY/Buffalo (1982-83)
I was the guy who loaded the punched card decks into the card reader, separated printouts as they came off the line printer, made sure the keypunch machines were working, and tried to keep the site neat and orderly. We had Harris 1600 series remote job entry equipment that communicated via the university's multiplexer network to the mainframe computers.
3) Graphics consultant, SUNY/Buffalo (1983-88)
This was a student assistant job, helping students (and faculty) with the various graphics packages and hardware we had at the time -- a Calcomp 936 plotter, Surface II, DIGRAF, DI-3000, Raster Technologies Model One, SAS/Graph, and TeX, to name but a few. We also had a Zeta 8 plotter, and eventually, we received 6 Sun workstations. (Old and obsolete technology by now.)
4) Programming intern, Allied Corp. (1986)
Thirty years ago this summer. A former boss of mine was now working at Allied Corp., and needed someone to work on a program that can be taken to trade shows, and to show that it was less expensive to use their brand of CFC solvents -- the Genetron product line. They gave me the equations; I wrote the Fortran code. Sadly, the program didn't do as well at trade shows as had been originally hoped, and the projet was scrapped.
5) SAS programmer for a doctoral dissertation student (1988-89)
My first job after graduation, and a freelance one. A graduate student was working on her doctoral disseration. The topic of the dissertation was to examine how undergraduate students learn. Students taking the "Methods of Inquiry"class took a survey about their study habits at the beginning of the class, and at the end of the class. My job was to take the survey results, display them in bar-chart format using SAS/Graph, and to help identify the key factors that were found to be most effective. (Apparently the class is still being taught, or had been as of 2006. See http://www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/archive/vol38/vol38n15/articles/FSEC.html.)
6) Night operator and data entry, Norrell Services (1989)
From what I remember, I worked jobs for two different clients through Norrell. For one of the clients, I went in on the weekends and performed tape backups of their computer on a weekly basis. For the other client, I did some data entry: typing in names and phone numbers from a telephone directory, in order to build a contact database for the client.
7) Programmer/Analyst, Battelle (1989-91)
My first "real" job (i.e. full-time). I was a subcontractor to TRW, which had a contract with the 88th Communications Group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to support one of their computer systems. They had between 20-30 locally-developed applications that were used by various system program offices (SPOs) in the Aeronautical Systems Center. They were written in Fortran and COBOL, interfaced with an Oracle database, and ran on a clustered environment running VAX/VMS (now OpenVMS). My job was to provide level-2 support on these applications: find the bugs, correct them, submit them to the software library, and prepare the required documentation (release notes, baseline change request).