[geeks] informal survey

[David Cantrell]

On Sun, Sep 09, 2001 at 08:14:12PM -0500, Bill Bradford wrote:

> Speaking of which, "informal survey"
> 
> "What do you do for a living, and whats your "history" ?"

Right now, I'm a project manager for BBC Internet Services, working with the
developers.  The group is responsible for development of large-scale and/or
'business critical' online applications, both as part of www.bbc.co.uk and
other internal stuff.  Of course, even though the ops guys don't fall under
my remit, I still need to work with them too.

Previously, I did a year as a network and database admin trainee with a
small consultancy, mainly working for estate agents and a Lloyds of London
medical malpractice underwriter; several years as a web developer-cum-
sysadmin (using NT, SQL Server, Java and Cold Fusion) for publishing
companies; a year or so as a developer for a small business ISP, where I
switched to Unixy systems and learnt lots of perl (which is odd - they
took me on for my NT and Java skills); then head of technology for the
UK office of a large web agency, where I did some sysadmin, some dev, and
got into security when they set up a specialist security team; when they
dot-bombed, I did six months as a developer and security person at
another ISP, doing broadband via satellite, which also went down the toilet
despite having a working product, making a profit on each installation, and
having a full order book - it failed because we needed to raise finance to
fund ramping up production of the hardware so we could satisfy those
orders.  Stupid fscking VCs.

I was at first a bit wary of getting into project management, as I didn't
want to become non-technical and I've never done it before.  But I still
get to be a techie, just concentrating more on analysis and design than on
banging out the code.  And unlike many other PMs, I have my colleagues'
respect because I know what I'm talking about.  I still write code, I just
don't do it at work, so all my coding is on projects that *I* choose, and
it's a lot more enjoyable.

I'm really happy here.  They're a great bunch of people with an absolute
minimum of pointy hair.  We work up to a standard as opposed to down to a
budget.  It feels good to be working in a respected public service instead
of just for greedy uncaring shareholders.  And, because part of my role is
to advise 'customers' on what they can and can't (and should and shouldn't)
do, I get to have real influence on the shape of the finished product.

I took a pay cut of nearly 20% to get this job.  OK, admittedly I was
unemployed at the time, but I did get offered more elsewhere.

I'm not sure what my dream job would be, but ...

Only possible in my dreams:
  tour guide on Olympus Mons;
Only if I inherit millions from some rich relative I don't know I have*:
  fund and direct a lab where talented people can work on interesting
  free-as-in-speech computery projects, whilst drawing a salary which is
  competitive with industry, and where the job is reasonably secure;

I have *no* clue what sort of vaguely attainable job I'd lust over the
most.

* - I don't do the lottery.  Because I am numerate.

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

  Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ``I know, I'll use
  regular expressions.'' Now they have two problems.        -- jwz