Time to move on with no regrets

My IT career was never supposed to happen. In 1976, at the age of 19, I had planned to switch jobs to one that paid more than my accounting position at Dowell Sclumberger in London, save money, and go to California to complete my education.

Fate, or whatever you prefer to call it, had other ideas for me. When I presented my manager with my notice letter, he told me that the DP (It was called Data Processing before becoming ‘IT’) department was looking to hire a trainee.

I had resisted computer classes at school when I was 16. I had no interest. My knowledge of computers was what I’d seen on television and in films – people in white lab coats going along banks of large machines, flipping buttons. That wasn’t for me.

At the time, it was possible to get programming jobs in America with just 2-3 years of experience under your belt, so I owed it to myself to have the conversations and take the entry test. I don’t recall what they called it, but it was logic-based.

I scored the company’s second-highest mark on the test, which worried them greatly. The only person to beat my score was an abject failure. Why, you might ask, did they persist in using it?!

What Was My Fascination With America?

To step back a little, both of my parents had a sister who married an American Air Force man. Actually, one introduced the other. So, in my earliest memories, I had two cool American uncles. My 6 cousins alternated between being American and English, depending on where they last lived. Their accents would change in a matter of months!

My parents always talked about moving to this country, but their dream was shattered when my Mum was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the age of 38. She would need but never be allowed to have medical insurance in the USA.

My dream never died.

Early career

I learnt from manuals and by being given simple programs to write. It was quite slow going. I had 4 jobs in 3 ? years. When I started the second one, I thought I knew how to do things. They did everything differently. That was a shock and I never truly settled. Job three crumbled around me after the company I work for received what was then the highest ever UK Corporate fine. Job four, at Dresser, Europe, was where my career took off.

When I heard about interviews for a job in New York City, I went along. I got the job!

Career Progression In The USA

My job title went from Programmer to Programmer Analyst, Systems Engineer, Systems Analyst, Business Analyst, and then hybrid BA/QA. I always had an interest in Process Analysis and did a few small special projects related to that, but it was never a job title.

By the end of 1999, I moved away from Mainframe work and got my first taste of working with Trading and Compliance systems, via Charles River Development. This was a bigger shift than any title change. (Thank you, Mustakeem (Musto) Khan for trusting me to manage the initial Bank of New York CRD implementations!)

Over the years, I saw many colleagues unable to get jobs by the time they were in their late 40s to mid-50s. By the time I reached that age, I instantly knew that if my interviewers were in their 20s or 30s, I had wasted my time showing up. It’s pretty much beyond dispute that ageism is strong in IT. But I soldiered on.

In the last several years, I took some time to try something else – running the blog at Curatti – before realising that I was a poor marketer. When I tried to get back into my long-time profession, it proved very difficult. Nobody wanted an older pro with a long gap in their resume until COVID opened the door to remote work. But after two 6-month gigs, that work rapidly dried up.

Next Chapter

I have now studied to become a Notary Public with a view to being a Mobile Notary specialising in Real Estate documents. The attention to detail learnt from my many IT disciplines will stand me in good stead for this semi-retirement career. I expect to begin this new chapter sometime between the end of September and mid-October.

I will remain open to speaking with a select few long-trusted recruiters but will be happy to no longer deal with the clear majority who are truly clueless.

My career has allowed me to meet, work with, and become friends with many wonderful people. I wouldn’t have changed anything about it. But as soon as I reached my decision, I relaxed just a little more.

It’s important to know when to turn a page, and that time has come for me.

Thank you to everyone I’ve worked with along the way. For however much I enjoyed most of my work, a clear majority of my better memories are related to people.

?

?