My first computer was a Commodore 64. On it, I wrote my first computer program in Commodore BASIC. It generated a small dot on the screen that bounced from corner to corner. I say "wrote" but it was really spending all afternoon copying in line by line, a program from a magazine article. That was when I fell in love with computers. It was 1985
At the time it didn't occur to me. I was headed down the road as a lifelong computer nerd. My friends got me into my first Job with a computer rental company. My days were filled with visiting customer locations to set up computer systems I'd configured in the shop or reclaim previous installations. I did lots of on-site troubleshooting and repair .
I moved on from there to be the lead shop tech at a local computer store. Several years later I moved to the Bay area in California. I got a job for a multimedia company as a telephone technical support representative.
On the phone, I walked customers through the physical installation of aftermarket sound cards, video cards and CD-ROM drives as well as configuring the software that goes with them. The company was restructured. I was laid off.
I found a new job at a large data storage company, again as a telephone technical support agent. This company was devoured by a larger data storage company who valued my services. They kept me on.
About this time I completed my CIS/BIS degree.
At work I began taking on web development projects. I became a Java web developer. Hand coding Java server side applications for back end systems.
I developed, maintained & supported various Java servlets and JSP pages that interacted with an Oracle Enterprise Data Warehouse.
As my responsibilities increased, I was made team lead, where I directed the efforts of 3 remote web developers in Singapore.
With a large time difference between the US and Singapore, I was allowed to work from home.
Our projects were technically challenging. There were communication hurdles to overcome. We were an effective team and completed many projects.
There were 11 layoffs during the 19 years I was there; The 12th took my job.
I accepted a new job at a small business. My primary responsibilities include, but aren't limited to IT Help Desk and Marketing tasks as well as maintaining various web based business applications I built on the LAMP Stack.
The contrast between being a corporate web developer and a position wearing many hats with a small business, has given me an educational view into the many challenges small business owners face.