Program Designer
She enjoyed math challenges but had not planned a specific career path even through college graduation.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
TC was the second oldest of four children. Her mother was a homemaker before she died when TC was six years old, obviously a terrible misfortune for the entire family, especially for a six-year-old with limited ability to fully understand the situation. Fortunately, Grandma moved in and was able to assist raising the children.
TC’s father never attended college but was a very smart and skilled draftsman, creating blueprints of electrical systems within refineries. Her father never tried to directly influence TC’s adult career, but TC was indirectly influenced by his dedication to accomplish complete accuracy for every detail.
CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS OF AN ADULT CAREER
During TC’s childhood, she contracted polio during that pandemic, just before the Salk vaccine was available to the public. While hospitalized, TC was fascinated by the different caps worn by nurses, in recognition of their various nursing schools attended. TC appreciated their care and thought she might someday become a nurse.
SCHOOL DAYS
From her earliest days of elementary school through high school, TC was self-motivated to be an excellent student in every subject, not just arithmetic / math which she was able to understand and enjoy much more than her classmates. Among the 125 graduates of her academically competitive high school class, TC is amused how she so clearly recalls the names and ranks of the smart ones in her class, she among them. But TC was not only an attentive academic, she also participated in several girls’ varsity team sports.
COLLEGE
TC never doubted that she would proceed to college, despite not having a specific adult career in mind as she was completing her three college applications, all to Ivy League level universities. Her goal was to graduate from a highly respected university, which would presumably lead to obtaining a good job within an interesting career.
Despite TC’s class rank, quite fine SAT score and excellent teacher recommendations, TC was accepted by only one of the three schools to which she had applied.
Editor’s note – At the time, most of the “Ivies” admitted men only, while concurrently having a formal affiliation with a nearby women’s college – a ‘Sister School’ (e.g., Harvard’s affiliation with Radcliff) – which was also highly selective in its admission process. Though it was never proven, it was then widely believed by high school guidance counselors that the ‘Sister Schools’ secretly shared information about their respective applicants and decided to avoid competition among themselves, by attempting to equitably distribute the best applicants among the ‘Sister Schools’. This seemed to be the only logical explanation for how students with the highest level of relevant achievements could be rejected by any school.)
TC’s self confidence in her academic abilities and motivation, was not shaken by her two college rejection letters, even though during her first semester, her grade in college English, was poor by her standards. However, TC pushed ahead to meet her personal high standards during the rest of her college years, focusing on the mathematics curriculum along with some interesting political science courses, which she thought – very briefly – could be useful if she would later apply to a law school.
TC mastered the available math courses but never took a course directly related to the emerging field of computer technology, though she was aware that a classmate had studied ‘Fortran’ – then a new development in computer science: a high-level computer programming language used especially for numeric and scientific computing. (Editor’s note per Wikipedia – Fortran was originally developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications, and subsequently came to dominate scientific computing. Examples of its use are numerical weather prediction, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, geophysics, computational physics, crystallography, and computational chemistry. Fortran’s design was the basis for many other programming languages; among the better-known is BASIC with several syntax cleanups, notably better logical structures, and other changes to work more easily in an interactive environment. Fortran is still the most prevalent computer language among scientists, because so many applications for their work are still available in Fortran and function correctly. BASIC, too, is still widely used because it is easily understood. Both languages are readily available around the world and appropriately documented.)
As TC’s college graduation date approached, she still had no career path in mind beyond knowing that she would soon need a job to earn money for her personal expenses, especially in a city with a high cost of living. TC’s math advisor suggested that she pursue a career as an actuary.
Editor’s note – An ‘Actuary’ is a business professional who deals with the measurement and management of risk and uncertainty. Actuaries provide assessments of financial security systems, with a focus on their complexity, their mathematics, and their mechanisms. For example, following a major hurricane causing significant property damage across many states, actuaries employed by insurance companies would need to estimate long-term levels of such damage to accurately price property insurance, set appropriate insurance company, financial reserves and design appropriate re-insurance and capital management strategies.
TC politely thanked her advisor but quickly concluded that she would be bored just “analyzing numbers” all day so she never pursued his suggestion.
FIRST ADULT JOB IS NEVER A BINDING COMMITMENT
Within several weeks of her college graduation, TC found employment with an insurance rating bureau to assist in its annual insurance rate calculations. After three weeks of training, TC began to flowchart and to write programs to collect and format transaction data into reports for analysis by the actuaries, but then never got to do anything more substantial. Seeing no interesting and challenging future in such an occupation, TC pursued other work opportunities and found employment at a consulting firm, where she stayed for many years while working in a main office as well as other cities, one in Europe. TC’s daily responsibilities there progressed, over time, from debugging computer programs to developing ‘compiler’ programs, which converted handwritten computer programs to machine language. TC really liked consulting there because it was team-work, an interdependency for learning, designing, implementing, fixing a client’s computer application – where the jobs were a whole new type of technical career.
CAREER CHALLENGE – KEEPING UP WITH THE EVER-CHANGING TECHNOLOGY
Editor’s note – It has often been said that “The only constant is change!” Change rattles some people, who prefer to learn something and then continue to apply that knowledge, which never evolves. Examples include: a lazy history teacher could focus on the Civil War and just discuss the same famous battles, year after year. Lawyers graduating from law school before the late 1960s never had to study the concept of “strict liability” (i.e., liability / responsibility without proof of fault) for an inherently dangerous product such as asbestos. But by 1970, most states adopted new laws holding anyone involved in the manufacture, distribution, and sale of asbestos, responsible for lung damage and death to anyone harmed by the effect of inhaling asbestos fibers upon the lungs. Before then, a wholesale distributor who bought the asbestos in bulk from Johns Manville and then sold it to the retail hardware store, which sold it in a small quantity to the ultimate user, could not be liable to the user because there was no contract relationship between the consumer and the distributor. But then the law changed and both insurance companies and lawyers had to adapt. Similarly, legal secretaries used to ‘take shorthand’ and then type letters from those notes but then computers were developed for offices, including spreadsheet programs to organize and calculate information. Secretaries had to learn new skills or lose their jobs.
For TC, the constantly changing technology involved with computer tools, presented interesting and fun, extended challenges which she looked forward to mastering and solving.
Editor’s note – Perhaps the reader knows folks who have fun completing mind games such as ‘E (electronic) games’, crossword puzzles and recently, ‘Wordle’. Then imagine your career satisfaction if your work activities often involved the same amount of fun, like a professional baseball player hitting a home run.
Each new computer hardware (e.g., PC and Mac computers, Android, and Apple mobile devices) needed an entirely new set of software to perform the same processing functions. TC enjoyed learning new (at the time) computer languages, especially COBOL (an acronym for ‘common business-oriented language’), developed by computer scientists from universities for mainframe computers to be used for banking, other commercial applications, the government, and defense. COBOL compilers became TC’s specialty. Developing compilers for then and still current common programming languages (e.g., Fortran, C and Ada for military planes then and many other critical non-military applications now) had become one of her employer’s consulting specialties.
Editor’s Note: While widely used starting in the 1960s, COBOL is rather slowly being eliminated by the organizations which still need it for many legacy applications for banking that are too difficult and costly to re-invent.
The appearance of new technology and newer implementation methods are examples of having to keep up with almost daily technology changes.
Editor’s note – Other stories within this collection, discuss different careers within the world of computer science. For example, see ‘Cloud Computing’ and ‘Software Engineer’ and ‘apps’ for modern devices like smartphones, pads, watches, etc. TC’s occupation is best described as a ‘Computer Program Designer’ which is like an architect for computer programs, differing from ‘Computer Programmer’ which is more involved with coding to implement the program designer’s plan.
CAREER CHALLENGE – EMPLOYER FAILS TO ADAPT TO CUSTOMER NEEDS
When considering how TC devoted herself in school to learning her coursework ‘inside and out’ to gain the subject knowledge and achieve a high grade, it is not surprising that she was always a loyal employee, willing to deal with difficult job situations such as having to travel to clients’ business locations. As long as TC was involved in interesting, evolving work, respected for her abilities, and paid fairly, she easily remained dedicated to her daily tasks. But, when an employer’s business doesn’t attract enough customers to be sufficiently profitable, even the best employees can find themselves unemployed. Such was the fate of TC.
ESTABLISHING A GOOD REPUTATION OPENS UNEXPECTED DOORS
Often a longtime co-worker, who has moved from working with you to another position, is likely to call you, while remembering your reputation for a high level of performance, and then learning of a new business opportunity for someone with your background. So, TC had earned the opportunity to be employed in a position that was not program development; instead, it was QA (‘Quality Assurance’) and maintenance of an existing set of programs for a commercial application. Some might describe such a development as ‘Luck’ but often, the unexpected offer is not mere, random luck, but as here for TC, “experience and preparation meet opportunity.”
Fortunately, TC’s level of dedication to her niche within the field of computer technology, were easily transferrable to other employers – via cohorts often – so, TC was never unemployed for more than a few weeks between jobs.
CAREER SATISFACTION
Looking back at her career path, TC feels blessed to have been born with a brain which could comprehend and enjoy math problems – at the right time for computer processing.
Then, not knowing where her math interest and abilities might lead, TC found a career which was a perfect match for her skills and interest in problem solving. The ‘icing on the cake’ was her opportunity to work with like minded individuals who were supportive rather than competitive among themselves.
A MINOR PARALLEL CAREER
A decade after college, TC started a secondary, concurrent career as a pottery apprentice. Soon she progressed to being an accomplished artist for several decades, enjoying presenting several local shows of her pottery, with colleagues.
