I’ve worked in tech all my career. Because I started decades ago, it’s interesting to read about some of the jobs that I had – because some were intro/early work for (at the time) cutting-edge technologies, that are quite commonplace today. Below are some examples:
Utilizing Microprocessors
My first job out of college was for the defense division of FMC Corporation (San Jose, CA) – that built armored personnel carriers (low-end tanks). I had a degree in electrical engineering, and was part of an effort to rip out electrical circuitry from these vehicles and replace the circuitry with microprocessors running software. The benefit of using software/microprocessors was enabling easy future functionality enhancements (through software upgrades) rather than requiring updating circuitry.
Because it was a defense contractor, we had to learn/use a defense-approved software language (Ada) – so I had to take a class at a local junior college. The project was successful, but it’s interesting to think that I was part of the early utilization of software on microprocessors.
Distributed Processing
At the same company above, I had to crunch on a lot of data to get needed results (on a later project). In that era (mid 1980s) there weren’t online server farms to give you the complex results you might need. So what I did was: worked evenings, broke my data up into small chunks, loaded it onto different employees’ work computers, had these computers crunch the data, then collected and compiled the results.
This gave me the results I needed, but it’s interesting to note that – at the time – work computers didn’t have usernames and passwords. So I was able to access 10-20 work computers (of other people) to crunch, and obtain, the results that I needed. Distributed processing wasn’t a technology that I fed / helped develop, but utilizing a bunch of coworkers’ computers is an interesting side story.
In-Seat Video
My next job was for United Airlines (south of SF). I was still an electrical engineer and worked for the Interiors group – so I had responsibility for anything electrical within the airplane cabin. United was innovative at the time (early 1990s) so I was involved with two interesting projects:
- Helping define the Boeing 777. United was the first 777 purchaser, so we had input into the cabin content and configuration. (Side note – I remember being on a 777 test flight, and buzzing the Grand Canyon.)
- Driving ‘in-seat video’ – dedicated screens embedded in the back of the airplane seat in front of each passenger (a new innovative concept). Lots of visits to Boeing (and Microsoft), plus lots of visits to a contractor in England who was helping with the video screens.
It’s interesting to me that, today, seatback video screens on airplanes are common – but I was a big contributor to the initial development / deployment of those screens.
The other interesting thing about my job at United is that – because my job was more providing direction than doing hands-on engineering – I transitioned from being an engineer to being (sort of) an architect, then to being a project manager.
Voicemail
Back in the day, if you wanted to have a recorded message from a missed telephone caller, you needed an at-home device – essentially a cassette tape recorder connected to your home phone – to capture that message. In the late 1990s, I worked for a company, Octel (SF south bay) – a ‘voicemail startup’ that built racks of equipment for telecommunication companies to provide voicemail service to customers. This allowed people to not need at-home devices, and this technology also fed recorded messages for mobile phones – which were then becoming a common product.
To me, it’s interesting (almost embarrassing) to say that I worked for a startup that provided voicemail – because voicemail is such an everyday thing today.
Lucent bought our company, but was more interested in the voicemail product and worldwide support offices than in the employees. I originally hired into Octel as a project manager but, with lots of people leaving week by week after the Lucent purchase, I ended up becoming a team manager for two teams at the same time. Also interesting – I had lots of Octel stock (mostly vested) which could have been worth >$100K (a lot at that time), but I ended up pocketing less than $400 when I left the company.
Optical Networking
My next job was with an optical networking company. At that time, data networking was done through copper cables – which had a low limit on data capacity and speed. Cisco (south SF bay) bought an optical networking startup (fiber optic cables) in the north SF bay area (Petaluma) – which was at the time the highest-priced tech acquisition to date.
As you can imagine, throwing lots of money at a startup in the modest north SF bay area gave the founders a ton of money in their pockets. One of the founders bought a major portion of the Lake Sonoma shoreline. Another bought businesses in Petaluma, including the Phoenix Theater – a music venue. Another quit working, traveled the world, and blogged about his adventures (blogging was new at the time). To show off (I guess) some employees had expensive cars (Ferrari’s, etc) delivered in the company parking lot. Unfortunately, I hired in post-acquisition (and didn’t pocket gobs of money) – though Cisco did pay to move my family from San Jose to Petaluma.
I helped refine and support the company’s optical networking devices. It was a good job, in a good town – and optical networking significantly advanced data flow on multiple fronts.
Ecommerce
A few years later, I sought and took a local job at an ecommerce startup in Petaluma. Petaluma is small enough that I had a short commute, and even bicycled to work (after acquiring a good bicycle).
[One side story is that – at the optical networking company mentioned above – they had a ‘bike to work’ day. I was close enough to do this, but didn’t have a bike (my old-ish bike was still in storage). So I rollerbladed to work – down the shoulder of a busy-ish road, past Lagunitas Brewery. This required me to carry shoes, and rollerblade back. Funny story.]
Anyway – the local e-commerce company was interesting, but it wasn’t really going anywhere. Plus, I found myself butting heads with the director of engineering – who wasn’t doing the right thing to move things forward successfully. I eventually got laid off – because I was pushing for the right path, which wasn’t in line with what the engineering director wanted. No big deal, but what is sad is that some people (including the dad of my son’s good friend) stayed with the company, but didn’t pocket any meaningful money after the startup acquisition. This startup took more than a decade to get acquired – which is a long time. I didn’t pay money out of pocket to keep my ‘startup stock’ – which was the right decision – because it didn’t provide any meaningful monetary benefit.
Cloud Computing
I then worked for a CAD company (Autodesk – San Rafael, then SF) – and one of the efforts I drove was to move the ‘crunching’ (CAD rendering) from local computers to the cloud (such as Amazon). The concept was – don’t require users to have powerful computers (instead, crunch it in the cloud). Not a crazy concept, but it made sense – and was innovative at the time. So, part of what I did was to ensure our rendering functionality worked in the cloud. It all went well, but it was a big effort. This was the early 2000s, so cloud computing was kind of new.
Again, it was interesting to be part of the move from local computing to cloud computing – especially at an acknowledged CAD company.
Summary
So, at the end of the day, I find it interesting that I –
- Moved across ‘cutting-edge’ (at the time) tech companies, over the years
- It didn’t occur to me to instead launch/join my own happening startup, to make money enabling/building young ‘that era’ technology
I’ve made good money, but it possibly could have been better. Oh well, life is what it is…