tags: [‘career’, ‘DevOps’] draft: true date: “2020-02-09T16:29:10-06:00” title: “Career as a Feedback Loop”

Career as a Feedback Loop: serial DevOps? Nomadic ramblings on the attention economy of cloud, web, Internet native

I Couldn’t Get a Job with my Degree!

After graduation with my B.S. Mechanical Engineering from Boston University, I began my search for work. It was during a recession. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, I sent out over a hundred resumes with customized cover letters.

I found jobs through the B.U. student employee board.

I was going through Internet withdrawal, but there was no way to fix that at the time because it required government or research sponsorship to the classified network.

I read Microcosm by George Gilder and questioned myself, had I chosen the wrong degree?

I started to apply to a different set of companies: the software industry.

Some of the only feedback was from Lotus, after two rounds of phone interviews, they wrote something like: “We appreciate your skill set as an engineer and your attitude, but we don’t know why you applied for this job.” I also applied to Thinking Machines, no response that I can recall other than having talked to one of their sales people who called Delphi customer support line one night I was working the phones alone. I got to an on-site interview for Parametric Technologies, an object-oriented computer aided drawing (and physical modeling) software package on Unix workstations, but even though I had exceeded my Computer Science coursework for my degree, it was only a few courses and I wasn’t cut out to be a software engineer.

I was angry, not at myself, because I knew I could work in any technology industry, but it didn’t feel like I could find the right leadership, mentor, or organization that was willing to train or take a chance. The recession made me continue to plug away at things try harder because nothing was generous except my parents, but I didn’t want to return home to live with them.

I Did Odd Jobs and learned how to probe.

I Started in a New Industry

I bootstrapped and self-taught new skills

I taught myself PERL 4.0.36, I remember the version because I compiled it.