Social media handle(s): Threads
A few words about me:
I'm a Senior Software Analyst / Developer in my late 50s and have worked in IT in pretty much every role for over 35 years.
Brought up in Liverpool, I'm currently living on the Isle of Man (sadly I'm not a millionaire!)
Outside of work, I enjoy listening to a wide range of music (but not jazz). My brain is absolutely crammed full of useless facts which I use to amaze/bore my closest friends.
Are there any professional experiences you've had that are quite unexpected compared to what you do nowadays?
Not as such, but I've worked in a wide variety of roles and business sectors including telecommunications, health software, finance, payroll, e-gaming, insurance and heavy manufacturing, so my professional experiences have been widely varied.
Is your background more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) or non-STEM related?
Definitely STEM-related.
Where did your professional journey start?
I did a college course in programming in Systems Analysis and Software Development.
How did you get into tech and what motivated you?
I was unemployed for 18 months in Liverpool in the 1980s when unemployment was very high. I managed to get a place on an IT-related college training course which paid a small wage, despite never having wanted to work with computers.
As part of the course, I spent a year at a work placement in the IT department in a large factory. They employed me at the end of the course and I ended up staying there for ten years, the last three of these as Computer Operations Manager.
"Pretty much everyone in tech is winging it to some extent."
Have you experienced any 'career in tech' challenges / stereotypes?
I've come up against the stereotype of the "geeky IT person with no interpersonal skills" a number of times. Yes, there a lot of people who fit this profile, but there are a wide range of personality types working in tech.
What you wish you knew before getting started in tech...
Pretty much everyone in tech is winging it to some extent.
What has been your biggest 'wow!' moment related to working in tech so far?
I worked for a company who wrote reporting software and ran a training course for a customer, showing them how to use it. At the end of the course we ran a workshop using the software to produce reports from the customers' own database. One of the attendees asked how he could extract a certain subset of information and I showed him. It took a couple of minutes to create the report and seconds to run it.
Everyone on the course was astounded because their existing method of getting this data took 12 hours to run and often crashed. The looks of absolute pleasure on their faces was an absolute high point of my time in IT.
What do you like / not like about working in tech?
I love that, in my current job, I am faced with new and interesting problems to solve every day.
What I don't like is when you put in a lot of work for an end user department on a big project and, when the project is complete, all the congratulations and kudos go to the end users and not the people who actually put the systems in place for them (and this has happened to me a number of times).
What's been your favourite / most memorable / funniest 'career in tech' moment so far?
My funniest moment was when a colleague, whose spelling was legendarily bad, misspelled a word which appeared in the message that appeared on the loading screens for everyone on a factory shop floor, changing an innocuous message to something outrageously offensive.
And to wrap up, is there any advice you'd like to give to others interested in a career in tech?
Remember your work / life balance!
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