Over Achieving

107

Focusing on College in July of Nineteen Ninety-Two, I was quickly the apple of the computer instructor's eye and I wowed and amazed him with my understanding of logical routines and computer obscurities. Going through the text book we came across the statistic that a company could only expect to complete ten lines of debugged code per day, per person, for any project. I felt that number was low, but the instructor pointed out it included systems analysis & designing, documentation writing, and testing time, not just the time it took to write the code. I still felt that was a little low and so the teacher decided to challenge me. Our first project was to write a stock tracking program, where the user would manually input various stock codes and daily numbers and the program would provide various averages which the user could use to decide if it was a good time to buy or sell. These were the minimum needs but we'd get brownie points if it exceeded those needs. Given the complexity of the task, he broke the class into two groups who would each work on the project separately... And then there was me: I'd be working alone. We had two weeks for the project and he wished us luck and offered to be available to provide any help required.

The following week I came in with the printed documentation I had finished for the program. I handed it to him along with a disk. He asked what the disk was for and I said, somewhat confused by his question as I thought it would be obvious, that it was the program. I also gave him my time sheet noting how many hours I had been working on it and when during the past week. I noted that I had averaged thirty lines of debugged code... an hour. He couldn't believe it and did the math himself assuming I had never slept, visited with friends, or eaten since he had assigned the task. Even with all of that factored in, he figured I had produced around three hundred lines of code per day. He made sure I remained as a group of one for all future coding projects during the class so I wouldn't just quickly put out the code and leave any team mates in the dust without them having a chance to code themselves. I thought that made sense.

Toward the end of the Summer semester came a surprise call from VocRehab. They had worked out a one month trial job for me at RMT. I would work at the complex on tasks they needed, but given the red tape of them being a national corporation, rather than my working there and being paid by them, and then them asking for reimbursement on my initial pay, VocRehab was going to pay me directly for the first month I worked there. I would be like a free 'independent contractor' for the company as they got to review my skills and decide if they wanted to hire me. I readily accepted the offer and my counselor noted that I'd need to get myself some formal clothing for my time working there. That threw me for a loop as I had none, but told him it wouldn't be a problem.

I asked Daina if she could loan me the money to buy a work wardrobe and I'd pay her back once I got my VocRehab check. Enthusiastically, she agreed and we were soon off to thrift shops in search of what I could find. Ultimately we got me about five short sleeved button up shirts. Given how light the material was, I would need to go back to the ACE bandage binding technique and even wear an additional white tee shirt under the work shirt to better disguise the presence of the ACE bandage, itself. Then we picked out a bunch of neck ties that would go along with the shirts and Daina, thankfully, knew how to tie them and showed me. Once again for ventilation, I hoped the short sleeved shirts wouldn't look out of place as I'd start the job at the tail end of August. While I still had trepidations about my ability to get a job at a corporation as I'd known in the past they would often require passing a physical as an employment requirement, I pushed that fear aside for now.

My work uniform set, I next had to deal with school.

I could take my Finals the week before the end of the semester and be done with my classes a week early so they wouldn't interfere with the start of my new job. But I would have to switch to night classes for the Fall semester to ensure there wouldn't be a conflict for the last two weeks of my one month trial job. Further, one of my degree requirements was to perform a 'work study' job. This would normally take place once I was reaching the end of my college time and just before I would get my degree. But as the opportunity was too good to pass up, I asked the administration if I could count my month at RMT as my work study requirement. Not only could I, but normally the best their students could hope for was a job copying diskettes as their work study so the College was thrilled that one of their students was going to be doing their time at RMT! Checking with the VocRehab counselor, he saw no conflict with it, either.

The next problem was my lack of a car. It turned out the local buses only ran during the daytime hours and the closest bus stop to the RMT complex was still a mile away. While taking the bus to RMT would be very problematic given the long walk to & from the bus stop while wearing my minimum layers of clothing, once night school started I'd definitely need a ride to & from College at a minimum. Daina offered to let me use her car, effectively I would keep her car overnight and then pick her up in the morning and take her to work, then drive to my RMT job. As the end of the school day came, she would work late on paperwork until I was done for the work day and then pick her up at the school. We'd have dinner someplace and then she'd drop me off at College allowing her to keep the car for any evening errands and then pick me up after classes. I'd drive back to her place and drop her off and I'd go home for homework and bed. While this plan worked on paper and we didn't have to worry about it during the first two weeks as I didn't have classes... Once the plan was in full swing Daina quickly chaffed at the sudden increase in gas costs and having to spend ten hour days in her classroom. She insisted and I agreed that once RMT hired me after the trial month, I was to promptly buy my own car.

I was heady with the thought that I would soon be able to buy myself my own car once again and no longer have to depend on free local bus passes from Vocational Rehabilitation.

When I arrived at RMT for my first week, I met the senior manager who had come up with the plan and was then introduced to the manager of the X400 messaging group who I'd be working for. He in turn introduced me to the 'team lead' who would be in charge of me and in return that team member took me to my empty cubical. It would take the next two days just to get the cubical set up and I used the time in between to tour the building alone with my little badge to defend me and spend some time under the skylight lit library area of the complex paging through the Digital Vax manuals; the machines I was told I was going to be working with once I had a computer terminal.

On the third day I was ready for my first assignment, the team lead looked through the 'needed code changes list' and assigned me to change a single line of an existing program. That took me a couple of hours, mainly just familiarizing myself with the system of getting the source code from the coding library and then compiling and testing my change before turning it in well before lunch time. I was ready for my next assignment. He had thought it would have at least taken me the whole day and asked that I come back to him after lunch for my next assignment.

While I didn't have cash to afford lunch, I did pocket a few dollars from my tiny savings to pay for my daily soda at their cafeteria, it was a gorgeous two story open area made of concrete which had an ambiance between a cave and a cathedral. I'd take a seat in a far corner and spend my time slowly sipping the soda and watch as the employees would trickle in for the lunch hour and socialize. Some would eat & run while others suddenly realized the clock after over an hour of socializing and rush to finish eating before parting from friends and returning to work.

When I returned to the team lead, he simply handed me the rest of the 'to do list' hoping that would keep me busy for the rest of my time. When I turned in all the completed work to him at the end of the week, he pointed out he meant 'for the rest of my time during the trial month', not for the week as I had assumed. He didn't know what else to assign to me and I had three weeks left to fill. He said he'd find something for me by the next week and I could leave early for the weekend. As Daina had needed the car for work during that day, I walked to that nearest local bus stop a mile away. Once I was there, I was soaked through with sweat and was glad I wasn't having to make this walk twice each day.

The following week I came in and the team lead had decided to stump me. They had always wanted an X400 message dump utility for debugging purposes but never had the time to create one. Thus my job would be to create that utility from scratch. He wished me luck and told me where to find documentation on the X400 message interchange file format.

The X400 messaging format was how companies exchanged eMails with each other over the developing internet. While internal messaging formats were often just text files, the X400 message format had to take in all considerations as to what sort of message might be passed through the internet. Not just text, but voice, telex, faxes, etc. As a result, the file format for a message was complex, if not convoluted, and the freakiest thing I had ever seen. Not only was the message dump utility going to have to be complex as well, it would also have to serve as my learning tool to come to grips with the file format itself. On the second day I asked if I could have sample X400 messages to use for testing. They got that data to me by the end of the day. By the third day I realized I wanted more time to work on this each day, but as I was tied to borrowing Daina's car and keeping to her schedule, I couldn't return during the evenings to keep working with the sample data. I asked if they had an option where I could dial in from home? They did and since I already knew Jeff had a spare Digital terminal I could borrow for a few weeks, I was soon spending my hours at home working on the same code I was working on during the day. Knowing by my third week I'd have to accommodate college classes into my schedule, I made a weekend long effort to finish the utility.

I returned Tuesday morning, after Labor day weekend, and asked the team lead if he'd like to review the output of my utility. He assumed I meant review the proposed output of the utility and said I could bring a copy to his desk, instead I arrived with the program on a disk. It took him a moment to understand it was a working program I wanted to show him and then he gave it a try. He was impressed that it was already a working program, but felt the output was too technical in nature: 'Priority = Normal, From = Bob'. He felt it wasn't readable enough. The output had to be readable, but when I asked him what that would be, he didn't know. I'd have to just work it out for myself and then he'd let me know if it was good or not. Returning to my cubicle I easily foresaw days of frustration coming up with a new output format for him to nix and my returning back to the drawing board to try again.... and again.... and again.

Instead I got the idea of attaching my FlexBase code library to it. A system I had developed in the early eighties to serve as a universal online site code base, it worked on the concept of 'you draw-up the format you want an online page to display and it would determine all of the logical needs to fill it in' for each unique user. In this case I married in the form based logic and allowed the X400 message dump routines to fill the variables with the message values. This took me almost three whole days to complete and test and then another hour making the first form template for the output. I took this new, 'more readable' output to the team lead. While he thought it was better, he still had some changes he wanted to it. I left and went to my terminal, tweaked the form template and reprinted the message data and was back at his cube within ten minutes with the updated print up and a huge smile on my face. He assumed I had made this 'example page' by hand and gave some more recommendations to tweak it. I didn't let on and returned to my cube, tweaked the form, reprinted and was back at his cube. He liked that one and asked how long it would take for me to incorporate these changes into the program. I told him I already had and this was the actual output.

I treasured that look on his face. Jaw agape, eyes wide, reading his mind that if he hadn't already seen the speed of my work the previous two weeks he wouldn't have believed it. But even knowing that it was still hard for him to accept and he asked me how I could have changed the output of the program so quickly. I told him of my FlexBase code library and showed him the template form it used and he tweaked it himself and reran the program to see the updated, instant results. In High School my coding skills had been admired, but as I was a 'big fish in a small pond' I really couldn't gauge if I was truly that good, or simply the best looking dog given what little competition I had. I knew my time at RMT would be my first true chance to find how good my skills really were, and it didn't disappoint!

The team lead asked for my source code and told me I could leave early for the weekend. The following Monday he came to my cubical with a huge smile on his face. He pointed out that he had a Masters Degree in software development, that looking at my code Friday afternoon he had become so impressed by it that he spent the rest of the weekend going through it for fun. He admired the logical structuring of my code and my use of tables to drive the code flow, not to mention the output coding which allowed the easy to modify template. He thought this was some of the best code he had seen in his life, and he was highly recommending me to be hired as an employee by the company. He gave me a copy of his letter of recommendation and his manager was reviewing it as we spoke.

For the rest of the week, more and more high level employees and managers paraded into my cubicle to see me run the code, promptly update the form with their suggestions as they watched and reran the program affirming their requested output changes. By the middle of the week they wanted to offer me a job...! There was just one little question: ''What degree do you have?''

I noted that I was self taught and didn't have a degree, as such, but was currently in night College to complete my Associates Degree by the turn of the year as I continued on to a Bachelors of Science. There seemed to be some turmoil with this answer and then they asked me when I thought I'd have that Bachelors in hand? In another year and a half, or so.

No job for me.

The head of the company on the other side of the nation had recently dictated that he wanted to have 'the smartest work force of any telecommunications firm' and by 'smartest' that meant everyone had to at least have a Bachelors Degree to get hired. As I didn't have that degree in hand, it didn't matter what level I performed at, they simply couldn't hire me.

So I got my work study completion form filled out by the manager as well as a glowing review written for the Vocation Rehabilitation people to have. Then I was back home at the end of the four week period with nothing but college studies to again fill my time.

I felt like I was the most highly praised applicant they wouldn't hire!

(at least I no longer had to worry about passing a physical examination to work there.)