What I Wish I Knew Before Starting My Career
Intelligence Learns From Its Mistakes. Wisdom Learns From Others'
It was the beginning of a new, yet uncertain age. I had just graduated with a bachelor's of computer science. The ominous cloud of an economic collapse was looming, Microsoft mass layoffs, and foreclosures followed faithfully. My prospects for employment were close to nil. I was a young twenty-two, naïve, and unemployed, yet to me, things were looking up. In my new phase in life, anticipation, coupled with extreme naïveté, had led me to believe that I was truly an asset to any company astute enough to hire me. The world was my oyster! Or so, I thought. My aim? To eventually become a superstar Googler. The reality? Back-to-back hardships and a double-dose of the school of hard knocks.
Misguided Mentorship
All of my youth, I had been trained to be an employee: simply get my foot in the door of IBM, the federal government, or any of the FAANGs, and I would have essentially 'made it.' Granted, Google, who coincidentally, was at the very tippy-top of my list, had reached out to me on several occasions without me having to place in an application. It was a good omen, even though I had failed the first few rounds of interviews, due to either anxiety, or personal tragedies. In the end, neither fate nor God wanted success at Google for me. The path to where I am today came instead by me starting out as a developer for a small family-owned, consulting business. Though it was not my family-owned business, it will always be dear to my heart. I say that now, because looking back, the pay was basically janitor wages, but even so, I was just stoked to be on my career path. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and in this case, a Judas had come along, pitted us all against one-another, poisoned the well, and stole my boss' clients. We eventually had to close shop.
As my career progressed, I found myself at another small contracting business. It was composed of arrogant axe holes at the top, and pretentious maladroits, save for maybe two or three of them. But what was nice, and quite amusing, actually, was that the supervisor assigned to me was said to be a giant. So I really wanted to meet the dude, especially, since they had already built up the legend around this man. Oh, I met the guy, and he was indeed a giant! A giant, stinking, rotten reprobate, of legendary proportions, that is... He ended up giving me the axe on day three after meeting him. And the reason? I suspect his very extreme reaction right after learning of my parents' nationality was a clear clue that I should have sued. But of course, being new in America, I didn't know my rights. And no, the colossal oaf is not White, so, it was not "Whitey" who shafted me. Eventually, carrying all the anger and stress of that incident took its first of the many chunks of essence it will take out of me, sticking me with tens of thousands of dollars of medical bills. Not exactly the great start in the career that I had dreamed of. But all in all, I got saved.
And Then a Hero Comes Along...
Not exactly, but they were instrumental in helping me pay off my medical bills. I recognize it as the Hand of God. The symbolism of it all: I owed a debt I could not pay, but someone comes along, who sympathized with me, and ended up paying my debt, which he did not owe, no works required! Call him the symbolic advocate, in the medical industry, no less! Needless to say, it was a great two years working there, and we each were treated with, at minimum, basic human dignity, and not like some number on a spreadsheet. For the longest time, the retention policy was kept. You had to be a real jerk to get fired, until...
The years went by, the old heads were retiring, and being replaced with psychopaths. Eventually, the original CEO moved on, and an unfeeling, cold-blooded beast was put in his place. Panic. Chaos. Former coworkers crying blood, shrieking about losing their family. Encouraged psychopaths thriving in their newly established environment, lurking darkly behind closed doors, colluding against the faithful sheep who had earned their way to their coveted positions. Tensions were high, and scruples were low. The dawn of a new day was upon us. I was warned by others about my team lead, and took heed. Like Daniel, I saw the writing on the wall, and could definitely decipher it. It was time to leave.
Enter the Sweatshop
The fine-tuned ship that once thrived on human decency and the gentleman's code, was now a sinking ship, brimming with buck-toothed cannibals. I wasn't built for such an environment where it's every man for him or herself, so I quickly bailed before I became prey. The new company I had found was looking for developers who could write low-level code, so I hopped on board. Little did I know, I had jumped into a more insidious environment, where you have no face, no name, and the managers absolutely suck at managing resources. They were panick-hiring, and they were years behind schedule. From my first day, until the project eventually failed, my life was composed of working six days a week, from 8:30AM to way past late. On some occassions, beyond midnight. We were at least compensated by having to eat our coffee to save time (I'm not kidding! They paid some whacko dude to come along to teach us of the virtues of eating your coffee!). The funding eventually ended, of course, and so did our income. The managers, livid as usual, blamed us, and even entertained the idea of suing each and every one of us. At this point, you would think that I'd had enough. I thought so, too. So I decided to cut my teeth on some contracting/consulting work. And God already had something lined up for me, but it was a humility test.
Becoming the Ninety Percenters (What's in a Name?)
It has been said that
ninety percent of politicians programmers give the other ten
percent a bad reputation. Given the disaster of explosion of Visual BASIC
programmers in the late 90s and the early aughts, I will not even try to refute
that argument. As a matter of fact, I learned first hand because of my
arrogance, folly, and my appetite for a challenge pain. All
three of these bad traits had caused me to put my name on the absolute
abomination that the previous -- to borrow a phrase I found online -- master
chef of spaghetti code left behind. To give context, an acquaintance of mine
was having some issues in his mid-sized business. He needed a competent
programmer, so he consulted me. When I visited his workplace, he showed me what
it was that he needed help with. On the surface, it looked simple, but as soon
as you delve into the inner workings of the application, you will quickly find
that this thing my acquaintance was wielding at me was a product of Cthulhu's
wet dream. An abominable security nightmare waiting for the slightest nudge to
go *KABLOOWEEY*, spewing biohazard waste onto any unfortunate soul who
happens to be within proximity. Somehow, this digital terrorist spent the better
half of a decade using Visual BASIC to craft this atrocious crime against
humanity, disguised as software code. What's worse? He was able to convince his
clients that he was using some advanced, "space-aged" technology, and he
made millions in the process of doing so (through referrals). Meanwhile,
I got stuck with the explosive aftermath. Yea, any fool could have seen what was
coming, but in my compassion and arrogance and folly, took the hook, and tried
to fix it. A big mistake, for which I paid dearly with my reputation.
Little did I know that those would be the happy days. Now, it only gets worse...
Along Came a Tiger
Well, the year of the tiger, to be exact. And just down the pike is an army of AI agents, meant to be the spearhead for the planned Great Reset. The good? I had found stable work in the federal government. The bad? My papa was long gone, and my mama was slipping away, battling an aggressive form of cancer. Around this time, I received what is now the last call from a Google recruiter that I'll ever receive. Though I was doing well in government work, receiving accolades from my peers for my outstanding work, my personal life was heavy. I wasn't at all impressive to the Google technical interviewer (who appeared to be quite cold towards me, actually), so that dream is dashed. By the end of the year, I had to endure another curtain call, and things have not been the same ever since. It was the year of the tiger, after all, yet it seemed that my tiger was toothless. All in all, between my wife and I, there were four losses in the family. My spirit was crushed. Even today, winning the lottery would not mean anything to me anymore, except that I don't have to slog it out at work anymore. How nice it would be to have that ace in the hole, where you could tell your abusive managers to jump off a cliff as soon as they begin exhibiting their nasty, psychotic nature. But at least I have my job in government, right? What could go wrong?
Dawn of the DoGE
It's the year of the snake. Some years have passed since I was truly happy. Something is in the air tonight. People seem to be suffering from some form of psychosis. Politicians, left and right, asserting their will on our lives. DoGE maniacs, political assassins, and festering fart faces, taxing me to death. Corrupt to the core, and talking about grifting my hard-earned money to be used for the greater good. All of this ramped up to notch eleven. And here, all I wanted was to live my damned life in peace, do my part in society, and go home. But as fate would have it, the manager assigned to me was an angry, mentally unstable spinster, LARPing Vince McMahon, pretending to assert her dominance over her herd of spineless dweebs, who one-by-one found themselves out of a job, because how dare anybody interrupt her as she balances that chip on her shoulder?! Don't you know she's got something to prove?? I wasn't having it, and of course, I tipped the chip. But it was fruitless, because, in the age of DoGE, clever tyrants are never punished. The proposal? Government [in]efficiency by cutting the workforce and replacing us with AI. Lady tyrant must've popped an obscene amount of champagne the minute she learned I drew the short stick again. Oh well. Seldom you win, sometimes, you learn. So what have I learned?
A Lesson Before Dying
If I were to get ahold of a Delorian somehow, the first thing I would do is take that damned college course on AI, instead of assuming that it was a course about video games. But that's besides the point. I know how badly my story reflects on me, and I take responsibility for all of my shortcomings, as you will soon see. Anyway, the greatest take-away here is that perfectionism is really a thief of time and success. If I were to do it all over, I would focus more on execution, and less on the art of my code. Yes, I am extremely skilled at my job, I know how to "think code," but even today, I have this tremendous fear of putting something out that doesn't live up to my standards. The truth is, the Klingon programmer is a millionaire today, not only because he didn't fear failure, but because he didn't care! I did care, and it got me evicted from my job. It's the not caring part that this world rewards. Today, in the age of AI, these agents can code in poetry if necessary! So, though I would trust my own code over any AI agent, given the choice, a senior developer would consider my skills somewhat redundant. The goal now is to keep relevant with AI being my slave, rather than AI becoming my master. Also, it's high time that I switched from the employee mindset, to an individualistic mindset. I was in denial, and refused to learn from the moment my second job had forced that red-hot suppository into me. As a consequence of my failure to learn, I was begging for my recently administered second dose. Will I learn this time?? Life isn't fair, but in the end of the day, you choose, one way or another, whether your life becomes a success story, or a cautionary tale.