The first PC arrived at my mega corp subsidiary and landed on a table behind my desk. It was an IBM, expensive, clunky, pre hard drive so there was lots of disk swapping and the screen was monochromatic- by today’s standards a real dinosaur.
It did what I needed it to do and I was overjoyed to have access to it. I over time I gained some invaluable skills.
I was told it wasn’t solely for my use. There was an engineer, an older gentleman who occasionally used it. I must admit at the time I thought Wow “the old guy gets it”.
I left the subsidiary a few years later and went to mega corp proper, joining a group of divisional controllers. I wasn’t there a few weeks when a tedious lots of spreadsheet (lotus 123) manipulation job came down from corporate. The Boss split the job up and sent us to our desk to get at it. No one said you couldn’t so I set about coding a solution. About an hour later I turned in the work. “You can’t be done” I explained and demonstrated my code to the crew. What took hours could be done in minutes; they were amazed. Ive been steadily employed since and got to travel to some great places.
Fast forward thirty years and Im in different part of the firm years and another huge job came up. The area we going to test had a reputation for being out of control with lots of problems. Julie the Lady running the job had been hand picked because she was smart, a great communicator, and had a reputation for getting things done. Better yet she is a great person. The specific test I was to provide technical support was assigned to a Paige a junior staffer and a nice kid. Paige was busy with closing out her last job so she left me alone. I spent hours duplicating the business processes and pulling and scraping data from multiple sources in code. Rather then a ridiculous small sample we tested hundreds of transactions. Rather then just dump the data on Paige I created the documentation. In the end Julie said as long as you do that kind of work you can charge as many hours you want.
We have a weekly process of submitting our accomplishments; The week I finished the job I spent some time to carefully write up what I’d created.
Last week the bosses boss called to let me know what will likely be my last annual bonus was. The number was terrific and he said You are being rewarded for your innovation.
Imagine that an innovator at 63. I couldn’t help but think “I guess the old guy gets it”.
I think too many of us think creativity is the purview of the young.
It did what I needed it to do and I was overjoyed to have access to it. I over time I gained some invaluable skills.
I was told it wasn’t solely for my use. There was an engineer, an older gentleman who occasionally used it. I must admit at the time I thought Wow “the old guy gets it”.
I left the subsidiary a few years later and went to mega corp proper, joining a group of divisional controllers. I wasn’t there a few weeks when a tedious lots of spreadsheet (lotus 123) manipulation job came down from corporate. The Boss split the job up and sent us to our desk to get at it. No one said you couldn’t so I set about coding a solution. About an hour later I turned in the work. “You can’t be done” I explained and demonstrated my code to the crew. What took hours could be done in minutes; they were amazed. Ive been steadily employed since and got to travel to some great places.
Fast forward thirty years and Im in different part of the firm years and another huge job came up. The area we going to test had a reputation for being out of control with lots of problems. Julie the Lady running the job had been hand picked because she was smart, a great communicator, and had a reputation for getting things done. Better yet she is a great person. The specific test I was to provide technical support was assigned to a Paige a junior staffer and a nice kid. Paige was busy with closing out her last job so she left me alone. I spent hours duplicating the business processes and pulling and scraping data from multiple sources in code. Rather then a ridiculous small sample we tested hundreds of transactions. Rather then just dump the data on Paige I created the documentation. In the end Julie said as long as you do that kind of work you can charge as many hours you want.
We have a weekly process of submitting our accomplishments; The week I finished the job I spent some time to carefully write up what I’d created.
Last week the bosses boss called to let me know what will likely be my last annual bonus was. The number was terrific and he said You are being rewarded for your innovation.
Imagine that an innovator at 63. I couldn’t help but think “I guess the old guy gets it”.
I think too many of us think creativity is the purview of the young.
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