That's a pretty standard career path for mainframe database report writers. I recognize the similarity to my own path from medieval history major to financial analyst to database programmer.
My favorite piece of programming as a consultant was always the troubleshooting part of conversions, because that's the part where one gets to be a hero. Normal processing where everything is going well is dull.
Congratulations on understanding the business data so well. That's crucial to making sure the processes work, and it's a piece that lots of programmers I worked with over the years were impatient with.
And additional congratulations on being retired with a cleaned-out desk.
I feel that a lot of SF fans have followed this basic career trajectory, and one of my other theories is that there's something about the minds of people attracted to science fiction that will cause them to drift toward technical careers unless they have specific ambitions in other directions.
I wonder if that's just because many of us were looking for work during the era of increasing IT technology, so our unwanted literary qualifications coincided with an insatiable thirst for technical workers. I'd be interested in some memories from fans who entered the workforce before 1970, and to see what happens to fans who enter the workforce after 2030 (if the trend is even over by then).
We were undoubtedly filling a growing need, and we were a cohort who were likely to have played with Commodore 64s when they were the hot new toy. I wasn't one of those myself, but some of my best friends ...
(It's Lesley!) I followed the same trajectory myself. My theory is that I spent four years analyzing the word choices of poets from the 1800s and earlier, even giving up and reading the entire Bible at one point so I'd be closer to where their heads were at (I drew the line at learning classical Greek). SQL queries and globs of inconsistent data are a plate of pumpkin scones in comparison.
My favorite piece of programming as a consultant was always the troubleshooting part of conversions, because that's the part where one gets to be a hero. Normal processing where everything is going well is dull.
Congratulations on understanding the business data so well. That's crucial to making sure the processes work, and it's a piece that lots of programmers I worked with over the years were impatient with.
And additional congratulations on being retired with a cleaned-out desk.
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