|
When I graduated from SFSU, it was difficult trying
to find a job. Ronald Regan was President and George Bush was Vice-President. The cost of a new home was $127,000
and the median household income was $26,061.
It was 1987 and Evangelist Jim
Baker admits to making payments to cover his sexual infidelity. As well as Gary Hart, who withdrew from the presidential
race due to his sexual indiscretions.
The Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is replaced by Alan Greenspan and the
Dow Jones Industrial Average suffers its' worst one day fall in history dropping 508 points.
And I had to look for a job!!
I took a part time clerical job
at the Bank of America, and eventually landed a Mainframe Operator job in their
Data Center in Concord. Knowing a bank doesn't pay much, I had a friend who worked
at Charles Schwab http://www.schwab.com. She was able to get me an interview there, where I was then hired as an Operations Analyst.
The money was great and the quarterly
bonuses were not too shabby either. The perks were beer & pizza every Friday, shares of company stock in your retirement
account and extravagant Christmas parties at the Galleria / Design Center in San Francisco.
The company decided to cut cost
and have a massive layoff. It was the first time I had heard the term 'downsizing'. So I had to hit the pavement
again.
Since my experience had been in the Mainframe MVS
Operating system environment, I had to search out for theses companies that had an MVS Environment. I eventually landed
a job at Lockheed Martin http://www.lockheedmartin.com in their Computer Room. I left there since the hours were tough. Twelve hour days, and then
rotating between dayshift and graveyard each month. I then went to work for Franklin Templeton
http://www.franklintempleton.com as a Production Control Analyst for their Distributed Data Center for a few years.
Then the
DOT.COM boom arrived. People we leaving and getting
hired left and right. Vice-Presidents were leaving and taking their best people with them. I decided to take the plunge
as well. I applied to another mainframe company, BMC Software, http://www.bmc.com on a whim not knowing that I would get a call. But I did get a call from them and they made me an offer, which I couldn't
refuse.
Luckily, I am still employed there to this day, but I've never seen so many layoffs each quarter here and all
across America since the DOT.COM bust. It's sad
to see your co-workers there one day, and gone the next. Human Resources don't even give you the time to say goodbye
to your co-workers. They just come to your office and walk you out.
Looking at the job market and the computer
industry in general, if I were to get laid-off, it would be hard to find a job in the Mainframe area with more and more jobs
being 'outsourced'. Don't get me wrong; most of the big companies still use the mainframe. With IBM's new z900 family
of servers which is based on the z/Architecture, this mainframe is designed to elimate bottlenecks associated with
the lack of addressable memory through its virtually unlimited 64-bit addressing capability.
But I feel I need to keep my skills updated
to keep up with the competition. So maybe taking JAVA and Visual Basic courses in addition to my mainframe background,
can keep me gainfully employed.
|
