It seems my background is atypical from the ones that have been posted thus far.
Job 1: Nine years as a manufacturing engineer. Great culture but new boss was
a jerk. Being a superuser of MAPICS, I left this job to work on the help desk
of a ERP software developer.
Job 2: Three months or so. Hated the culture. I was answering calls from MIS
managers who had been using the software for many years and they were asking me
why their upgrade failed. I didn't know, this wasn't MAPICS! I had only two
weeks training on their software. 50 hours work weeks were the norm. I gave up
a nine year track record at a company with a good culture for this? Then a
recruiter calls me out of the blue and says "You don't remember me but we
talked before and I've got a internal MAPICS help desk job for you". I think
he lied about that but I interviewed and got JOB 3.
Job 3: One and a half years. It's 1998 and this subsidiary of a Fortune 500
company is consolidating about 15 different worldwide midrange platforms (DEC,
VAX, AS/400, etc.) and software into one AS/400 running MAPICS and addressing
Y2K concerns at the same time. Good culture and it's fun fixing problems for
internal users. But, about a year and half later the parent company files
chapter 11. Scour the Sunday papers for a job and one Monday a co-worker shows
me a job ad she thinks I might be interested in. I look at the ad, which I'd
overlooked in the Sunday paper, and the description is perfect. I interview
and get job 4.
Job 4: Hired as AS/400 operator in 1999. Run jobs, distribute reports, assist
in Y2K preparation, etc.; but start to get bored. Ten months after I start, MIS
manager quits and is not replaced. Trial by fire for awhile as I learn IPL, GO
SAVE 21, PTF management, troubleshooting network connectivity, CL programming,
security for SQL via ODBC, etc.
Still here 8 years later and consider myself an "administrator", but I'm still
called "operator" by some. With the baby boomers starting to retire, I think
they'll be a place for administrators for years to come, but I'd be more
valuable if I had RPG skills.
Bryan
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-jobs-bounces+bryan_burns=echo-usa.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[
mailto:midrange-jobs-bounces+bryan_burns=echo-usa.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of David Gibbs
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 11:29 AM
To: midrange-jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Longevity (was: Belated Congratulations Trevor !)
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Chuck Lewis wrote:
Trevor Perry joins KMR!
This post in MIDRANGE-L got me to thinking ... anyone know what the
average tenure of a technology worker (System i or other) is these days?
I'm just a few days shy of 10 years at my current job ... longest I've
ever been at a single company. Before I came here (MKS) I didn't stay
more than 3 years at any one company. I kind of always was in 'looking
for a new job' mode.
Any thoughts?
david
midrange.com
