I had spent 5 years working for the UCLA Library as a student. I shunned possible engineering internships (unlike my peers) preferring to travel through Europe. The cost of school was covered so everything I earned myself fed this luxury.
I still had a prejudice to engineering as being filled with monotonous old hallways and dull, laser-focused, non-people-skilled people. Technology had an appeal, what I expected from the work did not. Traveling the world was always a chance for me to experience the unknown, to have to navigate train stations where no one spoke your language to travel halfway across continents, to adapt to different ways of thinking, speaking, doing, to see how others did the same things very differently, and to test myself. I reveled in it.
I assumed I would return to work when I was ready. The lack of internship work cost me. When I finally did decide to settle down, I found to my horror getting a job, any job was incredibly difficult.
I had thought that, since my cousin had graduated EE and immediately landed a very high paying (for me) position at Intel, this was my baseline and I would accept no less.
My wake up to reality was ice cold water on my face.
A job, any job became the standard. From August 2003 to April 2004 I had no job. I was crawling walls. I had something else to capture my attention so my feelings of absolute worthlessness came and went. I applied everywhere, even at my old UCLA Library. Nothing.
I remember the good advice of a friend, a retired Xerox executive, who told me to look for any work, even unpaid, to get the experience that would get me to the next step. I wasn't ready to hear it then. No, I didn't give away my time. It was inherently valuable. I give the same advice now, usually to the same deaf ears. I read lots of books about networking, interviewing, and adapted my behavior a little, but not at lot. Years later, everything I once read has been proven right.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself. -Oscar Wilde
Discouraged, I might have given up, but I'm not sure I had enough success to have anything to give up, even to know what surrender might look like. I took a few temp jobs, doing everything from screening movies for defects to setting up portfolios for art classes at a local college. There was some temporary work satisfaction from that. But the positions never lasted. I had my own little guest house with my folks so at least the money and food pressures were removed.
In April 2004 I got a call from out of the blue from my old boss at the UCLA Library. A position for a junior technician was opening up at the headquarters and a colleague asked if he knew anyone. He responded "only the guy I trained these last five years". Once I confirmed I was available, I don't even remember if there was an interview. I was hired as a contract worker and my 1000 hours began ticking.
The hourly pay was absolutely pathetic. I jumped at it with gratefulness overwhelming!
I did what they asked, deploying and troubleshooting workstations at the various campus libraries. I loved it. I would stay late to make sure the work was done right. I got along with most everyone and was well liked. I had trouble with one of the full time technicians, a (much older) lady who obviously was into running and staying in shape. She seemed to get along with no one. But I was told everyone tolerated her and had to. She had some personal issues she was dealing with and everyone felt bad for her. And it is very difficult to be disciplined much less fired at a public university, so there was resignation to accept her behavior. My boss explained this to me, as did others including a network engineer who one day (inexplicably to me) volunteered the point emphatically, recommending I stay on her good side. And by and large I did. We were never friends but I'd say we got along and I followed her lead instructions capably when she pulled me off to assist as needed.
This was my first encounter with the university mindset of promoting people to advanced titles after long tenure despite little advancement in qualification. She was a highly categorized deployer of workstations, by classification on par with the lady who hired me who worked with Active Directory and the more difficult programming problems.
By default I needed to distinguish myself so any programming project I grabbed on my own, using free time to craft this or that, as I had done under my old boss. I got a number of applications out, some were even used enthusiastically, until my boss' boss pulled the plug, very reluctantly, citing that this was not my responsibility and I wasn't permitted to keep programming. It was discouraging.
I got along with nearly everyone, especially the local library people who served as informal on-site computer admins. One, a very sweet lady, I adored. I don't know what happened, but one day I entered a computer storage room to find the older senior technician dressing her down with words and tone very hard to stomach. It was worse than I'd ever heard and it seemed so marvelously unfair. I stepped between them, told the older tech this was unfair and asked her to calm down.
She did. Her look of smugness and uncharacteristic sweetness the next day was disarming. The day after that I was called to my boss' boss' office and he and she sat me down to explain the formal complaint on the table. They looked very uncomfortable. I explained what happened and I'm sure they spoke to the innocent worker who had been subject to my coworker's diatribe. But I was a contractor, that technician was full time, and I was not allowed to speak to a senior person that way. It was a slap on the wrist. A letter with a built-in expiry would be placed into my file.
If unfair, I have nonetheless accepted this lesson of chain of command throughout my career.
The wind was temporarily stripped from my sails for these two things, but I picked myself up and in fact enjoyed my last month. I spend some useful time speaking with the other senior engineers devoted to the infrastructure, trying to understand what they did and helping out any way they would let me. As my 1000 hours were nearly up, I kept my eyes and ears open for something more permanent. My boss was the wife of the IT director at the School of Nursing. When he needed a new junior technician, she recommended me. One very cordial and engaging lunch interview later, I happily entered the School of Nursing.
No comments:
Post a Comment