Career history
Purpose of blog
My primary purpose in setting up this blog is to provide detailed information about my career to date and possible options for the future, focusing on my employment and leaving other blogs, linked from here where appropriate, to describe my periods out of work. Over the years, I've preserved more historical information about my career than most people would ever bother to. Technological progress means that some of it may be only of nostalgic or curiosity value, but at least it shows what I'm capable of.
1969
I left Kingsdown High School as it was then, long before it became a technology college, after taking my exams in June 1969, already having been offered a job as a trainee computer programmer. Because of holiday commitments, I chose not to start until August, filling in the time before the holiday with a temporary job at a bakery.
The seventies and eighties
My career in computer programming, with COBOL as the dominant programming language, was relatively straightforward until I was made redundant from my fifth programming job in 1981. At that point I decided to go freelance. I liked the work and the pay but not all the travel (made worse by my reliance on public transport), the tax accounting and the living in hotels. In 1988, I secured what I hoped would be a job in which I could settle. Notwithstanding their recruitment of myself, the employer was going through a bad spell and I became redundant again after only six months, along with a lot of other people who had served the employer for a far longer period. I returned to the freelance market but all the stresses in my life, especially the travel and the life in hotels, caused me to decide to take a complete rest early in 1990. I had plenty of money and could afford a break.
Not much work
I thought I'd be able to pick up where I left off easily but when I started looking for work again, nobody was interested. A separate blog, The nineties job quest, provides a detailed description of this period, but suffice to say here that the pressures of Y2K upgrades caused serious shortages of COBOL programmers in the late nineties so suddenly my old skills aroused interest. I ended up taking a job that I wouldn't have chosen in normal circumstances, but at least it was a job in which I could utilise my old programming skills. It kept me employed for four and a half years before redundancy hit me for the third time.
The only new thing that I did during that time that would help me secure another job was work in a UNIX environment using the VI editor, but that of itself was of marginal benefit without being accompanied by other new skills. I therefore knew that finding a job would be difficult and so it has proved because I'm still looking. Another blog, The politics of unemployment, highlights the problems that I've encountered since my last redundancy in 2002. It explains how various government agencies have not proved helpful in my quest for a new job, and that's putting it politely.
The future
Although I'm willing to consider working anywhere in the world where English is the main language, I expect my next job to be in Britain or maybe Ireland, as anywhere else would require an employer to wait while I obtain a passport and maybe also a visa. For a decent IT job, I'd go anywhere, as I've always done in the past. I would be somewhat less keen on relocating for a modest job with limited prospects, though a modest job with good prospects might tempt me.
Of course, I may end up taking a modest job with limited prospects in, or within commuting distance by public transport of, Leicester. As I live near the railway station, that includes but is not limited to Nottingham and Derby. Nevertheless, the problem remains that I haven't done paid work outside the IT industry, except for that temporary bakery job. The next three pages explore my career so far, while the subsequent six pages examine a variety of career options, both suitable and unsuitable.
While some people accuse me of ruling things out too easily, I feel that I'm just being open and honest. If I'm not able to do a job to a commercially acceptable standard, it would be bad for all concerned for an employer to take a chance on me.
2 comments:
NICE Blog :)
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