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JimBullockBackStory

"Should I start like David Copperfield, 'I was born. I grew up.' No. Better I should start when I was born to darkness, as I like to call it . . . " - The Vampire Louis in Interview With The Vampire, the film version.

I encountered this strange creature - Jerry Weinberg - through a book The Handbook of Walkthroughs, Inspections, blah, blah, blah in 1985 or 6. But of course I was ready to meet him. I was seeking to be infected, although I did not know at the time what it was that I sought . . .

OK, sustaining Rice's style would make this way too long. At the same time there's a parallel between my backstory and her vampire stories - worlds that intermingle but aren't the same, living a different kind of life, an excess of melodrama, and even the idea of infection and something that looks good from the outside and may not be so good once you've got it. So consider this story kind of gothic.

And consider also the implication that although there are many gifts that come along with the life I have chosen thus far, I'm not too sure that it was a good deal. Some folks seek out this other life. Some have it forced on them. I took it, thinking it was the best available option, but without really knowing what I was getting into. That might have been a mistake. I keep making that mistake, however.

Stay tuned for the next installment . . .

- JimBullock 2002.12.14

So by 1985 or 6 I was working as a programmer, and already deliberately pursuing this dual track - doing the work, and learning about doing the work. I'd ended up programming by default - had done lab work during college that included programming, and I was good at it. The habit I'd developed of focusing on the process-y stuff had paid off a bunch of times, so I would troll around occasionally for information on the how of building systems. Here was this Weinberg guy, among Boehm, DeMarco, Yourdon, Constantine, Parnas, Pressman, Dijkstra, and others who focused on the about-ness part, and it worked. I read them all when I could find them, or afford them. (Already the seeds of corruption were present - what's this about-ness thing? Where did that come from? And why live in a world larger than the current company, the current boss, and the current One True Way?)

I'd gotten there from a failed attempt at a chemical engineering bachelors from a name school (recently rated #36 in the country) which ended with much drama, and bitterness and noise. It didn't help that I had identified early that a college education was a potential entry point for poor kids - meaning me - into a life of paid vacations and working inside out of the weather. (The Gnome Who Stole My Future tells about when I came to believe that a bigger life was possible. It's Asimov's fault, actually.)

In the event this step toward making a better life for myself didn't quite have the payoff expected, although I've not yet had to work outside in the weather. I ended up with a house-sized pile of debit, no degree, and a good sized pile of frustration, confusion and anger - I'd had help in failing. I learned a lot, mostly not on the curriculum.

Some deliberate mental hygiene helped me cope with abandoning something I'd been working toward for a decade or so at that point. Bootstrapping yourself into an actual career takes a bit of mental discipline on the second try. So maybe I've been pursuing three things:

• this career thing, or doing the work.
• "about-ness" of building systems, or how processes, organizations and people work.
• and mental hygiene, kind of "Build a better Jim."

Over a long time, I've built a nice little life for myself, where I can be welcomed into company such as this, and thoughtfully read by people such as you. Pretty amazing, actually. Even so, I don't have anything like a standard skill set or work history, which puts me more or less permanently in: "Explain yourself" mode. I don't fit anybody's predefined job slot, so staying fed is an exercise in negotiation.

All in all, I think I'd prefer to have remained the arrogant, ignorant jackass I was set on becoming - all over paid and unreflectively part of the technocracy, suitably manufactured into the right shape cog in the engines of commerce. Unfortunately, some ignorance was sacrificed to experience I was not clever enough to avoid. I curse the lesson and bless the knowledge. (One of Harlan Ellison's aphorisms.)

After college there followed a series of jobs, each of which I took as far as I could, and when I topped-out, leveraged with deliberate calculation into the next. Still stuck on that "make a better life" vs. comfortably staying in my plugger, second-rate place. There's some risk associated with trying to take one's life "From almost nothin, to almost somethin." (A marvelous line from the movie "Deep Cover"). The strategy was simple: peg the performance needle in the job at hand, but when there was nowhere further to go, move on. Jobs:

• Techtran, where I became lead on 4 products inside 2 years, built a real-time executive, among other things. Company was bought and the product line terminated. Layoff # 1 with no warning, and no severance, just as I was getting on my feet from the College experience. I was doing 8086 assembly language programming - not a great skill for market positioning. But it was the job I could get.
• Carrier (through CTG), where I introduced a bunch of Software Engineering stuff over three years. Year thee I led a team that produced 4 controls, and migrated development to a new host, in one year. CTG in Syracuse had a lock on the account so movement to permanent was problematic. Skills were hard to transfer - 8051 Assembler, with development hosted on Prime-OS. I topped out at Carrier, and at CTG, so made a change.
• One year on the road doing factory floor stuff for Corning (through CTG). PLCs, some CAD stuff. Got me a couple transferrable skills: Fortran and Ingres on VAX.
• GE, hired into BSY-2 program. $ 55 million progress payment on delivery of one of our pieces. I ended up leading the team when Buzzy had a heart attack. I left just before the division was sold to Martin Marietta and gutted. Odds of someone with less than three years in, and no degree surviving the purge following a merge are what? I'd survived all the layoffs up til then, I stopped counting at 6. But better to jump than get pushed.
• Cellular One - recruited as development manager. Absent the IT director (He got canned about 6 weeks after I joined.) I recovered a billing & customer care system project at about 400 seats in three cities. Built a small development team. Blah, blah, blah. Director they finally hired from Paychex 18 months later wanted to bring his own development manager, so . . . at least I got a severence this time.
• dbINTELLECT, full-time traveling IT consulting for three years. Highlights are I guided a DW to implementation for one client, and built an automated testing practice. dbI cratered so . . .
• Harris Interactive, recruited as "QA Manager" to establish some lightweight life-cycle & such for IT projects, and create a testing team. The hiring freeze hit when the 5 offer letters to start my team were on HR's desk. I did recover two major systems projects in trouble, and build the testing team over the course of a year when Amazon.com called.
• Amazon.com, recruited to manage "QA Services" team, creating tools & policy for QA across development teams. Again the layoff hit just as I arrived. As did the reorg, giving me a different boss than the team / function had reported to before. (I've got to stop doing that.) We did some good. Eventually I took a layoff.

I don't seem to land so well when the organization goes South. I have also been soundly mocked from time to time - sometimes by self-identified colleagues - for my poor choice of employers. I'm not so sure. From where I sit, it looks like pretty steady progress, leveraging what I've got into something better. There weren't any "come work in IBM research" jobs being offered to a chemical engineering dropout in up-state NY in the mid-80s.

Meanwhile, I kept working on the about-ness stuff and the mental hygiene stuff which led me to the rest of Jerry's books and Jung, Boehm and Hayden-Elgin, D. L. Parnas and Bradshaw, DeMarco and Cambell, Handy, Bennis, Garfield, Drucker, Covey, Augustin. Also Marcus Aurelis, Piaget, Alice Miller, Myers-Briggs, E. O. Wilson, Samuel Florman, and so on. They are like the vampires, all living in this kind of parallel world. This is also how I came to Aikido - as a way of building a better Jim. And I've pursued a spotty, self-directed liberal education, and indulged the occasional baseless obsession. Two recent ones were the Hittites, and the Gnostics.

From the experiences I racking up I learned a bit about how the world works, mostly the hard way. The job history is an example of chances taken. Generally the stuff I understand pays off, while the stuff that's novel, well, there's no telling. For example, I haven't gotten blindsided by a layoff since that first one, in the first, kind of desparate job after I dropped out of college. The working world is large, however, so there seem to be enough silly things for me to continue to find new mistakes.

I guess you could call my career "tumultuous."

Along with the jobs, I got to participate in a rambling community of reflective practitioners in software, first through books, then through Ca$eforum, and later through SHAPE. Each of these online fora connects to various communities of people who know each other as well. I even hung out on the WELL for a while.

It's like the vampires as they wander about in the world, more like each other than the people they interact with. It's a little hard to reach out into these communities from up-state NY, working for smaller organizations, or buried in the scut-work section of a larger one. More little Napoleons than citizens of the world around there, especially in technology. Not a lot of investment made in developing contractors, or people who aren't on "the fast track." So it took a while.

Through one chain of connections or another, or sometimes through friends and colleagues I've met a gaggle of interesting engaged people, including most of the AYE hosts. Eventually in aid of "about-ness" and "mental hygiene" I got myself to PSL (as opposed to tech conferences about "doing the work") which I hated. I was also intrigued, and learned a lot, and decided - took me about a year - that PSL had been really good for me. I also decided that I wasn't necessarily going to end up selling poppies in airports, head shaven, wearing an orange robe if I went to another one. Not necessarily.

So I did Change Shop, strongarming my then current employer into paying for it. I have somewhat more cards to play in the employment poker game these days. And I did the SEM group. I got to True North's workshop, and some day-long seminars from Enterprise Design, and the other odd development-y thing. This year I got to AYE manily because I wanted to meet people I knew or had heard of. The content was just fine, but that wasn't the point for me. AYE was a chance to be immersed in a gaggle of folks with that mindset, so I took it.

Very few people in business, especially the systems business pursue "about-ness" or their own mental hygiene. I think "about-ness", and mental hygiene have more leverage than technologies. We're mostly smart enough already to deal with the problems intrinsic to most systems, or most IT organizations, or most businesses, actually. I'd like to have back the time I've wasted dealing with someone's issues that should have been left back in gradeschool. Somehow, people are supposed to spring fully formed into the world, and it's all about selection. Also about "I'm better than you, because I don't need to work on myself." That sentiment, of course speaks volumes.

Then again maybe I'm just defective. I've been told so more than once. Who the hell am I, to have an opinion anyway? Zaphod's just this guy, and he's president of the galaxy. (Mandatory Hitchiker's Guide reference required of all self-identified nerds.)

I am interested in backstories becasue I'm looking for models that I can steal from them. Asimov changed my life by showing me a kind of life I didn't believe existed at the time. I thought they were just fairy tales - about people who think for a living, and make their own way in the world. The people who've influenced me along the way have lived with some integrity, on their hero's journey. I could use more of those stories, especially in the systems field, where Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel is more journalism than humor.

There's a great deal of fatalism in Rice's stories. There's another connection with these strange creatures she writes about. There are times when seeing building systems as a practice feels more like an infection than a blessing to me. And I carry some questions about how real any particular achievement is, and how long it might last. Will I be employable tomorrow? What if I'm not? Are there some rules out there I'm missing, that'll catch me in a moment - just like college?

Am I all wet about the relevance of this study that I've pursued for years? I'd be a bit less concerned if I could find more "about-ness" practitioners who worked in organizations on big stuff. The "about-ness" population seems to be all "consultants" - parasites feeding off the economic success of their hosts. Perhaps offering value, but also doomed if the hosts disappear. Kind of like vampires.

Of course, I was already doomed. I had to listen to Asimov, to notice that he lived a life different from the lives around me. I really had given up. I was targeting some gas station with enough cash for paperbacks, and enough pharmaceuticals to get by, since there was no way out. Along comes this Asimov guy. So then, I had to have the unbridled arrogance to believe that I could maybe influence my own little life, to try and choose, or earn what I wanted. So I can't blame this on anyone, I was asking for fate to intervene just as Louis was in Rice's tale.

Writing this, I can't get out of my head the fact that Donald Whitaker died. I don't know why. He was smart, and funny, and well read, and taught music in the Pocono Mountain school system where I went to High School. He had backstories, and frontstories, and I imagine becoming stories. I imagined being him, back when I was in school - not a hero, but someone living in the world, and making a pretty good way of it. But he was like one of Rice's vampires who can't handle the gifts. He killed himself in a bathtub about 15 years ago. My parents, of course, made a point to share this "news" with me, just exactly as successes are not shared.

There were others along the way, from Carolyn Tilwic who taught a one-quarter psychology elective to seniors that was so good I placed out of Psyche 101 freshman year. Russ Speicher who ran the music program. Music kept me sane at all, trapped in that world. Mr. Below the english teacher who told me he put my vocabulary quizzes in the middle of the pile because he enjoyed the little essays I made out of the silly "use five of these words in sentences" exercise.

Mr. Below played music at some of the little resorts in the Poconos, along with Whitaker. Below is still alive as far as I know. Some who try to have a life don't make it. Maybe Whitaker forgot to restock on good models from time to time. Maybe he forgot to make time to spend with people who were also living a life. Maybe sometimes it's just too hard.

I don't want to end up like Whitaker. Nor like Mr. Below, who for all his gifts is stuck in that nothing life. I have found people who think about what they do, and try to make a life for themselves. But most of the time, I'm all alone in this. It gets old.

- JimBullock 2003.02.15 (Edits)