your first programming gig
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I was more than fairly recompensed. It was about 1983/85 and COBOL.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” Why do programmers often confuse Halloween and Christmas? Because 31 Oct = 25 Dec.
It was 1988 and I was programming on a VAX/VMS in Fortran. The application was a lease/loan financial system. It was really fast on VT420 green screen terminals ... Those were the days.
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Why would I agree to be paid otherwise? Back then, we're talking salaries (for entry level) in the range of $16,000/year. Here I am, almost 30 years later, and still making less than five times that amount.
.45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"The staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - J. Jystad, 2001My first gig was in RPGII in 1983 and my salary was in that range also. I remember switching company after a little less than 2 years for a 25% raise. Stopped programming for a living almost 15 years ago. Still coding as a hobby.
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No not fairly at all. I was hired in 1983 to work part time after school programming an accounting package at a business equipment store and one thing led to another and I ended up repairing and cleaning business equipment instead.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
I translated a hard-wired relay ladder logic control system, with all of the associated electro-mechanical timers, counters, etc., into a microprocessor based control system from the Eagle Signal Division of Gulf & Western. The control was named the Eptak if I recall and it was a first-generation device. I was well compensated, as I was working for a controls consultancy at that time. It must have been 1976, approximately. The expertise gained on that first jump-in-and-swim allowed me to do good work for Chevron Shipping , Anaconda Copper and many Bechtel Engineering projects. The most important aspect of that industrial controls programming experience, it would later turn out, was the time that I spent devising a way to use the controller to simulate a “Lunar Lander” for my own amusement. Goes to show that various experiences have a way of opening strange doors. Ah, the BAD old days! :)
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I translated a hard-wired relay ladder logic control system, with all of the associated electro-mechanical timers, counters, etc., into a microprocessor based control system from the Eagle Signal Division of Gulf & Western. The control was named the Eptak if I recall and it was a first-generation device. I was well compensated, as I was working for a controls consultancy at that time. It must have been 1976, approximately. The expertise gained on that first jump-in-and-swim allowed me to do good work for Chevron Shipping , Anaconda Copper and many Bechtel Engineering projects. The most important aspect of that industrial controls programming experience, it would later turn out, was the time that I spent devising a way to use the controller to simulate a “Lunar Lander” for my own amusement. Goes to show that various experiences have a way of opening strange doors. Ah, the BAD old days! :)
I wanted to clarify the compensation issue a little. I was well paid at that time but as time passed, I realized that I liked (don't want to call it “loved” for fear of being accused of hyperbole) programming so much that I would have done it for food, caffeine, cigarettes and a warm dry place to sleep and a daily shower. I know that it is not reasonable for most to live in that way, but you must admit that when ones luck and talent and happiness all happen to slam together, it is just magic. The money just seems to follow without effort or thought.
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
I came into software through the back-door. I was a hardware engineer who needed to program as a subset of my job (microprocessors, microcontrollers, state machines, etc.). Of necessity I was paid at the rates of a hardware engineer. This was in 1972-3 time frame. Somewhere after 1986, it became my full-time profession.
Fletcher Glenn
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My first gig was in RPGII in 1983 and my salary was in that range also. I remember switching company after a little less than 2 years for a 25% raise. Stopped programming for a living almost 15 years ago. Still coding as a hobby.
1983, I believe that I was freezing my ass off in Chicago, IL. (Northbrook) (I lived in Los Angeles, CA), Installing my 23rd installation of a single product (RPG II System 36) that I developed. It was a nice period for me, 1983 - 2006..10 (36, 38, 400, ISeries, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, 2003, 2008, Vista, Windows 7) (If you would like to go further back (System 3 Mod 6, mod 8, mod 10, mod 12, mod 15b, mod 15d, 32, 34), ever changing, evolutions of a system, although 90% of the business logic remains the same. Did I tell you that in 1983, I was 24? Did I tell you that when I was 21, I developed this product from scratch. Did I tell you that by the time I was 23 I had the F IRS after me?
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
In 1974 when I first got out of the army, I convinced the management at a huge manufacturing plant that I could learn the assembly language on a Quantel minicomputer, with NO documentation. I was given four dollars an hour, but not too bad then, especially for someone with no experience and little education. But, it was horrible for programming. Even then, programmers generally started at $15-25 hour. I was having an extremely difficult time until one day I discovered for some reason, the stack worked backwards. Then everything became crystal clear and I ended up working there for two years, never getting a raise. I was able to go to school full time during the day and work full time at night. I got a good invoicing and a very rudimentary inventory program done. I even started writing an RPG compiler. Imagine having to write your own data entry, database and reporting programs in ASM!
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
1978 or 79; I was a college intern at Ford. Translating programs from Basic to FORTRAN for HP systems, which used mylar tape to boot strap! Simple FORTRAN which only had IF statements with goto's for the conditionals, I think: IF () , <= zero>, (But its been a long time ago!) Commuted from college a few times on Amtrak to work on occasional weekends. After that, worked on a FORTRAN compiler putting in FORTRAN 77 features... Fair wage for a kid at the time. Paid for my Sears stereo with 8 track player... ;P
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
First useful program supplied to other was an IBM 7040 assembly language implementation of the random number function RANDU. It was written in 196X (X > 4). I gave it away to engineering students. It greatly sped up an assignment which was some sort of simulation. They had been using the FORTRAN equivalent library function which was written in FORTRAN and not optimized (FORTRAN compilers of that era didn't do optimization. JFW