Benched's birth song.

[shaunbhoy]

hey there. REME in Arborfield here, 1974,

Hey EO. My Old dearly departed dad used to work as a Civvy Driving Instructor for the MOD at Arborfield. He transferred there at the start of 1974 when they closed the Junior Leaders Regiment place at Dundonald in Troon, and was there till retirement in about 1978. Small world. Best job he ever had he said, one big round of cabbying around from one transport cafe to the next. Small world. You never learned to drive in a Land Rover whilst there I suppose?

[Drewster]

... was a permie Civil Servant at CO level......
... sat the EO exam and p*ssed it...
... next form to fill in (Career Planning) had a tick box "ADP".... looked at
the pay rates...
ADP Year 1 = + £350 p/a
ADP Year 2 = + £700 p/a
ADP Year 3 = + £835 p/a.

On my paltry few K the £350+ "bonus" for doing ADP looked good...
.... sat the ADP "Aptitude" Test. p*ssed it......

Thus started my IT career... an EO in Dept of Energy with the Title of "Operations Manager", reporting to an SEO "Senior Operations Manager"
beside a EO "System Programmer" who reported to an SEO "Senior SysProg"
and a few EO/Sandwich Student "Programmers" reporting to SEO "Application Managers"

All 3 SEOs reported to a Principal "Computer Manager" who in turn reported to (desk opposite) Senior Prin "Senior Computer Manager"......

I was "line manager" to the single "Operator" who actually did some work.......

[Paddy]

Got into IT more by accident than desire. I was self taught with electronics and the companies I worked for in the 60s (Like Kodak) had mainframes or rented mainframe time for a couple of hours per week. I bought a CPM machine and wrote a database and used good old WordStar CPM version. GF was going to university studding computer programming. I ended up having to read her notes in order to help her explain how understand the hardware worked. After a few years of all helping increasing numbers of friends with “computers” ; plus the odd couple of my own businesses going under; one friend said to me, why I don’t I do IT for a living. Due to media hype I was very unsure that anyone over 30 could do IT for a living, but I took the plunge, found work and did exams on the side. Money in IT is not a great as I was used to be getting in the 70s and 80s (I was used to having buckets of cash). The main observation is that there are too many muppets in IT with paper qualifications and no common sense.

[jimjamuk]

Left college and instead of following the crowd to Uni managed to get two job offers by the time I had to make the decision to go or not. Unfortunately (for Uni) one job offer was in a Brewery doing QA work - Bingo!

A few hazy years passed and as standard for a few hundred people employer there was no IT dept - me and a chap from accounts had an inkling how these beige boxes worked so we went around voluteering to fix what we could and declaring anything we couldnt as dead. Before the other chap left though he installed VNC on every box he could and left me the passwords. Having the whole company on a single LAN meant I spent the next couple of months playing the game of figuring out who's computer was who's, moving the mouse round just when people wanted to click on things to pee people off and generally loading up non appropriate material on mates machines before logging out.

Final straw was watching the Directors secretary typing the letter to us all saying the brewery was closing and we were all out on our ear. Couldnt risk telling my mates as I had £20k redundancy rolling on it and was sure the wrong comment would mean I would have been out on my ear without a jot of cash. Being in management then though the reviews suddenly came round for some of them and my advice to them was that Brewing probably wasn't for them and they should look to find something else

Anyway £20k richer I decided there was money to be made in IT and suprisingly I now do network security which means I now have an excuse to browse other peoples machines.........

[newblood]

My intoduction to IT was certainly full of excitement, drama and very very large rewards in terms of money.
I was unemployed at the time, and had been for a very long time. It was the lowest point in my life, depressing and there seemed to be only one way out.

Then I was given a zx spectrum and some basic programming manuals. What happened next is a story to warm the cockles of your heart. I threw the programming manuals in the bin and bought a game called elite.
The hours merged into days into weeks into months as I forged an intergalactic empire based upon courage skill and many reloads.

I vividly recall dodging the fer de lances as they unloaded dozens of radar guided missles onto my tail, and the strange buzz as I traded hundred of ilegal slaves to Alpha-Proxima, keeping the best one for myself. I made it to deadly with millions of galactic credits to my name

Ah yes, IT opened new horizons

I had completed Gear of War 2 on Medium difficulty. Are you saying I should be putting this on my CV ?

[EternalOptimist]

I had completed Gear of War 2 on Medium difficulty. Are you saying I should be putting this on my CV ?

of course not, dont be daft. You should only put real accomplishments on your CV like

Gear of War 2 on Hard difficulty

[RichardCranium]

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[newblood]

Opted to do Electronics at school. Discovered the microcomputers. Got hooked. Went to college to study Data Processing. Got a job as a Junior Programmer in a software house. Designed, developed and completed some systems that were hard and one that was impossible. Was not given the promotion I had been promised for completing a 2 year system in 9 months by working 100 hours a week. Left and joined a big corporation.

Spent 8 years climbing the greasy pole, working evenings and weekends for no overtime, being backstabbed and shafted by experts all the way until I made it to the roof of the most senior technical grade in this world-renowned corporation that is famed for its technology. Had three teams - 20+ staff - working for me.

Then they laid off all the non-core departments and I discovered a rolling permie 2 year contact = no redundancy pay. Left with nothing.

Realised I had spent a decade of my life working, giving up my leave, not doing anything much else except work and had nothing to show for it. I had never even been on a Spanish beach holiday.

Sat on bench for months until I got a contract junior support role on a helpdesk.

That was when the IBS got really bad and the depression kicked in.

Clawed my way back up to management contract positions, all the time trying to get back into permanent work. Never once managed to be considered for a development role.

Eventually realised I would never get permie work again as I had been labelled a filthy contractor. Decided I'd better get used to the idea.

Government decided it was better to employ 3rd world IT people than UK IT people.

Decided to compete by spending all my excess contracting income on professional training and qualifications. Managed to get 23 letters after my name in the process.

Got myself chartered and on various committees and councils.

Sat around on the bench a lot.

Decided this industry is tulipe and dying.

Forget it. It's all a heap of wink. I've wasted my life and career on a dream that had already gone away by the time I started work.

That is the kind of feeling I have now - 10 years of hard work for what ? Some tulipe agent telling me I am not this or that. But this is opposite of what this tread is meant to be : Cheer up and raise enthusiasm for IT.

[singhr]

I got my first programming job because the HR woman had a thing for young 19 year old boys. Her husband wasn't too pleased about it but she rescued me from a career in the civil service or a bank, bless her frilly pantied a*se.

[Mich the Tester]

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