If my current self could go back in time to tell my past self that one day, I would manage an internal recognition system that is connected to the professional development of a large team of people, my past self would punch my current self in the face.

This seems to be a pattern my career has taken. Each step was something I grew to tremendously enjoy. In some cases, each job I held before had something I took with me, and some things I was happy to leave behind. This is a brief summary of my career journey.

COLOR LEGEND I AM CREATING FOR THIS ARTICLE

• R:0|G:0|B:0 = This is a set of guidelines for something I am writing to help guide you through my storytelling process. According to the style page definitions, black and underlined text is the default indicator for a URL.

• R:7|G:55|B:99 = This is the base color for my narrative and explains a main point. I will use different font sizes for titles, subtitles, and body text in this color as my main point.

• R:200|G:60|B:75 = When you see text with this color, is a sub-point I am making which will eventually bring us back to the main point I started writing about. I will use different font sizes just like my description above where applicable.

• R:150|G:50|B:150 = When you see text in this color, it is a second sub-point I am making to bring us back to the sub-point I was making. I will use different font sizes just like my description above where applicable, but if we are already 2 levels deep, the idea is that text in this color is as deep as I want to go before circling back to the previous sub-point.

• R:255|G:0|B:255 = I stopped here and will continue the writeup shortly. Indicators will be ALL CAPS AND IN ITALICS.

THE JOURNEY SUMMARY

Without trying to bury the lead, this is the link to all the details of my work expereince published on LinkedIn... https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikea/details/experience/

Self-Employed Consultant as an Undergraduate

This is simply me looking for a little bit of cash as I navigated my Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and minor in Mathematics. Without a lot of money growing up, not being awesome with standardized tests, and really only targeting 2 possible college choices, I ended up at the City University of New York: College of Staten Island. It was stigmatized that landing here is likely because you were too poor or too stupid to get into someplace better. On the "being poor" side of things, I got myself some needed spending money. Combining hustle and being deeply driven to prove CSI was not the "College of Stupid Idiots" as many people poke fun at, I had something to prove in a big way.

I had no real idea how lucky I was until just now.

It wasn't until I wanted to back some of this up with facts that I was very lucky early in life. This specific section is being drafted on Sunday 10/27/2024.

As I began doing some research using the SciSpace GPT from OpenAI's ChatGPT to help illustrate a point that I was lucky enough to land at a college where I grew up that was inexpensive and offered baccalaureate degrees. When considering college in 1987, since I was only focused on in-state colleges. Marist College was my first pick, SUNY Oswego was my second pick, and CSI (short for College of Staten Island) was third. They all offered a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science... this was my only focus related to continuing education as the age of 17.

In my discussion with the AI, I received a response that no New York state community college offered any baccalaureate degrees in 1990. I did not think that could be correct, because I had one in 1991... and there was no way I would have continued my education at CSI if that were not the case. I had to enter my major when I enrolled in September 1987, and Computer Science was that selection! So, I did what I seemed to do best and challenge the AI with the fact that I did receive a degree of that level in 1991. It turns out that CSI was a deep exception to that assumption.

Here is a small portion of a response I received from the AI... "CSI is indeed unique in New York City's educational history. When the college was established, it operated as a dual-purpose institution that offered both associate and bachelor’s degree programs. It was part of a select number of community colleges across the U.S. that experimented with this model before it became more widespread. " This alone was mind-blowing. If you want to read more about this discovery, please take a look at the following...

• Shared ChatGPT link...  https://chatgpt.com/share/671e2eaa-9a2c-8011-b72b-598e4a415a14

• Personal Airtable report on the main topic of "Community Colleges Research Inquiry"... https://airtable.com/app3R9ETJMklz8DlW/shrE8soIEtIjnRSre/tblWQ1Opa4VCojPTU

• Personal Airtable report with each question and response broken down in the main topic of "Community Colleges Research Inquiry"... https://airtable.com/app3R9ETJMklz8DlW/shrkWDcJTaCNlYHK9/tblA4NuybVYDTWnh0

After learning that so few affordable colleges had baccalaureate degrees when I went to college, it explains so many early interview processes where some people were in disbelief to see a degree of this level from a community college in 1991.

The Marketing Advantage - Senior Programmer

My first job out of college located in Stamford, CT - a place I would eventually move to 2 months after being hired. I wouldn't call my position as Senior Programmer to be super glamorous, it also meant "only other employee." IF we had an employee numbering system, I was #0003. In today's context, it was also not necessarily a position that was AI focused, but here's the concept of what we were all about...

• We took corporate data, normalized it, then analyzed it, with an intention to create custom reports for executive management.

• The owner of the company studied each type of business to sell this technology to, and created a series of sentences to describe what each response should say. In many cases, he dissected sentences into sections to describe some of the data we analyzed. The way he built these sentence sections was pure genius. Each sentence's section could be put together to display a different sentence AND say the same thing! Imagine a scenario where you had a sentence that had 3 different sections, and you could draw from a list of 4 options for the first section, 3 options for the second section, and 5 options for the third section, you could communicate the same details in a sentence 60 different ways! That was a part of the code I worked on. Not AI at any stretch, but how funny is it to recall such a project in the early 90's and make it a tiny bit relatable to the current world of OpenAI, Anthropic and Ollama!

BondNet Trading Systems - Operations Manager

And now I ran into a dilemma. I always worked for different places that either paid you every week or every 2 weeks (I'm talking non-technical positions). I knew that some companies paid their employees every 2 weeks of bi-monthly. I was paid once a month at The Marketing Advantage, and it taught me one thing - how to properly budget my money! Additionally, I realized that being a programmer where you created a "masterpiece" would only be picked apart by customers who always wanted more capabilities, and by technologies that changed over time, requiring continuous overhauls. I was not 100% sure I was enjoying this discovered reality.

After a few occasions when there wasn't enough money to pay me, I got quite nervous and began looking for a new position. BondNet Trading Systems was looking for a computer programmer. During the interview process, I was asked questions about my programming experience as well as my educational skills. After everything was done, I was not offered "a job." I was offered "two jobs," and I needed to make a decision:

1. Pick the programmer position to write code on a DEC-OSF-1 Operating system and Oracle, based in Los Angeles, CA

2. Stay where I was and get paid to learn how to setup printers, computers on a networking environment from the ground up (which included punching cables, running wires, and configuring systems to talk on a local area network). This position also included server and desktop configuration and management, as well as operational work for the company's main application.

I thought to myself, "They are willing to pay me to learn something new... how stupid would I be if I didn't say YES to that!" Promptly saying yes, this is where I learned all I could about servers, networks, application configurations, and server configurations. I was part of a larger team, and even though I was not writing low-level code, I took that expertise with me.

ADP Brokerage Services - Level 2 Support Engineer 

Overall, BondNet was ultimately acquired and I stayed over 3 different periods of the company close to running out of money. I believed in the cause (to create the first odd-lot bond-trading market, which I was there for the first trade - it was a heck of an achievement) and chose to stick it out. But the fear of not being able to be paid for several weeks made it hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I just got married and it didn't feel right to make my new wife suffer with me on this ride. So, it was off to another job search that got me to move to southern NJ.

While I did not stick with the path of networking or programming, my attention to detail and ability to be operationally exact led me into a job as a Level 2 Support Engineer with ADP Brokerage Services. In this case, my experience let me to the position as well as my experience in the financial industry from a broker support role. This was a heavy travel job which I loved but there was significant stress in always coming to aid of irate customers. It was a heavy grind and I did not last very long in the role.

However, I ran into someone who I considered a very close friend for years. Between him and another manager, we were closely connected professionally and personally. The manager moved to a new company while I was working at ADP. Then he brought my friend over, and I was the third. We were a small click and tried to steer the ship of a very small company.

Futura Services - Help Desk Manager

In this example, someone who know my capabilities got me completely bought into the idea that by following him and my friend into this company, we can make something of it. It was a very local organization, 25 employees at the most. I was a Help Desk technician, and became the manager of the help desk very quickly. My concept was to document the fixes in detail as they came up. The solution we had for corrugated box plants ran on Novell Netware connected to dumb terminals using a DigiBoard as the network connection infrastructure, and the newer system for the folding carton industry was based on Windows running Microsoft SQL on a local area (modern-at-the-time) ethernet network.

Then the manager who we followed suddenly left without any warning. A few months later, my friend was forcibly removed... and there I was feeling like my personal support team was gone. Additionally, the manager and my friend parted their friendship over this. Within another 2 months, I was let go. The vibe that I got was we came in to "corporatize" this small company. While there was a lot of good things about them, they ran the support and development side of the business with very little enthusiasm. I was even accused of "trying to take over the internal network operations," which was misinterpreted in trying to fix a network routing issue that the person who made an error in altering a routing table created. I could argue that I was thrown into the makings of a culture war in an organization.

The path taken so far.

I landed The Marketing Advantage because in the owner who interviewed my loved my response to these questions...

1. QUESTION: Why should I hire someone from a community college when I can hire someone from an ivy-league school?ANSWER: I have no idea, but I think you're caring about the wrong thing. I think you should care about someone you feel has a good idea of what success could look like, and whether that candidate can help get you there. Even if that person - myself in this case - needs to learn more about the job role, you want someone motivated to succeed. I hope you feel I am that person.

2. QUESTION: Well then, what if I was leaning towards someone from an ivy-league school - how can you change my mind?ANSWER: I wouldn't want to do that based on your own expereince. I would just ask you what is more valuable to you, a candidate with a degree that got it some somewhere specific, or a candidate with a degree who can deliver the results you need. This way you can keep your opinion on the value of ivy-league candidates, while you consider how to achieve a goal to be successful. And again, I hope you feel I am that person that can deliver on that, despite where my degree came from.

With BondNet Trading Systems, the hiring manager simply enjoyed my company, passion and experience. He was I was personable, driven, and trustworthy. Nothing really stood out other than we clicked immediately. This was the second job where I did most of the selling of myself.

ADP Brokerage Services was me knowing someone. My wife's friend worked in a personal support capacity for an executive at ADP. We met several times over the years and I ended up running into her while I did a demonstration of the BondNet system at her office in Newark, NJ. My wife and I were invited to her place in White Plains, NY often. We got to know each other. She and my wife golfed together a few times as well.

When I was looking for work, she finally asked me what I do for work. When I told her, she immediately asked me for my résumé and I sent it to her when I got home. About a month later, I landed a job at ADP through that connection. It was weird for a while as I found out that it was only my connection with her that I landed the job. I was hired right in the middle of a hiring freeze. It was here that I made a close freind and did well with one of the managers here.

That manager brought me to Futura Services where the role was good in the beginning, but short lived.

At this point BondNet Trading Systems to ADP Brokerage Services to Futura Services was mostly through the connections I had with people from each position before. So, for 3.5 years I followed a path of people first, capabilities second, to three different positions.

It was time for me to make my next big move all on my own.

Computer Associates / CA Technologies - Various Pre-Sales Support and Manager Roles

So, I was looking for a new job in the midst of being let go from Futura Services. It wasn't long before I had two offers on the table in a few weeks. One position was for an IT specialist at DuPont in Wilmington, DE. Another position was for a Systems Engineer - someone who works with account managers to land software sales to customers. My wife told me she had several dreams that this was going to be the job for me.

In my first interview with the sales manager, he walked into the room, did not look at me, took my resume and casually tossed it in the middle of his desk with this question... "So, you can't hold down a job, huh?" I don't know what came over me but before he sat down and made initial eye-contact with me, I immediatelt repsonded with, "I'm 27 years old who landed entry level jobs with entry level salaries. I need to get ahead somehow." He looked me in the eyes half way through the first sentence. The next thing he did was chuckle, and blurted out, "Well said. I like you!" Now it took more than that to land the job, but somehow, every other question with every other interviewer was a blur to me.

Boy was she right on the money!

I got travel more with much fewer chaotic schedule changes, got paid much more, I made a name for myself as a high-performing person, and the job allowed me to change positions very frequently. In the beginning, all that corporate shuffling felt good, but it ended up being unwieldy in the end.

With many different hiring freezes, CEO turnover, and layoffs, I ended up getting let go nearly 10 years later. That said, I have been told that I have done some amazing good for the company and for many of the people that worked directly for me as well as a lot of people who were individual contributors during my run as a Senior Director. That's a series of topics for another time.

Universal Solutions Group - Director - Emerging Technology Group

Now, the timeline is insane here...

• 9/11/2006 - I was let go from Computer Associates (then just called CA).

• 9/12/2006 - The news of me being let go caused people I knew to call my house so frequently, that I ended up taking down the local network presence of Comcast in my area. For transparency, I was a VoIP early adopter!

• 9/13/2006 - One friend who finally got through to me said there were a few people who wanted to talk to me. That afternoon, I had a phone interview and scheduled an in-person interview in Glastonbury, CT the next day.

• 9/14/2006 - Waiting for the interview, I ran into 2 other people who I saw in the Princeton, NJ office when I was let go. This was shocking to me. They were both let go as well but already secured positions with USG. When I finished interviewing the CEO, I realized this wasn't an interview - it was a contract negotiation!

• 9/15/2006 - I signed the conditional employment letter where I was a probationary employee for 30 days. In 17 days, I met the requirements and was brought on full time.

This happened so fast, that I never skipped a beat! I was immediately dealing with new customers, new employees, some of the same past employees, and I ended up working with new people at CA who were our business partner. This was a very volatile role, and with questionable health care and dental care issues that ended up costing me too much out-of-pocket expenses to cover a dental procedure for my wife, I was not having it any more. I toyed with the idea of going back to CA, but something else came up from one of my former employees who wanted me to get into a new company he was working for.

TIME TO CALL IT A NIGHT - MORE LATER