It was the spring of 1989. Germany was still two countries, the Clintonistas were still Arkansas bound, and ‘text’ was NOT a verb.
Just about two years of my new career in Data Processing had gone by, and I was working in a testing group as an employee of AT&T. I had landed a job at an installation that was famous in local folklore as “The Tower” in East Brunswick New Jersey, where EVERYONE who was ANYONE worked on……”THE BILLING SYSTEM.” This system was always referred to in this manner, stating the words in reverent tones as if referring to a biblical entity in a movie of the same name starring Charlton Heston.
I was a member of a group of people that tested the interaction of large complex application computer systems. We made certain that the programs on the periphery of sub-systems passed correct data to other programs on the periphery of other sub-systems, and that those receiving systems handled that passed data, correctly. Now, in order to get these systems to create and pass the data to the receiving systems, we had to run all of the programs, in all of the systems, in the right sequence. Sometimes this could mean that we had to run 20 or 30 programs, and, usually, if the programs ran successfully, we were happy. When they didn’t run successfully, it was almost always because of a missing or wrong component in our testing environment, making our jobs unpleasant and gratuitously tedious; for you see, it was only the programs at the sending and receiving spots that were critical, and it was only at those points that we had to look at the data. I was known as a Verifier, and was expected to be subject matter expert for the system that I was responsible for; a system that I did not design, nor write. I had been trained to write code at the lowest practical level, so, naturally I was put in charge of overseeing the execution of large, complex systems, and understanding their function, without having been involved in their creation. And this was BEFORE Data Processing was trans-mortified into INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.
My deliverance from this situation would soon be effected; but first, I had to come face to face with my benefactor.
One day my manager told me that she had some news that would make me happy. She didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask for more details. I knew that she was an up front, no nonsense, fair-minded manager, and figured that I would find out soon enough what she was referring to.
It happened soon afterwards. The telephone in my cubicle rang, or bubble-beeped, or whatever one would call that noise that they make, and I answered it. Now this was early in my corporate career, and so it was long before I learned that answering the telephone could sometimes result in agida for either party. So, it was with no misgivings that I picked up the receiver and said “Hello.”
A man answered in an enthusiastic, jovial voice, saying something about, “coming up, and writing some programs”; at least, that was the only part that I understood. My response to this was either “What?” or “who?”, demonstrating to the other party that I too could put my best foot forward in a potential business interaction. He then invited me up to his office on the 24th floor to talk about writing some programs. I guess you could say, it was going to be a ‘soft’ job interview, because I had been hired by the company already, and my manager had probably prepped my boss-to-be. I, on the other hand was blind sided, ( a common practice and Buzz-word in The Corporate ), and that made my introduction to this new boss that much more thought-provoking and exhilarating… as we shall see.
24th floor. I had never been up there before, but I knew that I didn’t need a pass from my manager to go, so I got on one of the six elevators, and pushed the ‘up’ button.
Now, the 24th was the top floor, and was designed a little differently than the other floors. I didn’t know it then, but the top floor had been laid out with executives in mind, and there were several small offices built along the north wall. For some reason, I started looking for my new boss’s office on the south side. There were several cubicles, but the place was deserted. I took what seemed to me to be a long walk roughly following the perimeter of the floor and saw what looked like a modern ghost office, where everyone had won the lottery, and left. It reminded me of a Twilight Zone episode where a woman who was really a mannequin was walking around on the top floor of a department store that was totally deserted and had showcases containing no merchandise. She had been allowed to go out and mingle with mortals, but had forgotten to come back to work with the rest of the mannequins, and was AWOL. Shaking this crazed fantasy from my mind, I tried to think of a logical reason why a manager would be located on a floor where there were no other people. I considered the possibility that the guy with the jovial voice had been put up here by upper management because they had to keep him for some reason, and they didn’t know what else to do with such an eccentric. And I had been chosen to WORK for this person?
My search ended, and I entered his office with a little more trepidation that I might have had if there had at least been evidence of a Coffee Club nearby.
It was a semi-permanent walled office of about 10′ by 12′ with a metal desk at which my padrone was seated. He looked normal enough; a middle aged man with vestigial hair along the back of his head and a small whisk broom on his upper lip. There was a telephone on the desk that looked to me like a prop from the 2001 Space Odyssey Movie. It actually looked like a miniature computer with a small green gelatinous screen. I guessed that this guy must have had to put his finger into this semi-viscous mass when he had called me, just a short while ago.
I don’t remember our first words. He asked the questions. I do remember telling him that I had got a big kick out of using the PMAP option when running compiles, and being able to look at a lower level translation of the code that the compiler displays in the listing. He asked me ‘What did that tell you?’
I said that one thing it demonstrated was how difficult it would be to address data items in the code if one WAS writing in the lower level language that the compiler was spitting out in the listing, and, if the assembler didn’t create a Symbol Table on its first pass through the code and then assign addresses to it that would make it easy to access the data at the addresses simply by using the names from the Symbol Table. In the PMAP listing, the addresses for the data items were inserted in the instructions, instead of the data names from the Symbol Table that would be used by the programmer; unless Rainman was the programmer. He seemed to be suitably impressed by this insight.
Starting to feel more confident and cocky, I mentioned something about the two registers needed for the Move Character Long instruction. The only thing that I can remember about this reference today is my new boss’s IMMEDIATE response and correction: FOUR REGISTERS. I really doubt that I was finished with my sentence when he said it. There was no incredulation, impatience, or sarcasm. It was said in the way an actor would say ‘We find the defendant, Guilty as Charged.’, in a black and white movie starring Joseph Cotton. There was also an accompanying eye contact; not threatening or malicious.. just pure conviction. This response from him helped me to immediately see that he was right. Of course, four registers were needed to pinpoint the beginning and end, or length, of each data item in the instruction.
There was one question that he asked me that to this day makes me doubt his good sense as a manager. The question was ‘Are ya FAST?’ It was an inquiry as to how fast I could generate code, and was asked in an enthusiastic way with special emphasis placed on the word ‘FAST’. In retrospect, I suspect now why he seemed to want an affirmative response. By his own admission later on he said, ‘I don’t know why I have all of these time sheets and personnel files, I’m a programmer!’. He indeed had been a programmer for many years, probably since the Kennedy Administration, and this manager role was new to him. I guess he figured all programmers were as accurate as he had been. There would soon be many times on his watch in the months to come when quick slipshod coding written by people who coded faster than I did, resulted in scramblings to fix faulty programs and files. The biggest and most costly, occurring right after he had been replaced by another manager. By that time, the system was complete and apparently running well, and he was replaced much like Winston Churchill had been when Germany was kaput and there were enough Brits that felt that he was no longer needed. This last mishap at AT&T made me feel that he WAS still needed. We didn’t need any other Value-Added managers that would Hit-the-Ground-Running while preparing Business Cases, or any other proponents of meaningless platitudes, wasteful practices and corporate drivel.
It’s much better to have a manager who can sit down at your desk and do your job, than it is to have a manager who can’t, and thinks that he can be your manager. In the long run it’s better for EVERYONE concerned to have the former. Trust me.
After about 10 minutes, he said ‘Well, as far as I’m concerned. You’ve got a job up here.’ I thanked him and returned to my cube among the living on the 14th floor.
Soon afterwards I spoke to my manager about my adventure with the man upstairs. She said that his call was premature and was therefore a slight break in protocol. Knowing what I know now about him, I can see that he simply was attempting to get to the point and talk to me. He had told me in our interview that he needed people that were interested in programming. This was the first of many times that I saw his refreshing directness.
The effect of my manager’s verification that this manager-to-be was really on the level, and not an eccentric bit-and-byte man in corporate confinement on the top floor, was to get me to contact him the next day, and assure him of my interest in coming to work for him. At our first meeting, my natural tendency to be cool at meetings was compounded by my noticing that there were no other people around his office; indeed, the floor was deserted. So, with this further confirmation of his validity, I called him and said that I was very enthusiastic about coming upstairs and working for him. He said ‘Good.’
My first day was 12 April 1989.
Jonathan Womelsdorf 2011.