Job History

When I was in junior high school, I worked in the school library. I did the same in high school. (I'm a geek, remember?) Then I started working in the public library. I enjoyed that, but the salary was pitiful. I sought a job in the tech industry.

After college, I went to work for a disk drive manufacturer as a test technician. After the drives came off the assembly line, it was my task to test them, adjust them and repair them.

My first day on the job, they sat me down in a tiny office with a TV and a VCR and played a tape that was supposed to instruct me on how to service the disk drives. I watched it for about five minutes before I complained.

"This tape isn't doing me any good," I said. "I've never even seen a hard drive! I have no idea what the tape is referring to. Why don't you just put me on the line for a bit so I can play with the machine and see what it does, and then the tape will mean more to me."

There's a saying I like that goes like this, "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand." That's me to a T.

So they put me on the line. (I realize now how extraordinary that was. An employee makes a request and the employer complies?)

After working on an actual hard drive for a few hours, I learned what the parts were, and how they worked together, and what they did. So I went to the lead technician, my supervisor, and said, "Okay, Mike. I'm ready to watch that tape now."

He laughed. "Are you kidding? You've already learned everything you need. There's no point in you watching it now." So I grumbled and went back to work. But he was right.

Periodically I'd run into a problem that stumped me and I'd go to my supervisor. "Mike, can you help me?" He'd say, "Sure, just give me a minute."

So I'd go back to my machine and wait. And wait. After a while, I'd get bored and keep working on the problem while I waited for him. 95% of the time, I'd fix the problem before he showed up. Eventually, I figured this out and stopped asking him for help. I still wonder if he did that on purpose.

Eventually, I got to be really good at repairing and setting up the drives. Then one day they got an order for hard drives with lots and lots of modifications. During assembly, they would cut many of the connections on the logic board and add dozens of fine wires from one place to another. (Ever hear the phrase haywire?)

Those special-order machines were real turkeys to work on. In fact, one day, we got a memo from management: Do not refer to the units as turkeys.

After I'd been there a year, I felt that I'd learned all that I could learn servicing hard drives, and I asked my boss for a transfer to another position. He said there was a freeze on transfers. Now what was I to do?

I transferred anyway... to another company. I quit and got another job. For more money. For the early portion of my career, this was to become a habit. I'd work someplace about a year, get bored, and go get a job someplace else for more money.

By the way, those hard drives I was working on? Like hard drives today, they stored data magnetically on a thin disk platter. But back then, the disk platters were 14 inches across and only held about 5 megabytes!


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