My Professional History...
Here are just a few examples of what I'm talking about...
- IBM, MVS JESII, JCL, DB2, ETC...
- VAX VMS, DCL, CADCAM, ROSS, ORACLE, ETC...
- HPUX, SAP R/3, INFORMIX, ETC...
I did things the hard way and started out in the "trenches" of a Bank's production shop as a tape jockey - mounting tapes on IBM tapes drives for eight hours - nightly. I did that for five years. I learned every aspect of that computer shop as I could - printers, operating system, transmission devices, JESII, JCL, Microfiche. I finally moved up as the production lead computer operator - until the company I worked for was taken over by a larger company. Layoffs have always made me nervous, so I left.
Living in Northern California I then went to work for the Aerospace industry as a senior computer operator - running a large VAX/VMS Cluster on the swing shift - making sure all backups, CADCAM drawings, reports, and jobs finished correctly. I was cleared for Top Security clearance and maintained the Secret computers during this time. During those five years I learned to become very clever with Digital's DCL - not to be confused with IBM's JCL. But layoffs came again - so off I went.
By this time I had made many connections in the computer industry, and had a great reputation as a hard worker and team player. One of my past supervisor's hired me on at a very large health care company located in Rancho Cordova, California. I started out as the production lead operator working on their VAX/VMS Cluster. Again, I dove in learning as much as my brain could handle. From this job I moved into a Production Control position, then to a Systems Analyst position, Database Administrator, and finally to supporting a small (ha!) application called SAP R/3. As any IT professional knows you never really leave one position while working within the same company - you just aquire different "hats" to wear and take on additional responsibilites. Needless to say I was very busy during my 5 years working for this health care company. But it was the BEST learning experience of my life as it opened many doors for me. If you know anything at all about SAP R/3 you know that it creates many lucrative opertunites once you have a bit of experience in it. While I was with the health care company I was the SAP R/3 Basis person, the Informix DBA, and the assistant UNIX administrator (along with all the other above mentioned jobs!). Basically I lost my life. I was stressed, overworked, and miserable. I begged for help, but when you are doing the job of 5 people a company doesn't listen. So after bringing our SAP R/3 system live (and in only six months!) I hung out for about another year until I couldn't take any more. At that point I took a much better job at Hewlett/Packard.
Today I work at Hewlett/Packard, and can say it is a GREAT place to work. They really take care of us here. We have an entire team of talented SAP R/3 professionals. Today I am supporting one of the biggest R3 installations anywhere. As is HP's way, they are allowing me to now start dabbling in other areas (like NT, SQL Server, MS Access, etc.)
If you feel you still need to know MORE about me, go check out ROCKSLIDE's home page at http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Towers/2960/