Today I'll write a bit about what it's like to start a new job. I've only had two jobs, and each time it's a wonderful feeling to start fresh. That's not quite true, I've worked at Naugles/Del Taco when I was in high school, but that's fast food so it doesn't count. After college, my first job was at West Coast Beauty Supply, a company that sells cosmetic supplies to salons in the Western United States.

The funny thing about West Coast is that I have no idea how they found out about me. I don't remember giving them my resume, even though I was sending out lots of resumes back then. They probably got it from someone else. In any case, I was totally overdressed for the interview, in my suit and tie. Nervous as heck when I met Jon Putnam and Patrick Huber. Jon was the Information Services manager and Patrick was the systems administrator for the VAX mainframe.

The interview went well and I was hired on the spot -- the benefit of a small company is that it's quite agile. I started working before I signed any sort of Human Resources papers. Anyway, the interview was on Friday and they wanted me to start Sunday. I was supposed to come in and work with Jeff Brown as he showed me how to do the system backups. Actually, I was going to replace Jeff, who was moving to Portland and I think he was leaving that night or the next day. Hmm, ok now I've figured out why they hired me so quickly.

This was only a part time job, three days a week at eight hours a day, not very well paid. But none of that mattered at the time. This was my first adult job and I wanted so much to do well and fit in. And I didn't know anything at all. College taught me programming, software development, and how to get around in a Unix system. Totally inappropriate for a tech job. I had to learn how to use a PC, DOS, DEC mainframe, COBOL, VMS, FoxPro, how to make ethernet cables and wire computers. And tech supports, lots of tech support both to corporate users and our 40+ stores.

Now, it might seem like this job was a waste of the college training and my diploma and that I must have been quite bored since I wasn't being intellectually challenged. But I don't see it that way at all. I was constantly learning new things. Once I did something and completed I got a new project. We were a small department, probably too small for the company, and I constantly had things to do.

I became the store guy, maintaining and implementing new software at the stores. And that was done remotely since driving around to all the stores was out of the question. Now, we're not talking about developing software on a mainframe with a C compiler and a command line interface. This was taking off-the-shelf products and using whatever scripting or programming functionality they had to create solutions. It's a unique challenge trying to tie in a half dozen different applications with just Microsoft DOS as your shell language.

I worked at West Coast for four years, quickly going from part-time to full time to being a key part of the department. Wasn't doing real software development, wasn't getting paid a lot (about 1/2 to 2/3rds what my Computer Science friends were earning), and I had pretty much topped out, there wasn't anywhere for me to go up in the company (I'm not the management type).

But I loved working there, and that's because of the people. Less than 10 people in the department and we were family. About 1000 people in the whole company and I had met and talked to about half of them. We shared hardships and complained about management and had parties and picnics and it was a real family. So I do miss that. And even though at Oracle I have much the same feeling of family and friendship and belonging, it's not quite the same.