El Dorado County
Kris and I were married and had moved to Rocklin. Being computer programmers we figured our best hope for employment was up in Placer County as there was a semiconductor manufacturing company up there as well as Hewlett Packard. Consilium, where we had been working in Silicon Valley, was a software company whose product was the leading semiconductor manufacturing software on the market. It turned out neither of the hi-tech companies in Placer were interested in us. We ended up getting jobs elsewhere, Kris with the IT department of the Sacramento Bee downtown, and me with the IT department at El Dorado County located in Placerville. The result was we both had commutes but in different directions. (Placerville is not in Placer Country and Yuba City is not in Yuba County. What happened there?)
At El Dorado County I was hired into a programmer analyst position. The county was my first experience with working for a government organization. Well that's not exactly true. I did spend 3 plus years in the Air Force but that was a bit different. All my non-Air Force jobs had been in the private sector. My technical lead was a guy named Mike. He was in charge of the Financial systems the largest of which was the Payroll system. The IT department of El Dorado County was interesting in that half of the department was comprised of people like me who relocated from either the Bay Area or the LA area. Their motivation was they wanted to live in the foothills, buying a house with some land. While Kris and I had moved to a suburban house in Rocklin, at least for me I was thinking it was a temporary move hoping to eventually to move up into the foothills too. So the IT department was this mix of people who were from big metropolitan areas and people from small town rural areas. The programming staff was mostly urban transplants where as the operators and system programmers were more local. Tom, our main systems programmer, hardly spoke and kept to himself. It took a few years for me to get more than one word out him. Tom was very smart. The thing about Tom was he did not tolerate fools. If you came to him for help you better to be prepared or he'd ignore you. When the county got a new IBM computer he turned down all the training and learned all about the computer from just reading all the manuals and he became an expert. You need to be an IT person who has worked on mainframe (IBM in particular) computers to really appreciate the enormity of that feat. IBM manuals are hard to read. They were big, complicated, and boring. Most all IT people do not relish having to consult them, which is unfortunately sometimes necessary. Dennis was the lead operations guy. He didn't trust anyone who wasn't local to the area. Linda and Wilma were the most experienced programmers on the staff. They were over the Property system, life blood of the county. They were also responsible for the HR (Human resources) System. Wilma was a brilliant designer and coder. They were both transplants from LA. My lead, Mike, was well liked and although he was also a transplant he was originally from Kansas so he came across less urban. Two other programmers, Walter and Nushin were also transplants from metropolitan areas. There were four other programmers who were from the general area, one of them being the programming supervisor Lee. There was Gary who was local and friendly but there was also John who trusted no one and was reluctant to help or provide any information especially to us transplants. He was very uncomfortable in groups and hated cities. He once was sent off to training down in LA and on the second day he refused to leave his hotel room. He not only would not go to the training but also would not leave to even eat or go to the airport to fly back. Someone had to drive down to get him. Anyway, that's some of my co-workers. In spite of the above, working at EL Dorado county was both interesting and pleasant. Everyone did pretty much got along.
Lee, my supervisor, was nice, but I never felt she really fully understood the big picture. It always seemed to me that she was a competent programmer who just happened to get promoted a bit beyond her capabilities. My experience is that tends to happen rather often. After a couple of months on the job Lee came over to talk with me. She said I was clearly qualified to be working at a higher level. She then asked me to fill out a form for a higher position and return it to her. So I did. A couple of weeks later she asked me to come to her office. There was another person there as well. Lee then proceeded to ask me questions about myself and my experience. Most of these questions she already knew the answer. I was confused. It was like she didn't know me and I was being interviewed. She had asked me to fill out the forms for this position telling me I was qualified, but now she wanted me to tell her how or why I was qualified. In my past, private experiences if my boss wanted me to do something they generally just asked or requested that I do it. I'd been promoted many times in the Silicon Valley companies. My promotion was a result of my work at the company. I had never asked for a promotion and I never was asked to explain why I deserved one. In my mind it was “You're my boss, can't you tell if I deserve or am qualified for this position?” When I brought up that she already knew all about my background from either my work there or from the interview I had with her when I was hired, she looked a little uncomfortable and explained that I needed to tell her again. Well I did and a week later I was promoted to a new position. To my surprise that meant I was to stop working on my current assignment, move to a new cubicle, and work on something completely new. That meant Mike was no longer my lead. I now would report directly to Lee.
In my new position I was responsible for all the social services applications This included the AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) and Food Stamp systems, the Child Services systems and a few other small miscellaneous systems including the Jury Duty Selection system. At this point it was going to be just me supporting these systems. They all appeared to be running pretty smoothly so it didn't seem too bad. The next week I met with various department supervisors who worked in these areas to get an idea of their needs and concerns. It seemed to go well. The systems all ran on an old Sperry UNIVAC mainframe and by old I mean this computer had a memory of 3 megabytes (3M). It was actually only a 2M machine but had been custom modified into a 3M. UNIVAC, the Universal Automatic Computer, was the first computer built for general commercial use in the early 50's. It used magnetic tape in place of punch cards to input and store data. Data storage was all on tape so programs had to access and store all data on tapes as a result there was a bank of the tape drives all programs used and a whole room dedicated to housing the tapes. As a program ran someone (a tape operator) had to load up and unload all the necessary tapes the program needed. The computer, the tape drives, and a huge printer took up a whole room. It was like going back to the 60's, except it was 1988. The scuttlebutt was that a new IBM mainframe was arriving very soon.
The next week Lee called me into her office. She let me know that all the county systems were going to be converted from the old Sperry to the new IBM. I had to convert all of my systems and add a new online component to the Welfare system and maybe the Child Services system as well. My initial thought was that would probably be a minimum of a couple of year's work. I asked if I was going to be getting any help and Lee explained that there was not any staff currently available but maybe down the road if any of the other systems completed their conversions early. I inquired as to what was early and she then said all conversions need to be up and running within 9 months counting the current month. I wanted to laugh but I just sat there quietly, a little stunned. When I came out of her office Mike and Gary came up to me and asked how I was doing and if I was stressed. I said “Not really. It's a ridiculous and impossible assignment. She's f#$%ing crazy.“ They told me the deadline is fixed and I replied it doesn't matter I would need to have at least 2 more of me with all three of us working non-stop overtime to even have a chance at converting those systems in 9 months. They indicated that they had started working overtime on their systems. I said I'd think about it but I don't see any value in worrying about something that's not possible. Gary was the programmer whose position I took. He said I could come to him if I had any questions on my systems. He then told me he'd asked to be moved off the position because he was over stressed. He just wanted out. Gary would often remark in the coming weeks about how calm I seemed about the situation. Did Lee really think this was possible? I started working on it but I wasn't about to go crazy with my hours. When asked I just said I was working on it doing the best I could. Failure was a given and there was nothing I could do about that so I didn't worry too much about it.
Another month or so went by. The County had a new, recently hired CAO (County Administrative Officer). He hired a new CIO (County Information Officer), John, not the programmer mentioned above. John came from the Bay Area and he also had worked in the private sector. John would be Lee's boss. He assessed the situation and did not like what he saw. He was clearly not happy with Lee and she was not happy with him. They tussled. She became extremely stressed after which John convinced her to leave. We were now down to about 6 months. With no Lee I was now reporting directly to John. John met with all the area leads one by one. My turn came and John invited me to his office. He asked how I was doing and told me a little about himself. He then explained to me the current situation. He said the IT department had been dragging it's feet for some time and the deadline for the conversion had been set by the County Supervisors because of their frustration with the department. As a result there was no wiggle room on the conversion deadline. He said he was planning to hire consultants to do the Child Services system for me. He said I could let the little one off systems slide till after the conversion deadline. Then he wanted to know what will it take for me to get the Welfare (AFDC & Food Stamps) systems converted by the deadline. Ut-oh – suddenly the deadline became a real thing...
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