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Leaving El Dorado County for the State of California Me with and some Eldorado IT guys - "Stop in the Name of Love" I t was 1995. The year of the O.J. Trial and the Million Man March in Washington DC. It was also the year of the Oklahoma City bombing. On the lighter side there was the movie “Toy Story”. The Number 1 Billboard song for '95: Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise. I was looking for a new job. I had put 7 years in at El Dorado County which was a PERS organization. I was initially thinking of returning to private industry but my mother-in-law, who had a long career working in IT for the State of California, encouraged me to think about looking at the state, since I had those 7 years in the same retirement program that the State of California used. She had worked her way up to upper management and was familiar with many of the state's top IT managers. She pointed out that while state government was much larger than El Dorado size had adv...

  Please GOD, Get Me Back to Being a Programmer. I was still the IT Applications Programming Manager at El Dorado County with a staff of 20. My manager, Ollie, while a good guy, really had no understanding of what my staff did and more importantly why what they did was even needed. Good news was he mostly left me alone but the bad news was there was a push from above to greatly reduce our staff and he was not pushing back. M eanwhile I was having the kind of fun one can only enjoy as a manager. One of my programmers, Jeff, who had opted to work a 4/10 schedule (four ten hour days with 3 off) came into my office to complain he was being shorted because he was now only getting getting 8 breaks (2 breaks a day) a week when he used to get 10. I listened to him and made an attempt to feebly commiserate by saying hey your right I was just on vacation and I didn't get one break during that time. I think the county owes me 10 breaks... Let's just say he was not comforted. ...