After leaving a safe and well paid job the brave new world of Legacy Modernisation awaited. However, it did not all go according to plan… Things started slowly for the new company. I had a couple of minor engagements, including changes to the website of a wholesale fruit and vegetable merchant. Of course, I didn’t […]
With seven graduates integrated into the IT department I was free to move on to other things, but first I had to persuade the new management team that “The Training Guy” could do more than just teach… As the graduate training programme came to an end in the autumn of 2008, and the new management regime […]
After eleven years as a freelancer I was given the option to take a permanent role at a place I knew well… In truth it was not a difficult decision. The COBOL gravy train was showing signs of being derailed, and IR35 was a threat to the contract profession everywhere. I went to the pub […]
New century, new start. Or in my case, not so new as I returned to familiar ground in the centre of Manchester… Agencies can be a rare and strange breed. Even when you decide that you want to switch contracts they rarely help you, its almost as if they are in denial. This appeared to […]
After three contracts travelling to Leeds, Chester and Oldham, it was a welcome change to head back to the easily commutable Manchester city centre… By Spring 1996 the fashion retailer had ditched Mantis. The 4GL that worked particularly well with the hierarchical database Supra was causing all sorts of problems. Performance, record locks, unfamiliarity; it […]
After years of familiarity it can be a big step out into the unknown swimming with the sharks, but I needn’t have worried. The big wide world of contracting was not exactly a showcase for excellence… I marketed myself as a senior analyst programmer, with skills in COBOL, CICS, VSAM, Supra, and if push came […]
Eleven years is a long time to be in the same job. Could I perform as part of a team? Would my coding skills be up to scratch? And what was the beer like in Manchester? The last few weeks of my time at the brewery should have been a period of handover, but […]
A few years into my IT career I ditched Assembler for COBOL and hoped that I would never have to go back… COBOL was a revelation. It was horse drawn carriage to motor car, Betamax to VHS, black and white to colour. After the relatively slow and long-winded Assembler, I could churn out COBOL code […]
My forty year career in IT blossomed in the late 1970s as I learned a valuable lesson about continuous stationery and undertook my first legacy modernisation project… The seventies were drawing to a close and technology was moving at pace. Actually, if you compare it to technological developments today it wasn’t really moving that quickly. […]
Introduction Once upon a time your computer systems were cutting edge technology. Your IT department was a shining light of innovation and your staff were young and creative. Now your staff are older, wiser, more experienced, and they need to be because the resource pool to maintain and enhance your ageing technology diminishes by the […]