Introduction
In February 2023, I (along with hundreds of others) was unfortunately laid off from an up-until-then great company shortly ...
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That was quite the career and, honestly, if I had f--k you money, I'd retire too (I mean, I'd do stuff, but I wouldn't have a FT job) and I've only been doing this like 27 years. The industry is tough right now and not a fun place to be.
Fwiw, I also bomb live coding interviews. Every. Single. Time. I know how to do the stuff and have way more experience, typically, than anyone reviewing my code and yet I cannot code under pressure while being watched.
Enjoy your retirement!
Congrats on your retirement!
May I say that 20-plus years of career longevity in tech likely let alone 30-40-plus years will become a rarity in years to come.
So long for those years!
Best of luck to the new generation of Millenials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha/Beta.
Only once that I can recall did any company ever give a take-home coding problem. I like these much better. I wish more companies would do this.
This was very enjoyable to read, thanks for taking us on your journey and giving us glimpses of how tech has evolved. You've had quite the career! Congratulations on retirement, even though it came earlier than anticipated.
Thank you for sharing, that's a great career journey! I can sympathize with the hiring gauntlet & the "joy" of having to jump through the technical screening flaming hoop.
The first time I was laid off, it really hurt. The second time it happened in my career, it was not a big deal.
I started programming in 1976, on HP 2000 minicomputer using a Model 33 Teletype. Later, my family got a CBM 8032 when those came out, and I programmed on it in BASIC and 6502 Assembly. I got my own Apple //e a month after they came out; more BASIC and more 6502 Assembly. Then Amiga 500, programming in C and 68000 Assembly. Then Amiga 3000. After Commodore collapsed, I finally jumped back on the Apple bandwagon, sort of... PowerComputing's PowerTower Pro. Now I'm on Macintosh properly. Although I'm a Unix guy at heart... the GUI is just a fad.
Our career journeys have a lot of similarities! I've programmed on a wide variety of platforms, big and small. We've both enjoyed the personal computer burgeoning from the early days. :-)
I picked up C++ in 1990. Now it is 2024, and I'm still programming in C++. (I have to admit, a love-hate relationship with C++. I hope Herb Sutter's C++ syntax 2 experiment or Sean Baxter's New Circle experiment bears fruit.)
Even if I were to retire, I don't think I'd stop programming. I'd just be programming for fun. But I don't quite have enough FYM to worry about retiring. I don't have the right kind of brain to think about money — my Achilles' heel.
Some of the projects I've worked on that you might have heard of: Oregon Trail, Premiere Pro, Expression Blend, Visual Studio, Internet Explorer, and Photoshop. (Many others too, but not as well known.)
congrats on the retirement! thank you so much for taking the time to write your career history for us, it's inspiring to read and interesting to see how much the industry has evolved ~
You deserve the rest ✨
Much respect for you! 45 years is an amazingly long time. What a well-written piece on your journey.
All the best in your retirement! Sorry that it came sooner than expected but at least now you get to relax a bit and do more of the things you enjoy.
What an insanely cool journey, I feel like rarely does one get such a full picture of one's career, esp in engineering spanning that long. (45 years, I can't imagine). Huge congrats to your retirement!
I loved reading this. What a career!
I'm only a couple of years behind you, I however seem to be able to spend 'f--k' you money as I go...
Thanks for sharing this Paul! What an interesting journey. While I never got to work too closely to the things you worked on at Splunk, coinciding with you there between 2014 -> 2020 was awesome and inspiring, I loved some of the talks of yours that I attended, and your feedback on some of the things I did there. Congrats and be well Paul :)
What an awesome career!
Congratulations on your retirement @pauljlucas. Best of luck in your next chapter!
I've enjoyed a lot the reading. Thanks for sharing.
This was a delightful read! I found your recounting of your journey and insights into the evolution of technology quite enjoyable to read.
I enjoyed this very much, what an interesting career! Now I feel like mine is boring in comparison. Enjoy your well deserved retirement!
One can only envy such a career and history! you've come a long way, now you can calmly go on vacation
Wow! You made it. This is a good read. Thanks for sharing 😊
Thanks for the read!
this is currently the best thing I've read today
Loved this! Reading about life stories is among my favorite things.
As others have mentioned, massive amount of respect for sticking 45 years in tech. It looks like you took a thoughtful approach in your decisions, though I know it probably wasn't always like that.
It would be great to read more about your time collaborating with CERN. I've spent most of the last decade writing software for scientific research (still do), but at times I've felt a bit like an outsider. Their perspective is just so different than in the industry, at least in Europe.
Congrats for your retirement. You've definitely made it. And best of luck with that teaching position, your students would be so fortunate to have you.
There isn't much to tell about CERN. Fabio just used my CHSM software. We collaborated via e-mail. He suggested changes and I made some.
Many years later, someone from CERN contacted me about visiting CERN to give a course (or maybe talk?) about CHSM. CHSM is very well documented already, so I really couldn't think of what to talk about.
That aside, I asked them for $X to cover my airfare, hotel, time off work, plus a bit to make it worth my while and to endure a really long flight and hassle of getting there (and back); they didn't want to pay $X, so I didn't go.
Only 12 years in the industry and I already felt like quitting my career. The competition is tough and it's hard to get paid well.
Paul, I really appreciate your post … it’s interesting to look back once in a while to see how long and varied the journey has been. From building Fortran card decks on IBM card punch machines in the early ‘60s for ‘big iron’, to ‘mini-computers’, micros (writing binary for the Intel 4004), PCs, desktops, laptops, handhelds and now the cloud, it has been awesome.
It's truly exciting to see how the field has grown into something unimaginable (to me) back then. As I move into Data Engineering on the AWS platform, I’m slowly getting a feel for where we are now, and some inkling of where things might go … beyond awesome!