What I do

When people ask me what I do, I usually answer "computers" and they
don't ask any more. Occasionally someone asks what I do with
computers, and I reply "software." In 20 years, I think only one
person has asked any further.

I don't mind--what I do is pretty boring, unless you're a
propeller-head like me. Building computer systems isn't glamorous; in
fact, 90% is behind the scenes. It is arcane, opaque, and nobody
actually knows what you're doing, not even your boss, so you need a
lot of internal motivation. When I finished a system, I was usually
the only one who knew if I'd done a good job, but I loved it.

The funny thing is, if I had to do it all over again, I don't know if
I would. 25 years ago, software was the Wild West, the final frontier,
an elite club of like-minded people doing their own thing. Today,
although still far from perfect, it's fairly well regulated, with
standards, processes, and controls--in other words, boring.

With my new job, I've moved out of software development and into
software architecture--in other words, defining the standards,
processes, and controls for software systems. While it gives me more
latitude, it certainly doesn't give me that same sense of
satisfaction.

To make matters worse, they posted me on a backwaters project, a
mainframe-based system that was 30 years old. It had no documentation,
just 13 developers who were still in the Wild West, and I was supposed
to bring the project under some sort of control. The more I looked
into, however, the worse it got, and in the end I realized that no
matter what I suggested, they didn't have the budget to do any of it.
And the fact was, the system did what it did just fine, so as long as
you didn't tinker with it, there wasn't any real reason to change it,
and the best thing I could do was leave it alone and let it die of
natural causes in a few years.

Today I was told it was the new strategic platform for insurance management.

So the good news is, I have lots of job security, a very high-profile
role, and a broad mandate to rebuild the system to support a variety
of clients for the next 10+ years. The bad news is, they still don't
have any budget.