« Male Advantages I | Main | End to End Computing »
September 04, 2003
Unix Geek - A History
A couple of items (about AUUG and the last Friday Five) have inspired some readers to send emails about my age (confidential) and career. I figured I could outline how it happened and show that really it was a pure accident.
Many years ago, when I was in High School, there was an Apple IIc (later an Apple IIe) which "lived" on a table in the vice principal's office. It was a small school and I was easily hooked. I borrowed manuals, taught myself Apple Basic and Integer Basic and started drawing bit-blip elements (effectively 8502 machine code). I wrote programs and flogged a few via email to apple games suppliers. When I looked at university, I was planning on getting a cadetship or sponsor to help with the costs. Given my interest in computers, I contacted the only computer company that I knew anything about - IBM. Unfortunately, IBM at that time had a policy of not employing computer graduates - they did have cadetships for law and arts and they would then train them in computing directly. There was some fear that the things to be learned at university would somehow be problematic for a career at IBM.
In the end I decided to find work and then do uni plus a part time job (or part time uni and a full time job). Australia was in a bit of a recession so work was not easy to find. Given where i lived (out in the sticks), I headed to the nearest "city" and walked the streets asking for work at every retail outlet. I would drop in, ask for a job, and leave a resumé behind. I would do 50+ places a day and when I had been to every retail outlet in the city, I started again. I got three nibbles - one was at the Post Office who wanted me to do an aptitude test, one was a coffee shop, and the last was the local Tandy (Radio Shack in the US?) store. This Tandy store made lots of money from HiFi gear and also had a computer section and a classroom (full of TRS-80 Model IIs). I pestered all three and the one that offered me a job was Tandy. The fifth (or sixth) visit, I met the manager. It was a Friday afternoon. He said: "Can you read?", I said (indignantly) that I had a HSC, he ignored that and asked: "Can you read fast?". It turned out that the instructor had quit, they had a class starting on Monday and he wanted me to "teach" it. When I arrived on the Monday (having read the course notes - without any access to a computer) a new teacher also arrived and so I started unpacking stock boxes. After two weeks, they decided to pay me :-) Tandy were good to me and I continued to work with them (full time over Christmas - two months) and part time the rest of the year) for the entire time I was completing my undergraduate degree. It was here that I met OS-9 (a mini Unix) and later Xenix.
When I finished my BSc, my first employer was InterTan (the computer sales arm of Tandy) in the same store that I had first worked in. I was officially a CMR (Computer Marketing Representative) and I survived in this role for 3 months. In my first month, I managed to outsell the big "York Street Center" (the flagship computer store with 4 or 5 full time CMR's). My commission cheque was greater than my pay. I received two letters from head office. The first congratulated me for my effort and the second announced that the commission rate would be effectively halved (unless you worked in a flagship store). That was like a red rag to a bull and I repeated the performance and reached the same level of commission (i.e. doubled the sales). The boxes we were selling included the T-2000 (an DOS-clone - not a PC-clone because the legality of cloning was still not established), the Coco (Coco 3 ran OS-9) and of course, real business systems (TRS-80 Model IV) and laptops (T100). Again I got two letters, one thanking me and one announcing a new commission plan with the effective rate halved again. I pulled out all the stops and sold systems directly into a number of schools. I was pumping computers out the door as fast as we could get them in but I could not match the previous months commission and so I resigned and took a Unix job instead.
When I had started university, I was really interested in Unix (having found OS-9 and read lots of technical manuals) and I desperately wanted to study computer science. The problem was that Computer Science was an elite course with an entry requirement on 460/500 (HSC Score) while I had a mere 360/500 (top marks for 3U Maths and good marks in 3U Geography and stuff all else). Also it was not clear that there was any form of career available in IT (remember the IBM comments above). I decided to be a teacher but do a science degree so that I could do computer science subjects. The rules were that you had to have two teaching subjects and so I took a minor in Geography and three years of maths which met the requirements to teach those subjects (the requirements differed depending on the subject you wanted to qualify for). This left lots of space for computer science subjects and the rules (more rules) were quite clear. Pretty much anyone could do the first year subjects (from memory these were: one in computer science- 6.001, one in maths - 10.081 and one in physics - 1.041). There were about 60 places for CompSc students plus 600 additional places for other students (300 for science in semester 1 and 300 for engineering in semester 2). At the end of the year some students dropped out of the CompSc stream (the attrition rate was deliberately kept at a high level) and those who survived the general subjects could apply to transfer. This was done by adding up the marks for all subjects and dividing by the standard workload (8 units). Ah ha! I did nine units and got a transfer and became a real CompSc student :-)
Note that my plans had not changed, I was still working towards becoming a teacher. The IBM PC had been announced (and presumably the first Mac too but I knew nothing about it) but it wasn't a "real" computer and there was no indication that there would be any potential to get work from studying computers - after all we were not learning about mainframes at university :-( What had happened while I was studying is that Unix had gone mainstream. Students coming out of university and working for computer companies could not help comparing what they had now with what they had seen while studying. There was this progression to using Unix servers on "mini" computers. So while I was selling computers, there were companies actively looking for people with Unix skills to help in system design or coding or administration. I took one of these jobs (in a pathology laboratory) and I have been doing Unix admin, design or administration ever since.
To be continued....
Posted by Ozguru at September 4, 2003 12:09 PM
Comments
Posted by: Jivha at September 4, 2003 12:09 PM
Posted by: Jivha - the Tongue at September 4, 2003 12:09 PM
