In 1995, I hated my friggin’ job. I had the odious task of playing a middle-management role in a law firm that was quickly headed downhill. I spent the lion’s share of my time running interference for support staff who were just trying to do their jobs, keeping the insecure and power-hungry administration from running roughshod over them, just for the sake of reminding them who was the boss.

Ironically, it was the kind of job I hadn’t wanted to take. I had sworn for years that I didn’t want to work in the legal profession, having developed a strong distaste for lawyers and hair-splitting as a line of work over a number of years of doing legal secretarial work. But when I relocated to a small city and I needed to find work asap, my legal background enabled me to land a job almost immediately, so I took the position despite my better judgment. (I’ll add more on this sort of professional decision-making later.)

Earlier in my life, I had aspired to being a published author. I had penned many an article and short story and poem, and even two novels, but I wasn’t having any luck getting published on a large scale. So, when the world wide web was picking up speed, I realized that I could publish myself electronically by building a website that featured my writing. I did so, and I loved it. The act of building web pages was such a departure from my workaday administrative world, that it gave me a much-needed reprieve. When I coded pages, I was creating something, not just running interference. And I could see the results immediately.

I built another website. Then another. I started to look at the source code of the pages I was building, and I realized I could code them by hand, instead of with the WYSIWYG editor that was mucking up my display. Long story short, in the space of about a year, studying technical manuals on public transit on the way to work, and practicing my chops on the weekends, I knew how to code well enough to go looking for paid work building websites.

I changed careers. I went from being administrative/middle management, to being a technical producer and engineer. To some, it would seem like a significant change, and it was. Even more significant was the fact that I went from being a salaried employee at one of the region’s top law firms, to being a “temporary” contractor who was paid by the hour and didn’t have full benefits. And I had a household to support.

Ditching full-time permanent employment in favor of hourly independent contractor work is, by modern standards, something of a risk. Some might say it’s a substantial one. I think it was. The world wide web was still young, people hadn’t yet widely embraced email, and there was no guarantee that there was any future at all in building websites. As far as my family was concerned, it was a wild stab in the dark… a pretty risky gamble. But I had a hunch that it was going to be big – and there would be substantial reward waiting for me, if I just hung in there.

Fortunately for me, I was right. And over the course of my professional web development/software engineering years, starting in 1997, I routinely took chances with my work, pushed the envelope of what code could do, embraced new technologies, defied organizational politics, and generally refused to play the games that most corporate climbers did. Due — at least in part — to my brash (some would say rash) eagerness to test limits and get away with it, my income ballooned dramatically. I was one of the few people who would willingly and eagerly take on “impossible” tasks… and deliver. I would wade into a bee’s nest of cranky engineers and pissy managers and emerge with the proverbial honeycomb of a successful implementation. I thought outside the box. I inspired people with my devil-may-care can-do attitude and my code-ninja moxy. I brought home my projects on time and on budget. I was the go-to person if you were in an impossibly tight spot. The company where I worked rewarded me well, even through the tough times after the dot-com bust. Especially through those times. For I was one of the people who could keep a clear, cool head in the face of impending disaster and come up with inventive solutions when all seemed lost.

Thanks to the favor of my employer, I entered the ranks of the world’s top 25%, financially speaking. I was able to buy a great house with a great view in a highly desirable community. I have two cars in the garage and a resume that reads like a best-practices guide for Getting Ahead In Technology.

When it comes to risks I took that turned out well, my gambits in the domain of the world wide web are the most shining examples of just how well things can turn out.

At Risk: My career path and job prospects, health benefits, welfare/survival of my household
Dangers: Unemployment, socio-economic marginalization, domestic uncertainty
Rewards: Higher pay, participation in cutting-edge technologies
Outcome(s): Higher standard of living, solid track record in profession

A Perilous Relief – Table of Contents

Technorati Tags:
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,