In The Bear season four finale Syd confronts Carmy in disbelief. Carmy has been keeping a truth that Syd just can’t comprehend. Carmy’s truth as it relates to me and tech hit me hard (warning, spoiler alert ahead).
Going into my junior year of high school, that would be a long time ago, I could choose two electives. There were some restrictions, like you had to take one from this group and one from that group. It was hard to avoid language studies and I really did not want to study one (a preview of my Mandarin illiteracy). I noticed that instead I could take a class called “Computers”.
The classroom had some TRS-80s that we got to play with and write small programs on. We worked in twos and threes since there were not enough computers to go around. The TRS-80 had games! A baseball game. And I learned that the Basic statement “poke”, which can change the memory of the computer. If I changed it in just the right place, I could change the game. Soon I was the star shortstop of TRS-80 baseball and hooked on computers and the funny little language they taught.
In college, I loved the programming assignments and would obsess over them. At first, writing code on paper in order to input in a terminal session. Spending my commute time thinking how to solve a particular problem. I struggled with the science classes of Computer Science, but got As on all the coding classes. I learned the classic algorithms and the beauty of scale.
When I first started working, I was a mainframe systems programmer. I wrote a lot of Rexx. I loved its elegance. I wrote a lot of BAL. I loved how it was so close to the system. Later, I would write a lot of CMS Pipes and loved the power of data flow programming. A manager at the time said to me, “I bet you can’t believe you get paid for this”, and it was true. I did it for the love of the game.
I transitioned to PC/Web programming and loved making my web apps interactive before it was a thing (thank you Javascript). I went full stack and broke up with C++ and leaned into Java. At this time, I felt technically I could do anything and yes, I loved it.
In my startup days, I stayed technical but would also do customer and partner visits. I started to understand the business and have opinions on it. I was fascinated by it, but didn’t love it. Then the dotcom bust happened and for personal and professional reasons I gave up on companies and did contract programming. I still loved to code but it was getting harder to work for other people. I knew too much. So, I became a director at a startup. I had a career goal to be a founder and thought a stint at a successful startup could get me there. After six months, I realized the startup was more of a small business. You say tomato, I say tomato. After two years, I quit and moved to Beijing with my family. I didn’t just quit a job, but was in my mind, I was quitting tech.
That lasted about six months. Cash flow said I needed a job. I was able to find some programming jobs in Beijing but they didn’t pay much. Also a kind of business development job which I would be horrible at. Lucky for me, I found Microsoft and was hired there as a Program Manager.
Microsoft was literally my dream job. I would have worked there for free. Well, maybe not free but close to it. I remember my first business trip and walking onto the Redmond campus. The only thing I can compare it to, would be walking onto the field at Yankee Stadium. So, for this boy who dreamt of playing shortstop the San Francisco Giants, it was an emotional moment. I felt realized.
I didn’t code much at Microsoft and that seemed odd to me. My role was essentially one of the glue guys, who did whatever it took to get things done. At the end of 2010, a bit full of myself, I quit and did contract programming again. I returned in 2012, humbled, and vowed just to focus on the work. That worked well until the last couple of years when I was ill suited for the work at hand. I certainly didn’t love it.
Which brings us back to Carmy and Syd. Carmy’s big secret was he didn’t love being a chef anymore so he was going to stop. He realized that he was putting obstacles in between him and success.
This hit me like a sand dollar. For me, it was a cumulative effect and not an epiphany. Looking back, I can see the obstacles I put in my way only to fail to navigate them.
In the 10 months since I stopped working, I’ve mostly taken care of family and have not been doing a whole lot. But, I have dipped my feet into programming again, this time with the help of AI.
And I love it and would (am) do it for free.