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email: sbpearce@cybermesa.com
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Story of My Education To My Career
I grew up in Silver City, New Mexico and the time spent in high school, I was never employed. I spent the majority of my non-academic time working on my basketball skills. I lettered three years of varsity basketball and two years of track. Coaching basketball was what I was interested in pursuing as a career but I also wanted to find a career that was stable yet paid well. I took two years of accounting in high school and thought this was the path I would take.
The summer after graduating high school I found a job working at the newly opened McDonald's restaurant in Silver City. The following school year I started college at Western New Mexico University (WNMU) in Silver City and continued working at McDonald's. I had in my mind that I was to major in accounting, and started taking business classes while working on my basic core curriculum. I also tried out for the University's basketball team as a walk-on but found out to play college sports you needed to either be on an athletic scholarship or be an exceptional athlete to walk-on. I was neither.
My third year of college I took a FORTRAN programming class and thought it was really fun. At about the same time, I was taking an Intermediate Accounting class and decided accounting was really boring and that I didn't want to pursue that educational and career path.
WNMU did not, at the time, offer a business degree with a focus in computer programming. I had already logged what I thought was too many hours taking business classes to change from a business degree. I was also very ready to move out of Silver City.
Two hours down the road in Las Cruces at New Mexico State University (NMSU), they offered a business degree with a concentration in Business Systems Analysis. I transferred with most of my credits earned from Western going with me. The GPA did not transfer. I was, for the first time, out of my parent's house, yet, I was also starting at an new school taking junior level classes and starting from scratch with my GPA. My grades suffered and I started out at NMSU with a low GPA.
Before leaving Silver City, I had continued to work at McDonald's and the owner of that store had just purchased the store in Las Cruces. I also transferred my employment to the Las Cruces McDonald's where I worked weekends, some nights and some mornings.
The Business Systems Analysis degree plan became the Business Computer Systems degree plan by the University for reasons I still do not know for sure. I believe it had something to do with the expectations of recruiters that were not looking for computer people and the University educating computer skills. This degree plan required extensive study in COBOL programming, Job Control Language, IBM mainframe utility programs, and data structures, along with the business classes of Management, Finance, Accounting, Economics, Marketing, and other business classes. This degree plan was considered to have one of the toughest curriculums in the College of Business at NMSU.
In December 1984 I completed my required course work and was awarded the Degree of Bachelor of Business Administration with a focus in Business Computer Systems.
After Graduating with a GPA of 2.0, I was unable to find work in my chosen career path, and I still worked at McDonald's. I knew for sure that the fast food industry was not for me for much longer. I wasn't making enough money working at McDonald's to continue living in Las Cruces, and moved back to Silver City and in with my parents again. I also transferred my employment at McDonald's back to the Silver City Store.
Before Leaving Silver City and WNMU, I got involved with a group of people who played the game of Ultimate Frisbee. We traveled to surrounding areas to compete against other teams in weekend tournaments. The tournaments I participated in were held in Phoenix, Arizona, El Paso, Texas, Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Silver City, New Mexico, and in Denver and Boulder, Colorado. In Las Cruces, I helped to start up a competitive team. When I moved back to Silver City, the team there was on it's last legs but I wanted to not only recruit new players, but to try to get the older experienced players back out also. I was working at McDonald's and one of those experienced players came in for lunch. I asked him if he was going to practice, he said he was just too busy with his job. So I asked him what he did for a living and he said he was a computer consultant and he was developing software. When I asked him if he needed any help, his eyes lighted up and he asked me what I got my degree in. I stated I received a Bachelor of Business Administration majoring in Business Computer Systems. He smiled real big and said we needed to talk.
I started working for Michael Cox Associates, Inc. on a part time basis and continued to work for McDonald's. Michael Cox and his wife were the only employees of his firm and he worked out of his house. I started by programming several reports then got more involved in debugging of the system being developed. We were writing a Video Store Management System in dBase II. We decided that since dBase II allowed the users access to the source code, that we would start using FoxBase which was a dBase II clone but could be compiled. This way we could put the compiled version on the user's machines while keeping the source code safe. After a few months I finally gave up the McDonald's job.
We finished writing the Video Store Management System and continued to maintain and modify it. We started a Construction Company Job Costing System. About the time we were completing this system, Michael went to the big computer show in Las Vegas, Nevada, called COMDEX. He came back with a Software package he wanted us to market. He wanted to sale vertical market software to Automotive Body Shops. We both went to Florida for training on this software. It was a very impressive software package, but between the facts that neither Michael nor myself were much in the way of sales people and the fact that the owners in the area of Auto Body Shops were not ready to be computerized. Michael Cox Associates, Inc. went out of business, and I went back to work at McDonald's.
Around that time I put in my application with the State of New Mexico and didn't hear anything from them. Family friends invited me to live with them in a small town outside of Kansas City, Missouri and continue my computer career job search in Kansas City. I left McDonald's again and moved to Missouri to pound the streets. No takers, not even an interview.
In December of 1986, I flew back to New Mexico and interviewed with the Health and Environment Department (HED) of the State of New Mexico in Santa Fe. After the interview I returned to Kansas City to continue my search. HED called and offered me a position as a Programmer Analyst 2 and I started work in February of 1987. As I stated earlier, accounting bored me in college, so it was ironic that I was placed in charge of maintaining the department's Financial Accounting Module (FAM) and the Payroll/Labor Distribution System.
The Information Systems Bureau's programming staff was divided into two groups. The Development Section consisted of one Data Processing Manager, one Systems Analyst Manager, two Systems Analysts, and one Programmer Analyst 2. Their main duty was the analysis and development of new systems. The Maintenance Section consisted of one Systems Analyst Manager, two Systems Analyst, two Programmer Analyst 2, and two Programmer Analyst 1. This section was in charge of maintaining legacy systems. This section was also divided into two groups. One in charge of health and environment systems (like Vital Records or Air Quality Systems) and the other group was in charge of administrative systems.
Between 1988 and 1989, the development staff lost two of it's people, the Systems Analyst Manager and a Systems Analyst. The bureau was then reorganized such that each analyst was responsible for both development and maintenance. Two groups were formed out of both the Development Section and the Maintenance Section, one taking the health and environment systems and the other taking the administrative systems.
There was a development project underway to rewrite the Batch Financial Accounting Module (FAM). This system was originally brought over to HED from the Corrections Department. The group responsible for the administrative systems all took part in the development of this rewrite along with the ongoing maintenance of their responsible systems.
In 1990, the bureau lost another Systems Analyst and I was promoted from a Programmer Analyst 2 to a Systems Analyst 1. Along with the promotion I was assigned the duties of ACF2 Security Officer.
July ????, the Health and Environment Department was split into two departments: The Department of Health (DOH) and the Environment Department (ED). I stayed with the Department of Health.
In December 1990, the State Personnel Office restructured the Systems Analyst classes from Systems Analyst 1 and 2, collapsing them into just Systems Analyst. I then became a Systems Analyst.
My supervisor, Jim Shinas, left DOH for the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) and was replaced by Richard Schaefer in 1995. About this time the Bureau Chief talked to me about re-classifying my position in order to get a 15% pay increase for me. In December of 1996, the Bureau Chief was still talking about a re-class and 15% increase. Nancy Knouse called me from the Office of the State Engineer and asked me to consider going to work for her. Nancy had worked for DOH a few years earlier and now was the Bureau Chief of OSE's Information Systems Management Bureau. I was still somewhat happy with my job at DOH and was looking forward to that 15% pay increase.
In August of 1996, I was married to Sharon Ortiz, who was the Administrative Services Division Director for the Department of Public Safety. Through Sharon, I was learning more about how State Government worked, including how State Personnel Office approved re-classifications.
At the turn of the year, I was also falling out of graces with my supervisor, who only one year prior was saying that I was the "Model Employee." Now I was "struggling to grasp the new technology." I wasn't the only on in our group falling out of grace with him. He once said in front of several people, that "Nobody in the bureau could program themselves out of a box." With ten years of programming experience, I took the comment personally.
In late May of 1997, the Bureau Chief informed me that I would not get the 15% increase because the department policy was only to give 10% increases, but he still wanted to do the re-classification of my position. At this point I decided to start looking for another position.
I had a friend at the Taxation and Revenue Department who told me of a position that was open. I called Jim Shinas, my previous supervisor at DOH, to ask him if I could use him as a reference. He spoke to his supervisor, Nancy Knouse, because they were still looking for a programmer, and told her that I was finally ready to leave DOH. Nancy didn't have a Systems Analyst position available, but did have a vacant position. Within a few weeks, Nancy had that position reclassified to a Systems Analyst and offered me a job transfer. I started work for OSE in July of 1997.
My duties were to program in Informix 4gl and UNIX kshell scripts developing code for the new Water Administration Technical Engineering Resource System (WATERS). This was a completely new environment for me. I was also given the duties of organizing the department's web page and I became the Webmaster.
Beverly Leeds, from the Human Resource Bureau, and myself worked together to come up with the ground work structure of categories for the web site. We looked at other sites for samples and ideas. We came up with what we felt were the nine general high level topics of information for the department. These topics have not changed in four years. We had a contractor that took our ideas and put together a home page and several other pages.
Web pages and the internet were very new to me, but I took what the contractor developed and refined the pages, added a background image, developed a file/directory structure that matched the topic lists, developed templates with a standardized look and the web site began to grow.
October 1997, the State Personnel Office reclassified the Systems Analyst series into three separate classes, Systems Analyst 1, 2 and 3. My position was re-classed to a Systems Analyst 1, which would give me a larger career ladder.
April 1998, I was appointed as the department's Information Technology's Year 2000 Coordinator. I created an inventory list of software, hardware and other IT related items that must be Y2K compliant by the year 2000. This included verifying that upgrades were made, and versions were certified as Y2K compliant. I also reported to the State Government's Chief information Office the status of the department's Y2K compliance. The year 2000 change came and went without any major hitches.
May of 1999, Nancy reclassified my position from a Systems Analyst 1 to a Systems Analyst 2 with a 15% increase in salary. I also picked up the duties of Human Resource Liaison for our bureau which included maintaining the bureau's departmental policy and procedures binder along with the State Personnel Board's rules and regulations binder and the collection and logging of timesheets and disbursement of pay cheques. It included updating and forwarding our bureau's bullet report to the division and department heads. I also acquired the shared responsibility for performing the Informix database backups, along with my co-workers Diana Hardy and Mercedes Ortega. Mercedes was the Database Administrator while Diana was her backup. I was third banana DBA backup. I didn't have any formal training but could switch out the logging tapes or bring the database on or offline.
Currently my duties include Webmaster tasks, maintenance and developmental programming and documentation of the WATERS database, the Payroll/Labor Distribution download program, the General Ledger download programs, and the Inventory System. I also am the Department's Informix Data Security Officer, the Human Resource Liaison for the bureau, tertiary DBA backup, and miscellaneous other duties that arise. One of the miscellaneous other duties is to submit an article for the department's newsletter titled "Water on the Web."
I hope you've enjoyed this trek through my life's education and career path. The current date is July 2001, and any future events will be included as addendum.
Brent Pearce
This web site was created using recycled electrons.