I graduated college 20 years ago, and even before I registered for my first college class, I knew precisely what I wanted to do. I was in the extremely lucky minority of students that did. I wanted to work on or with computers. By the time I’d enrolled in college, I’d already built numerous PC’s, spec’d and built a couple of servers, did some programming (for good and….chaotic good), and played many games with my friends (I called them “net parties”, the second generation called them “lan parties”). I look fondly back on the days of Doom II and Quake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I got my first job out of college, I didn’t know what the road ahead looked like. When I got my first job, it was in healthcare. I was the only <\/em>IT person the company had and was fortunate enough to be able to get my hands on new technologies, new systems. I wasn’t jaded back then. I hadn’t “seen things”. Bright eyed, bushy tailed – I thought I knew it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ve absolutely no regrets – over the years I’ve changed jobs only a couple of times (it’s not in my top 3 favorite things to do if I’m honest), but I’ve seen a troubling trend. More and more people are entering the IT workforce, but less and less people understand how any of this works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As things break, less people know how to fix them. Hell, some people don’t even try. You start to see the train wrecks ahead. Major projects are on a collision course with disaster. Some projects employ a “design-as-you-go” philosophy, which is another catastrophe. People don’t ask the right questions. Senior leaders sign contracts before talking to technical folks. It’s all part of what I and many others refer to as the ‘Dumpster Fire’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I use the phrase semi-lovingly. I rather enjoy problem solving. I tend to find myself on the short list of people at my various workplaces who can solve the difficult and challenging problems that no one else can solve. I welcome these challenges – I usually learn new skills or tactics, and I love the feeling of solving that difficult problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now we arrive at this blog. I wish I’d have started this a decade ago (though I did have a Geocities page in the mid-to-late 90s). Wish I’d shared some of those interesting and challenging problems. I’m 20 years into my career, with at least another decade to go. Perhaps it’s time I start documenting some of the fun and interesting things I come across. We may both learn a few things – I’ve love realized that there’s so much more to learn. As the saying goes…..”the strongest steel is forged in the fire of the dumpster.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I graduated college 20 years ago, and even before I registered for my first college class, I knew precisely what I wanted to do. I was in the extremely lucky […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dumpsterfirecomputing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dumpsterfirecomputing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dumpsterfirecomputing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dumpsterfirecomputing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dumpsterfirecomputing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dumpsterfirecomputing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/www.dumpsterfirecomputing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dumpsterfirecomputing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dumpsterfirecomputing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dumpsterfirecomputing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}