On Jan 13, 2012, at 12:28 PM, Venkat Mangudi wrote:
So John, this begs the question. In what order did you change your
jobs?
I grew up on a farm in New Jersey, but went to high school in
Manhattan. From there I went to Hamilton College, where I studied
literature and anthropology. After college I joined the Peace Corps,
and served 2 years in Senegal doing agricultural development work in
a tiny isolated village. From there I did a master's degree in
Agricultural Economics at Purdue Uninversity, and I intended to make
a career doing agricultural development work in poor countries. But
in graduate school I met this hot babe who was doing a PhD in
molecular biology, & I kind of fell in love with her and couldn't
imagine dragging her to the middle of nowhere, so that killed my
plans to go back to remote poor parts of the world & work on
agricultural development.
Somehow I talked my way into a technical writing job at Data General,
although I had no formal training in engineering. Everything I know
about computers and engineering I learned on the job. I wrote about
50 hardware and software manuals before becoming a manager. I ended
up being a bi-coastal manager of technical writers and software
engineers, with one office in Silicon Valley and office near Boston
and along the way coined the term "information architecture" and
started doing that. My company (Sun) forced me to move to California
in 1993, then laid me off in 1994. By that time I was VERY burnt out
& sick of high tech. We decided to move to Martha's Vineyard, where
life is slow and the schools are good. I was planning to write
technical books for outfits like O'Reilly & Associates. But that
didn't work out too well, since I found myself writing novels when I
was supposed to be writing about Linux or whatever.
So then I went broke and got whatever jobs I could, doing truck
driving or construction or whatever. Since 2000, I've gone back to
high tech land. I've had 2 full-time jobs (2 years & 5 years) for
companies in Boston and Silicon Valley, working mostly from home.
When I got laid off in 2007, I began doing freelance work and
continued writing novels, essays, magazine articles and so forth. In
this recession, work has often been hard to find. Which is where I am
today -- underemployed as a technical writer, trying to make money
writing fiction, which is a ridiculous proposition, but hey, I'm a
dreamer, what can I say.
I became a firefighter 3.5 years ago. I would have become one decades
earlier, but thought I was too old! Firefighting is good for my
mental & physical health. It's interesting, useful, and even fun,
although it's hard to use "fun" when you sometimes have fires in
which somebody dies or looses everything they have.
SO, now you know much more about me than anybody could possibly want
to know, but, I trust that I've answered the question ;^)
Regards,
jrs
Blog: http://www.wetmachine.com/
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