Man Doing the Splits

You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m flexible. I really am. No kidding.

So, I may not be able to do the splits, but if you look over my long career, you’d have to admit that one of my strongest character attributes is my flexibility–my willingness to change to fit what is needed.

My last job doing TCL is an example of this. I didn’t know TCL from any other language. I had never heard of it before I got that contract. I just turned on the computer and started working. I figured the language out pretty quickly.

Look at what I’ve learned since BASIC. I’m not just talking about languages here, but languages, operating systems, technologies, not to mention work cultures, geographic cultures, and whatever else needed doing.

I’m still quite a bit like my old students at OMSI, the children who really didn’t even need me to tell them how to program. The learned because they were still young enough to be flexible in their thinking. So, I’m 54 years old. I’m still flexible in my thinking.

Since my time at that last contract, I’ve built several web sites and can code and engineer software as well as ever.

Here’s a list of the things I’ve learned within a few days if not hours when the need arose:

In today’s computer consulting game, they still want to know how many years you’ve been working with a certain language or technology. I recently applied for a job where one of the requirements was five years working with Javascript. Really?

Do they really think they are going to find someone who sat down and coded Javascript for five years straight, never looking at another language? That would be a job that would quickly drive you to despair. Yet, that’s the way hiring managers seem to think.

Some people would say that the variety in my experience makes me a jack of all trades but a master of none. Maybe they are right. I would say that I am a jack of many languages, but what I really am is a master of flexibility at learning new things when new things come along.

If you’re a hiring manager, consider this. I may not be able to claim the years you want with a certain language, but I’ve done enough different things that I might even be better than someone who knows how to do only one thing.

Consider this too. Since that lay off, I’ve operated my own web building company. Haven’t made a lot of money, but I’ve made a lot of web sites.

The best thing I did was that I went back to school. If you read Back to the BASIC, you will hopefully remember my high school Medical Careers teacher who thought I should become a psychologist because I’m the kind of person people like to tell their troubles to.

Me At My Graduation

I received my Bachelors Degree in Social Work in 2007 from Concordia University. I graduated Magna Cum Laude and was honored by the staff as Outstanding Social Work Student of the Year.

For several years now, I’ve taught life skills to developmentally disabled adults. I help them with behavior problems. My flexibility and willingness to adapt is probably the best skill I bring to this work as well.

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