[Today’s run: 3.5 miles]<\/p>\n
I was doing some nostalgia fishing on LinkedIn last night.<\/p>\n
I’ve been touching up my profile on LinkedIn and I then got to fishing around for more information about my first full time job, at SOM in Chicago.\u00a0 This would have been before our kids were born, approximately 30 years ago.<\/p>\n
I had graduated in May of 1985 with a B.A. in Architecture, looked for a job, didn’t find one.\u00a0 So I went back and got a B.S. in Computer Science.\u00a0 I liked Computer Science better anyway.\u00a0 In the summer of 1986 we moved to Chicago to follow my wife’s job in a transfer.\u00a0 I hit the job market and came up with a position at Skidmore Owings and Merrill in downtown Chicago.\u00a0 I worked for the SOM Computer Group.\u00a0 I was there about 2 years.\u00a0 I started getting calls from headhunters, so I told one guy that I’d be interested in another position if it paid at least X.\u00a0 He found me that, so I left SOM and went to SPSS north of the loop.<\/p>\n
While I was at SOM I learned C and Unix and vi and similar things.\u00a0 It was an interesting job.<\/p>\n
So I was remembering some of the people I worked with, or trying to remember.\u00a0 And I was fishing for them on LinkedIn and Google.\u00a0 I did end up finding a few.\u00a0 My problem is that I don’t have a list of names and my own memory for names really stinks.\u00a0 Then I found that the project we had worked on had a business trajectory from SOM to a couple of other places.\u00a0 And some of that group are still working together.<\/p>\n
I never felt like I fit in at SOM.\u00a0 First of all I was awed by being in Chicago.\u00a0 And I was awed by working for an internationally known architecture firm.\u00a0 But also I had discovered in college that architects were kind of an odd bunch and the big-time ones can be extremely so.\u00a0 I didn’t understand the business organization of the firm either, probably still don’t.\u00a0 But I thought the work was interesting and I have no complaints about how I was treated.\u00a0 My co-workers were interesting and very encouraging as I tried to come up to speed.\u00a0 They were computer people, so I felt more at home as long as I didn’t stray too far from my desk.<\/p>\n
I found online some pictures by J. Mark Andersen at a retrospective event regarding the computer group at SOM which took place in 2012 (or so I gather).\u00a0 And there are a few faces I recognize.\u00a0 (I don’t directly remember J. Mark Andersen, but I think he may have been one of the guys who interviewed me for the position I had.)<\/p>\n
The man on the left was the “database guy”.\u00a0 I think the database we used was Ingres.\u00a0 I do remember that he had a “joke” algorithm regarding the office coffee machine which was posted over his desk.\u00a0 The man on the right, I seem to remember he took afternoons off on those days that the Cubs played home games.\u00a0 I don’t remember either of their names, I’m sorry to say.<\/p>\n
![http:\/\/www.jmarkimages.com\/gallery\/?\/DDatSOM\/Digital_Design_SOM_17.jpg<\/a><\/p>\nThe guy I worked most closely with was named Nate, and I found him on LinkedIn.\u00a0 I don’t know if he would remember me.\u00a0 It was a pretty short association, 30 years ago.\u00a0 We worked on a feature called ‘hardware zoom’ which was an emulation of a built-in feature of some big Tektronix vector workstations.\u00a0 This was so that the Tek boxes could be phased out.\u00a0 They were leased, so getting rid of them was direct savings.\u00a0 Even though I wasn’t there long, and a lot of my time was learning curve, I think I helped save them some money just by getting that part right.\u00a0 Nate was the design guy who knew what needed to happen and I did the actual coding.<\/p>\nMy boss was a guy named Eric who was pretty intense, a go-getter.\u00a0 I found him on LinkedIn too and he seems to have had a prosperous career.<\/p>\nHere is a link to a video presentation<\/a>\u00a0 from that 2012 gathering about SOM and their graphics work including the period I was there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Today’s run: 3.5 miles] I was doing some nostalgia fishing on LinkedIn last night. I’ve been touching up my profile on LinkedIn and I then got to fishing around for more information about my first full time job, at SOM in Chicago.\u00a0 This would have been before our kids were born, approximately 30 years ago. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6375"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6383,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375\/revisions\/6383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/www.jmarkimages.com\/gallery\/?\/DDatSOM\/Digital_Design_SOM_17.jpg\"){kind=link}