Seriously now,
Today I am celebrating the sixth year of my first Saturday in Delray Beach, South Florida. And in this job.
It all happened very much in part because of my 98% score in the
Java Programmer Certification
test that I passed then. JavaRanch had a lot to do with this success,
BTW...
Even though at my age then (almost 50) I thought that I would never find a job as a Java developer even though I had been programming since the days of assembly language and Fortran (assembly language to make our electronic warfare equipment run in real time and also for the
Arecibo Observatory to record signals in real time), I was wrong.
Only days after that St. Valentine's day I posted my resume in USENET
newsgroups dealing with programming jobs in South Florida (where I wanted to live, period) and "
Poof!", two callers on the phone only days later asked me to go to Ft. Lauderdale and Delray Beach for a Java Developer position. No professional experience required (remember this was 2000) but certainly knowledge of object oriented programming in JAVA required.
I sailed through the interviews even correcting minor mistakes that the interviewer may make.
In just days I had the two offers: Ft. Lauderdale or Delray Beach?
It seems that I chose right since I'm still in Delray Beach working for the same employer. This Monday (the day after tomorrow) is my SIXTH anniversary. Six years, in my long experience, is a long time for a programmer to stay at the same job.
Twenty years ago it was unheard of. Not today. There are programmers here (not in Java of course because it is a 'young' language) but in Cobol and RPG (backend) that have been here for even longer. This company it turns out has near the best compensation package for employees. I stay for the work part, though...
Good Night and Good Luck! Tony