![Job.gif]](jobs.gif){kind=small}
| The internet resource that is no threat to Yahoo! | ||
| ||
|
[School] [Siemens-Nixdorf] [Informix] [SME GmbH / AG] [self-employed]
A brief chronological history of what I have worked where and why.
After the apprenticeship ended in fall 96, I stayed with the
"division for co-operative banking customers" (Genossenschaftsbanken)
and finished my part of the OS/2 presentation manager C++ program I had
started to participate during the apprenticeship.
After that was finished, there were various ideas to which direction
we could turn to, but I liked none (Lotus Notes being the least)
and decided it was time to change company anyway.
In fall, it turned out that most of the german bookkeeping was loaded,
so upper management hat to go, and with them about 150 of the 300
people that worked at Informix Ismaning at that time. I was one of
them, and enjoyed the short but nice period of being already fired but
still getting money.
Indeed diverse my work is there, from Solaris Admin to Java/Swing
development, and since 1998 even management tasks like sales,
pre-sales, recruiting, basically everything you consider management
stuff in a 20-30 people company.
Having officially become a department manager in 2003 (head of development),
in-house projects in software development still more and more gave way to
on-site professional service-like assignments. After one and a half year of
doing on-site consulting, with little opportunity to follow up my original
tasks as department manager, I decided to take professional services one
step further and turned freelance in October 2004.
1980-1993: School
For an extended period of time, I went first to "Grundschule am Grünen
Markt" and then to the "Gymnasium Erding" to get my piece of eduction.
I was released from school duties with a bavarian "Abitur" in the
subjects of English, Economics/Law, Math and Ethics, three of those with
considerate success, lets not talk about Mathematics, ok?
1993-1996: Apprenticeship Siemens-Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG
Since going to university seemed out of reach, I started an apprenticeship
as "Fachberater Softwaretchniken" (translates to something like
"software specialist" or "software consultant") with german
computer-titan Siemens-Nixdorf.
SNI was the result of a merger between the bureaucratic and clueless
computer division of german-economics-allstar Siemens and the
brilliant but bancrupt Nixdorf Computer AG. The idea was to synergize
the two to a well-organized and brilliant company, but the result
was of course a clueless and bancrupt one. After much hassle, Siemens
finally let go of most of the Nixdorf remains, which after all that
time seem to be again experiencing success on the market as the
newly formed Wincaster-Nixdorf AG (sp?).1996: Informix Software GmbH
The new year started started with a new job in tech support at database underdog
company Informix. From day 1, I was stuffed with technical info in various
training courses and hands-on sessions. For the first time in my job
life, a situation where there were new things to learn every day, I enjoyed
the training, developed a still lasting affection for Solaris, Informix
Dynamic Server (Informix-Online and Informix-Universal Server as they were
called back then) and
Illustra, and tried to broaden my technical horizont as much as possible.
While the tech stuff was great, work in tech support never is much fun,
especially when management is seemingly trying to make the job as hard and
unpleasant as possible. There was a brief period in the summer, where under
a new management we were allowed to work productively and in a creative way.
The fun lasted for maybe 4 weeks, when the manager in charge had to quit,
and with the old boss returned the old habits. The guy they made quit
is now manager of Sun Education Germany, the most successful training
division of Sun worldwide, so go figure.December 1996-October 2004: Science Management & Engineering GmbH, then AG
Having various job offers, I was approached by a company only
a few kilometers away that already had hired two of my former
collegues. They offered a more diverse range of possible projects
and technical topics at the same money, so I joined there.
October 2004: fulltime freelance
cf www.tomeicher.de
 | ||
| (c)opyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Tom Eicher. All rights reserved. last modified tom-14-Nov-2004 |