How and Why I became a Nurse: Part 1

Part 1: The Fall

When I was about 37, I began to feel like my career was not going anywhere. I was a software developer. I thought I was reasonably talented at it - there was never a problem I couldn't solve in code, one way or another. I especially enjoyed user interface design, software design, project management, and working with the clients/users directly. I have a bachelors and masters degree in computer science.

I'm smart. There I've said it.

What happened that soured me on the industry is this. I worked for a terrific software company. In the frenzy of the late 90s and early 00's, the division I worked for was spun off as a subsidiary owned by the original company. This was in 2000, and I was 34-35. We were given a week to decide if we wanted to go with the new company (and stay with our current work group and products), or we had that same week to find another job in the company. A week! What the hell?? Most of us went. Golly, this was exciting.

We were given seed money and we were kicked off the main company's campus. This is significant because the main campus has a load of perks - a gym, day-care, subsidized cafeterias, etc. Then, we sacrificed our Christmas bonuses to reinvest the money in the company. We gave up our lovely private offices with doors and windows, to have cubicles. We worked our asses off to get our first product ready. We did. On time, even. We had buyers in the pipeline. We kept expenses down, and our seed money lasted 50% longer than expected.

Then the owner of the original terrific software company (I"ll call it Terrific Company) decided we weren't making money. (Duh. We were a start-up.) So he decided he'd just cut us loose, and if we wanted we could re apply for our old jobs. There weren't as many old jobs available as there were people - funny coincidence, don't you think? There was also the opportunity to take a buy-out. This is what I did. Those of us with tenure at the company had a pretty sweet pay-out - if I remember correctly it was 2 weeks of pay for every year of service. For me, that was almost 4.5 months of salary. The end result was that several experienced workers left, and the new hires stayed. And those with families and health problems. See, the benefits at Terrific Company are unbelievably generous.

Notice I didn't say the good people stayed and the bad people left.

This sequence of events broke my heart. What it taught me was that as hard as I would work, I was at the whim of a company's management. And as much as I liked Terrific Company, it was run by a benevolent dictator (with dicey morals, by the way...I didn't like hearing about all his affairs with female employees. Sheesh.) Additionally, it didn't look like I'd ever be management. I had been on the management track in the subsidiary; in fact, I was a manager for a whole 3 months in the subsidiary. In the big company, I was to be a plain old software developer again.

In the chaos of trying to find a new place in Terrific Company, I contacted some people I knew in the usability group and asked if they would hire me. I loved doing that work, and I really believed in it. I negotiated. I bargained. But, they couldn't get a position for me. That was the end, and that's when I decided I was done with Terrific Company.

My buy out money financed my education in nursing. It took a while to get there, though. Watch for the next post.