Most of the times it is about getting the opportunity. Even in places you do not expect to offer any, or especially in those places. Like becoming a "computer-man" (some people used to call it "computerist" in their native language) in a godforsaken country built on economic ineptitude, social lie and political despotism. The country I was born in and grew up through my formation years.
*
It is the beginning of fall and maybe it’s still warm, or the rain season may have already started and it was getting colder, I don’t really remember. It’s such a distant time that shows now fractioned on the screen of my mind, engulfed by my memory thick shadows. It is Romania, and it is Craiova, my home town. After finishing the Polytechnic Institute in Bucharest, the country's capital, I got assigned to a job to the national telecommunication company, at one of its local departments in Craiova. There were interesting times: the communism was dragging its feet in the crusty clay of the most damaging illusion the human mind created, and the regime starting to crumble down under the heavy weight of its own incompetence. But in spite of the long lines for food and commodities, in spite of the unheated apartments which you could use as freezers during the winter season, in spite of the generalized corruption that covered the skin of the country like a fatal rash, there was no evidence of a unavoidable end in our minds. There was no hope that some day we will see the light at the end of the tunnel. What tunnel? What end? We were blind moles who didn’t know anything else then to grope through the thick darkness in our underground narrow, endless corridors we called "our lives in a communist regime." For us, then, the end of the despicable regime could be brought only by the end of the world, the total destruction of the planet, life included, and our deep hope was that the Maya calendar was right: that meant that pretty soon, in less than thirty years, the red nightmare will come to an end. And we were to be extinct. Like everybody else on the planet. Like all those lucky bastards who were living in the free world, enjoying all its advantages. That was what I would call the fate's fairness.
The first day in the job, the people I was supposed to work for sent me to buy vodka and smuggle it back in the office, right under the expert nose of the security guy, who only smiled and winked at me with connivance, totally aware that I was just going through my initiation ritual. And what a ritual: an office full of males, sweaty and stinky, barely visible through the heavy smog of their cigarettes, talking dirty, becoming more brazen after each shot of the vodka I smuggled into their workplace. My workplace. When my first day of work came to an end (and I myself had a few shots of alcohol on board), I already had come to a conclusion: nothing good (what am I saying here, not even close to decent) should be expected from such a rotten environment. For me, the beginning of the road was also its dead end. I was there, young, enthusiastic, full of dreams and ready to embrace the world, and discovered myself already doomed for the rest of my life.
But then a few miraculous things happen, in the interval of a couple of months. First off, one of the teachers I had the chance to study with in my final year at the polytechnic institute, called to offer me a job into a team of software programmers, hired by the same telecom company I worked for, but running its activities in a central lab in Bucharest. Of course a transfer from Craiova to Bucharest was out of question at the time, the rule being that you had no right to change your assigned workplace during the three years of probation period, and you couldn't even get fired for that matter. This autocratic and totally abusive rule seemed to me, and not only me, more of an arrest at the workplace. Trying to fool the system which had been put in place by a bunch of idiots with power, of course, my teacher talked through his boss in Bucharest who talked through my boss in Craiova and in the end they arranged to have me working in Bucharest on a full time basis, while in the timesheets I was showed being gone in a permanent business trip to the headquarters. Nice, smart, vile trick, but all with good intentions: I did a good job and had a lot of learn, while still having fun, in that team of software developers. We spent one whole year building an application that monitored the quality of the telephony network and raised exceptions when the quality went under, escalating an operations team, who was supposed to intervene quickly and fix the issues. The application has never been deployed in the field, although there was a bad need for such a product, but the local managers feared that by using the application they could have become subjects to criticism for the poor job they were doing to maintain the system's quality in their own geographical boundaries. In spite of this political glitch that nobody foresaw, the deed was done: I did good, I learned a lot, I was happy with myself.
After one year I returned to Craiova, and shortly after that the director received notice of a new equipment of desktop computers produced in Eastern Germany (I remember their brand name, they were called “Robotron”) The arrival of these Robotron computers was only the first sign of a technological revolution that had just started and was about to shatter to pieces the obsolete foundation of the existing telecom equipments built entirely on mechanical relays. The director, a bear-like, slowly moving, taciturn individual, who barely spoke a few words, hadn't known me personally. He must have heard of me as being a smart and dedicated individual, also fresh from the school benches, the right candidate for a job that meant big time change for his company. And because for the last year or so I had worked with information technology in that team, he naturally picked me to send me out for training. In spite of his looks, the director was a bit of a visionary. When I returned back from the training, the manager of the “Computing Centre”, an old division with fresh technological looks, tried to push me aside. My increasing reputation as a technical guru made his insecurities go rampant. That guy was an economist by formation, had no technological background, and to make up for the gaps, he was a very aggressive, incisive, although superficial type of individual. When I asked him to allocate me one of the twenty five Robotron computers he had received, to allow me to start working at a financial application the controller was interested in and talked to me about it, he refused it bluntly. Next day the director called me in his cabinet and then he did a curt motion to me, to follow him, in his very predictable style, mumbling a few unintelligible words.Once we arrived in the office of the obnoxious manager of the Computing Centre, he only told him: “You give one of those damn machines to this boy here.” That’s all he said, and by today this is one of the most powerful executive decisions I had ever witnessed. With that “damn machine” I managed to put together a nice financial application built in dBase4 (for those of you who grew as software professionals, this name must sound like the rattle of an old papyrus) that made me a bit famous in the company, placed a bit of lucky aura around my head and consolidated my position as the new technology guru.
In another year, a new director, a totally anti-bear-like personality, very energetic and listless, but even more fascinated by the new information technologies, asked me to build a monitoring system that he wanted to have in his office: watching on a screen the current status of incidents in the field, as reported by our phone equipment users, and the number and locations of the technicians sent to fix and remedy the situation. There was a new director after that, who came up with new requirements for the system, which I kept implementing, and implementing. In a couple of years the application grew bigger, got better functionality, and became a useful tool in their daily management status meetings. At some point the director asked me to present it at a national telecom conference, during which I had been attacked merciless and criticized to the bone: "This is not a reliable application! What do you do when's no power and the computers are down? What do you do if there's an earthquake and the computers are broken? This is not good!" In reality, the provincial directors who had attacked me viciously, couldn't hide their fear that by using this application they had to become accountable and make decisions. Plus they were now watched by the glossy eye of a lifeless robot, who had no clue about making deals. The minister agreed with the group of doubters and the whole conference ended up with a party filled with plenty of booze and local dancers, above which hovered, like a spiffy cloud, the confidence in the bright future of the information technology. But coming back to work, after that conference, I was still saluted like a little hero who put our office on the map, if only for the short duration of a week.
*
Let’s recap: it’s Romania, it’s 1986, the communist regime is about to crumble, the corruption is endemic, the economy is in shatters, the social stability is about to evaporate, and above all, nothing works. But in spite of all these, I, the “little silly employee” with no connections, no social soft skills, no charisma, but with a head full of knowledge, a heart full of enthusiasm, and an intrinsic motivation as big as the planet Mars, grabbed the opportunities that suddenly crossed my path to get enough lift to place the load of myself on the trajectory that defined my profession, my career, my life. So, do not despair if you're still cleaning the tables at McDonald's or washing the floors at Danny's, with a diploma in your pocket and a head full of ideas. The opportunity is just around the corner, lurking at you. If it happened to me, it will happen to you!
