Anne's 30-Year Computing Career (Parts G - L --> from 1985 to 2015) -- by Anne Shier

My 30-year Career in Computing from 1985-2015 -- by Anne Shier Part G After I graduated, with honours, from Seneca College, I was hired for 1 year at Seneca College (Don Mills campus) to tutor first year students of the CPA diploma program in Math and computer programming.  That year, I learned more about how to teach program-ming than I ever could have expected.  It taught me that I could teach programming for one thing, and that I wanted to teach programming full-time.  It was only a question of whether I could get a job in a college or a high school.  Since I was still a qualified high school teacher, I applied to the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) in the hopes that they were in hiring mode, if not for teachers of teenagers, for teachers of adults enrolled at day school. I also applied to other places while waiting to see what lay in my teaching future.  I sent my job application to RBC-FG (Systems & Technology) and, a week later, I got a call to attend an interview with a man named Jeff.  He hired me right away to work for him in RBC's Telephone Banking System.  I had never had any exposure to telephone banking or to mainframe computers, only to the COBOL programming language that RBC used.  However, I was to learn a great deal about mainframes, banking systems, and computer networks while on the job at RBC. This company was working on automating a lot of its employee (human resources) functions so that employees could apply for and modify their own benefit packages online. I was working in a state-of-the-art computer network environment that involved mainframes, PCs, and Mac computers.  It was an awesome experience that would benefit my computer career for years to come.	Part H That was year 1 of being at RBC. Then, my boss, Jeff, got transferred to another department by his boss, Danny, and I got a new male boss, Mike. Neither Mike nor I saw eye-to-eye about anything from day 1 of his sojourn with the Telephone Banking System (TBS).  I'd been getting along with all my colleagues and bosses (like Danny on up), but Mike was on my case from the moment he arrived at our department.  I did my best to do my job thoroughly and accurately, but somehow, it was never enough.  Mike continued to give me barely acceptable performance appraisals (we had to have at least 4 per year) and I was getting more and more frustrated with him and with RBC as time went by.  Finally, push came to shove and, after explaining my situation to Danny and his boss, Len, I was finally given permission to look for another position somewhere else, either in another RBC department or outside the bank.  Danny told me that I would keep my seniority and employee benefits if I stayed at RBC, but I would also get a good reference from him if I could not stay.  It was no-brainer; I had to go somewhere else, anywhere else, in order to survive.
Part I One day, I got another interview at RBC, this time with a woman named Gwen. She and I liked each other immediately and she hired me to come and work for her. This time, I would be working in the Indirect Lending System (ILS), with which I was also unfamiliar. So what? I thought. I can do this. I can do new and challenging jobs that I've never done before.  And, I was very successful in this group, considering that Gwen left RBC just a couple of weeks later. That left me in charge of the technical part of ILS and I was thrilled, mostly because it was like a promotion except that I sort of inherited the position. Nevertheless, I did very well as the sole Technical Systems Analyst for the ILS group for the next year or so.	Part J However, as the economy was still deteriorating, RBC had to make some tough choices right after their required Y2K testing was completed in preparation for the arrival of year 2000. In November 1999, I was informed that my services were no longer required at RBC, along with 2,999 other technical employees.  I got a lump sum severance payment equal to half a year's salary and I was determined not to waste that money or my time in waiting around for another job to just drop into my lap. It was now time to re-visit my old application at the TDSB to see if there was still hope of becoming a teacher (half- or full-time, I didn't care which). I wanted to teach computer science, but to get any recognized teaching experience, I had to land a teaching job somewhere (in Toronto, hopefully) - supply teaching was not going to get me what I needed anymore. And, landing a teaching job was going to be the biggest challenge for me yet.
Part K When I followed up on my TDSB application, which for some reason was circulating around various high schools, I got an offer I couldn't refuse. The head of the computer science department at Winston Churchill C.I. called me and asked me to come in for an interview, barely three weeks after I'd left RBC. His name was Doug. He and the principal wanted to discuss a predicament they were in.  They had just fired a teacher in the CS department for incompetence and they now needed a certified teacher who knew computer programming, specifically the Turing programming language. It turned out that I fit the bill as far as they were concerned and they offered me a long term occasional (LTO) position, which would only last until the end of the semester (2 and a half months away), but (most importantly) would give me required documentable teaching experience - something I sorely needed in order to move ahead in my "new" teaching career. I accepted their offer gladly.	Part L My LTO position at Winston Churchill, though challenging to complete, set the stage for my next LTO, which would start immediately after this one.  It would be at Stephen Leacock C.I. and would also involve teaching Turing, which by now, I was comfortable with. But, after suffering a horrific car accident on the way home from work one sunny afternoon in April 2000, I spent the next 8 months recovering from it and, during the summer, took what is normally referred to as an AQ (Additional Qualification) course so that I could become a fully qualified computer science teacher. This AQ course would allow me to be hired on as a full-time contract teacher, ultimately. It had taken me almost 25 years to accomplish this feat, which is saying a lot considering that I had graduated as a teacher in 1976.