14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; 15 nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Matthew 5:14-16 (LSB)
My first job as an application developer was with the FDIC. I developed the application that was used by those who went through the Bank inventory process during a bank closing to record that bank’s inventory into a database which resided on a Compaq portable computer. I usually went to those closings to support the app and do whatever was needed to keep things running. When we got back to the office I would take that Compaq, copy the db files off of the hard drive onto a network drive, open those db files with the main database server app, and then upload that data into our main database, then assist whoever needed it in printing reports, etc….
I also wrote the code and developed the database for the main database in our office and the app everyone used to look at each bank’s inventory. However, there was a problem. When I was out of the shop, I was not there to support the main app or db. My boss, the man who hired me was preparing to leave and start his own I.T. company in Dallas and was suggesting that I apply for a job. His boss hired someone to replace him who wanted to change how everything was done. He hated the fact that I was the only one who could work on that system. I was gone for a week to Del Rio, Texas for a bank closing there and when I got back the manager of the office that was the primary user of that system was waiting for me. She said someone had made changes to the system while I was gone and now the system was down. I found the problem quickly and fixed it. I asked who made the change. My interim boss told me he assigned the change to one one of our junior programmers. I made the comment that he had no understanding of the complexity of my code. He made the comment that he wanted the code simplified so anyone in the shop could work on it. I told him I didn’t have the time for that. That would be an entirely new project. He told me he was going to remove me from all responsibility from any development work until I could get it simplified. I told him to drop dead. I had been offered a job at an Engineering Firm that used the same Networking system we used and this just made my decision easier. I took that job and never looked back.