Someone asked me that at work this week.

Not sure if he saw it on my Twitter or LinkedIn or what but he asked.

“Yes, I do”

I didn’t ask why he asked. I don’t know if pretending to know such a thing, is a thing, or whatever, but that’s fine.

Here is the evolution, of how one might have gone from, what we called programming back when I did it, to what I do now.

Its early 90s. I have my first ‘real’ job at 19. I was at the reception desk for a federal contractor, while taking classes at community college.
Over a short period I turned answering the phones into posting job ads (we faxed them to the paper ;)) into naturally taking on more and more recruiting & HR responsibilities (I managed open enrollments etc).

The positions were primarily programming, some dbase, QA and support. I was curious about programming and eager to learn about it whenever anyone would take the time to explain it to me.

My commute was 75 miles one way. That is not a typo. I had lots of time on my hands during the commute (van pool). So, I read books about programming ((later I’ll tell the how I got into infosec story and the books I read on the plane ride to my first DEFCON)).
Anyways, one of the PMs, his name was William (I wonder how he is doing) seemed to appreciate my interest and gave me an assignment.

I wrote a remote profile maintenance program, on my own, in Visual Basic, for the USPS. Well, a piece of it. I was so proud of myself. Its really the only program I ever wrote. That was in 1993.

The commute got to me after a few yrs and I moved into an HR role for a local municipality. I could not shake my love for technology though, and when the whispers of bringing PCs into the fold started (yes we used typewriters and card files – though we did have a nifty AS400 system and dummy terminals) I jumped all over it and helped establish and build the helpdesk and deployment of units and training. Next thing you know Im a help desk manager.

When I relocated out of that small town, I moved to an ecommerce firm in the midst of the dot com boom (late 90s) managing their support desk – and yet I missed HR…

There’s a bunch of chapters missing here but suffice to say, I heard about a contract recruiting position and a) the pay was nice b) it seemed to be a good mix for HR and IT and c) was closer to home than the position at the ecomm firm in DC.

And here we are 18 yrs later – running a team of tech recruiters for a Big Data Analytics and Infosec company.

I could recruit for healthcare or transportation or construction, but I recruit in technology because, its what I love, and anymore, it touches everything.

That is all for now.

Be well,
<3 ~K~