So if this job was so great, why would I leave?
I wasn’t doing the programming work I loved anymore; mostly I managed the people in my department. Sometimes I had to get involved in office politics, in my opinion a low activity.
Twice a year I had to do performance appraisals; these gave me problems getting to sleep and a nervous stomach on appraisal day. My boss made me review each one with him beforehand; in his management book, everyone has something in serious need of improvement, even if we have to stretch the truth. This feels dishonest.
My group researched and travelled to manufacturers’ sites to identify the best new midrange computer for the branch offices. When we made our recommendation, we unfortunately chose a “wrong” brand, not the one favored by our higher-ups. The company president made a crack to me about “shitting in the punch bowl”, that is, spoiling something that was going along oh-so-well. Not a career booster.
Insco had been paying me pretty well over the years, and it seemed unlikely anyone else would pay me that well to do something I liked doing, so I wasn’t really looking for another job. Life at Insco wasn’t so great anymore, but it was still borderline okay.
Then one Sunday I was browsing the New York Times help-wanted section, and saw a job that seemed to have my name on it: IBM’s Yorktown Research Laboratory, not very far away, was looking for VM/370 systems programmers. Programming! Hands-on tech stuff! I thought about it for a day, then had a talk with Mimi. She was ready for a new adventure, and I started working on my resumé .
Some people in Yorktown already knew about helpful improvements I had made to the VM operating system, and I was invited for an interview.
The clerk who phoned to set up the interview said to bring a copy of “my highest degree”. When I told her I didn’t have a degree, she said “Not even a bachelor’s?” She sounded very young. Remembering the “figure of speech” issue that came up at Insco thirteen years earlier, I had been very careful when filling out my application, and I asked “Is that a problem?” She seemed flustered, and answered “Oh, no, no, not at all.” When you drop out of school, the explaining never ends.
I got through my interviews and the physical just fine, and was offered a job again doing the work I loved.
Side story: The physical was quite thorough, and included taking a blood specimen. While checking my blood pressure later, as the pressure cuff was doing its stuff, the doctor asked if I had any objection to them running a drug screen on my blood. I said that would be fine. I think the odd timing of that question was calculated to produce a pressure spike in pot smokers or such.
When I gave notice at Insco, nobody was surprised.
Here’s a link to my daily life at Yorktown and beyond. I stayed at IBM until I took their generous 1992 buyout offer and retired.
Comment on smoking: I started smoking as a teenager, and have quit many times – for a few hours, a few days, once even for five years. I always went back. At Insco, the stress of being in management got me smoking again. Sitting on the beach the day after my last day at Insco, I realized I no longer had an excuse or the desire to smoke, and I quit again, this time for good. I do sometimes wish I had a cigarette though, even 36 years later. Don’t smoke, kids. You’ll be sorry.
Epilogue
Continental Insurance
Continental Insurance was taken over by CNA Financial, who now send me a small check every month.
The site
Sometime in the 1990s, Continental’s lines of business dried up or were sold off, and Continental leased the Neptune building to Prudential. I don’t know how long Prudential stayed there, but a Google Earth timeline shows no sign of life after 2006. When I drove by in August 2020, the main building was being demolished.
Old Rob and me
I recently got on the ordering line at a Jersey Mike’s, and recognized the gent ahead of me as someone who was a programmer at Insco 35 years ago. After we talked for a few minutes, I couldn’t help myself, and made a little joke, “Wow, you got old.” I don’t think it was well received. It would have been a better joke, and much more accurate, if I had said “Wow, we got old.”