Gary Lee Webb:  

My parents moved around a lot. My father had a knack for knowing just when to get a new job to maximize his income. The result was that they moved from Tucson, to Tempe AZ, to Virginia. I suppose that moving around is why I did so well in school ... but it also left me valuing stability. I did not move on. I stayed in Tempe, studying at Arizona State University, when my parents moved east. Received my BS in 3 years and my MA in another 2. But I was married at that point, and the day I took my masters comprehensives was the night my wife went into labor, and my oldest child was born. I went out and got a job with the world's largest private solar laboratory. Could not get a job in Mathematics, but I had a hobby called programming ... took my first programming course (at Monterey Peninsular Junior College) at age 13 while I was still at Walter Colton JHS, and I have been programming ever since. While I was a graduate assistant at ASU, one of my jobs was running the computer lab for the Math Dept. So getting a job in 1978 as a programmer ... that I could do. And the next year I was senior staff. I did, after all, have 9 years experience. Now I have 42 years experience, and since 1979 always the senior grunt. I like being a programmer; I have no real interest in being a manager. Cannot claim to be financially rich, but I do well enough: bought my house, put wife and 4 daughters through college (some are still in that process). As for myself, I have provided my family more stability than my parents did me. I stayed with that first job two years. The less said about my boss at the end of that period, the better. Suffice it to say, he was the owner's son, so EVERYbody else in that department left within a year of my departure. I was just one of the first to look around and get a new job, then give 2 weeks notice. Went back to work for them as a contractor, with one caveat: I did not want to be anywhere around the man (I considered him dangerous). The term "postal" had not been invented yet. My second job, also by Phoenix, also lasted 2 years. I was head of the programming department when we went bankrupt. I have no desire to ever again be in the position of having to give people that news. Afterwards I spent a summer trying to be a consultant between jobs ... also not to my taste. Especially since I had 2 daughters by then. So I was thrilled when a headhunter called me and asked if I would consider ... Moving to Chile and working for an astronomical observatory. It was probably just as well he could not see me jump up and down for joy. I had been an amateur astronomer since age 7. And I had already happily lived overseas. Would I consider it ??? I spent 14 years, 9 months working for Cerro Tololo Inter-american Observatory (CTIO) under the aegis of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). The only reason I returned was the fact that they decided to go to a nearly all-Chilean staff, laid off every non-Chilean in my department other than one who had married locally....Expand for more