Tonight, I return to university. No I'm not starting any course, I'm going to the first meeting and greet as an Alumni Fellow. To which I've signed myself up and been accepted, I don't think this lets me add any letters after my name, but it's nice to drop into conversation that you've a Fellow of your old university.
This will be the first time I've returned to the Newton Building in the Nottingham City Center since it's massive renovations over the last decade and I'm excited to see what they've done with the place whilst also feeling a little trepidations as to what they've done with the place.
For University seems to be a very different business to the one I left when I graduated. I was the very last year where public entrants to University had their fees paid, I left university with a degree and zero debt, which is practically unheard of then and even more so now.
I therefore look back with memories of the technology, the modules and the learning pathway I was upon and I see where it led me, but also what was worthwhile and what not.
Worthwhile was my programming techniques, some of the data modules and parts of the advanced technology subjects, like Artificial Intelligence. Things not of use, the Business models, the presentation or self-worth items and the database modules.
The latter were pretty useless as they taught nothing about scaling, nothing about what was then the emerging field of cloud computing, you were on person on one machine with one very old copy of DBase or FoxPro or evil of evils Microsoft Access. None of it carried over into the placement I was on whilst still on my course nor into modern use of data models and techniques.
The business models were not that much use, because simply the dot com bubble had just burst, the bottom had fallen out of the high priced computing model and so as I hit the work force at the turn of the millennium I was one of many voices crying out for the same jobs, which could be filled by a salary dictated graduate position or Jimmy Bloggs who's just read about it in a "Learn Computers in 24 hours book" but cost the company 1/4 the price.
There in lay the first challenge, the cost of being a graduate, you companies were seeing computers and computing power as an ever cheaper resource, Moores Law was still in effect at the time, the cost of the machines you were driving was ever decreasing, yet you were demanding the same or higher salary. It made no-sense to business middle or low-runners. So the highly skilled had to find highly niche or skilled jobs rather than getting in on the ground floor of IT and computing businesses.
Fast-forward into those roles however, and the price to reward difference of a graduates skills became obvious to the employer, they had initiative, skills to tackle anything thrown at them, and the confidence in their own skills to exercise and even expand on the problems and tasks set them. Where as I observed first hand lesser experienced hands go down with the proverbial suicide project*.
Graduating with no debt however let me leverage lesser paid roles, to drive myself out into a web of wide businesses, from underwear manufacturing, time and attendance systems, web enabled pressure monitoring systems, remote SMS data collection, entertainment system engineering and most recently international development of pay to play entertainment products (fruit machines).
I think today, nearly twenty years on from graduation, I have a larger experience base in the development field than most peers I meet around me and critically as I've always diversified my thinking and skills I've kept myself interested in technology (this blog is evidence of some of the crack-pot things I get on with).
So tonight, I return to University to meet and mix with peer Alumni, lets see where this goes.
* This is my phrase of the month by the way, in a few months time I maybe able to explain why.
