I survived in corporate America for almost seven years. I was at Leviton Manufacturing for six months, AT&T for six years and Consolidated Edison for four months. It wasn't easy.
First of all, let's look at AT&T. I got that job based on a solid business education and computer literacy. I have both undergraduate and graduate degrees in business and I studied computer programming too.
My GPA in graduate school, the Boston University/Ben Gurion University of the Negev Joint Program was 3.73. So obviously, I didn't fall asleep in college. I also finished the program in 11 months. So I didn't dilly dally over it.
I took 14 business courses as an undergraduate student at Long Island University's CW Post College and I received 12 A's and 2 B pluses. Again my GPA was very high. I also took art and music appreciation and received A's in those courses. My GPA at LIU was 3.94. So I had a good track record.
I still had a hard time finding work though. I thought employers would be throwing themselves at my feet based upon my scholarship but that didn't turn out to be the case. The so-called real world turned out to be a crucible that tested me out to the max.
It took me about two years after I graduated with my Master of Science in Management degree to find work at all and I was afraid of dying on the street. Not to mention how New York State Higher Education Services was coming after me to pay back my student loans as soon as they tracked me down when I got a telephone installed in my apartment.
I'll let you in on a big secret. Sometimes, people passed copies of exams to me and I used them several times (three times in fact) to get good grades on a test. I also had a computer program passed to me at COPE Institute where I studied computers before being hired by AT&T.
My sister always told me, “When you go on a job interview, lie, lie, lie or you'll get nothing.” And my sister worked for some of the big placement agencies in NYC like Alberta Smyth. I took her advice. I had to, but there was a trade off. I'll explain the trade off via an episode of the Simpson's.
Bart Simpson, cheated on an IQ test and based on that he wound up in a class for accelerated students. He was out of his league. It took a while for him to get out of the mess he was in, as it did for me.
My first boss at AT&T told me, “I know you know calculus, statistics, et al, but I can't figure out why you can't write and debug computer programs well.” The truth is I was useless to AT&T for almost a year.
My psychometric tests administered by my Jr. High school pointed out that when it comes to clerical speed and accuracy, I'm only 30th percentile. So much for dealing with data rich files.
One thing I will tell you is that the boss I referred to above bragged about how she made it up the ladder without a college education. It was too bad for AT&T that they promoted her. Every system designed under her had to be redesigned by someone else and the system I had, AM04, was a useless piece of junk that we threw in the garbage pail. Let me explain the l latter:
AM04's outputs didn't look like the outputs of any similar system. Based upon statistics, if a system gives results that don't match comparable systems, it can't be accurate. AM04 cost 1.5 million dollars a year and it was in existence for 8 years before I killed it. And I knew what I was doing and my boss at the time didn't.
One thing I can tell you is by quoting Rabbi Shea Hecht of Chabad Lubavitch. He told me, “Even if you're not good in learning, friendship is very important.” I've found this to be true.
My first boss at AT&T gave me work to do in the VM operating system and in PL/I. I couldn't finish it alone. Someone in the company decided to bail me out and he actually wrote my project for me until I learned this system and language well enough to fly on my own. Later on I became known as very proficient in these technologies. It's a matter of a learning curve.
