I’m still a programmer, but I now work on web applications, mostly front-end work (but a little back end)
I am allowed to WFH occasionally, but I don’t very much because I have a harder time concentrating on work when I’m at home. In 2000, working from home was almost unheard of, and I don’t think there were any web applications out there - certainly there were web pages, but they were for the most part static? (Wow, Amazon has been around since 1998)
What do y’all do today, and how has it changed in the past ~20 years?
In 2000 I had just left my job of 15 years as a compiler and library programmer for a major HW/SW manufacturer, eventually becoming a project leader. I left for a start up doing Internet consulting, I was the 13th employee. With so few people there I did a bit of everything; client interaction, budgeting, architecture, coding, etc.
Now I’m back with a large HW/SW company, as a project manager on security software.
No change at all. The application I work with has evolved (they are always adding new features and functions) and I have expanded my knowledge of the various functional modules. But I am doing fundamentally the same job with the same product in the same way as when I started back in the late 90’s.
In 2000 I was working as a vehicle body launch engineer for an American auto OEM in Silao, Mexico, thinking snarkily that if civilization ended at midnight, I’d probably be okay in Leon (where our hotel was).
I left that company shortly afterward in 2000 to join a competitor (the company I really wanted to be with in the first place), and held a powertrain plant engineering/supervision position for a little while, before joining the vehicle body launch organization. In 2011 I joined the management ranks and moved to China. In 2016 I returned to my current role as an engineering subject matter expert in a management position with no direct reports (which is awesome).
Despite how it sounds, I’ve not done the same thing for 20 years; in fact, it’s been one hell of a wild ride.
I wanted to fly airplanes in 2000, now I’m a teacher.
In 2000 I was 19 and was working in a bookstore and as a janitor in a nursing home. The nursing home shut down that fall and I hooked up with a organization that paid me to go back to school. I wanted to learn to fly but they wouldn’t pay for it. So I went into healthcare: I got my CNA license that winter. I did that for ~14 years before going back to school. Now I teach for my local community college’s adult basic skills (so, GED acquisition classes) department.
Not to mention the loss of Netscape and rise of Firefox, and the absolute mandatory need for mobile-friendly design.
And that’s just the tiny bit of stuff I’ve managed to use and pay attention to in my corner of the Internet. There have been oodles of other things I never dipped my toe into that have come and gone, or come and stayed but I still haven’t checked them out.
The world of Web development moves QUICK. And I am slow af.
Physician, and I’ve moved onto the dreaded electronic medical record from paper charts.
And I hate it. It has slowed the flow, reduced me to a data entry clerk, impaired relationships with my patients, and resulted in degradation of quality of medical care, rather than its improvement, which is what it was touted to do.
In large part that’s due to the fact that it’s not a real medical record, it’s a billing platform with some add-ons. It needs to be able to talk to all over EMRs out there, but the companies that create and sell and service these things want lots of extra $$$$ to allow it to talk to other EMRs.
In my system, it’s eroding my legacy of over a decade of system improvement, by rendering useless my previously implemented chronic disease care plans and monitoring templates. Our EMR agency tells us they can’t be adapted to their system, but for a few $million extra they’ll customize some things for us. So we don’t use them to track chronic disease anymore. And as a result do a poorer job at it.
I could go on with 3 dozen more pet peeves about it that make patient care harder, less personal, more time consuming, and generally angrifying of my blood.
I’m not alone in this despair. Recent articles and research show it’s negatively impacting physicians and patients across the US. I don’t know if other countries do it better; I suspect some must do better.
Well, in 2000 I was a student, only working at a casual job on weekends and holidays. Now… uhh… I’m a student, only working at a casual job on weekends and holidays.
I did do other stuff in the middle though. All sorts of things, just nothing that both led to possible progression and was the kind of thing I wanted to progress in.
In 2000, I was 11 years old, in the 6th grade, being extremely frustrated with the fact that I was taller than all the boys in my class (I was 5’9" then, the height I am now).
Now, I am a project engineer, doing engineering stuff and not using the chemical part of my chemical engineering degree hardly at all. I don’t know that I really predicted that I’d be where I am not when I was in the 6th grade. I ain’t mad though. I like what I do, even if it is really damn stressful some times.
In 1999 I was a legal secretary in early-middle-age, moving to Silicon Valley and looking for a job. I interviewed at several firms and got three job offers, I think. I called a random secretary at each place and asked what it was like to work there, and chose the place that got the most enthusiastic recommendation from an actual employee.
Twenty years later, I’m still here. During my time here, I changed from floater to real estate law secretary. As many of you know, the commercial real estate market in Silicon Valley is white-hot and we have more work than we can handle.
I’m a GIS programmer. I still work for the same county and the same boss. Oh it’s changed a lot, all app development has. But I have the same job at the same place.