I came across Alex Exler’s post about the “What Did You Study and What Was Your Job?” flash mob (the post is in Russian). It’s a fun idea, so I decided to write about myself and also find out about others.
So, I graduated with a degree in “Computer Science” from the Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science (ФПМИ in Russian) at Belarusian State University (BSU). According to my diploma, I’m a “mathematician-systems programmer,” though I’ve always felt we leaned more towards applied programming than systems programming. But that’s what the diploma says.
Now, as for “what jobs I’ve had,” that’s much more entertaining. By “work,” I mean only activities for which I got paid. If I did something for free, it doesn’t count.
Here’s the list:
- Janitor (my very first job where I earned money)—there’s a photo above, though it’s of poor quality, and I’m not in it because I was the one taking the picture. Still, you could call it our little gang of janitor-trainees back in 1987 (yes, in the fourth grade).
- Electronic text typist (typed handwritten texts onto a computer).
- Programmer (even before officially earning the title).
- Journalist (wrote a few articles for the teen newspaper Perekhodny Vozrast (Teenage Years), for Computer Gazette, and some small pieces for sci-fi magazines).
- TV scriptwriter (for the TV program Five Wonders on Belarusian television; my wife later took over the baton).
- Translator of fiction books from English to Russian (I got paid for two; one was published).
- Writer (I earned some pennies for my book, so it counts).
- Blogger—like this blog, for instance. I’ve received a few donations for it.
- And the rest is in my main profession:
- Programmer
- Software architect (not of buildings)
- Analyst
- Technical writer
- Project manager
- Manager at various levels
- Management and process consultant (this is what I currently do, and my full professional history can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/knari/)
What about your experience?
