Completing A Geographic Aspiration That Was Everything I’d Expected It Would Be But Was Cut Short
I had worked on 2 major projects which had been a terrific experience and I had learned a lot, but the feeling remained in me that I would really like to Work From Home. It was not easy to do. The internet hadn’t really progressed to the point where an Internet Business could offer Online Jobs.but stories were beginning to emerge of fantastic fortunes starting to be made by people who had set up an Internet Business which had taken off. An early example from Britain was the Friends Reunited website.
While I was out of work following the end of a Y2K project I started to educate myself how to build a website and put one together. I created a website which I added to regularly, really just a personal site about me but what could be seen as an early blog since I wrote articles and put down thoughts about things that occurred to me. It reaffirmed in me that I wanted to Work From Home.
Then a mate rang and said he’d had an idea for a product and wondered if we could to create an Internet Business to sell it online. I looked into it but the challenge was being able to take credit card payments which in those days was very hard to set up, and the idea died quietly. And then I got a phone call and I found myself with a new job and the chance of working on Online Jobs was gone again..
It was to go to work on third major project that I was involved with was also the most infamous – the development of the Child Support Agency (CSA) system which was happening in Newcastle Upon Tyne. It was a city that I had always wanted to go to and I was really looking forward to be going.
The first challenge I had was getting there. I’d been out of work for 12 months and my car was unusable so I flew from Birmingham to Newcastle and this became a regular routine for many weeks. On arrival, I and 19 others were startled to realise that we were not expected. The project was being operated by an outsourcing firm for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), and the DWP were holding off sign the contract to go ahead on the reasonable grounds that the firm had no one there to do the actual work, which meant they speedily took on twenty developers. Alas, they did it so fast it was to be 6 weeks before we actually had any work to do.
But when we did get started we built a system that contained loads of errors built into the design and which did not really had a chance because progress was demanded so fast that pieces of work were being finished and delivered without ever being tested before the system testing starting.
Eventually I was able to get the car on the road and enjoyed the travelling in both directions, even though a 4 hour journey and then starting work was hard going. I leaseda smashing flat with a great friend in the area of Jesmond and once again the off work side of the project was important and we enjoyed evenings out in Newcastle at the Quayside by the Tyne Bridge. I loved the city and its people, being there was a joy and not long enough.
It was decided that when the bulk of the system development was done, that the firm would start to lessen the headcount of the most expensive consultants, which meant that most of us didn’t get a contract extension unless we went permanent with the firm. So the British, Canadians and Australians left but the project went on, being staffed on the development teams by people from Brazil, the Sub-Continent and Far East, Egyptians and South Africans.
The internet by now was becoming a major fact of life. Broadband was not yet available to be installed in people’s homes as a rule, it was an expensive thing to have where and if it was possible to install, but the technology and software was beginning to come together which was soon to make a leap forward, making an Internet Business a dawning reality for those who were technically minded. Much of the work I had been doing was still not using any internet technology, but this was due to change.
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