Anyone who knows me knows that I have been around the block a few times. As I have traveled through life I have noticed something that disturbs me. I have seen people fake their way through life using lies and deceit and they are rewarded for it. For instance, I was working in the call center at a software development firm while my co-worker was traveling around the country giving seminars on our software and making big bucks. When he was giving his presentation if someone asked him a confusing question he would tell them he would think about it and then would step outside for a smoke. However, this guy did not smoke. He would frantically call me on the phone and say, “Phil, I don’t know what these people are talking about, I need your help!”. He later went on to become the IT director for a large restaurant chain. I once asked him if he had all the answers and he said not at all, he surrounds himself with the people who have the answers, and therefore he looks like a success.
I have found myself envying these people and wishing that I could be that brave and conniving but I have never been that type of person. I don’t know if this is common but quite often I have found that if I wish for something, it actually comes to pass. It almost seems magical and I think it is the strangest thing. How did my dream come true and turn into a true nightmare? More about that later.
First, let me tell you a funny story about the actor Peter Lorre. He came to the United States during World War II from Europe to escape the Nazis. He needed work so Alfred Hitchcock interviewed him for a part in the film he was making. Apparently, Lorre smiled and laughed at all the right moments in the interview so Hitchcock hired him thinking the actor would be a great asset. Later he discovered that Lorre did not speak or understand any English. He had to learn all his lines phonetically and had no idea what he was saying. This is pretty much what happened to me.
This took place in December of 2021, they were moving people around at work, assigning them to different development teams, and just like musical chairs when the music stopped I was left without a chair! The team I was supposed to join didn’t have room for me and they had already moved someone into my old team so it was full and I couldn’t go back. I interviewed for this new team with the technical lead who is a genius, we will call him Fred. I told him the technologies where I had experience
- C#.Net
- Oracle database
- MSSQL Database
- JavaScript
- Java
- Node.js
- HTML
- CSS
Now, it is important to note that in some cases I knew almost nothing about these technologies. It was like saying I had helped to build a house because I held a board for someone while they drove a nail into it. However, he never asked me for any real details. I guess Fred thought I was a real genius and he added me to his team. Boy, was he in for a surprise!
Now I am trying to simultaneously learn JavaScript, React, and Next.js while I am writing code through trial and error – there is no time to take classes. Everyone is upset that I am moving so slowly and asking so many questions. In the case of people who spend their entire lives faking and lying to get into new jobs, I really don’t know how they do it! As I am typing this I am thinking of the movie “Catch Me If You Can”. That was a great movie!
In any case, this leads me back to my original statement. Be very careful what you wish for in life because it seems to me that you very well might get your wish!