Uh, oh, I've woken up in 1973. Can I get a job in computing? [closed]

Question

I've woken up in 1973. Until I can figure out how to monetize my knowledge of coming political, economic, and social trends, I need to support myself somehow.

So... I walk into one of the major computing companies (IBM, Digital Equipment, Bell Labs, Atari, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, EDS, etc.) and ask for a job. The receptionist directs me to a waiting room. "Someone will be with you shortly."(*)

Sitting among avocado-green and rust-orange chairs, ashtrays and Life magazines on the coffee table, I'm feeling a little anxious. I have no credentials to show. Well, I do have credentials, but they are in the future and the dates might raise some suspicions. I will have to impress them purely with my knowledge and skill.

I carry in my head a broad palette of contemporary computing knowledge: Python, C/C++, SQL, SQL Server, DOS commandline, a full repertoire of algorithms (searching, sorting, binary trees, image processing, geometry, numerical methods, etc.) and lots of mathematical and statistical methods.

However, most of these technologies have not been invented yet, or they are still in their infancy and are not yet widespread. And I don't know the first thing about whatever they might be using (Fortran, COBOL, IBM mainframe operating systems, punch cards).

Will I be able to impress the hiring manager? How? What should I emphasize?

(*) Aside to youngsters: There was a time when there were far fewer gatekeepers in the hiring process. If you walked into a corporate headquarters from off the street and asked for a job, you could reasonably expect to be taken seriously, or at least treated politely. Especially if you were dressed up and had a briefcase.

Answer 1

Make your way to Palo Alto, California, and find the Xerox PARC facility. Do whatever it takes to get a conversation with Alan Kay. Admittedly, you don't know any Smalltalk, but neither does anybody else. Your ability to think in terms of a collection of software objects interacting with each other will impress the hell out of him.

He'll get you a job doing some of the most exciting work available in 1973. Prototyping the first desktop computer as an office machine. The graphical user interface and the mouse. Ethernet. Email. The print server. Object oriented programming.

You won't have to deal with COBOL or Punch cards. It's all interactive computing, although it's on timeshared systems. They will be using Tenex, on either a modified PDP-10 or a Xerox copy of a PDP-10 called MAXC. Your knowledge of C, if you can regress a little, will come in very handy.

You won't make a lot of money, but you will get by long enough to enjoy it. The bad news is you won't go down in history. Everything you do will be swept aside when Xerox senior management decides against trying to cash in on the "office of the future". Some day, after the bad news has broken, there will be a kid that visits Xerox PARC and learns what the future holds. His name is Steve Jobs. Follow him.

For the Xerox PARC timeline, start here. Also read Dealers of Lightning.

Answer 2

Depends on the position.

Honestly, you're not really qualified for a lot of the work.

You don't know the languages, you don't know the operations, much of the work is routine processing and ETL, so it's not as if it's "exciting" work. In that sense, while you have a grasp of computers and their operations, you don't have any actual experience in the things they do. You'd have a bit of a step up at the entry level, but you might be surprised how little what you know carries back.

The real question, is whether you'd actually enjoy the work. Turn around takes a long time, you might be "coding" on paper forms to have them keyed in by someone else on a batch of cards. It may be too mechanical.

I, for example, like to iterate. Write something, try it out, test it, fix it, rinse and repeat. Let the computer do computer things (static type checking compilers for the win). Having to be stuck behind coding with a pencil and a 24 hours turn around, I'm not sure if my lizard brain would have the patience for it. It might be too methodical and detail oriented for me.

I could do the work, but the workflow I may not enjoy. I took a COBOL class that required us to use cards. It was the first level of COBOL, and many students first encounter with the computer system, or, honestly, at that time, ANY computer system. So, for them, the cards were less of an issue.

But I'd already done all that, I was used to the system we were using, this was not my first rodeo. And after using the cards for the first project, it was just way to stifling compared to a line editor and 1200 baud terminal. I didn't do any of the followup projects on cards.

Answer 3

Depend on the country, really. For example, in the Soviet block you would be asked for credentials, not to decide if you are suitable for the job, but because they have to know your education to calculate your salary. And you would not be able to provide any. Speaking of it, even in the liberal USA you would find it difficult to persuade anyone your shiny new driving license issued in 2015 is not an obvious fake...

The best bet, if you ignore the document issue, would be to get a FORTRAN and ALGOL manual and familiarize yourself with the languages before the interview. WIth a C background, it should not be difficult (unlike aiming for COBOL), especially the latter if you remember a bit of high school Pascal. Knowing algorithms, mathematics, you could be hired. There is however one crucial issue, you will be inevitably asked what is your experience and where you got it. Remember, there are no home computers at all. And "I've read a lot of literature" sounds weird...