3 September 2020
Getting a job in the City
by Hilary Strong
I was an unlikely new graduate applicant for an investment bank career in information technology (IT) at the end of the 1980s. I had opted for computer science and mathematics in my second year at university in a gambit to avoid cutting up small animals and reptiles in biochemistry and pharmacology. I enjoyed the logic games and solving algebraic matrices but not the labs learning to code in ancient languages like Assembler, C, Pascal and COBOL. At the time I thought the windowless computer rooms stifling, and most of the tasks pointless. In primitive Assembler code we built circuits to turn lights on and off.
20 years later when I advised a high street bank to decommission two of their 1960s Assembler interest calculation systems, the client opted to keep the one he had written; computer programmers can be expensively sentimental. We were also taught to code in ‘C’, reading lists forwards and backwards. It is a useful skill but is mostly prized by Computer Science graduate recruiters for point scoring and limiting the pool of applicants to people like themselves. A project to update student exam results using Pascal code backfired when a couple of students took this as license to hack into the records system at the university to update to their own results. Nor did I relish, or use later in life, calculus to calculate the surface areas of oddly warped shapes using differential equations. My lack of interest in the subjects led to scraping through my degree without honour, my time spent reading crime fiction, the Russian classics and my flatmate’s English Literature booklist. By the time I graduated I could differentiate a Speyside from an Islay Malt and had carnal knowledge that I wished I could forget.
To redeem myself, the following year I took a post graduate degree in Systems Analysis, learned how to read a set of accounts and finally, how to code something that was useful, a holiday company booking system. I learned much more from my industry seasoned college lecturers than I did from the university lecturers who had not tested their theories. At the milk round, and the graduate career fairs I was passed over by Arthur Andersen and their ilk, for not having a 2.1 and not looking great on paper or in my pale blue ‘business’ interview suit. My first job was at a small software house coding packages for actuaries and insurance companies specialising in payroll, pensions and personnel. Try saying that quickly. Since I was paid tuppence halfpenny for this gig with an employer which specialised in its own niche programming language, similar to Pascal, I moved on to a large American company with the hope of programming in something more marketable, COBOL.
I did learn to code in bullet proof COBOL and its partner for screen design ‘Mantis’ but before long an earthquake in the form of a new head of IT from the parent company arrived to shake things up a bit. The new boss was a Vietnam veteran who had made a commitment to top brass that he would upgrade our midrange IBM computer to a mainframe within 12 months. While he handled the negotiations with IBM, we set about rewriting the entire manufacturing and shipping systems in Natural /Adabas. He missed the migration of the hardware and the switch to the Natural/Adabas deadline by one month, resigning on principle. Luckily, he did not fall on his ‘sword’, a Viet Cong machete trophy, kept on his desk in the shadow of a large American flag. This impressive yet aloof man, with a vision and a mission, had provided me with a game changing opportunity to swap the career ladder I was climbing for one with fewer rungs.
Sitting on the Underground one evening, completing my journey into London Bridge against the stream of traffic, I took a flyer from a guy walking through the carriage. I always take leaflets regardless of the content, they get paid when their batch of leaflets has been distributed, why not help them? I had been commuting against the flow, to the outer suburbs, for over a year, resenting the effort, the wasted time and the pushy people who burst from the doors of the overfilled trains at Waterloo. Why did I commute out when I could work somewhere closer and get paid more?
I read “NATURAL /ADABAS Programmers wanted for jobs in central London. If that is you, call Jamie on 01……….” It was me, so I called Jamie at lunchtime the next day from a call box, avoiding using the office phone, telling him about my 2 ½ year experience as an analyst programmer. Giving me scant information about the job, he arranged an interview for me at the Investment Bank I had never heard of. I don’t remember how in pre Google days I prepared for my interview with a serious Oxbridge classics graduate, a relaxed Bostonian and cheery Londoner. The Bostonian was interested in my views on my food manufacturer employer, he had recently sold his shares in that firm for a good price to an asset stripper who had swooped in and bought out the small shareholders in the biggest deal of the year. Luckily, I could talk about that, and we also talked about the whisky barrel he had purchased from a highland distillery; as a daughter of a publican and a whisky drinker, I could talk about that too. I aced the logic and programming questions from the graduate and told the Londoner about the training courses I had taken in Derby to become a Natural Adabas programmer at double quick speed. I made no mention of my classmate’s extracurricular heavy drinking, and nights out at Greek restaurants as part of the week’s away training.
When I went back for my HR interview, offering me a 50% pay rise on my current salary, the Sloane Ranger office manager told me the cheery Londoner was cheerier still, having been promoted to VP that afternoon. Bottles of champagne were perched on the cardboard boxes of new personal computers and the atmosphere was raucous.
I started the new job, as a lateral hire not a graduate, in an office building near the Leadenhall Market; we shared a floor with the fine dining kitchen for the asset management branch of the firm and programmed to a background sound of clanking dishes and slamming doors. A tea lady came twice a day and we gathered round the trolley, glad of a break and an escape from the 6 foot cubicles we worked in.
My new salary came with so many luncheon vouchers I spent the excess in supermarkets for my weekly shop. Admittedly, a pain in the neck for the people behind me in the queue, counting out my bill in 25p and 50p denominations. My previous company’s perks gave access to factory price cigarettes, peanuts, chocolates and as much tinned fruit and fruit juice as I could carry on my bicycle. My flatmates missed my last job, more than I did.
The first week, my quiet boss, a farmer’s son from Devon, eased me gently into a project calculating counterparty risk for financial regulatory reporting. I got my head round programming big batch job control language programmes which took in lots of data files, sorted them, merged them together, enriched them with currency rates and product descriptions, applied risk algorithms I later understood, and totalled the outstanding deals by customer, product, country and currency.
On that first Friday I heard a 3 month probationer had been sacked, filling me with dread and fear. I did not ask why he had been let go, assuming standards were high and upping my game to avoid the ignoble sudden exit. Months later I was told he was a ‘slacker’, starting at 10, taking a 2 hour lunch break and leaving at 4pm. It seemed excellence was measured in hours but it is unlikely he got the job done in his compressed schedule. Fearful of losing my free luncheon vouchers, I began a 9am to 7pm work habit, exchanging my old commute time for more time in the office.
