Completing A Geographic Ambition That Was Everything I’d Thought It Would Be But Was Cut Short

I had worked on 2 major projects which had been an excellent experience and I had learned a lot, but the feeling remained in me that I would really like to Work From Home. It wasn’t easy to do. The internet hadn’t really developed to the point where an Internet Business could offer Online Jobs.but tales were beginning to emerge of huge fortunes starting to be earned by people who had founded 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 Year 2000 project I started to educate myself how to design a website and put one together. I created a website which I updated oftern, 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 teephoned and said he’d had an idea for a product and wondered if it would be possible to create an Internet Business to sell it online. I looked into it but the problem was being able to take credit card details which in those days was very difficult to arrange, 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 in was also the most notorious – 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 visit and I was very happy to be going.

The first difficulty I had was getting there. I’d been out of work for twelve months and my car was off the road so I flew from Birmingham to Newcastle and this became a regular routine for many weeks. On arrival, I and 19 others were amazed to discover that we were not expected. The project was being managed 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, so they quickly took on 20 developers. Alas, they did it so quickly 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 lots of errors built into the design and which didn’t really had a chance because progress was demanded so quickly that pieces of work were being completed and given in without ever being tested prior to the system testing starting.

Eventually I was able to get the car usable and enjoyed the journey both ways, although a 4 hour journey prior to starting work was tough going. I renteda beautiful flat with a good friend in the area of Jesmond and once again the off work side of the project was excellent and we enjoyed evenings out in Newcastle at the Quayside by the Tyne Bridge. I loved the city and the Geordies, being there was a joy and all too short.

It was decided that when the bulk of the system development was done, that the firm would begin to bring down the headcount of the most expensive consultants, which meant that most of us didn’t get an extension unless we went permanent with the firm. So the British, Canadians and Australians left although the project continued, being staffed on the development teams by people from Brazil, the Sub-Continent and Far East, Egyptians and South Africans.

The internet by this time was becoming a major fact of life. Broadband wasn’t yet an option 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. Most of the work I had been doing was still not using any internet technology, but this was about to change.

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