My biggest career mistake is that I was offered a programming position at Pulse Technologies and turned it down. The reason I turned it down was because I was told that I would be doing documentation for the first few months. I instead took a lower paying job to get more exposure to technologies, but ended up having a bad experience at the company.
My other mistake is that I allowed rumors to circulate about me and didn’t answer the rumors. Now this website exists so that anyone who googles my name will know that the content allegedly written by and about me is not actually me. I think that was a smart decision.
There is a rumor going around that I stole debit cards at a company I worked at. This is false and the only “evidence” they have is circumstantial – I was there when it allegedly happened. Other rumors involve mischaracterizations of my political views – something I do not bring up in the office. Had I worked at Pulse Technologies instead of Fidelio Insurance Company, then these rumors would not circulate as much.
Another issue is that I wrote a check printing system that was similar to the original but was in a new language. The task, they claim, was to write something new. However, if I was specifically told what the business requirements were, I easily could have added new features. It wasn’t my lack of ability. Finally, when the manager there saw that I was doing a good job, he felt threatened by it and concocted an excuse to get me dismissed – although I continue a relationship with a contractor there.
A lot of this probably stems from the fact that I challenged my classification of an independent contractor (at the time) because it was used to deny me unemployment benefits. I won the challenge and I suspect the company was not happy.
I was going to work on the website at the company, but another manager stepped it and messed that up. It is funny that they run wordpress, because I could have built a wordpress website easily.