On JSA, Never Give Up

Alternative title: Don’t let the Buggers get you down!

As a teenager in Wales in the 70s/80s being unemployed was inevitable. But I had an idea that I wanted to have something to do with computers. I’d even bought a Casio fx-201p programmable calculator as a school boy.

I came up with very simple ideas — whereas a maths genius in my class was able to program it to effectively fly a spacecraft to Mars. So perhaps I could have been put off then by seeing someone who was far more gifted.

On leaving school, I went to the Jobcentre for an aptitude test for a computer operator training course. I asked (as instructed by my old maths’ teacher) “Do these questions follow the rules of BODMAS?”. She looked at me perplexed. So I assumed they didn’t and got nearly every question wrong. Never assume am exam invigilator sets the questions!

Some time later I attended an aptitude test in another city for the same type of computer operator course. Again I failed. Now a normal person would have walked away and said to themselves I’m not as clever as I think I am. Instead I said to the examiner — I don’t accept the result! After some shuffling and a meeting — I was told the exam was biased to favor younger people. I’d failed as I was too old at 20. But because of my persistence they put me forward to a test for a computer programming course.

On JSA [called unemployment benefit] in the 80s, I travelled to yet another city for an aptitude test. But this time I passed — and against older people. I later found out the other people on the programming course had usually completed a degree in engineering or maths — but had failed to get a job.

The programming course was intensive and if you scored less than 90% at each test you were thrown off the course. The course involved reading thick IBM manuals one day and then being tested the next. Programming involved writing out Assembly Language code on bits of paper — which was returned with a print out. One young guy on the course was exceptional. He had been a window cleaner with just one O’level in Art — a bit like the character in the film Good Will Hunting — he completed the course twice in two programming languages. But perhaps without a degree he never got a job as a computer programmer. My hope is he combined his artistic ability and programming genius to become a games programmer. Otherwise you may have an old white-haired window cleaner outside your home or office who was a cleverer programmer than Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame.

Myself I never had a job as a programmer — as I too didn’t have a degree. But I ended up teaching programming to young students for a few years. I was even an examiner.

My point is: never let people tell you what you’re good at. An IQ or aptitude test can be passed one day and failed the next.

P.S. I now develop simple apps: see www.ajobtracker.co.uk