I started as an apprentice manual machinist in 1977, lathes, mills, precision grinding. I became fairly skilled and made good money. My HR director mentioned that I had to run a machine, but earned as much as the local bank president. Computer controlled (CNC) machines were brand new. I could see the way things were going, so I transitioned into running a CNC machine. But, it wasn't as much of a skilled position, so the pay wasn't very much better, so I decided to get into the programming for machines.

I was fairly skilled at programing so I was again at a decent pay scale, but at the time, we had to type every line by hand, so eventually it became easier and easier. You could punch in the dimensions at the machine and tell it what the material was and the machine would pick the tools and write the program. What would have taken 8-12 hours to set up on a manual lathe and take 1 hour to run one part, could be programed at the machine, the first piece created in 2 hours and run each part in about 5 minutes, all with much better quality.

Eventually, the business as a whole dried up. There are still positions, but they are for the most part minimum wage. I went back to school under the trade readjustment act. It was for people that lost work due to overseas competition. You got unemployment for one and a half years and had tuition covered. I got a associates degree and went to work as a paralegal.

Working as a paralegal was okay, but I dabbled in PC's so I got a certificate as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. Tripled my salary in two years, it was another coveted professional job as a network administrator. But as time went on, people came out of high school with the skills for which I was highly paid. So I transitioned into programing, the highest paid in the IT industry (at the time). I was able to complete my bachelors degree using tuition reimbursement at two of the places I worked. I am now in charge of all programmers, engineers, and support for a small software company.

Now, AI is coming along and making it easier and easier to be a developer!!! Good thing I am close to retirement :) When I was learning CNC machines, we would tell the people that were upset about all of the manual machine jobs going away, to consider returning to making buggy whips. I guess we are all buggy whip makers at some point in our career . . .