I’ve worked for four companies. All have been large public Fortune 500 technology corporations. And in each I've established respect, confidence, top ratings and trusted to advise at the highest levels. That took putting my head down, becoming expert in my field, then talking - a lot.
While in my earlier years I fantasized about being a carefree millionaire, for twenty-two years I worked and grinded and helped people. My first all-nighter was spent fixing an issue with a database I built which caused IBM to report an incorrect billion dollars in savings instead of a million dollars. Turns out I had programmed the database with an incorrect decimal point. My bad.
Sleepless nights all over the world, had become a norm. For six months almost daily, I was woken by the company helpdesk to solve a problem. After work the first call would come in at 7pm from North Carolina. Then 9pm from Monterrey in Mexico. And then midnight from Singapore, followed by 5am from Hungary. Then back to work.
Sometimes after a night out with my German consultant colleagues I’d crawl into bed at 4am in the Budapest Novatel intoxicated and an hour later address a problem by dialing into the production network and creating files through Linux prompts.
The Electronics Manufacturing Services industry, otherwise known as contract manufacturing, is notorious for a work hard play hard culture. When the American (primarily from Alabama) entourage of system implementers came to Scotland they had a separate hotel room just to store booze, enough for three weeks.
And Scottish folk like to party. An ex-colleague from my hometown when working at Blackberry living in Canada, on a flight from Toronto to Shanghai, forced it down in Vancouver because of physically fighting another passenger in business class. A situation fueled by a cocktail of alcohol and Ambien. He was booted out of Canada and banned for life.
In my late 20s I apparently 'won' a tequila drinking competition in Guadalajara and woke up in a Mexican hospital room. Greg, an elder project manager from my company was in the room ready to greet me in his slow southern drawl. "That's some good tequila in that" were the first words from his mouth as he pointed to a drip that was hydrating me intravenously. The middle of my chest was bruised from the emergency doctors resuscitating my heart and the doctor later informed me it as a miracle I survived the level of blood alcohol in my system.
Times have changed, thankfully.
Traveling the technology world in my twenties and thirties was exhilarating. I felt like the jetsetter I had once fantasized about. Then one day about two years ago I decided to tally up my cash and assets. It was over a million in cash and multiple millions in equity, stock, and investments.
While working my hardest, putting money out my mind, and just focusing on helping others, I had missed the very moment that I had fantasized as a young boy, becoming a millionaire.