This was my first programming job.

I was 18 and Windows 95 had been out for 6-7 months when I started working for a company that made Total Quality Management software. At its peak, there were 6-7 VC++/MFC developers working on on something I would describe as blend of Visio/Excel.

It was a great first job. We had a few senior developers
who were consultants. They gave me some direction and answered questions, but they really didn't have a lot of skin in the game, so the supervision was minimal. While they mostly worked on the statistical part of the software, I got a lot of freedom to work on the diagramming part. Imagine a stripped down Visio where the diagrams automatically lay themselves out.

Six months into the job, the senior consultants left and the company started laying people off. They had budgeted 6 months development time with 5 developers and the project had been going on for at least 9 months to 1 year. The owners/investors were wondering when 2.0 was going to be ready and our timelines kept slipping. Soon after, they laid off 2 other people leaving me and another guy who was 4-5 years older. I'm pretty sure they kept me because I was the cheapest full-time employee who also happened to be moderately productive.

The first thing that happened was the scope of work dramatically changed. We spent less time actively developing new features and more time fixing bugs & doing tech support. Not long after that, the other developer left and I was the only developer. The guy running the company was a TQM domain expert who focused on the admin/sales/project management side. With me being the only developer, I mustered up the courage to ask for the "Lead Developer" title and a small raise.

Not too long after, we hired a friend of mine to help me with the development work so we could create version 1.5. The first version was written in 16-bit VB, so the plan was to upgrade it to 32-bit VB. After we did that, the thinking was we could take some of my diagramming code from 2.0, turn it into a set of ActiveX components and embed those components into the VB app.

Like other struggling companies, we lurched a bit with creative ideas. The guy running our company (he wasn't the owner) started looking for creative ways to partner with other companies. For example, I remember us approaching SmartDraw to see if we could embed their application into ours. It was a good idea. SmartDraw had an excellent product that was very reasonably priced. We charged 5x for our software, so we could easily cover the cost of a license. At first, the owner of SmartDraw liked the idea of selling additional licenses, but that soon fizzled out when he realized how niche our product was and the level of effort it was going to take on his part to turn his application into something that could be embedded into a VB app.

I left when the company decided to move out west. My salary was low, and I knew I would struggle living in a west coast city. However, my friend
and the marketing girl both moved out west leaving them with one developer again.

My friend worked for them a few years, then moved back east. I think the company kept going for 5-6 years after that.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had moved out with the company. Part of me thinks I could have finished up the 2.0 version if I had a year.