I Would Have Taken the Job for Free - How I Got To Roanoke

Back In The Day

I remember coming to Roanoke in February of 1988. Flying in from Chicago, where the ice and snow were at least a foot deep, I arrived to 70-degree weather. Trees were budding. Birds were chirping. Flowers were flowering. There were mountains everywhere.

    It was magical.

    The main purpose of my trip was to interview for a job with a fairly new startup company called FiberCom. They specialized in fiber optic communications, specifically tactical systems for the Army, Marines and other military services.

    I had spent the better part of a year trying to get a job there. My goal was to spend more time with my young daughter Sarah, who lived in Roanoke with her mom and sister. Chicago was where I worked at the time, which also allowed me to help out my elderly parents. But being a long-distance dad was too hard, and I was missing out on watching Sarah grow up.

    I actually had several good employment prospects at the time, either in Roanoke or close enough to get there in an hour or two. But FiberCom invited me down, so I came.  I interviewed with the top management team on the engineering side and spent most of the day with them. They would become friends for life, though I certainly didn’t know that at the time. I also didn’t mention during the interview that, given the beautiful weather and the prospect of going back to Chicago and a guaranteed blizzard, I probably would have accepted an offer to work there for free starting right then.

    Later that night, about three hours later than planned, I arrived back at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. There was a fresh 12 to 15 inches of snow on the ground. Every car in the parking lot was buried. All the lot and row markers were buried too.

    It took me an hour to find my car and dig it out. As I dug through the ice and snow in about +5 degree weather and a stiff hawk wind off Lake Michigan, I prayed hard that FiberCom would come through with a job offer.

    As things turned out, they did.

    And FiberCom was, without a doubt, the best job I ever had. The best people. The best management. The most exciting technology. The best practical jokes and jokers. It was simply a place I loved being a part of.

    Two of the guys who interviewed me that day, Ken Ferris and Mike Usberghi, are frequent visitors to 3rd Street Coffeehouse, and I’m still as grateful to them now as I was when I first met them. Others, like Mike Czysz, remain close friends on Facebook. Josh Jones, whom I met on my first day at FiberCom, is like a brother to me. So many people, so many stories - I could write a book, maybe several.

    It was the job of a lifetime.

    Today’s blog was actually going to be a rant about the state of the world and our politics. It was going to be ugly, depressing and pretty much guaranteed to make everyone mad.

    Thank goodness I got that interview at FiberCom. It saved all of us from that. Well, mostly. Early voting in Virginia starts this Friday, September 18. You know what to do. Go Beth.

    What was the best job you ever had? What made it great? Please share your thoughts in the comments. I hope our conversation will be thoughtful, respectful and productive.

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    Thank you for reading—and for walking this road with me. Go vote.