WORKING

That Time I Got Arrested at Raytheon

Fun times as an independent consultant

Photo by Job Moses on Unsplash

I don’t know how Raytheon got my name. I never advertised, so it could have been a referral from another consultant, they might have found my website, or maybe they had scoured the Unix newsgroups — no, too early for that, possibly BBS groups. I never thought to ask any new clients about that — probably a basic business mistake, but I had more business than I needed back then and was giving referrals to other people when I could. Originally I had subbed people, but issuing 1099s is a pain, so I switched to asking for 10%, but keeping track of that was annoying, so eventually I was just giving away jobs I didn’t want.

Not this one, though. I don’t remember what the problem was; something to do with SCO Unix, which was something I had a lot of experience to draw on. So much experience that it didn’t matter whether I knew how to fix the problem or not; I had confidence I’d figure it out and if not, I wouldn’t charge them.

So they called, told me whatever it was they needed, we picked a day, and that morning I hopped in my car to head up Rte. 128.

I almost never scheduled any job for early in the day. I had no love for clogged highways, so I’d plan on setting out around 10:00 after the traffic had died down…