Employment

Sherlock, Soule, & Rollins, CPAs, Staff Accountant, 1978 - 1980, La Jolla, CA

After graduating with my B.S. in accounting, I was not able to land a job with one of the big CPA firms. This local CPA firm was reorganizing and hired 2 new staff accountants including Harvey Schroeder and myself. My starting salary was $12,000 per year.

Located near the intersection of Herschel and Wall Streets in download La Jolla, it was a beautiful location to work. I could take lunch and walk a few blocks to the beach.

The small firm served medical practices, retail, and other small businesses in the area. My work consisted of monthly bookkeeping, quarterly payroll, and annual tax return preparation. Manual journals, ledgers, and work papers were the norm.

In 1979 I purchased an Apple II Plus computer and began learning a bit of programming. Microcomputers were in their infancy and the CPA firm was not open to using them at that time. I became frustrated with their unwillingness to leverage technology and decided to move to another firm.

If I could turn back time, I would have stayed put and just endured the situation. Just a couple years later, some software companies started in the San Diego area including ChipSoft (TurboTax) and I likely could have gotten in on the ground floor.

Shultz, Meggelin, Inouye, & Chais, CPAs, Staff Accountant, 1980 - 1982, West Covina, CA

My friend, Stephen Cammans, referred me to this CPA firm. It was somewhat larger and more sophisticated firm but still had not adopted computers for bookkeeping. The firm did enough audit work for me to get the required experience.

After passing the CPA exam, I got my CPA license. But I found that I did not like CPA work that well and that my true passion was technology, specifically software development. So I searched for and found a job in that arena.

Computer Sciences Corporation, TACS Division, Tax Analyst, 1982 - 1994, Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, CA

I joined this tax "service bureau" as one the first full-time tax analysts. Managers and sales staff wore multiple hats and contributed but I was able to devote full time to design and testing tasks. The company generated computerized tax returns using their main frame computer and large Xerox laser printers as a service to tax accountants. TACS stands for Tax Accountants Computer Services. Accountants would fill out "input sheets", send them via courier to our data center, the data entry staff would key in the info and our computers would generate the laser-printed tax returns.  

While there I pioneered the "remote data entry" system and lead a small team of developers in the late 1980's. After 2 years I stepped down to let someone else lead the team as my passion and skills are as a developer not a manager.  

We had a very interesting work schedule at CSC TACS. During September through January we would do development work 5 days a week with overtime as required. In February through March, we would work 6 days a week doing telephone support. From April 1 through April 15, we would work 7 days a week doing support. But during the summer we would work 4 days per week with a month of vacation. An annual highlight was our after tax season 3 day, expenses paid, company outing to South Lake Tahoe or similar destination. The company was small enough and profitable enough to sponsor such and it was a something we looked forward to and enjoyed.

Intuit, Consumer Tax Division, Tax Analyst & Programmer, 1994 - 2012, San Diego, CA

In the early 1990's microcomputer-based tax software grew to rival and then out-perform mainframe-based software. In 1994 CSC TACS was downsizing and I was laid off. I saw it coming and got a job at Intuit the week after leaving CSC. But had to take a 25% reduction in salary to get the job.

I was among a group of 20+ tax analysts hired in 1994 to develop business tax software using a new technology developed for the individual tax software the previous year. My first year I developed disposition forms shared across the business products. My second year I took over development of the S Corporation (1120-S) tax return. I added 8 new supporting worksheets to improve the product and was given a "Chipman Award" to recognize my efforts. I went on to develop for the Partnership (1065) product and added new partner allocation features to the product.

In 2000, I transferred from the business group to the individual group. I developed K-1 worksheets, disposition forms, and others. I went on to become involved with the product's data import features.

In 2012, 120 developers were laid off, including me. Most had been at the company a long time and were in my age bracket.

Wolters Kluwer, CCH ProSytem fx, Tax Analyst & Programmer, 2015 - 2016, Wichita, KS

After doing self-employed, contract work for a couple of years, I returned to employment with one of the handful of companies in the tax software industry. It involved moving to Kansas.

I knew the technology used by CCH dated back to the late 1980's. But I did not know how extraordinarily tedious their development and testing processes are. The leadership team members were absolutely opposed to me making improvements. From my perspective, they were both technologically ignorant and technologically obstinate. They don't even use basic development processes such as source code control and automated build scripts. Working there was one of the most unhappy employment experiences of my life.

After working at WK for 9 months, I suffered an ischemic stroke. I tried to return to work after 6 months of recovery but, after 3 months, I found that working full time, especially in that work environment, was too taxing and I resigned.