My Testimony

My Journey So Far - May 2008

I started working for AT&T as a contractor in New Jersey in 1988. In 1989 I proposed to my girlfriend and she accepted. Very soon after that, it was announced that my job would be moving to Mesquite TX. My boss Ray told me that he likes me and I am welcome to move with them to Texas. He offered me a permanent position with AT&T and the company would pay for the move. So here we are, my new bride and I, living 1500 miles away from home in Texas.

It was here in Texas in 1990 that I met the Lord. A man from a local church came through our neighborhood knocking on doors and I invited him in. That right there was a genuine miracle. It's just something I don't do. Invite strangers into my home to talk about God. Well I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior right then and there at my dining room table.

From that time on, I began to grow in the Lord. Learning about Him and how he provides. Soon I found Mesquite Bible Church where we fit right in. Our family has now been attending there since 1991. Life at AT&T Power Systems was good. I had a fun job with people that I both liked and respected. Life at home was great too. I had a wife who loves me and two great children. In 1994 AT&T divested themselves and we became Lucent Technologies. Life at Lucent was still good. The only real change was the sign on the front lawn of our building.

On January 1 2001 Lucent Technologies sold us (Power Systems) to tyco. There were several "All employee meetings" to keep us all informed through out the sale process. We were told there would be no layoffs. We were lied to. The first day back after the New Years Holiday there was a huge layoff. This became a way of life working for tyco. As the economy got rough in the Telecommunications Sector we endured quarterly layoffs and weeks of "furlough" without pay. Morale at work got worse and worse. I personally learned to hate tyco and everything they stand for. During one of the many layoffs I was barely spared, but was transferred into a different department. I lost my fun software job and was moved into Qualification. That job was unrewarding, boring, and left me stuck in a hot, noisy lab with nowhere to go in the company.

I made the most out of my time at tyco. I created extra jobs to "volunteer" for that were fun. I set up my own LINUX server in my office and created several web applications to help me with my job responsibilities. The company was still loosing money and we were still having regular layoffs. I was burning holes in my stomach with worry. Suffering from a major lack of self-confidence and having no plan B for the future should I get laid off. I was in a bad place. My wife always told me not to worry because God had never let us down before and He wouldn't now. I still felt tremendous pressure being responsible for our single income family.

Word went out in 2007 that we would be sold again. It worked out that this time we would be sold to The Gores Group. They are a private investment group from California. We again had "All employee meetings" where we were told that there would have to be changes to make us profitable but layoffs were not on the list of things they would try right away. We were lied to again.

Our family planed a cruise to Mexico for the first week in January 2008. This was right after the Gores Group took over the company on January 1. I was gone on vacation from January 7-11. My first day back was Monday January 14. The rumor mill was running in full swing. There would be a layoff within the week. Something was different this time. I felt no fear. No nervousness. No anxiety. I was completely calm and at peace. It was the coolest thing to be in the middle of the chaos at work and be so calm.

The very next day, Tuesday January 15 at 8:30AM, my boss Jerry called me into his office. I knew what was happening as soon as my phone rang. I walked the few feet from my office to his perfectly calm. Jerry with an obviously broken heart told me that he had to lay me off. He took my ID badge, gave me an envelope with my "package", and told me I needed to be out of the building by lunch. I spent the next hours clearing out my personal belongings and saying goodbye to my friends and finding out who else "got it". It turns out there were quite a few. It was a 38% work force reduction!

I still had no plan and no idea what I would do now. All I knew is that I had a good severance package since I had been there for 18 years since my days as a contractor. A few weeks later I was talking with my friend and ex-co-worker Russ who was also laid off. Russ was telling me about his son and what he is doing. Russ told me his son is getting into database administration. As I was hearing Russ tell me about it I was thinking, "I can do that" and BANG! I had a plan! So far, God had provided complete peace through a very tough emotional experience and now a plan, via a random conversation with a friend.

Now armed with a plan, I set out to get WIA funding to pay for some education. WIA (Workforce Investment Act) is a federal program that provides my tax dollars for re-education of displaced workers. One of the programs available via WIA is an Oracle 10g Database Administrator Certification. This looks like exactly what I'm looking for. So I visited the Mesquite WIA office to see what I have to do to get the process started.

The approved school for the Oracle DBA Certification is TechSkills in Dallas. I contacted them and discovered that they had just moved to a new location and were hosting an Open House. I decided to attend just to see what TechSkills is about. While I was there, I met a woman named Cheryl. She is a recent graduate of TechSkills who was still looking for work. Cheryl told me a little about how the WIA program is administered. Through the Mesquite office I could get the Oracle DBA program at TechSkills. If I went through the McKinney office, I could get the Extended IT program at TechSkills. The Extended IT program allows me to take as many classes for as many certifications as I want for a full year. I then decided to use the McKinney office rather than the Mesquite office to take advantage of the additional funding available there. God provided again, a chance meeting with a stranger at a school which was having an open house because they just happened to have moved at exactly the time that I was looking into WIA funding. What do you suppose the odds of that are?

A friend of mine who works at a Assisted Living Home offered me a two week contract position to write an application for them. He needed a way to search and display some information. I suggested he use a web based approach and he liked it. I wrote a PHP application that runs in an Apache Web Server that talks to a MySQL database server. That position lasted for 2 weeks. Exactly the two weeks before I started school. Because I was working, I didn't have to keep up with a job search to meet my un-employment/WIA requirements. That provided a little extra cash and eased some of the pressure of meeting the WIA requirements. Thank you again God.

As I'm going through the process of applying for WIA money, I was looking into Oracle DBA jobs at different sites on the web to see what I'm getting into. It looked to me like every job opening required a minimum of 5 years experience. This information seemed to agree with Cheryl's difficulty in finding a job. A job shop company found my resume on the web and called me. I went in just to talk with them and share my plans with them hoping we can work together when I get out of school with my new certification. They also confirmed the gloomy news that getting an Oracle DBA position is very difficult without that magical experience. However, as they looked at my resume they suggested I become a LAMP developer. LAMP stands for: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. These are all skills I already have and have proven experience with. They suggested I pursue a LAMP position while targeting companies that use Oracle. They said that would be a great way to get into an Oracle position and getting that precious experience. This whole idea is very appealing to me since I like LAMP development. That is what I was doing for the assisted living home listed above. The job shop company also added that having the 2 week contract position on my resume will be a big plus! It demonstrates my ability to use my skills in different contexts to solve problems. This whole LAMP path to DBA idea really helped me build my personal confidence in my ability to get where I'm trying to go. God comes through AGAIN!

As of today, the school has the WIA voucher and I am ready to start classes. As you may be able to tell, I'm really excited. God is working overtime in my life. It seems He is showing up around every corner to surprise me with the next unbelievable coincidence. I cant wait to see what God will do next!

I hope this true story blesses you and encourages you. Check back now and again as I will make updates as the Lord leads.

Dennis Kaptain