>It's kind of funny that I ended up with so much control here. I interviewed for the job in the summer of '97. Didn't get it. That November, I got an email from the guy who got the job saying that they're looking for someone to help and I came in second on the original interview. So I took it. I've since found the original letter the guy wrote to the boss saying I'd be good for working on the web page and doing some debugging. :) Well, I _was_ still in college at the time.
>
>Anyway, about 2 months after I started, the guy quit and I became the only programmer! The boss lives 6 hours away, and doesn't program anyway, so I had to learn the job real fast. Thank God I found the UT since I'd only been using VFP for 2 months.
>
>Eventually, the guy that wrote the software originally came back, so I got some help, but I've pretty much taken over the Tripsoft program. He's working on a Taxi Manager. Last summer I told the boss that version 5 sucked and I was starting over for version 6. So it's my baby, now.
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>I'd been working on the project 2 months before the boss even saw it. He's only looked at it once for about 10 minutes. Which is a good thing for me, considering the stupid "suggestions" he's had for Taxi Manager. :)
>
>It's an interesting situation. Fresh out of college, with a LD boss who's practically computer illiterate. Basically, I designed this version and I'm programming from my design. It's worth the low pay to me to get that kind of freedom.
>
>But eventually I'm going to run out of things to do, and I don't think I could handle working in a tightly controlled environment after this, so that's what got me thinking of striking out on my own.
>
>-Michelle

I envy your patience and persistance, those are nice qualities to have. I fear I'd be long gone if I was you, but then again it's more unusual to end up in your situation here, we're 9 in the firm 4 full time programmers, and considerably small firm in the context of the market at hand. So we manage quite good I guess, I still believe we have surprisingly huge clients/projects.
On my new job, on the other hand, it will be a whole different story, 600 people alltogether. I think it'll be a nice experience for a 25-year-old like me.

I tried to find out more about "your baby" at TripSoft.com but no luck, although it's in the works. :-(