The first application I ever wrote, theoretically saved the company $10.2 million dollars. I was working as a systems administrator at a Big 3 automotive suppl

The first application I ever wrote, theoretically saved the company $10.2 million dollars. I was working as a systems administrator at a Big 3 automotive supplier and identified a gap in our million dollar production system. If we ever lost connectivity, the system would be useless and the off-line backup system was insufficient. Our contract stated that we could be charged $10,000 per minute for shutting down the plant. I wanted to learn how to program, so I wrote a backup app in perl. The electric company dug up our data lines and we lost communications for 18 hours. We tried using the backup system, but it could not keep up with production and we put the plant in jeopardy. My app, which was not in my job description to create and not supported by the company, ran production for 17 hours without errors in a complex automotive sequencing environment. I don't know that the Big 3 automotive company would have actually charged us $10 million dollars, but it would have easily been > 1 million. Raising 3 kids as a single father, among other personal accomplishments, by far trumps this achievement, but it doesn't sound as impressive on paper.