Software Services of Delaware, Greenville Delaware
February 1987 – June 1991
Software Services of Delaware was a small private owned business by entrepreneurs Barbara Hines; CEO, Nancy Fromm, accounting software developer; and Nicholas Romano, electrical engineer and software developer. This company had about ten employees including the hands-on owners. Besides developing software for clients and packaged not-for-profit accounting software they were licensed to sell, install and manage Novell Netware products. They had a contract with the Philadelphia Catholic school district so we were also often installing networks for schools.
Barb hired me when I was still studying at Delaware Technical and Community College. She asked me why she should hire me with no experience. I told her I was a capable programmer and asked her to give me a trial for one month. After working for her during the school year she asked me to start as a full-time employee starting after graduation and completing my B.S. degree during the evening. I thought this would be a good career strategy as this was in the beginning of personal computing and Novell networking so I would get experience from the beginning,
During my time working with Nick Romano besides developing software systems for many clients with the computer network, I worked with communications with the personal computer to devices with the serial port.
Nancy was in charge of a Not-For-Profit software package that the marketed nationally. We did modules for general ledger, accounts payable, receivable, payroll and payroll taxes. Each year I had to update the tax algorithms or the states for each client.
With Nick I worked on a reservation system for the Three Little Bakers Dinner Theater. As it was before the Windows operating system we had to use a graphics library with the C language and use trigonometry to rotate tables and put seats around tables to show reserved and available tables, seats and table sizes. For this system I worked closely with Carl Immediato and the Three Little Bakers family. After I left Software Services I continued to do work on the side for TLB having been given permission from Barb.
At SSD I also worked with many other clients and systems. I used Clipper, a dBASE compiler, Microsoft C and Assembler and Novell Netware operating system. I gained a lot of good experience.
Upon graduating at Goldey-Beacom with my B.S. degree I had spent five years with SSD. I asked to join as a partner but was declined as they already had three partners so I decided to move on.
At SSD as a small company we were very personal and friendly. Every summer we would all go to Dewey Beach on the weekends where the company owned a beach house. We also were able to use the beach house for vacation each year. We often spent time together outside of work hours. I remained friends with everyone there for many more years and have very fond memories.
A few years later SSD grew in size and was acquired by another company.