Since you are here, I will give you short biography that may enlighten your kind self to my background! My name is Mike Jacob. Born in the lovely city of Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, a relatively normal childhood (I think). I won’t delve into childhood details here, so instead, will jump to my first real job at 15 years old working at the local good ‘ole Dairy Queen. A fascinating job at first, I learned how to serve drinks, hot dogs, hamburgers and ice cream. Once learned, best forgotten!
Next few years though were of similar ilk, what I politely refer to as “not much thought required” jobs. Mostly physical labour jobs. Let’s face it. As a kid, the best I could get was things like Pizza cook, delivery driver, concrete layer, house builder. But I learned what I didn’t want to do for the rest of my life!
Now education bored me. I skipped attending much of my senior year in high school so I could party. But I had knack for socialising with teachers and coming up with great excuses such that I never really got in any trouble (Ferris Beuller?). I always turned in exceptional homework which even got me on the “B” honour roll. Result, a free scholastic Scholarship to Purdue University back in 1979. Enter college (aka University in England), and my initial studies in the wonderful world of Electrical Engineering. But college studies were equally boring so I arranged my own curriculum around “Party 101”. Fun at first but 18 months of this was too much (and even partying becomes boring) so I quit college.
United States Air Force – Germany
I drifted around for the next few years, working at Amtrak (railroad), RCA (factory work) and other equally mundane jobs. I had to thinks a bit more in these types of jobs, but not much more. But I still wanted to realise my life long passion of exploring the world (hard to do when broke) so I enlisted in the United States Air Force (USAF) in Jan ’83.
The Air Force taught me quite a bit about discipline, myself and my first really useful “thinking” job where I was able to use my brain a bit. My training involved how to be an Operations manager (AFSC- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Specialty_Code). I got my first real duty station in Jun ’83, assigned to Sembach Air Base, Germany. I managed the operational needs of 2 squadrons of OV-10A Bronco’s aircraft and 8 CH-53 helicopters. Very interesting stuff! I spent a year in Germany with many official trips to Italy and Spain (TDY). With the bonus of personal trips around Europe to include Amsterdam, Bavaria, Switzerland and France (awesome!). Busy year.
United States Air Force – England & U.S.
I got new orders for Mildenhall, England in June ’84 (Sembach closed). A great transit base with many flying gas stations (KC-135, KC-135R Stratotankers), with even a few a few SR-71 Blackbirds. I got married to a lovely lady, we had kids, and I settled down for the next few years whilst I learned how the real world worked in more detail. Cross trained partially into IT Operations and continued to grow my knowledge, with many 
TDY missions around to other Air bases in Europe and the United States. But saddened that the USAF paid so poorly.
As a growing family, we had to claim food stamps to make ends meet. So to get by, I took many part-time jobs over the years, mostly food service type jobs (waiter, cook, bartender, etc.) in addition to my military job. Working an average of 65-70 hours a week for the next 12 years, which became the norm.
In ‘Jun ’88 I got new orders to Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota and spent the next 4 years with B1-B Lancer bombers, working my primary AFSC as an Ops manager/Database Manager. And my part time jobs of course. But alas, as the saying goes in the military “If the military wanted you to have a family, they would have issued you one!”. I disagreed with the idea of a remote 18 month tour in Korea alone, so I took other measures. So whereas I was on my 3rd re-up, I resigned and took an early out package of cash in Sep 1992. Yet I was very proud of my honourable discharge as a USAF Staff Sargent.
School and a government job
Now remember, I was a college dropout, no job, a family (4 sons), but a semi-healthy bank account. I calculated I had just enough money to go to school for 1 year while supporting the family. But even after transferring all my old college credits and USAF credits (yes, you get college credits for courses in military), I painfully realised I needed 2 years of school, but could not afford it!
So in very pragmatic fashion, I enrolled in Park College, “doubled down” with horrid schedules, double classes in all studies. Graduated in Jun ’93 with a 3.863 average in Managing Information Systems (graduated “With Distinction”.) So what next? We moved again of course, back home to Indianapolis!
Now my first “real” civilian job (well, govt civilian job), involved working for the US Army personnel affairs division, Fort Benjamin Harrison, IN as a GS-11 Systems Analyst in Sep ‘93. Quite a culture shock, adjusting to working back with civilians at the tender age of 32 years old! Especially when I began to realise I couldn’t just “order people” to do things. Shocking! But I learnt “how to get along” with real people again and grew up a bit more over the next 15 months.
The next few years
But once again, fate intervened and the division was closing down in late ’94. Options were move to South Carolina or stay in Indy. So I quit and took a job in Indy, as a C++/Fortran programmer, writing printing programs for large Xerox printers on magnetic reel tape. Boring, but it paid the bills. 8 months later, unemployed again as the company “cut back” during some hard times. Several more disillusioned jobs within Indianapolis over the next year prompted the wife and I to look over the horizon for new opportunities. Like a move back to England. So in June ’96, we packed up our bags, sold off the house and went back to England, settling down in the lovely city of Cambridge this time.
After a few months of sorting house, I landed a new job with Philips in Sep ’96, working as their systems manager for their proprietary pager production
systems. Working in the manufacturing sector now, I spent the next 5 months becoming “the expert” on their systems. I became so proficient that when Philips decided to go global with their pager production in Jan ‘97, I became their expert in building out new systems in each region. I received a new job title of Global NPI systems manager, and I spent the next 22 months building out new ERP systems in quite a few places. Singapore, Hong Kong, Fremont California, France and Guadalajara Mexico to name a few. Very interesting stuff though as we even joined forces with Lucent technologies for a year (Philips Lucent JV). But that didn’t last either as Philips closed their Cambridge offices, so I was made redundant in Dec ’98.
Contract consultant
At this time, I decided to widen my skill-sets so I spent the next 9 years independently consulting abroad. New regions I worked in included Shenzhen, Belgium, Mexico, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Korea and various states back in the USA such as California, Boston, New Jersey. I found I had a flair for Business Analysis, IT project & program management roles, which landed me continuous lucrative contract roles in companies such as KPMG, Advantra, Lucent technologies, IDL and BT. Working in IT, Banking and Insurance sectors, Telecommunications.
In April 2007, BT headhunted me so I accepted a full time role as a senior manager. I setup (with my team) new IT B2B integration solutions for customers in multiple locations globally. Frankfurt Germany, Prague, Amsterdam, Johannesburg SA and of course, customers in the U.S. The importance of the roles led to my eventual promotions to technical project director and then technical program director spanning a career in BT of 13 years. The last 5 years were focused on massive change and transformation programs. I focused on driving increased business value, cost reductions using multiple forms of automation, B2B solutions, and robotic tooling.
But alas, in 2016 BT fell hard times, lost 80% of its share value over the next 4 years. Enter a new CEO, new strategies, cut costs, cut people, cutting back on everything. So with little regret, I decided something new was in order and I left in May 2020 to take up my new role as a private consultant.
I have a number of interests & hobbies. These include solving challenges, RPG gaming, animals (2 dogs), scuba diving (not recently), seeing new sights that fire the imagination, reading, cooking, gardening and meeting people!
