Bill moved here in around 1977, to work as Payroll Programmer at Burroughs (later, after Bill left, known as Unisys), who were manufacturing computers there at the time. He'd seen a school friend, Dick Adkins, go straight into a career in computing (with Norwich Union) so, with his background in using computers in his studies, had managed to land a job as a Cobol programmer… During his time there, he bought a maisonette and joined the Glasgow Glenmore Club. Dominik Hay of Leys (now in London) was also a member at that time. In 1981 things were looking a little uncertain at Burroughs, so Bill decided to move on. He was offered a job at Otis in Liverpool just before Burroughs announced some redundancies (which saved one of his colleagues from redundancy - Bill's post was not in jeopardy, as he was the only payroll programmer there!). Bill spent his notice period (a month, I think) training someone else to run the payroll. As it took around another 9 months for Bill to receive an already-agreed backdated pay rise, he concluded the new payroll programmer had found the changes difficult. One of Bill's major achievements was to upgrade the existing payroll program so it could cope with salaries of over £9999!
Liverpool