I remembered where I'd seen Steve Balzac before. He was a 6.001 TA. He was also a member of the Assassins' Guild, as was Clifford Neuman, who I knew from the EECS computer facility staff. I might as well include BCN (Clifford) along with the other MIT westside geeks. (He lived in Next House.) Among other things, he was one of the principal designers of Kerberos.
Learning that Steve Balzac is no longer in the computer field gives me pause. It's not as if people can't/don't change their minds about careers. Perhaps he left the computer field because he wanted to, not because of downsizing or anything like that. But he is an example of someone who at the time I was an undergraduate seemed headed for a stellar career in CS with no apparent reason to change.
Learning that Steve Balzac is no longer in the computer field gives me pause. It's not as if people can't/don't change their minds about careers. Perhaps he left the computer field because he wanted to, not because of downsizing or anything like that. But he is an example of someone who at the time I was an undergraduate seemed headed for a stellar career in CS with no apparent reason to change.
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And, no, it's not unusual to change careers, particularly as new technologies come on line and/or stuff changes in other ways. Also, for some reason, "young" is in. Bruce turns 38 tomorrow, and he's beginning to worry about his age. I think that it's pathetic, myself, but it's not just CS in which this is the case.
(BTW we met for lunch at UCLA years ago after occasional contact via Usenet for a while... dunno if you remember me)