Gary W. Olson

Current

• Software Engineer at Delta Dental Plan of Michigan

Past

• Programmer at Michigan Millers Mutual Insurance
• Programmer at Continental Systems, Inc.

Education

• Central Michigan University

Connections

23 connections

Industry

Insurance

Gary W. Olson’s Summary

About the whole of my working career since leaving Central Michigan University has been in the programming and data aspects of insurance, first auto and home, and later (at my current employer) dental. I've worked with many languages and in many environments, and have found that I enjoy data analysis and modeling the most. My goal is to advance into data architect work.

Gary W. Olson’s Specialties:

Java (I am a Sun Certified Java Programmer), Oracle SQL and PL/SQL, data modeling, data analysis, ETL conversion work.

Gary W. Olson’s Experience

• Software Engineer

  Delta Dental Plan of Michigan

  (Insurance industry)

  March 1998 — Present (11 years 9 months)

  I'm currently a developer working in SQL, PL/SQL, and Java in a UNIX/Oracle environment. I originally joined as a COBOL/JCL programmer, working in an IBM mainframe environment. Broadly speaking, almost all of my projects here have involved data conversion, data modeling, and data architect-like work of one form or another - only the tools, environments, and project goals have varied.
  
  In addition to the above, I've also had some experience and training with Weblogic, DARS (ETL software), TIDAL, Toad, Serena ChangeMan, Microsoft Visio, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and the Rational suite of project and time management tools, including Niku, ClearCase, and ClearQuest.

• Programmer

  Michigan Millers Mutual Insurance

  (Insurance industry)

  June 1996 — March 1998 (1 year 10 months)

  I did some COBOL/JCL work here, along with work in "M2 Programming Language," which I believe was an inventory-oriented programming language that we somehow managed to make work for our auto and home insurance processing (in a mainframe environment). I've never found anyone else outside MM who has ever heard of this language, and I'm sure MM itself has moved on from it.

• Programmer

  Continental Systems, Inc.

  (Insurance industry)

  March 1992 — June 1996 (4 years 4 months)

  I worked on developing programs that were packaged and sold to individual agents who wanted to do comparative rating for their customers on home and auto insurance. This was way back in the day before you could do this sort of thing on the web. I learned a language called 'CBASIC' for this, which is, as it sounds, a Frankenstein-like stitch-up of C and BASIC that you've never heard of (more like C than BASIC, with lots of GOTO statements). Continental Systems got absorbed by a larger company that subsequently dismantled it, but its founders created a new company called NetRate Systems that has continued to this day. (There is, apparently, another company on LinkedIn that calls itself Continental Systems, Inc, but this was not that company.)

Gary W. Olson’s Education

• Central Michigan University

  Bachelor of Science , Computer Science, Business Administration , 1987 — 1991

  I was a Computer Science major and a Business Administration minor. Almost all of my classes involved languages I had no use for once I entered the workforce (BASIC, Pascal, C, FORTRAN... that's all I can remember). I did have a use for COBOL and JCL, it turns out. But I did get a strong foundation in how to think in software engineering terms that has served me well in all my working years since.

  Activities and Societies:

  I was part of the 'computer science fraternity' in my senior year, which was not a 'real' fraternity in the sense of having its own house or hazing or anything, but it did have its own sweatshirts and was more or less official.

Gary W. Olson’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• reference requests
• getting back in touch