C. Edward Mc Vaney - Career

Career

As an engineer at Western Electric in mid-1964, McVaney worked in applied mathematics schemes theory which got him involved further with both computers and operations research using mathematical modeling in the mid-1960s. Because the computer systems of the day were so primitive and the data was incomplete, it was extremely difficult to get reliable information because, in McVaney's words, "the numbers weren’t credible." McVaney explains of that era, "We went through a whole twenty-five year period of time building strong powerful computer systems with integrity so that then twenty-five years later, when you did the fancy mathematics and the operations research and so on, it worked fine." While working at Western Electric, McVaney learned machine language programming. While work at Western Electric was both challenging and rewarding intellectually and McVaney making what he considered good pay, $9,200 a year, when he was offered $14,000 a year to go to work in the Wall Street financial district for Peat Marwick Mitchell (now KPMG) in 1966, he snapped up the opportunity. McVaney found that as a frugal midwestern-bred young man, he could easily live on $3.00 a day when placed on a $9.00 a day expense account. He was in a self-described good situation.

McVaney was transferred by Peat Marwick from New York City to Denver, Colorado in 1968. He continued with Marwick until 1970 when he took a position with Alexander Grant, now Grant Thornton LLP.