How I Found Success Working in IT

  How did I find success working in IT?

Here's the short answer, it took a willingness to learn, adapt, innovate, and grow. Most of what I know I learned on the job, or used my free time to learn, using a home lab and experimenting without fear of breaking the infrastructure at work. Keep reading if you want the long story, or skip to the end for my breakdown of what I did to be successful.

  Anytime I have a conversation about what I do for a living with someone, they assume my degree is in the field. They're always surprised when I tell them that I have a degree in Filmmaking. The only relation to IT is that I use computers to edit films, videos, and to create graphics. How did someone like me, an aspiring Steven Spielberg get into IT and move up the rankings relatively quickly?

  It honestly started with my experience in multiple operating systems. My education and freelancing in video and graphic design gave me experience in both Windows and MacOS. I was able to get my first job in an IT related capacity due to my experience with MacOS. This gave me an advantage during the interview process. While the others may have had more technical knowledge, it was all Windows experience. My MacOS experience put me in a different category practically giving me a shoe in for the job.

  Knowing multiple operating systems is helpful when looking for a job in IT, it doesn't need to be MacOS, you can learn others like Linux. It just happened that this position required us to speak with teachers and technicians at schools. At the time, Apple had some incentives for schools to get their computers at a decent discount. This meant that the chances of you helping anyone with a Macintosh was quite high, so knowledge of the Mac Operating System was a huge plus.

  This position was a Tier One Tech Support Representative. It was mostly software support for educational software. These were tools to help kids with Reading and Math mostly. The support at this level mostly consisted of assisting teachers in finding reports for grading their students, troubleshooting issues, and blindly walking through the install process of the software.

  While working in the position I learned as much as I could about the software, how to walk anyone to different areas, and how to install the software in each operating system we supported. This made me an asset to the team. I was able to help teach others where to go to find different items, the best troubleshooting steps, and I even created documentation on the install process for each operating system, MacOS, Windows, and SUSE Linux. Not having remote access tools to assist with these things made it hard at times to help with troubleshooting some issues and the installs. That's why my documentation was so helpful to the other techs.

  Learning these items, and the tools I built made the job easier for both me and my co-workers. This lead to my first promotion to Tier Two. This position consisted of being support for the Tier One Techs, taking over escalated calls, and handling cases where there were potential bugs in the software, install issues, or software upgrades.

  Normally when you first start as a Tier Two you are slowly eased into the roll. Your focus is mostly to help the Tier Ones while taking on cases slowly. My first day I was given a full case load that belonged to a Tier Two who was demoted to Tier One due to negligence. I was told that his cases were potentially all disgruntled clients and to do my best to ease things over while getting their needs met. Apparently my supervisor noticed during quality assurance call reviews, I had a knack for deescalating tension with frustrated teachers and school techs on the phone as a Tier One Tech. This was an opportunity for me to show that I could rise to the challenge. I not only rose to the challenge, I exceeded all expectations.

Over the next year I earned trust from our leadership with my ability to handle different issues and deescalate calls with upset clients. It actually got to the point were certain clients would request to work with me for every escalated case. All of this lead to my next promotion to Assistant Team Lead. At this company Team Leads were managers without the title. My duties as an Assistant Team Lead were more consistent to a traditional Team Lead would be at other companies. I would still handle a case load while also being a resource for both Tier One and Tier Two Techs. In addition I graded calls for quality assurance, and would take over as the main leader when the team leaders were not available.

  After another year I was eventually promoted to Team Lead. A position like that can be both rewarding and also high stress. If someone on your team does something wrong, it was your fault. It was rewarding when you help anyone on your team succeed.

  I worked at that job for just under five years before I realized that the opportunities to move up were quite limited. This was the point where I found a new position as a Tech Support Rep at another company. It may seem like the move was a demotion, but they offered higher pay than what I was making at the time with a lot less stress. It felt like I had conquered one mountain, and it was time to start climbing a new one with a better potential up side.

  This new job was a more tradition tech support job. I actually worked with active directory tools, build user profiles, took helpdesk calls, built and imaged computers, the works. It was a fresh start with so much to learn. As I was taught different tools and followed documentation, I also worked on building my own documents that were more up to date with the current processes.

  It took me about a year before I was promoted to Tech Support Rep Two. The main difference between the positions was really my title, a pay increase, and a better yearly bonus. Now the company has built the roles out differently, but back then, it was more of a you're doing great and we want to show you our appreciation with what you've done. This was also a time during a company merge of IT. After about another year, I received another promotion to Senior Tech Support Rep. This role involved more responsibility, and it increased my exposure to leadership.

  Eventually I was promoted again to Systems Administrator. At this point I had been so engrained with the workings of the company, and due to how great leadership was, I pretty much walked into that role. I had most of the access needed to do the job. I recall right from the beginning at the company that if I didn't know how to do something I would ask how to do it, "assuming I have the access". That phrasing tended to get me the access much more quickly.

  The key things that have driven my success has been my willingness and ability to learn and adapt. Over the years I had always shown that I was ready and willing to learn what I didn't know. I viewed these as challenges that would give me more opportunities to move up and forward in my career. Leadership took notice and worked with me to learn the skills I needed to move up.

  Let's review what got me where I am today.

1. Basic skills in the use of multiple Operating Systems

   • Windows

   • MacOS

   • I now have a decent knowledge of Linux

   • You don't need all of these, but learning more than just one will benefit you.

   2. Willingness to learn.

   • Jump into learning everything possible.

   • Learn not just at work, but on your free time.

   • Create a home lab with similar tools you use at work to help you learn them with more depth.

   • Make it known to your manager that you want to learn more, and ask if the company pays for certain training.

   3. Build Documentation

   • Creating and updating documentation for the processes helped me learn it all better.

   • This also helped me figure out better ways to approach issues or procedures.

   4. Create and build tools.

   • I must have created hundreds of PowerShell and Batch scripts to do different tasks more efficiently and quickly over the years.

   • If you know how to program in something other than PowerShell even better.

     • I've figured out ways to fix an old proprietary program written in visual basic.

   • Share these tools with co-works, it will go a long way in showing how much of an asset you are.

   5. Always be willing to help and teach others.

   • The more you are involved in helping, the more you are going to learn.

   • Helping others also puts your name in a positive light when you come up in conversation about different projects. This adds potential for more promotion.

   • If you're at an elevated position, don't put down those who are under you. If they don't do something right or miss a step, show them "your" tips to success. It will go a long way showing your leadership abilities.

   • Be Humble.

   6. Have a drive to always improve, grow, and move forward.

   • Some people like the status quo. I get that it's comfortable, but I can't live my life without striving for a better me, and a better tomorrow.

There you have it, my recipe to success in IT. I hope my story helps you understand that you don't need any tech degree to get in and start. You just need audacity to be the guy to go get what you want.