My IT Career History | PART ONE
I want to live off my writing, that isn’t really a secret. My goal since I learned what it meant to write a book has been to create stories for a living. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do and that dream hasn’t changed. However, building yourself up through storytelling takes a lot of work and time, and it can be slow going for a lot of us, so I did have to cave in and start a different career, at least while I work on projects like this website, my YouTube channel, and my books on the side. Today, I thought it would be fun to share my personal IT career journey and talk about how it started and how I got where I am. This is going to be split into two parts since there’s a lot to go through. My hope is that by being thorough and open about this, I can show others that it’s entirely possible to build a career in a field like IT and support yourself without the need for a degree that you don’t actually want or care about.
It Isn’t About Passion
I absolutely hate it when I get questions during interviews in the vein of “what makes you passionate about IT”. The answer is money, but that isn’t what the interviewers want to hear. I’m in this field because I’m good at it and it supports me financially. Yes, there are some aspects of IT that I’m passionate about, but I could still be passionate about those things without devoting fifty or more hours of every week to the field. The only way I could imagine myself being passionate about every facet of my work is if I got a job as a technical writer (which hasn’t happened and, at this point, probably won’t). Likewise, you don’t have to be passionate about IT to be good at it and build a career around it. If IT interests you enough and if you’re capable when it comes to technology, you’ve got what you need to consider a career in this field. Obviously, the more you care about IT, the more likely you are to succeed and go the distance, but it definitely isn’t a requirement for starting a career in this field.
You Don’t Need a Degree
When I first started my IT career, I did not have a degree. I didn’t go to college for anything other than a couple of classes for about four or five months. Instead, I pursued a certification—just one, not more—and that was enough. From there, it was just a matter of talking to some connections until I could get my foot in the door and express that I wanted to start my career in IT. Likewise, you don’t need a degree to get started in the field. If you don’t have one, my advice is not to get one. Find a lower-tier position that suits your current skill set and start working your way up. I’ll even go so far as to say that the least competent people I’ve worked with have all been people who are fresh out of college. Half of what they knew was irrelevant and they needed to be trained more than people who had been active in the field for the last four years instead of stuck in a classroom reading textbooks that are outdated the minute they hit the printers. Any time that I’ve conducted an interview or reviewed potential candidates, I have not given a crap about education, and neither have the people at companies I was interested in working for. You do not need a degree to join the IT field. At most, you need a certification or two.
My First Job
My first job in IT was actually my favorite one. When I got the call letting me know that they’d like to offer me the job, I was on shift at my position as a janitor. I kept the janitorial job for about a month before I changed the IT job to my full-time position. The job was pretty straightforward and simple. I was a data center technician in Dallas, and the hardest part of the job was the commute. I worked with a great team—the best team I’ve ever worked with, honestly—and had a lot of fun. Yeah, there were some hard days and some terrible customers at times, but for the most part, it was a really great job. I made about $13 an hour, plus overtime (which tended to be generous) and worked four days a week, ten hours a day (a fantastic shift). It was a solid job, I loved it, and it allowed me to live on my own. The only reason that I left that position was because of my move to Kansas City. I loved the job and was sorry to say goodbye to it.
When you’re looking for your first job in IT, I suggest looking at the median salary for each position you interview for, then be ready to accept the lower end of that. You have no experience, so you’re a bit of a risk for most positions. Don’t worry, after six months to a year, you’re probably safe to start interviewing for other positions and can push for more average pay. I accepted the $13 an hour in a heartbeat, and I’m glad I did—it gave me the experience I needed to start pursuing higher pay.
Grabbing a Gig in KC
Now, the job that followed my favorite job was my least favorite job. When I got to KC I needed a job, so I grabbed the first thing that came my way… and that was a mistake. I worked at this absolute hell hole of a helpdesk. I lasted five weeks, four of which were training. It was miserable. Interestingly, though, I learned that a number of people in IT around Kansas City all spent a few weeks there. Some people are still stuck there, thinking that if they stay for a decade or two, maybe they’ll start making some decent money and get a promotion. They just have to keep getting abused and need to raise their hand every time they want to go to the bathroom. It was atrocious. If you’re in Kansas City, don’t go work for ISPN. Can I say that? I’m pretty sure I can. I can back up my claims. Working for ISPN sucked. Don’t go work for them if you’re in KC.
This job also paid less than what I’d had before, at a meager $11 an hour. It was a terrible job and I shouldn’t have accepted it in the first place, even if I was in a mad scramble for work after my move to Kansas City. I should have just kept looking instead of grabbing this job. I can see how it would have been a good opportunity to get some experience if it had been my first job, but as a second job and a follow-up to the best job I’ve ever had… no. It was bad. I cried in the car before heading in to work. When I quit that job, I walked in, wrote “I quit” on a piece of paper and signed it, then walked out. That was it. That’s how I left, and it’s more than they deserved.
My First Real Job in Kansas City
A couple of months after that job, I finally got a decent one in KC. It was another Datacenter tech position at a place called Datapipe, which has now been bought out. For the first year or so of that job, it was actually great. I liked the team, liked my manager, and enjoyed the gig. But, after that first year, some changes happened that began to make the position utterly unbearable, particularly my boss’s boss constantly coming down to micromanage and be… well, gross. The dude could be really nasty and demeaning. Additionally, there were some hiring decisions that resulted in a number of questionable folks joining the team. Thankfully, they didn’t really last all that long, but the job just rapidly started cascading downhill until it became unbearable. I will say, though, that when I got the job, I started at $17 an hour. It was a real step up from both of my other IT jobs.
But, then, I learned that some of the new people who were coming in were making substantially more than that. Some who were less experienced than I was were making north of $25 an hour. Upon learning this, I went and asked for a raise. When it was declined, I put my resume out there and got a position offering $27 an hour a few weeks later. This is why it is so important to talk to your coworkers about how much you’re making. You most likely didn’t sign an NDA—the myth that you can’t talk about your salary is just that: a myth. Know you’re worth and if you’re not getting it, ask for it. If they don’t give it to you, ask someone else for it, because they will give it to you. You will find someone who is willing to pay you what you’re worth.
That new job, while it did pay me an additional $10 an hour, was a lot harder and more involved than my previous one… and the manager, somehow, was worse than the upper management at Datapipe had been. More on that in next Friday’s post, though.
Conclusion
This has been part one of my IT career! Next week I’m going to wrap this up with the last couple of jobs that I had, up to where I am now with my career at Zoom Video. I’m trying to be as honest and (hopefully) helpful with these posts. I’m thinking that after I’ve done next week’s post in this miniseries, I’ll have one more post where I summarize some of the lessons that I’ve learned from navigating my career in IT. I’m hoping that this can apply not just to your own pursuit of an IT career, but your pursuit of just about any career. I’ve been aggressive throughout my career and it has ultimately paid off in a few ways, though we do still have a few pitfalls coming up, here.
If you’d like to support me and my pursuit of ditching my IT career in favor of being a storyteller full-time, the best way to do so right now is to subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can also follow me on social media! I’m @TLBainter on most social media platforms, and you can find links for those at the bottom of this post.
Until next time, bye!