Speaker 0 | 00:09.602

So today I’m dissecting popular IT nerds. We’ve got Jose Garcia. Jose, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us where you’re working and what your title is?

Speaker 1 | 00:22.726

Hi everyone, so I am currently working as an IT manager for a data market. I’ve been in the tech industry for about 20 plus years. It started off when I was in high school, as many of us geeks generally go through. I had my first computer when I was around 15, 16. And then it just elaborated from there. So I guess essentially I got introduced into technology. because of my dad. My dad is an electronic technician, so he would take apart computers or televisions, anything that had electricity running through it. It was him fixing the components inside. So as some of this equipment was readily available for me to take over and just play with, I started getting a lot of interest into how technology works. Essentially, that pointed me into the direction of computers.

Speaker 0 | 01:30.055

So tell me a little more about the electronics and the things that you learned to do and all of the components. Because as some people may or may not know, Jose and I know each other and had met earlier in our careers. And I’ve seen you fix things that most people are like, oh, it’s broken and they just are ready to throw it away. But these experiences that you’re talking about now, what are… What are some of the things that you did early on with that? How did you first learn and what kind of things did you experiment with?

Speaker 1 | 02:02.575

So what’s interesting about electronics is that every single component, just like in computers or software, every single component has a purpose, right? So, you know, you’ve got your transistors, your capacitors, your resistors. They manipulate the electricity a certain way so that you get the ultimate. you know result that you have like a television running or um you know uh i don’t know your computer turned on or whatever the case may be um as my dad would explain to me how these components worked and you know how the electricity would work on the the variables or or whatever the requirements are for that specific electricity what the output would be for that electricity or how that component would would manipulate it I began to learn how to basically fix the equipment around me. One of the first experiences that generally kind of gave me an opportunity for him to kind of focus a little bit more on him teaching me some of this stuff was he had a box of broken radios. and, you know, DVD, sorry, CD players. And it was all in a big box. And there are a variety of components put together. And generally, I asked them, you know, what, you know, can I play with these? And that was essentially the question, right? I was around 13 years old. And he says, yeah, that’s trash. I’m going to throw it away. And is there just extra components? You can do whatever you want with them. So I, from, you know, it took me about maybe two to three weeks. doing a little bit of research, you know, trying to find out exactly how the components work. Eventually, I had a Frankenstein stereo that, you know, had a CD player that played music. And it was the only CD that I could find at that moment, at that time, because I didn’t really have a CD player. The only CD I could find was, you know, one of the ones that they give you in the demo radios, like at the stores, you know, they have one that has like a elevator music playing on it. Well, anyways, that right there, um, kind of piqued his interest to see, you know, how he could, uh, kind of share his knowledge over to me. And, uh, um, you know, during my high school, excuse me, during my high school, I kind of used all that for like science fair, um, projects or for, you know, you know, keeping, keeping me busy. Um, I remember that, uh, one of these times, uh, I built, you know, with his help, a radio transmitter. And when I built that… It was a really fun experience. So it would generally transmit just like a regular radio station, but it was maybe about two to three football fields in radius. And it was always fun kind of playing with it. And you could also kind of, it was, I didn’t really quite understand how it would actually kind of modify the frequency so that if anybody was listening to a radio. while they were driving up, I can generally make it so that it would change their channel. I could never explain how we got it to do that, but that was always interesting to me. And that technically, you know, piqued my interest into technology and try to learn a little bit more as to how things work and how I can use them to, you know, to make things a lot better.

Speaker 0 | 05:55.494

So with, well, a couple of things in there. So one of your first teachers of electronics and technology, it sounds like a rare thing, at least in my experience so far, was your own father, which is kind of cool. And I’m also thinking back to how, like, today our kids, you know, you’re talking about CDs, and that was going to be some of the topics later, is, like, you know, what… what are your experiences with technology? So you’re talking about CDs at 13 and 14. And our kids today have never had to deal with CDs. You know, they’ve always had the streaming music and the music services. Exactly. Exactly,

Speaker 1 | 06:42.238

yeah.

Speaker 0 | 06:45.919

So how did you turn this, so talk about that progression then, from going from electronics and Frankenstein-ing or… taking components from multiple devices, getting those to work together to computer systems and, you know, in becoming a director of IT and then a manager of IT at a global company. Talk a little about that transition, you know, high school through college. So,

Speaker 1 | 07:18.234

you know, the interest in technology that… That, of course, kind of gave me the opportunity, or not the opportunity, but the interest to go after, go to the libraries and kind of pick out books related to electronics and start working my way there and eventually ending up in computers and understanding how to manipulate them and how to make sure that, you know, make work efficient. When I was, I’d say about 15 years old, that’s 15, 16 years old, no less at that time frame, that’s when I got my first computer. It was one of those gateway, you know, that came in a cow box.

Speaker 0 | 08:10.518

Like the 286 or the 386, one of those, that era or even newer?

Speaker 1 | 08:20.301

I think it was like an M. 866 or something. I kind of vaguely remember you had a Windows millennial operating system and it had a whopping 40 gig drive back then. When my mom actually bought me that one, it was for me and my brothers and being able to utilize some of the programs out there too. to do a variety of things. It just kept growing and growing. Eventually, when I was in high school, I went into programming classes, and I took Visual Basic, COBOL, C++.

Speaker 0 | 09:06.280

Did you guys have broadband, or were you doing dial-up? Or did you have to wait for a while before you even had connectivity?

Speaker 1 | 09:15.466

It was, what was it? It was when I was using it, and I was using it for a while. We had those CDs, right, that you would purchase or whatever, and they gave you so many minutes of internet for free.

Speaker 0 | 09:30.941

J-O-L, yeah, all of those.

Speaker 1 | 09:33.783

All that kind of stuff. It was still around in that time frame. I didn’t really have internet per se. When I got my first computer, it was generally for software, purchased software. install it and utilize it that way. You know, I would go after those free because they always had some of those free promotional opportunities that you can hook up your DSL or your phone line to them and use them. So that was one of the… first ways that I was able to get to the internet using the free and then eventually getting a DSL line into the house. So that was one of the first computers I had. I had an e-machine as well from my dad’s side. He purchased this computer. That computer actually, the Gateway computer, it was $2,500 when my mom purchased that. A year and a half later. Yeah, it was like, wow, like that, those things are expensive. A year and a half later, I think, was when my dad purchased the computer that I had, you know, at his house. And it was more or less around $500 to $600. It was a major price change. That was an empty machine, right? So, I mean, this is back in the day when, you know, I was using, you know, Some software like Messenger, you know, was the other one, MySpace, you know, going into that era, that’s when that’s when a lot of my interaction with the Internet was in that time. That was was pretty big.

Speaker 0 | 11:19.555

So were you had did you learn to code your own HTML? Because I remember that, like, I never really got into MySpace or any of the social medias that much. But the I remember MySpace being one where you, to make your page different, you would actually do the HTML behind the scenes and then after page.

Speaker 1 | 11:44.219

Yeah, exactly. So that was the fun part of having one of those pages. You would be able to modify. So yeah, mine was pretty elaborate. It’s kind of hard to remember. It’s been so long, but I had a lot of things on it. you know, different background, different fonts, different, you know, it was a pretty fun way of making something your own that was out on the internet, right?

Speaker 0 | 12:13.609

Yeah. Tell me, did you ever use the flash? Remember those other tags that we could put in? Flash. And it would blink on and off.

Speaker 1 | 12:27.860

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did use some of those. Oh, man. So, yeah, like in high school, you know, the programming class that I took, that was one of the defined moments where I wanted to get a career in specifically programming. I wanted to learn, you know, how to create software, how to… And that was my main focus. And that’s essentially where I finished my career in, or at least that was the, you know, the focus of my career is programming. You know, learning how to code C++, C Sharp, all that, all those kind of, you know, important programming languages that are out there.

Speaker 0 | 13:23.030

Okay, let me interrupt you for just a sec, because you brought up COBOL. I think you said Pascal, you said a couple of, you talked about the languages that were like the true structured language where, you know, line 10, line 20, line 30, go to 40. If X, go back to line 10. And then now you’re starting to talk about some of the object oriented. So how did you find that switch from the structured programming over into the object? oriented world.

Speaker 1 | 13:57.529

So COBOL, what was about that class is, yeah, it’s just exactly how you mentioned, go from one to the other. COBOL, it was an introduction to programming, right? I love the fact that you could create, you know, certain programs that would pick out from different areas to essentially come up with the result. And what was… You know, I would take that home and build my own little programs at home. You know, as geek as this may sound, whenever I had my friends around, I would come back and tell them, hey, you know, look at the program I made. And, you know, I would have them go through a series of either questions or buttons. I believe it was just questions at that moment. And then eventually at the end, it would come up with, you know, this flashing little screen that said, you know, things like, you know, I’m better than you. or you know things like that just and then obviously they weren’t in technology so they’re like you’re such a you’re such a nerd right that was kind of their response But as I transitioned into Visual Basic and I saw the opportunity there, Visual Basic, I was introduced in high school. But in college, I was able to learn how to really apply it to day to day things and how we can create applications, software, things that you can incorporate in the lives of people. So one of the senior projects that I had or sorry, sophomore. projects that I had was to create a, what was it, a thermostat that would essentially turn on a heater or turn on the air conditioner. It was all through Visual Basic. So all of that was really, really fun. And being able to create that was even, that was the whole point of where where I wanted to go with as far as programming goes. Being able to build stuff that would make things a lot easier to do.

Speaker 0 | 16:13.515

Okay, so then all right so now you’ve hit high school, you’re doing the programming, you’ve learned those kinds of things. What was one of your first jobs? So you’re already invested in technology, you like technology. Where did you go after high school and did you go right into college or did you start working or doing both?

Speaker 1 | 16:39.084

I started working, obviously the works or my jobs that were focused in technology actually started at EPCC. I went for, it was the student technology services, which is an awesome program that they have, where you get to shadow the IT. department or the IT leaders or the IT employees that they have there, we kind of learn from them and understand what they do day to day. And so as I’m working with them, and it was completely different than what I was going, you know, or what I was trying to finish my degree in, but at the same time was introducing me to other aspects of technology, you know, the hardware aspect, the, you know, how servers. communicate how the network is built how the network works so things that were you know generally don’t interact with people that you know or are not essential for their job duties for those that are programming or those that are in development those that are it’s not it’s not their forte they have to understand how it affects their applications or how that affects their their programs but essentially it is not their responsibility so um As I started to learn how the networks are interconnected with each other and how they function and what’s important between the different server environments and the different user environments, that started to kind of divert me in a different direction. And so I was there for… for maybe about four years and I shadowed different managers within there. It was mainly in the network side. There was also a little bit of the kind of like the help desk or server side of EPCC. And so that was one of the ways that I was introduced into technology. in that sense, in that aspect. From there, I went into what was Goodwill. There was an opportunity for me to go to Goodwill. And it was as a, you know, the reason why I had that transition is that, all right, you know, I got to a point where, okay, I feel pretty confident here. I’m not going to learn anything new and I want to go, right? So there was an opportunity for me to go to was it a goodwill and kind of be a level one instructor. I was a computer instructor for one of the programs that they had there. And I technically explained to them and taught them how to mainly maintain their computer, how to make sure it’s protected, how to utilize applications like Word, like Excel. how to make sure that their computer is generally well maintained. That was my…

Speaker 0 | 20:03.238

job responsibility and then so let me let me interrupt again for a second and and kind of talk about that summarize that progression so so you first start off playing with the circuit boards of um different electronics and and then being able to connect those together and create or get a device put together working then you start playing with programming um get to understand and know programming and then start looking at the physical aspects of computers and the networking and the interconnectivity of it and and then your next job is teaching people

Speaker 1 | 20:47.267

how to use computer and now we’re back to right where i interrupted you so go ahead sorry exactly so so when you’re teaching somebody how um you know how to spec out their computer and um is, you know, somebody that generally doesn’t know or doesn’t understand how, you know, how a computer functions, that they’re generally afraid of it, right? And being that it’s Goodwill, one of the awesome things about Goodwill is that, you know, they get a lot of things that are donated. And within those donations, there was a lot of computer parts. There was a lot of computers that were, you know, monitors, towers, you know, you name it. There was a lot of things that were donated to Goodwill. So… How do you take fear away from some of these students that, you know, they just don’t want to touch computers because they’re afraid, but they understand that that’s where, you know, the job market is going. They need to understand how to use Excel, how to use Word, how to even, you know, operate a computer without it. You know, I’m talking about in terms of, you know, 13 years ago, you know, in that timeframe, and you’re talking about an older generation that wanted to understand how computers function. So how do you take the fear away from them and it’s you know expose them expose it to them so what i would do is i would build these computers i would place it right in the middle of the class and i would have them take it apart and the reason for that is that i wanted them to understand that there’s no real fear when you kind of understand what each each piece of the computer works now this this uh you know this these uh individuals that i was teaching they um they didn’t really understand the technical technical terms that we use um in the technology world so i generally had to kind of find other ways of how to explain how to maintain their computer and how it would work and one of those one of those that i thought you know kind of sort of mimics the whole idea of how to properly shut down your computer. Because that was one of the first things that many people do, right? You go and you hit the power button and you wait until it completely shuts off. Well, that’s incorrect, right? That causes a whole bunch of problems that we all know later can actually corrupt your computer, corrupt data, corrupt any of the applications that you have there. So one of the ways that I explained it to them, and it just made sense to them, was You know, imagine if you open up your refrigerator, right, and you open up all the doors. Your refrigerator is running with all the doors open. The doors completely open. The little cabinet doors are open. You know, everything is open. And you come back and you say, I’m done with this. And you slam the door. Chances are those doors are going to close in. But what’s going to happen to them? You know, you might get a little bit of fracture here. You might get a little, you know, a little chip here and there. They may continue to function, but there’s a possibility if you keep doing that, it’s going to fail on you. And that was one of the ways that, oh, this is why you don’t hit the power button. It’s going to cause things to actually break.

Speaker 0 | 24:10.258

This is why you shut down all of the applications and close all of your windows and bring the computer back to a neutral state before you tell it to shut down.

Speaker 1 | 24:22.705

Exactly. So, and that was one of the ways that I was able to kind of explain in a different level or a different point of view to kind of help some of these individuals that I was trying to help teach them how to maintain their computer. You have to find what the individuals are teaching.

Speaker 0 | 24:43.558

Are they the same age? Are they younger? Are they older?

Speaker 1 | 24:47.481

No, they’re generally the older. They were older, you know, trying to. as part of the program to kind of learn newer skills to kind of hit a different job market.

Speaker 0 | 25:03.142

Okay. And or to just even get back out into the job market potentially?

Speaker 1 | 25:07.844

Exactly. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 0 | 25:11.025

All right. So then after goodwill and teaching, where’d you go after that? Or were there any lessons that you learned besides that ability to communicate, you know, the complexity of the computer to older people who were not computer savvy? Did you pick up anything else? And through this part of your career, ways to communicate to the non-technically or the people who weren’t curious enough to start figuring out how to solder different components together to get a CD to work or make their own radio transmitter?

Speaker 1 | 25:53.873

At that point, what I learned from there is customer service. That was one of the first, that was one of the biggest things that I learned from there. Because it, you know, my job was to teach it, right? It wasn’t my job to kind of explain it in such a way that they would learn. So understanding that they’re there, they want to learn. They want, you know, they want this. They’re there every morning and they’re fighting for a seat. So understanding that, that, that want, that need and kind of finding other ways, finding. other ways to communicate so that it strikes a chord with them, that it makes sense. That was one of the biggest things that I learned from that job, trying to understand how to see what the customer wants.

Speaker 0 | 26:50.229

This wasn’t teaching grandma how to use a mouse or how to right-click and open up a window or get to the settings, but it was more like… Like teaching somebody who has been flipping burgers their whole life how to use a computer to try to get a job in an office.

Speaker 1 | 27:09.740

Correct. Or some people that were hurt and they can’t use their hands anymore for whatever reason. So trying to find a better way to make them efficient so that they can go into the job market.

Speaker 0 | 27:30.846

Okay. So the way you said that sounds like you actually had that experience. You had to work with somebody who didn’t use their hands anymore. What solution did you come up with? How did you make a computer usable for them without it being, and from goodwill, without it being an investment in a voice-only computer? Which, you know, I remember Dragon speaking naturally way back when, and it was not that good. It’s not like the things that we have around now where we say, hey.

Speaker 1 | 28:05.334

No, exactly. And I’m not talking about, you know, completely losing your ability to move your hands. But, you know, I have people that, you know, had like carpal tunnel from doing, you know, the assembly line year after year after year. And they couldn’t do it anymore. So it’s kind of unique talking about carpal tunnel. And then. and then going into a field that has computers, right? But it wasn’t about going into a repetitive. It was about opening an opportunity that they can use programs like Excel to be able to do their math for them or to have an inventory to better understand how they can provide a service to a company while… not having to do things on paper or not having to do things that are repetitive or not damaging their hands more than what they’ve already done. So that was one of the ways that I learned customer service.

Speaker 0 | 29:13.664

All right, yeah. So customer service through effective communication and communicating in the way the… customer needs versus corporate directive or following a specific script to achieve a goal, but achieving a goal through solid communication.

Speaker 1 | 29:39.276

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 29:41.257

Okay. And then after Goodwill?

Speaker 1 | 29:45.939

That’s when I started working at Mesilla Valley. So the program, unfortunately, was shut down. at Goodwill and there was a variety of programs that were shut down in the El Paso area and essentially I had, you know, I was laid off. At that point, I started looking for other opportunities, and there was one specific opportunity that came up at Mesilla Valley. And eventually, that was as a logistics clerk. That was my first position there. And it was a short-lived one, but that was the one that allowed me to put the foot in the door to be able to grow with Mesilla Valley.

Speaker 0 | 30:31.964

So Masuya Valley is a transportation company, a trucking company. I know this because I work there. But just for the audience who doesn’t recognize and doesn’t know what’s going on. So you were working as a logistics clerk at Masuya Valley Transportation, and then you got a different opportunity.

Speaker 1 | 30:55.280

So as a logistics clerk, some of the things that I found there that were… were, you know, to my benefit, is that the TMS software or the transportation management system that we had there was, you could find ways to automate certain aspects of your work. So, you know, I would go in there, you know, start my day off at eight o’clock. I would basically hurry up and finish my day-to-day tasks so that I can… continue doing my research and I would learn how this application, how would I be able to make that so that it picked up the repetitive items that I generally got from the same screen. So essentially I was able to automate my work on my computer and then I had a loads of time extra for me to do other things. So essentially what I did from there was I would finish my workload, and then I would go to the other departments to kind of find out, you know, what are you doing? What are the first ones that I went to, or at least one of the biggest ones that I went to, and I spent a lot of time there was, the safety department. The safety department would use Excel sheets, and they would compare one Excel sheet to another, so they would download the data from one site. and then would download another data from another site, and then they would try to compare, which, you know, they didn’t understand VLOOKUP. They didn’t understand, you know, how to use some of these things. But they needed something to produce a specific result on their Excel documents. So essentially, I created a couple of macros. I showed them through a couple of formulas how they could do it. And, you know, this would… It essentially would save them. And, you know, I calculated, well, how much time are you spending on this task versus, you know, if we were to automate this and make it easier for you? And I calculated more or less based off of what I thought they earned per hour. We were creating a savings of somewhere around like $1,000 a month or $1,500, which was, you know, it’s not that much. But what they got back was a significant amount of time per month. that they can now do for something else. So, as I’m working through some of these things and kind of finding ways to help my fellow departments, now that I’ve got all this extra time, there was a help desk position. And that was the first time that I got to meet Mike Kelly. One of the developers that I knew there, he’s like, hey, there’s a position open. You should go talk to Mike. And he was actually in the old Basel. So I went over there and talked to him and I said, hey, I’m interested. And, you know, when it came down to it, I submitted an application and then that’s how I started going to help desk.

Speaker 0 | 34:13.367

Okay. And so tell me about some of the experiences and what happened for you through help desk and, you know, walk me through what you learned from that, how it helped you grow. to do more and talking to management and helping people with solutions. Or what was it like working at the help desk? We all have those stories. I know I spent hours trying to help somebody troubleshoot why their computer was broken and how it wouldn’t turn on, only to realize that he was hitting the power button on the monitor. and never actually turning the computer on. And it was such a simple solution. I just could not see it. I couldn’t fathom that he’s going to hit the power button on the monitor and can’t understand why the computer’s not turning on. So if you’ve got any stories like that, bring those up.

Speaker 1 | 35:11.791

Actually, I’ve got one, and it falls back on me. So as a logistics clerk, there was this one time that I come in, and my monitor wasn’t working. One of them was, right? And I’m like, okay, why isn’t my monitor working? was working. So I started thinking, all right, I’m going to look at the video, I’m going to look at the drivers, I’m going to look at, you know, try to find out, is this thing correctly configured? You know, what am I missing? I checked the cables. And, you know, it took me about 15 minutes, because I, you know, I came from the computer world. So I’m like, this is a simple problem. I don’t have to call help us to get this, you know, get this to work. So, you know, you know, I don’t know if Mike, if you knew that story, but, you know, I apologize, I opened up. a computer property to try to fix it myself. But so I went in there, I took the video card, I put it back in there. I went into the drivers. I’ll try to find out what, you know, make sure that everything is up to date, make sure, you know, as much as I could, because it was obviously restricted to a user profile. But I got to that point where I’m like, okay, all right. I give up. I don’t know what it is. It may be a bad motherboard or something. them and when i call i get a text report right and he’s he was asking me what’s going on i’m like my monitor for some reason it’s broken i already got into the drivers i got into uh you know i checked the video card i checked the cables everything seems to be okay i’m wondering if it’s a bad motherboard so your remote’s in and guess what he could see both monitors so and he’s like is it is a monitor on and at that moment i was like oh my god This is so embarrassing. Yeah, the power button was off.

Speaker 0 | 37:01.037

Don’t you love that?

Speaker 1 | 37:04.440

And I was like, okay, I hope he doesn’t tell Mike, because I’m really interested in this position, because this is a very, very dumb fail right there.

Speaker 0 | 37:14.070

Oh, man. No, I don’t remember that one. That’s probably a good thing. All right. So more about help desk. What was it like doing help desk and what things did you learn there? And how did that help you grow even more? Because now you’ve gone from hardware, learning how to program, you’re teaching people how to use computers. You go off, get a job that’s not really, you’re using the computers, but you’re not really doing the techie stuff. And then you get an opportunity to do level one help desk.

Speaker 1 | 37:50.432

So, as a level one helpdesk, you know, there are certain access that you get. One of the major things that I always wanted, you know, it’s like a lot of people say, you know, I’m lazy. Why? Because you want to be able to automate things. Well, the thing is that it’s not that I’m lazy. I hate repetitive things. I want to make sure that we can automate this. So, there was a couple of things that the helpdesk team were doing repetitive. And… As I started to kind of research and kind of understand how these applications worked, I don’t know if you remember, I created a GUI that would essentially install and configure certain aspects of like the AS400 client, or I think it was tributary, or there was a couple of things that I, through scripts and through an actual GUI, it helped my team. be efficient. Instead of having to go out there and do these installs and wait 15-20 minutes, they would do them in the background and essentially call the end user and say, hey, look at your screen, it’s already there. So this was back in the day when this was an XP machine and there’s a PowerShell, was an actual package that you would have to download and install. There’s a variety of things that I would use that, you know, I would look at the problem and say, well, there’s got to be a better way of doing this. You know, why are we having to, one of those examples, why are we having to log into the server, stop the service, and start the service again? You know, it doesn’t make sense. There’s obviously a failure somewhere in the application, manufacturer application that we can’t handle. But there has to be a way for us to come, you know, automate this and not have to worry about waking up at 2, 3 in the morning to get this done. So, you know, through tools like… PowerShell and VBScript and you know create you know certain things that would either be on the scheduled tasks or be able to be executed remotely from the text computer. So by building some of these solutions for the team to help them, the main goal was let’s be efficient. Let’s make sure we’re not losing time that doesn’t need to be lost. And so as a help desk, I was able to, you know, in the Sea of Ali. transportation and obviously with with Mike Mike’s leadership there learning in understanding or training and understanding that you know the skills that you learn is only going to help the company grow was something that was very beneficial to me because I was able to use you know that the latest technology the newest tools that were out there learn how to apply them and make things that are easier for the departments or the really different departments around me and help them. So from a help desk perspective, one of the biggest things and most important things that I learned is how the operations workflow looks like, what is important to them, so that I understand how the applications that we’re supporting will actually help. them be successful.

Speaker 0 | 41:25.602

So understand the business so that you can know how the technology that you’re supporting works for the business.

Speaker 1 | 41:35.511

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 41:40.075

Okay. And so what are some of the other things that you learned along the way, like those kinds of things? How did you… How did you go from doing help desk to managing the help desk and what were some of the things that helped that happen?

Speaker 1 | 42:02.680

It was so moving from a help desk position over to basically a leadership position is by not holding the technology or the skills that you have in by making sure that your team is or at least your in that sense like your your co-workers understand that there’s a better way of doing things and helping train them so that they can do it themselves was the was the the best way to help grow into that role right because I was exposed as a lead for the team. So, sorry, let me take that back. Before I became a lead, I was generally finding ways for them to be efficient at what they were doing. So finding opportunities that they don’t have to do repetitive tasks or do tasks that take them longer than usual was one of the ways that it helped me build up and be in my… as far as I understand, be offered that leadership position. Looking at that team instead of an I, right?

Speaker 0 | 43:31.186

Right. Yeah, so helping the team grow and looking for chances for automation and efficiency and then creating things that help with that. One of the things that I always, and it seems to me, it almost seems counterintuitive, but if I can help you save an hour, we actually get two hours. Because now you’re no longer spending that work doing task one for an hour that we automate that task and take it away or let a system handle that. And now you get to do task two. during what was that hour you were using on task one. So task one is still getting completed, and now you’ve got task two being completed. So you basically can save somebody an hour of work. You give them another hour so that you get two hours out of it, not just one.

Speaker 1 | 44:34.641

Yeah, exactly. And from a leadership’s perspective, if you train some of your employees, on certain aspects that you do, they get to learn a new skill. They become more valuable to the company and essentially the industry. But you get to train them. But does that necessarily mean that they’re going to be there’s a possibility for them to take over what, you know, over your job or over yours or, you know, essentially replace you. Well, it’s up to you, right? You train somebody to understand or learn this skill set, but you don’t utilize that time back to learn another one, then you’re essentially putting yourself in that situation where you technically could be replaced. So as a leader or as a… you know, a team member at Maceo Valley, anything that, or Maceo Valley MBT, anything that I would show my teammates and help elaborate their skill now gave me time to go back and learn something else and kind of come back. And that was kind of the, you know, the environment that I was building with, as a director with my team, right, to be able to bring up other individuals so that they had the opportunity to do that. opportunity to go back and learn new skills and essentially bring that more innovation to the company.

Speaker 0 | 46:02.326

You just made me think of an old saying in a completely new way, but I think it kind of summarizes what you’re saying. And that is, if you teach a man to fish, then you can learn to go hunt.

Speaker 1 | 46:16.077

There you go.

Speaker 0 | 46:22.302

Yeah. But yeah, I mean, so. So that’s, that’s a, actually, that’s an awesome way of looking at it. I hadn’t really summarized it in the way that you just said it, that, you know, if I, if I teach somebody to do something and I don’t have them do what I taught them, then, then I take away my own opportunity to go learn. So if I teach somebody to learn or teach some, yeah, teach somebody so that they. if I teach somebody so that I can go learn something new.

Speaker 1 | 46:59.367

Yep. And then you bring that back, and, you know, essentially it’s an ongoing thing, right? It’s a ripple. They come back, they teach somebody else that they’re bringing up, and they get a new opportunity. So that’s one of the ways that we built some of the skill sets that we have at Maseo Valley. Right. Or MBT.

Speaker 0 | 47:24.348

Okay, so, all right, team lead, then help desk manager, then on to what? And tell me more about your experiences and what you’ve learned or, you know, since I was there with you for some of it, there were many long nights.

Speaker 1 | 47:46.354

Many long nights, right? So understanding, so there was one particular, and this is why help desk is important. And this is one of the reasons I fully believe in bringing up somebody within the company instead of technically hiring from the outside, right? Building the skill up from within. One of the occasions that I remember that would really help me understand the value of understanding the workflow within the organization was… The time that our 400 went down, it was an actual physical electrical part that failed within this very crucial environment that completely destroyed the ability to fail over into the secondary state. I don’t know if you remember that.

Speaker 0 | 48:39.335

Oh, yeah. I remember exactly what you’re talking about.

Speaker 1 | 48:43.197

There was a four, I think it was a four hour, a six hour. time or ETA to get the device in and get the support to get it installed because it was a, you know, a specific unique part. And what was really, what really helped me, you know, manage my team and help my team help operations was kind of understand, understand the workflow, understand how the operations was used, utilizing, you know, the software that we. or the applications or servers we had applied or that we had, you know, we had installed or we had given them. And then understand the skill set within my team and the way that we linked along, because obviously we were not efficient at that specific moment. We’re talking about a complete shutdown during the day. I think it was more or less like around 10 a.m. with the ETA of 46 hours. We were talking about a lot of hours of not being in production. One of the ways that helped me kind of alleviate or at least bring down the fire a little bit was to understand… that I had, you know, the TMS administrators, and then we had a development or a training environment that was synchronized with our, you know, production environment. Well, our production environment completely was out of, you know, there was nothing we could do, we couldn’t get into it, there was absolutely nothing that we can utilize from there. So one of the things that I remember, I’m like, well, wait a second, our… development environment contains all the information that this team needs to continue, at least continue working with the loads that are in transit and make sure that we continue our process and, you know, be a little bit less impact to the organization. So as I instructed my team members and I said, please create. or please allow them access into the training environment please make sure that they don’t make modifications to it and then i went back to operations and i instructed them i need i need you know i need a certain amount of groups to take phone calls i need uh specific supervisors to be able to print out um you know the loads for that day or for those particular divisions and please spread them out please give them the the driver information the phone numbers you know everything, let’s communicate with them and give them the ability to, you know, give them details like pickup numbers, delivery numbers, you know, give them the ability to keep moving forward. So understanding the workflow, understanding our environment and tweaking our phone system so that it functions the way that it needed to function in those particular hours. I mean, yeah, we were limping along, but we were not dead in water. So there was a, that was understanding. How important the help desk in understanding how the workflow works is very, very important for the IT department and how to, for that department to be able to support the operations of the company as a whole.

Speaker 0 | 52:11.302

Yeah, so if the help desk doesn’t understand how the company performs business, their ability to help in a crisis is minimized.

Speaker 1 | 52:23.294

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 52:24.754

Versus being a force multiplier, they’re now another burden or another group who can’t work because technology’s down.

Speaker 1 | 52:36.197

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 52:41.499

That sounds like a long day, man.

Speaker 1 | 52:44.599

It was. Trust me, it was. I remember calling you a couple of times saying, hey, this is where we’re at. Hey, this is what we’re doing. hey you know in the first thing as soon as i came back and i talked to my um my as400 administrator i’m like how bad is it it’s like it’s really bad both sides are down it’s a physical um module that’s that’s broken there’s really nothing we can do and i’m like what’s the eta the eta is this the very first thing that i did is i went straight to the coo and i said this is bad um i’m not going to lie to you we’re not going to have this within the next couple of hours. It’s not something we can wait. We need to fall back to a plan B or another plan that we can make sure that we continue to limp along. Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 53:31.486

that one was like a complete plan D that you thought of at the moment by recognizing what was around and seeing, oh hey, the training environment is synchronized with production. We at least know where everything is.

Speaker 1 | 53:49.358

we’re no longer completely blind literally so you know it helped us limp along which is which is and then once the part came back up everybody stayed a couple you know three hours later but we’re able to continue moving forward which

Speaker 0 | 54:07.390

is is what’s important yeah because transportation i mean a 24 7 business with um constantly changing information where everybody Everybody wants to know where their package is. I mean, today, we’re all looking at our phones, wondering when Amazon’s going to get to the front door. But back then, it was, you know, we were looking for where’s the truck and when’s it going to get to the store or when’s it going to get to the distribution center so that it can pick up that next load.

Speaker 1 | 54:39.811

Yep, exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 54:45.558

All right. And so from help desk manager, then you went to?

Speaker 1 | 54:52.674

Director. Well, actually, it was from my team manager into director. So the different aspects of, as I learned how my job role was with the organization, now, you know, as a director, I’m faced with trying to balance the requirements of 14 different companies that they all want the same thing at the same time, right? You know, what can actually cause, what are the negative aspects of not? being able to handle that aren’t. I mean, my experiences are, you know, you had a lot of shadow IT, like, you know, that started to come around, that started to become a pretty big problem. Because now you have some of these, you know, leadership teams that they know they need a particular item, but they don’t really understand how the environment or how the technology environment around them works. So it comes down to, all right, you know i bought you know make it work right or um hiring outside entities to come over here and um tweak your your environment essentially uh you know affecting your your policy so i um you know some of those scenarios so as a director what was my responsibility how did i learn what did i learn from being a director so as a director it was important for me to work around with my peers, understand the leadership team, understand, you know, first off, gain their trust. That was one of the very first things you have to gain the trust of the leadership of the other companies and the departments. If you don’t gain their trust, that’s when things like, just like I said, shadow IT become, you know, evident. So gaining their trust. It means that you have to understand, obviously, their workload. You have to understand what is their bottom line. You have to understand what makes them profitable. You have to understand what is important to that one company. Not what’s important to me and my department, but it’s how my department can make changes so that what’s important to them is there. if that makes any sense so yeah yeah as a director um so yeah as a director i had to learn to talk um you know talk the language of other people um one of the biggest difficult or one of the difficult language that that i t people face is um talking the the dollar signs right um i mean generally i.t is labeled as the highest operational cost that sometimes you don’t really see an ROI for. So being able to gain a little bit of trust from, you know, the CFO that’s, you know, guarding and making sure that the company is not wasting money, that’s one of the biggest important that an IT department, IT leadership needs to take on. Basically talk their language. Obviously, I’m not going to go in there, or I learned not going in there and saying here. this is what it’s going to take. We have to have something to back it up. I remember several situations where I would present the project cost of what it would take to accomplish it, and there was an immediate pushback saying, well, no, this doesn’t mean anything. And then coming back with the immediate response, coming back and saying, well, these are the steps we took. This is what you’re going to save if we do this route. Otherwise, if we do this route, these are the quotes. This is the overall labor cost. You know, this is the cost analysis of doing this project if you do it several different options. You know, and at that point, we start getting, you know, the response is, all right, you know, this makes sense. Let’s move forward. So understanding how to talk that language and understanding what their bottom line is and making sure that you gain that trust from the. you know, the financial aspects of the building will only help you. Because if they understand that you’re in a, you know, this is in a mindset that you’re not there to waste money or to purchase, you know, an infinite number of tools simply because it’s going to make your department easier. But you’re there to purchase tools that it’s going to make your department efficient. is the difference, right? If it’s going to make my job easy, right? But there’s really nothing that the business is going to get out of it. It’s not a selling point for them. But if it’s something that’s going to make you efficient and it’s going to protect the environment and it’s going to, you know, it’s going to provide security and it’s going to provide, you know, it’s going to have a lot of check marks that is important for that business. Then you’re selling something different than a tool that’s going to help your department. Does that make sense?

Speaker 0 | 60:22.942

Yeah, so selling the technology. to the organization or helping the organization understand the value of the technology and how it’s going to affect the business and making sure that they understand it’s not just a new shiny toy for all of the geeks in the closet to play with.

Speaker 1 | 60:50.285

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 0 | 60:56.716

Okay. Tell me some about this new venture that you’re on, Datamark. Tell me about what’s going on with that and some of the environment. You mentioned something about working with people who are doing things internationally while your focus is on the continental U.S. Did I catch that correctly?

Speaker 1 | 61:20.335

Yeah, that’s correct. So my team is… essentially in charge of the United States, right? We’ve got a global team. There’s an IT manager in Mexico. There’s an IT manager in India. So we’ve got essentially three places that we have data centers in. Overall, there’s a, I would say about, I believe it’s about 450 servers or such that we support globally. you know there’s a lot more networks and switches you know network equipment that is spread out amongst these three sites um i’m in charge of um i’ve got seven seven people i’ve got technicians i’ve got a systems engineer systems administrators and network engineers i’ve got a couple of my team is not that big but the responsibility that they take on is enormous, right? Their skill set that I’ve learned while working with them, it’s, you know, they understand their stuff. Like it’s, they’ve taken the necessary steps to understand this elaborate environment that we’re working to help support, you know, different entities within one specific location. and being able to support the security aspect of their being able to segregate them in such a way that it’s um they’re completely you know i you know isolated from the rest of the environment i mean it’s it’s a very elaborate it’s very um interesting and um there’s a lot of potential for growth and understanding how how things function at you know a data market It’s, I’m learning a lot of things that I was not necessarily exposed. I mean, as a company, we’re very security focused. I mean, we’re moving, you know, we’re not only moving, but we’ve always been trying to, trying to go after and make sure that we don’t have any loose ends.

Speaker 0 | 63:53.956

Don’t have any loose ends. So reducing that attack surface and the vulnerabilities that are innate within IT. So I’m curious. One of the things that you talked about at your prior job was that, you know, growing with the business and understanding the business, and now you find yourself in a new environment in a new business. So how, what’s that shift like and how are you finding a way to leverage what you know, but from a completely different industry to help create success for yourself in a new organization?

Speaker 1 | 64:44.893

Teaching myself another set of languages. teaching myself how the different departments function you know understanding their requirements, understanding each individual project that we support, or each individual client, what their requirements are, how to leverage my team to make sure that we’re supporting this customer and that this customer is satisfied with our work. So essentially, how do you make this work? How do you manage the IT department so that it makes the business move forward? And the only way, and then basically coming from a different industry, coming from a completely different environment, how do you make that work? And the best way is you have to go and make sure you understand the different departments. You have to understand their workflow. You have to understand what’s important to them. You have to understand how to make those departments successful and how that applies to your team and how that applies to what your team is doing and making sure that the goals are aligned, you know, that they’re both moving in the same direction.

Speaker 0 | 66:15.787

Align the business, align IT with the business. understand the business. So you’re still taking that same lesson forward. You’re just now spending time to learn the new business.

Speaker 1 | 66:27.808

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 66:31.852

You got any other tips or tricks or things that the next generation needs to know?

Speaker 1 | 66:37.896

As a leader, if you are in a position of leadership, if you’re moving into a position of leadership, It’s always important to look at this in a specific way. You have to make sure you understand what your department’s goals are. You have to make sure you understand where you are. Know your department. Understand where you’re, you know, where are you located? One of the biggest things that I always talk to my team members and try to change or try to, you know. make them or help them understand that this is the goal that where we’re going is kind of understand where are you with regards to the business you know there’s always that that support department there’s always that it department right where you’re there to fix anything that breaks and that’s your essential duty you’re there to fix anything that breaks but what’s wrong with that is that the business doesn’t trust you enough to bring about any solutions that may help them. So now you’re getting into being forced to make an application function that generally is not supposed to work that way. So you start losing compliance, you start losing efficiency, you start losing to application failure or solution failure because of shadow of IT. You’re… put it into a position where you don’t know how to make it the best that it can. But if the business were to trust you and bring you into that conversation when they’re thinking about it, now you’ve got an opportunity to, you know, understand, is this product going to fit in the environment that we currently have? And if it doesn’t fit, you know, you’ve got a voice now to come back and say, you know, this product is great. but we’re not ready for it. Or, you know, this product may seem that it’s great, but it’s outdated and we’re going to lose compliance. So by moving your department from a support standpoint into a service, into a business partner, and essentially being part of the strategic, strategic, you know, planning phase and having that goal as, you know what, I’m going to, I’m going to. make my department transition into this specific partnership or area within the business will help minimize some of these issues that many IT departments face.

Speaker 0 | 69:31.305

So getting involved in that conversation with the business early versus having to react to the decisions that they’ve already made without you. and trying to play catch up.

Speaker 1 | 69:46.009

Exactly. Because then if you’re playing catch up, then you’re always technically firefighting. You’re never preventing. You’re never… going after innovation, you’re never going to have the opportunity to grow your skill set because you’re always trying to fix things or patch or band-aid things that generally were not supposed to be made that way.

Speaker 0 | 70:15.300

Is there anything that you want to promote? Anything you want to bring up and let anybody know that you’re doing? Or the habit… habits um hobbies um things that you’re doing that that you’re proud of that you want to mention on the show and i’m proud of well um i mean uh what are you doing what are you doing in your spare time for enjoyment what’s what makes you smile when you get When you get home from work and you’re not having to deal with the office, what are you doing that makes you smile?

Speaker 1 | 71:02.639

My family, my daughters, my wife, my beautiful wife. Spend time with them. You know, disconnect. That’s one of the biggest things that’s a little hard for me. Because I generally, you know, if I’m faced with a problem, I think about it, I think about it, I think about it. So learning to disconnect. Regardless of what that is, in my situation, being able to spend time with that, whether it’s watching a movie, whether it’s playing a game or playing something, it’s just disconnecting from work and getting away from technology. That’s one of the biggest things. You see a screen every day, eight hours a day or nine hours a day. And you need to get away from that. So spending time with my family, you know, that’s what helps me relax. That’s what helps me, you know, gain that. I could be on, you know, after 11 or 12 p.m. working, you know, nonstop. But if I have that break and I’m able to spend time with my family, maybe it’s kind of like a refresher. Come back and we’re not a refresher. but a, I guess like a new energy, right? And you come back and you approach things a different way. So I’m a family. I mean, you’ve always known me. I’m a family person. I love spending that time with my family.

Speaker 0 | 72:41.689

I think it’s one of the most important things too is that chance to just come home, spend some time with them and enjoy the family and the love. and share that and, and get some of the rewards of all of the time we spend at the office. Yeah. Cause we get a chance to take care of them by being at the office and then come home and, and actually spend some time with them.

Speaker 1 | 73:06.456

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 73:07.756

So remember to spend some time with the family. All right. Well, Hey, you know, one thing that I need to promote is of course the dissecting popular it nerds. And so if you liked the show, please leave a comment. Give us a thumbs up or a vote or whatever it is on the service that you’re using. But definitely let us know what you think of the show and go to wherever you’re downloading the podcast from. And please leave us a comment. Jose, it’s been great talking to you. I hope you have a wonderful evening and go spend some time with that family. Really appreciate your time today.

Speaker 1 | 73:54.026

Bye, everyone.