Speaker 0 | 00:07.098
Welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds.
Speaker 1 | 00:09.999
Today, no relation, last name spelled different, we are speaking with Denny Farrell. No relationship to Will Farrell whatsoever, but you’re much better looking. Hopefully more funny. I don’t know if we can pull that one off. So, from my… from my alma mater. How do you say that? Alma mater state, Colorado. Are you in Denver? Do you live outside in the mountains some way? You’ve got a little bit of a mountain man look to you. That’d be nice.
Speaker 2 | 00:41.636
I actually had to clean it up when I took this job a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1 | 00:45.538
but it was pretty much the opposite. So IT operations, management, business continuity, whatever that is, that means let’s keep the business going so it doesn’t… burn down to the ground and, um, I don’t know, disappear. I put a meme out on LinkedIn the other day that just basically showed a picture of Armageddon and it said, you know, um, um, what if everyone in it just quit their job?
Speaker 2 | 01:11.791
I saw that. I saved that picture.
Speaker 1 | 01:14.011
So that’s what we’re going to call a business continuity. I made that one up. I felt pretty good about that one. I made a somewhat minor viral, not really viral meme, the, uh, cross-functional teams. I don’t know where to begin. How about this? What? Did you grow up in Colorado?
Speaker 2 | 01:31.784
Yep. I was actually born in Colorado Springs. I did a little stint in Germany. My dad was military, but back here since I was 12 years old. Yes,
Speaker 1 | 01:40.507
sir. Air Force if you’re in Colorado Springs. So back then, before the dawn of the internet, what did one do in Colorado Springs growing up?
Speaker 2 | 01:52.710
Besides getting into a lot of trouble, not a whole heck of a lot.
Speaker 1 | 01:56.360
Right. Let’s tell some trouble stories.
Speaker 2 | 01:59.041
It’s the typical Colorado story. We hike, we bike, we do things outside. In reality, we’re going around just with our skateboards and causing trouble in the parks.
Speaker 1 | 02:12.809
What was your first computer?
Speaker 2 | 02:14.410
Man, I can’t remember if it was a Compaq or a TI. I want to say it was a TI. One of the…
Speaker 1 | 02:21.574
X-Incidents?
Speaker 2 | 02:23.155
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 02:23.972
That was my first computer rectangular cartridge shove into right side, more of a glorified Atari. But I don’t know if we did any word processing on that. Did you do, do you remember doing anything actual on that thing?
Speaker 2 | 02:38.936
No. In fact, my first and only experience I remember was I somehow connected it to our TV and I was going through some instruction guide on how to write some code to basically make a snake pattern on the screen. And I could never get it to work.
Speaker 1 | 02:53.196
I was like logo. That was like, then that’s your second computer. And it’s my second computer. The, okay. So I just, I find it fascinating to find out how people that are, I would like to say closer to our age got into technology and see how far it has come over the years. When you think about it, is it, is it a bit shocking to you every day,
Speaker 2 | 03:18.330
every day? And especially because I did not. come up through high school and college with any aspiration of doing anything with technology i’m i’m not a computer guy i’m not this is the truth everybody this is the i became one exactly no well it wasn’t a thing back then no one was like growing up like i want to be a computer no
Speaker 1 | 03:41.129
uh guy when i get older yep well you kind of are an architect now it’s a lot more fun with us yeah yeah i uh i was in architecture for years that’s my degree and uh
Speaker 2 | 03:51.592
it it’s weird i kind of fell into technology because i was really good at autocad and i i aced through those classes and ended up teaching night school to you know uh adults at the community college teaching that yeah so that kind of kind of morphed into uh working for an architect doing all his drafting work his wife worked for a company up in denver liked what i did needed somebody to help run their uh drafting department so okay Sure, I’ll take that on. And so I’m still, you know, in my CAD space doing that thing.
Speaker 1 | 04:26.307
These files transferring so slowly.
Speaker 2 | 04:29.088
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 1 | 04:31.650
CAD and file transfer in the construction. See how this segues so nicely, but keep going. Keep going. We’ll get to that.
Speaker 2 | 04:39.054
Yeah. So, you know, I got recruited a couple of ways out of that. And what got me into the IT world was I was working at an office furniture company running the. design or not the design department, the drafting and CAD department. And, uh, that was right at, uh, nine 11. So 2001. And then, you know, everybody went full blown panic mode. The world is ending and the company started really hurting. So people don’t give a rat’s ass about office furniture anymore. So they started, they started shutting things down.
Speaker 1 | 05:12.868
I wonder how office furniture did during COVID.
Speaker 2 | 05:16.008
Yeah, I know. I know. Same kind of thing.
Speaker 1 | 05:20.650
But anyway,
Speaker 2 | 05:22.650
so we had two locations and there was an IT manager. Air quotes. And they started shutting down various departments and I’m having to let go X amount of people per week. This is just drying up. And they came to me one day and they said, okay, look, this guy, Andy, he’s kind of a tool. He always tells this guy he’s working at this office and this guy he’s working at this office. He’s out four wheeling in the mud in his Jeep. So we’re going to let Andy go. And you’ve got three people left in your department, including you. So. Here’s the writing on the wall. Your department’s going away. So is the IT guy. But it looks like you know how to run computers. And I’m going, I can work CAD on one computer. I don’t know how they talk to each other. I don’t know what’s in the back room with all the cables. I have no idea, but you know.
Speaker 1 | 06:12.594
You seem smart enough. Google, wait, there was no
Speaker 2 | 06:17.596
Google. If I stay on, I will learn it, man. And that was my foot in the pool of IT. And I’ve learned. The stories are on the job training or 25, 24 years.
Speaker 1 | 06:30.321
The stories are amazing. Uh, I think I had one guy that was working in the cafeteria, the cafeteria, and they’re like, you, you’re pretty good with talking to people. Um, I think you need to be in it. I think you need, so, yeah. So, but it makes sense. Um, yeah. I don’t know what kind of network was there back then. 10, 100 switches. Was there even a network? What do we have?
Speaker 2 | 06:54.272
No, I want to say it was a token ring, actually. It was old.
Speaker 1 | 06:58.594
Token ring.
Speaker 2 | 06:59.974
Yeah. I remember having to go to Barnes & Noble and get books on networking for dummies. In fact, I still have my…
Speaker 1 | 07:08.978
Please.
Speaker 2 | 07:10.199
This was the first book I bought. I just keep it because it’s kind of for posterity, you know?
Speaker 1 | 07:15.601
And they’re like, this is an IP address. Yeah. Like, where do you start if you are a dummy? If you are a dummy, where do you start networking? This is for all the children out there. This is for all the children out there.
Speaker 2 | 07:29.227
You know what? I had to look up what IP stood for. I knew what it was. It was a series of numbers that was like a little name tag for your computer.
Speaker 1 | 07:39.313
Oh, internet protocol. What’s the internet?
Speaker 0 | 07:44.275
Yeah. We should call that.
Speaker 1 | 07:45.596
I want to start doing actually a section of the show that is, what is the internet? Can you answer that question? How does the internet, what really, where does the internet begin and end? Can you answer that?
Speaker 2 | 07:58.185
As easily as I can answer, what is the cloud? Where is the cloud?
Speaker 1 | 08:03.569
Well, the cloud, they got that bumper sticker. It’s really just someone else’s computer. Like that’s done. Okay. Definition over. But the internet, like really, like I want to know every component of it. Is there like an electrical component to it? I mean, I know we’ve got headers and footers and we’ve got packets and we’ve got, I’m just, um, you know and bandwidth and latency and jitter and we got to explain all these things but really like i would really love to know like where’s the where’s the generator yeah where’s the master switch yeah there’s you know where’s the the internet kill switch is it is it at lumen’s headquarters i think it’s at lumen’s headquarters which was uh which was what century level century lane level three level three level three that was They were supposedly, we used to say they’re the generators of that. They’re like the generators. And just I remember, I remember since you’re from Denver, I remember C Beyond. We used to joke around and be like, can’t we just be R Beyond? Like we already are beyond. We don’t need to. Can we just stop seeing beyond? Can we R Beyond?
Speaker 2 | 09:11.075
But it was the letters. It wasn’t even like seeing letters.
Speaker 1 | 09:14.116
Yes. So I remember they had like an OC 12 running the whole network. Oh, boy. i remember like our net are like my uh walter domler who’s over at a company called uh ring central now i want no one gets calls from ring central ever the um we’re a fan of customer as well i’m a fan of ring central i love ring central do not get me wrong i love ring central um and and walter domler’s over there now but i remember we were sitting in a meeting one time and he was just like yeah we’ve got an oc3 and we got a redundant oc no oc12 and we got a redundant you know oc3 coming from level three in denver i think he said oc3 from quest and so let’s just never forget that you know
Speaker 2 | 10:01.213
We had the Quest building downtown for the longest time.
Speaker 1 | 10:04.234
I used to go, I used to have, when I went to college, when I worked for Quest and people would call up and be like, I want to speak with Joe Nachio. And he’s in jail. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 | 10:12.177
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 | 10:12.697
He’s a jail guy.
Speaker 2 | 10:14.318
That’s that name.
Speaker 0 | 10:16.339
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Speaker 1 | 12:24.985
popular it.net and say i want help managing all of my internet garbage please make my life easier and we’ll get right on it for you have a wonderful day so to diverge how doth one what because you have you have an interesting industry uh cad files are fairly significant large files um what’s the trick to um i know what the answer is it’s kind of a loaded question but what’s the trick to um sharing cad documents across large networks oh you
Speaker 2 | 12:55.173
Lord, man, bandwidth, bandwidth and compression. But, you know, it’s interesting you bring that up because we’re suffering from that exact thing right now. The company I work for currently is a building material supply. So we have a lumber yard out here in Aurora, Colorado. That’s also a trust plant. And we make, you know, wall panels and floor panels for residential and commercial construction.
Speaker 1 | 13:23.452
Okay. I could use some. Can I get some samples enough to cover my house?
Speaker 2 | 13:30.501
So they might not match.
Speaker 1 | 13:32.823
It might be better than the yellow siding I have right now. I don’t know. You never know. Might be able to do some artistry. Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 2 | 13:42.530
Yeah, so as part of that, we have designers that design all these pieces and parts and assemblies and stuff. So their files are… ginormous, I’m talking multi-level, multi-complex apartment.
Speaker 1 | 13:57.888
Yep.
Speaker 2 | 13:59.228
So we’re using a company called MyTech for the design software. And they also provide a lot of the machinery and connector plates for trusses and stuff. So it’s a good relationship there. But the file transfers and the space that we’re seeing on our server side is just exponentially increasing. So one of my… radar tasks one of my whiteboard tasks for this year is to really start leveraging this azure environment that is new to us here um and start spinning up some virtual servers like let’s get the stuff off trim because i don’t want to buy hardware i don’t want to maintain hardware i
Speaker 1 | 14:40.092
don’t know why it’s a it’s a nice private just get a couple nice uh redundant private cloud connections to get off stop writing the public internet and fully there you go we just in the last
Speaker 2 | 14:58.533
Inside of 30 days, implemented a cloud backup system that was actually a requirement from our cyber insurance carrier. They said, we need you to have an air-gapped, completely detached system. Before that, I kid you not, it was a series of three Quest Rapid Recovery servers running the backups, storing it on QNAP devices sitting in the rack behind the server. Now, there was redundancy in that they replicated across all three sites. But you go in there and take a hammer to it, you’ve killed the backup. So there was no off-site, not the old tapes in the ammo vault kind of thing in the back of your car. There was no rotation. It was just a static backup.
Speaker 1 | 15:42.374
Maybe we should employ the cyber insurance guys just to find out what we should do. Yeah. They cover your name like another thing. You know what I mean? What else should we do to prevent anything ever happening to us so that you would insure us so that you’ll never have to pay a claim ever? Because it’s basically what you’re doing. So thanks for your time.
Speaker 2 | 16:06.490
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 16:07.531
Bye.
Speaker 2 | 16:08.631
Yeah. It was a big, expensive project. But now that it’s in place, it is the godsend. And we’re decommissioning servers and repurposing them for other uses now.
Speaker 1 | 16:20.016
The average uh i read the other day that the average number of applications that a like any type of uh you know medium-sized business so we’re thinking i don’t know five thousand two thousand two thousand employees and users humans with souls plus people putting fingers on a keyboard the is um somewhere between like 90 and 120 that seemed astronomically large to me but i guess it’s real If you count all your applications, you know, Microsoft, Adobe, I don’t know, DocuSign, LogMeIn, every other type of little application and thing that everything in the company, it can be quite a daunting thing.
Speaker 2 | 17:05.294
Wow, I really thought of it that way. Now I’m going to be hyper aware and start counting applications on machines.
Speaker 1 | 17:11.738
I mean, maybe in an enterprise company, but I’m just curious even from… I would like to have this great awakening, this great awakening to the rest of the world of how important IT is and how important the IT directors are in the company. How many end users do you guys have?
Speaker 2 | 17:31.824
Around 300.
Speaker 1 | 17:32.885
Okay. I’ve done a ton of shows. I find that the average for mid-market IT space is the average ratio of end users to IT departments. is one to a hundred. So if I had to guess, you’d have a team of three.
Speaker 2 | 17:47.115
Unit. Well, four, if you include me.
Speaker 1 | 17:49.497
Yes. Then you’re, then you’re above the curve. Then you’re doing, then your company, whoever owns your company, can I send him an award that says you care about it? We should have like some awards that we send out to see.
Speaker 2 | 18:00.285
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 | 18:01.066
We should have some like joke awards. That would be like a really, it would be like really fun, you know, to send out to them. Hey, by the way, you care about it. Award we noticed, and you don’t even know this, but we were talking about you on. We’re talking about you on a podcast. You care about IT. You got the award today. And then maybe he’ll be like, wait a second. Hire some more people. Hire some more IT guys.
Speaker 2 | 18:19.128
It’s interesting you say care about IT because that’s one of the things that brought me to this company. I had been at my previous employer for 14 years. He’s a national home builder. So, of course, they’ve got all the teams at their headquarters. What we did on a local level was break-fix. No strategic planning. No… real budgeting.
Speaker 1 | 18:39.737
Keep the blinking lights, keep the blinking lights blinking. And yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 | 18:43.860
Yeah. Keep them blinking and keep the, uh, affected salespeople happy because they’re the lifeblood.
Speaker 1 | 18:50.445
Okay. Um,
Speaker 2 | 18:52.286
so, you know, I just, uh, saw the writing on the wall one day and, uh, I’d had actually stemmed from an argument I had with one of my managers. And I thought, you know what? I, there’s no really nowhere to go vertically here without moving to Texas. And I’m not. I’m not down for that. And I think I just want to change. So,
Speaker 1 | 19:10.014
and then there’s nowhere to move vertically or laterally.
Speaker 2 | 19:13.977
No,
Speaker 1 | 19:15.778
I hadn’t been in Texas though. It depends on where in Texas, was it like Dallas or Houston or was it like Emerald?
Speaker 2 | 19:21.541
Arlington. So Dallas.
Speaker 1 | 19:22.982
Okay.
Speaker 2 | 19:24.323
Yeah. It was between Dallas and Fort Worth, literally across the street from the Cowboys stadium. You can see it.
Speaker 1 | 19:30.086
Okay.
Speaker 2 | 19:31.327
But you know, I had, I hadn’t written a resume. 20 some odd years. I didn’t need it. I got recruited from position to position.
Speaker 1 | 19:38.902
Preston Pyshko That’s how it should be.
Speaker 2 | 19:40.083
Nick Neuman I found myself in a spot where I’m like, well, I don’t know what to do. I want to make a change. No clue how to do it. I’m going to start with LinkedIn. I hadn’t activated that for years, years and years. So I’m sitting at home one night and I came across a post by this lady, Kim Tracy. She says, hey, if you’re looking for a quick resume review, it’s the big change. This is late 2021. The big quit is happening. So send me a resume and I’ll review it for free. So I’m like, okay, what do I know about resumes? I heard that they should be one page.
Speaker 1 | 20:20.780
Like the old 80s. Painting is like Wall Street type.
Speaker 2 | 20:28.739
I started putting together my one pager encompassing the last 20 some odd years of doing this. And I sent it to her and she calls me the very next day. She’s like, hey, Danny, this is Kim. Thanks for sending me your resume, but good Lord.
Speaker 1 | 20:45.103
This is garbage.
Speaker 2 | 20:46.664
Yes. What? She goes, let’s just say I opened it, immediately closed it and started over. She goes, seriously, eight-point font, single space for an entire sheet. I said, well, I got a lot of stuff to want to cover. So long story, I ended up working with her over the next couple of weeks, face-to-face interview training. She coached me through resume generation. And she wrote a lot of the stuff you see in my LinkedIn profile, gave her full access to beef that up. And what I discovered in working with her is it’s not about… sending out resumes and applications. It’s about working that network.
Speaker 1 | 21:26.287
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 | 21:27.187
As soon as I had that perspective on it, I tell you, man, I had doors open from, I probably had three or four opportunities in front of me at one point and I had to decide. I didn’t send one of these folks a resume yet.
Speaker 1 | 21:40.270
So this is really beneficial to people listening. First of all, I’m putting Kim Tracy’s LinkedIn profile link. She’ll be on your webpage because we build a webpage for everyone here. So bring her on your webpage for the show. The one, the, I did the last chapter of my book on, on this actual topic. And I would love to do like a, a speaking the language of business, it 2.0. When we do the, when we edit it again and, you know, actually make it even better than whatever it is right now. The, and part of it is how to find your dream, dream job. And my suggestion is that people should be on LinkedIn. They should have a dream 100 list. You don’t need a hundred, but like, let’s say there’s a hundred companies that you would love to work for. This is just my suggestion. You tell me if this, because I want to ask you first, if this is an alignment before you tell me what you did or what you coached for. Find the top dream 100 companies that you want to work for, the 20, you probably start with 20, 25, reach out to the CEO or whoever the person is that you would essentially be working for, supporting the person that really cares at the company, connect with them. And just say, can I ask your advice? And then when they say, sure, shoot. Hey, when it comes to IT or IT services or networking or your IT department, your company, what’s your single biggest frustration, problem, or concern? And then just listen. And then add value to that conversation. You don’t need to plug yourself. You don’t need to say you’re looking for a job. You don’t need to do anything. You just offer help. And if you know that there’s a way that you can help them. I mean, if they need a reason, be like, hey, I’m not trying to sell you anything because you always got to say that on LinkedIn. I got to be like, hey, I promise you I’m not going to send you a one paragraph thing with a bunch of links in it trying to sell you an offer to get on a 15 minute call and have to be at the top of your email and your inbox and all the other things. Now, just honestly, can I ask your advice and be a real person and ask and offer some advice? And I mean, to me, that’s demonstrating that you know what you’re talking about. I mean, you might want to give them a reason like, hey, I’m. doing some uh i don’t know research for dissecting popular it nerds and then send me that information because i would love to know it because we’re like data is gold right now and want all the data as possible but what do you think about that any anything is that at all in alignment with what you and about building a network or anything like that or is it more like hey who do you know that’s looking for a job um a
Speaker 2 | 24:00.048
little bit of both uh on advice of kim you know i’m going through some of my my connections and people that i know just saying hey i’m out there What do you know? What do you got? Anybody I could talk to? She actually did make a very, very similar suggestion. You call up, you find the decision maker and talk to them. So I was fully prepared to do that. And we had practiced this in our interview training sessions and all that. Ended up not having to go down, but I think it’s incredibly valuable to do so because more so- Is someone new already?
Speaker 1 | 24:36.204
What’s that? Is it because someone knew already or what?
Speaker 2 | 24:39.522
Um, no, I just, I think started presenting themselves to me.
Speaker 1 | 24:43.703
That’s what I mean. That’s what I mean. Like someone already knew like, Hey, yeah, they need a job over here. Yeah. We need people. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2 | 24:48.806
Gotcha. Yeah. But I think more so in the last few years, um, the perspective employee, the job seeker. actually has a lot more leverage than they might think. You’re not throwing yourself at the mercy of, oh God, please hire me. At least at, let’s say white collar positions. But when you’re looking for management and upper level positions, it’s almost a reverse interview. You’re talking to the company. Do I want to work here? Let’s ask how are your operations done? What are your priorities for IT? Do we have strategic plans? Do we have goals? Do we have… budgets? Do we have staff? And by the way, what are you rocking now? Is it old? Is it dusty? Do we need something new?
Speaker 1 | 25:35.535
And why can’t I come work there? Are you going to be real tight on the budget? Am I going to get no money for IT? Is it going to be like, what’s the current atmosphere like? Is everyone going to quit day one?
Speaker 2 | 25:45.962
But it was terrifying at first, because like I said, it’d been 20 some odd years to look for a job. And I had three or four things on the table. So I was in a position where I could… pick the one that was best for what I wanted to do. And I was 51 at the time and I decided, I don’t want to do this again. So where I land is where I want to stay. And right off into the sunset, unless something catastrophic happens or they fold or I hate it. But so I really took my time. I mean, a few weeks worth and turned down the other offers. Some were better, some weren’t, but the culture fit here was what got. And it’s a a family-run company for 40 some odd years now. And we’ve got footprints in Colorado and Nebraska. And the culture is just, that was the driving force. The red tape and bureaucracy of publicly traded company doesn’t exist here. Now, we have a board. We had answers to the board. We answered to the C-suite. But one of the biggest things that… attracted me was in interviewing right down the hall here with the CEO. He says, we’re going to want you to come in and tell us what we need, because we honestly don’t know. I wasn’t replacing anybody. This was something where the previous person had left. And there was a guy in between, Brian. So I was kind of taken over, but able to come in and create and build a role based on what I saw. the builders had and what I thought we could do, where we could take it. And I don’t want to say I was given free reign, but I was kind of given free reign. What is your vision? Tell us what it is. How much is it going to cost? What do you need to get it done? Why do we need it? And how long is it going to take? And man, get what you ask for. It’s scary. Having that much respect and autonomy. And just faith in who you’re bringing on board was something I’d never dealt with before. It was pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 | 27:57.536
That’s awesome. Yes. Scary is good. Scary is good because now all the responsibility actually falls on you.
Speaker 2 | 28:03.438
Oh, I learned real quick that when there’s a problem I can’t solve, I can’t call anybody higher than me to figure it out. I can’t slough it off to the help desk and move on. We got to figure it out.
Speaker 1 | 28:13.340
That’s actually a big problem. That’s something that a lot of… a past guest i’ve been on the show and i just kind of ask him like hey what do you think like it directors need what do you think what are we lacking what do we what do we not have and he said phil it’s really lonely at the top it’s really he’s like when you get to the top it’s lonely at the top i don’t have anyone to go to i don’t really like i can’t go to the like ceo i can’t go he’s like i don’t i can’t go to the you know my team below me he’s like there’s just like this kind of like this he’s like we need like a good you know you know peer group or whatever and uh it’s not like i can just whip up another slack group and everyone’s gonna be like yay let’s join it uh because there’s enough of that stuff going on out there it’s it’s so i don’t know anyone any of you anyone out there listening have you got any great ideas for dissecting popular itiners and how we can all come together and not be not be lonely um you know that’s you know we chose this career path that’s just kind of one of the one of the breaks uh no but loving to go to work loving the the family that you’re a part of you know you know going to a great work environment um everyone has the job that they remember that they loved um i really did love working for quest by the way but i really did love working in that massive call center doing warranty replacements for analog cell phones with a headset on throwing you know paper balls into homemade basketball cups and stuff like that it was great oh i remember that game on the phone where you’re doing the paper toss Well, we had, we had open network back then. So back to networking, right? Like, so there was no like firewalls back then there was, I mean, maybe there was, but there was no, like we had probably, there must’ve been 200 computers networked. We, we did have an OC three coming into. made just into one building back then so that was back when dsl just came out so that was kind of like fast right so we all figured out how to like do you remember that game scorched earth yes i do so we we would play these massive networked games of scorched earth while we were doing like warranty replacement while we were working in the call center we’d be talking about yes sir um to yes you need to know how to type your grandson’s name into the phone press two three times press the c once you know like alphanumeric keypads right like oh your phone’s oh your bills yeah we’re like okay i have two f3 while we’re playing while we’re playing scorched earth you know we’re like hurry up and fire like we had so we would play these masks then we would also play and then i got promoted to this premier group which was like 50 cell phones or more if they had 50 cell phones or more we just sat in like this room Like maybe, maybe 12 of us that was like just quest premier for anyone that had 50 cell phones more and we’d get like one, like maybe four calls a day. So we just sat on these, you know,
Speaker 0 | 31:06.819
nothing locked down,
Speaker 1 | 31:08.160
download, whatever the heck you want, which was really, I don’t even know what we download. We civilization, we would play a whole game of civilization in one, in one workday. What do you want to play today? Let’s do civilization. Okay. We’d have like eight people all networked on these computers playing. Like a LAN party. It was a daily LAN party. It was great. That was a… So yeah, think of that work environment.
Speaker 2 | 31:32.071
The days of waiting for the calls to come in. Now we’re waiting to catch a break. The 300 or 400 person company is a lot. This is a manufacturing company at its core.
Speaker 1 | 31:48.136
there’s also a retail component in nebraska some big box stores but there’s nebraska my wife’s from nebraska so omaha only two places and oh carney yes she would know is it carney or carney it’s carney i know it’s pronounced carney she’s slapped me for that yeah she would slap me it’s carney so yeah my in-laws are from nebraska south dakota and uh kansas yeah and then east coast massachusetts guy so
Speaker 2 | 32:18.080
All the flat ones.
Speaker 1 | 32:18.660
Too rough. Too rough. So yeah, it’s… How does… How doth IT do more with less or do more with fewer people? What’s the key? Migrate to the cloud, Phil.
Speaker 2 | 32:34.288
Yeah. I mean, automate as much as you can. And I know that’s a buzzword. Automate, AI, cloud, blah, blah, blah. But not coming up through… I didn’t go to school for anything IT or tech related other than a couple of classes here and there because I learned something.
Speaker 1 | 32:54.793
We were burning things in the mountains.
Speaker 2 | 32:58.895
Yeah, exactly. I’ve learned to be humble about what you don’t know, first of all. Coming into this position, I was terrified because there are systems I had never heard of before. Every step. station that builds a trust has its own controlling PC and all these different systems. And our core is an ERP from Epicor. And I had to look up what that stood for. I feel kind of silly for taking this because I don’t know what I’m doing. I was terrified. I thought I made the worst decision ever. But the first couple of weeks, months, whatever, I’m really trying to understand how everything works. I’m leaning on… my senior technician who’s been here at this point, nine, 10 years. And I know that I’m burdening him with questions every five minutes. And so I kind of took a step back at some point in the first year there and said, you know what? I don’t need to know everything about everything. But what I need to understand is I have to know what I don’t know. And that’s right here on my whiteboard, KWIDK. Know what you don’t know. And that’s been kind of my guiding philosophy here is when I don’t know something, I got to recognize that I don’t know the first thing about this and either ask or let somebody else handle it. Because I don’t need to know how every single sausage in this place is made. So I need to know how they all work together. I need to understand how to solve the problem that’s presented itself. But maybe I don’t need to know the inner workings of the the database that runs the SOOT. I just need to know what it’s doing, what happens when it goes down, and how we put resources in place and leverage the knowledge and skill sets that we have. One thing I’m constantly telling my folks, my team, is that We could spend hours Googling and researching and testing and trying and all this stuff. But in about 20 or 30 minutes, you’re going to know whether you can fix this problem or not. And if it gets much past that, it’s time to just throw up the white flag and start making some calls. And that may mean paying somebody, paying somebody that knows more than you do. And that’s okay. You can’t know everything.
Speaker 1 | 35:27.066
It’s a weird, profound thing that keeps coming up. Maybe it’s Maybe it’s actually like a learned skill, trying not to do everything yourself. It’s a weird, profound thing that keeps coming up from the IT leadership standpoint. Multiple people have said that you’re like a jack of all trades, but not. You know a little bit about everything, but you’re not. You probably have your specialties. You probably have your things that you do know that you do know well, but you can’t know it all. Sure.
Speaker 2 | 35:57.955
But recognizing that helps you. get it done. And that’s been one of the big learnings here is just know when to say when and when to engage other resources. Because IT is a service industry. Like it or not, we’re in the service industry. And one of the things my CEO is constantly putting at me is the user experience, the customer experience. That is paramount.
Speaker 1 | 36:26.658
What does he say? That’s interesting that he knows… That he knows to use those words, like the user. I mean, we know to say customer care, we know to use it, but that’s pretty deep that he would say that. I want to know what the user experience is. Is he an iPhone guy?
Speaker 2 | 36:39.368
He is. I am not.
Speaker 1 | 36:43.331
Okay. Okay. Wow. Isn’t that weird how I pinpointed that though? It’s just weird. Like, how did I know that? Because user experience, because the iPhone’s like, what? It used to be one button. Now it’s no button. Now it’s no button. It is like user experience is so important to keep it simple, stupid, especially from a business, from a business standpoint, user experience. Yeah. I mean, that was all the Amazon’s thing was like, how do user experience, user experience, user experience. Like that was all Amazon. How do we make it one click by one click by one click by not got to go here. Got to go there. Go to another page and turn your credit card, blah, blah, blah. One click by. It’s not stupid, but it’s so, it’s so unbelievably amazing. It’s so.
Speaker 2 | 37:23.456
Yeah, but you pick that option whenever you can because it’s just easy. But in our business, the user experience internally translates to the customer experience externally. If our sales force or our manufacturing teams are struggling with something, that shuts down the communication and the sales cycle with the customer. For whatever reason, it’s a delay. and getting designs done or all of my emails down or whatever. I couldn’t get back to you with a quote or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1 | 37:56.577
Everyone hates delays.
Speaker 2 | 37:58.258
Right. We are an instant gratification society.
Speaker 1 | 38:01.659
Well, especially in IT when you’re trying to get like a, I don’t know, where’s my internet circuit? Oh, there’s construction. Oh, there’s red tape. There’s a, I don’t know. We need a permit. They need to trench across the whatever, I-95.
Speaker 2 | 38:17.883
Uh-huh. That blue wheel spins for more than a fraction of a second. It’s taken too long and people are annoyed. So delivering the user experience, which is our customers are our people. We don’t deal with the outside world, but our people are customers. And what I’ve been preaching since I got here is, look, if Steve out there, and I don’t think we have a Steve, so I can’t get in trouble for this. Steve calls us and says. Oh my God, my outlet changed to all black and I can’t function. I can’t do anything. I’m freaking out. We’re going to go inside. We’re going to go, oh my God, dude, just find the setting to change it back to the light background. Okay. Whatever. We can’t say that. We can’t, we’re not, we don’t have the privilege of being condescending and being jerks about it. Because Steve’s going to say, you… a-holes, he’s going to go up to his manager and go, IT’s shutting me out because they think it’s a waste of time, but I can’t function like this. And I do have another anecdote on something very similar. But the fact that they picked up the phone, the fact that they picked up the phone or put in a ticket or email or whatever it is, means that that is an issue for that person. We could probably fix it in a half a second, but it’s a work stopping or it’s a work hindering thing for that.
Speaker 1 | 39:42.752
Imagine if you had a button that you could press and this big red siren starts spinning. It’s like, and then a TV pops up and they’re like, Steve can’t get his thing to black. Everyone, all hands on deck.
Speaker 0 | 39:59.314
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Speaker 2 | 42:19.627
The other story I was going to mention is we have a person on staff, he’s a designer, and he’s very, very good at what he does. Very intense, big, big, big projects. I put a workstation timeout in activity policy in place last year. Security, man. Don’t leave that thing unlocked and walk away for the rest of the day. If it’s inactive for X amount of time, you’re going to have to log back in or unlock it or whatever. So I put that into place. Come to find out, this guy is so engrossed in what he’s doing. He’ll turn away from his computer and he’s got the drawings over here, doing all the calculations, working all this stuff up. If he has to stop and type in his password, it breaks the train of thought from the project that he was on.
Speaker 1 | 43:12.153
It’s true.
Speaker 2 | 43:13.194
it’s it’s that’s what they’ve got he’d never never would have considered that but that is the user experience so what we did jacked his world i’m trying to downplay it for the longest time then i realized this is this is a real problem so let’s
Speaker 1 | 43:28.620
make an exception rule to this timeout script and we did maybe like some kind of face id or something i don’t know but the um although no he would even pp he would even want to do that like i have to sit and stare at it for a few seconds and then i pops back on and like yeah but that they did a wire that way and who am i to say that there was a whole management study on um done on the on on i don’t know like pattern interrupts i guess is what that you would call that a pattern interrupt right when you’re like when you’ve got like i don’t know what you want to call them knowledge workers or whatever you want to call them people that have to really be kind of engrossed in like really deep concentration tasks like like not you crazy add people that are just doing everything all day long you know i don’t know that’s just probably like me but the if you’re engulfed in like a really strong task like every interruption takes you off task a minimum of five to seven minutes yeah so five to seven minutes and like so if people are like hey so back when i was a manager at a certain company um I remember I had like, you have policies and procedures, and I do want to get to policies and procedures because we haven’t talked about that. We don’t talk about that much. We talk a lot about the end users, your customers, they’re humans. We’ve got to treat them nice guys. And you know, that’s, I’m not downplaying that. Like that’s the truth. We are the absolute truth. Right. I had a saying called like, where’s the broom? Because there was a point where like I had to like sit down and concentrate and do this, like the schedule. I was in charge of doing the schedule. There was like a ton of people at this place and like everyone has all their different things. I got to have vacation here. I got to have vacation there. And like the schedule, it could take like, I don’t know, four hours. Like it’s not a simple thing, right? Back in the day. So every time someone came to interrupt me, hey, where’s this? where’s this hey by the way do you know where the broom is hey where’s the broom and uh you know it’s so like we had i came up with this like saying it was just like where’s the room and everyone everyone knew that was like you know are you asking a stupid question and interrupting someone from doing their tasks because you don’t want to go like like the the point was is like to segue to the policies and procedures is like the broom needs to always be kept here always and if i had a new manager come in that would say like hey got all these great ideas i got all these great ideas we’re going to start keeping the broom over here And we’re going to start keeping this over here. And I’m like, are you sure? Are you sure? Because you’re going to have 20 people coming to ask you, Hey, where’s the broom? And you really don’t want to ask him, Hey,
Speaker 0 | 46:04.660
where’s the broom?
Speaker 1 | 46:05.821
And if you don’t put that dang broom back where it’s supposed to be, you know, like it’s kind of like, uh, I don’t know. Do you have kids? You have any kids? It’s like messing with the tools. It’s like messing with dad’s tools. Like where’s like, where. where’s the screwdriver where’s the screwdriver i was using it every day oh then gabe was using it okay and then uh well noah was using it and then well i think uh no mom was using it to put up where’s the screwdriver oh it’s just i don’t know so to segue to policies and procedures what are some really good policies and procedures what are some bad ones i was hoping you could tell me because i have to write some gold standards checklist we had that one at starbucks so what’s the gold standard
Speaker 0 | 46:48.260
Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 46:48.420
I would love a, I think let’s start with security. We should have a security policy. I think, I think we should have one, but you know.
Speaker 2 | 46:54.602
Yeah, it’s interesting you bring that up because I’m in final draft mode of an email usage and security training policy. We use Noble 4 for our email training.
Speaker 1 | 47:07.488
People love them. It’s fantastic. Are they funny? Are they funny? I hear that they’re kind of like funny. Yeah,
Speaker 2 | 47:13.110
you can choose the tone, I guess. cartoonish. It can be a game. It can be like a little movie short or just quizzes. So you can kind of tailor it to your user base.
Speaker 1 | 47:25.754
Good for you guys know before, can you sponsor my show, please? Give me some.
Speaker 2 | 47:29.495
I’ll give a shout out for those guys. But people are used to it now. It’s been a year and a half or so since I deployed it. And we’re going to twist the screws and make it a little harder because people got really good, which is great. That’s great news. That’s what you want to hear. Good. But I want to make it harder because the bad guys are making up.
Speaker 1 | 47:49.907
We need some awards.
Speaker 2 | 47:51.448
Yeah. So I know.
Speaker 1 | 47:52.949
Yeah. Burritos.
Speaker 2 | 47:55.291
Burritos go over well in Colorado. So, you know, the biggest part of that right now is the phishing training and NFA. So my policy is going to be kind of crafted around that end. If you’re going to work here and have an email account, you’re going to need to have regular security training. It’s not something that works with one and done. This is a monthly because it changes every second out there. And it’s not worth risking the company and the people because it’s an inconvenience for you to sit through a seven-minute video or whatever. And part of the policy is also going to be, what are the, I don’t want to say consequences, but what happens when you are continually clicking either the test emails they send out or legit ones? Are you a person who just is not getting it, that’s a risk. That’s a risk, man. Sorry, but we’re going to have to have to talk with you. And then, so that’s kind of what,
Speaker 1 | 48:57.257
that’s my first- I’m the head engineer, pound sand. Yeah,
Speaker 2 | 49:01.381
that’s my- I know. First foray into policies here is going to be that one, but it’s needed, especially multi-factor. That was another requirement from them. cyber insurance and we had it in place for vpn just being general i mean i think everyone should have multi-factor that’s kind of like we’re we’re no superpowers we’re well not duo across the board like today and beyond so that’s it’ll give us the ability to for privileged access management um as well as individual applications and vpn and all that stuff i was really surprised at what a kickback you get from people to put an app on their phone if it’s their phone not a company phone. I am not putting that on my phone. You are not getting in my business. And I would explain how that works. You don’t even have to have an account.
Speaker 1 | 49:51.446
You should be like, what are you doing on your phone? Oh, really? What are you doing? We want to know. Okay. Maybe you should be working here anymore.
Speaker 2 | 50:03.252
We’re a four man, three and a half man team. Cause I don’t, I don’t think many tickets myself. You really think we have the time to go snoop around your business and oh, by the way, that’s not how that works and we can’t. So relax. So I’d sell that piece. Okay. The next kickback I get on that one. Okay, fine. So you’re not snooping on us. That’s great. But are you going to pay me for the time I have to use this?
Speaker 1 | 50:26.895
reimburse my cell bill for that for the six seconds it takes you to oh what oh the uh here’s a quarter i’ll just give it to you we’ve got taco tuesdays okay uh big city burritos down the street uh we’re giving out for the top top security top
Speaker 2 | 50:46.288
secure person do you want better if you do this thing we’ll give you a paycheck cool you Is that acceptable for you?
Speaker 1 | 50:56.556
We just fixed the glitch. Yeah.
Speaker 2 | 50:59.798
And we were able to get some of the staunchest resistors to jump on board. We might have to issue a company phone here in an urges for that purpose, but I’m fine with that.
Speaker 1 | 51:11.508
Oh, people are amazing.
Speaker 2 | 51:15.211
We thought we worked through all the possible scenarios before announcing something like that. And nope, there’s always some.
Speaker 1 | 51:21.616
Well, yeah. So guess what? you know what happened? You found out what you didn’t know.
Speaker 2 | 51:27.723
100%.
Speaker 1 | 51:28.383
You knew what you didn’t. You now know what you don’t know. Right. And now you know.
Speaker 2 | 51:35.425
It’s a great callback.
Speaker 1 | 51:36.825
You know what you don’t know. Oh, Denny. Denny, Denny, Denny, Denny. Denny, Denny, Denny, my friend. It has been great having you on the show. Thank you so much for being on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Thank you for what you do for IT and the world. And, uh… I think just that sharing how, you know, coming out of a job of 22 years or whatever, and then going to find a job, I think that’s all going to be very useful to the listeners. I appreciate you and truly appreciate your investment here on the show.
Speaker 2 | 52:08.074
Likewise. Thanks for having me. It’s been a blast.
