Speaker 0 | 00:07.161

Welcome back, everyone, to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m your host, Doug Kameen, and today I’m talking with Tim Kitchen, Director of Information Technology for Networking and Infrastructure at MetroCare Services. Welcome to the show, Tim.

Speaker 1 | 00:20.872

Hey, thanks for having me.

Speaker 0 | 00:21.933

So, Tim, every time before we start a show, I always make sure to talk about, you know, how do we pronounce our names? and how do we do this other stuff like that and and so so your name isn’t mispronounced but people people want to pluralize your name every time every single time every time right there’s always everybody’s got something right like that that like thing that happens to you whether it’s their name or anything else like that it’s just with people there’s it’s there’s so many different ways to do so many different things and it’s it’s like it’s almost like it’s uh

Speaker 1 | 00:59.384

you stop for a second and it makes you think about how many different perspectives you get on on even that one thing yeah and it’s weird you know it’s just something i’ve dealt with my whole life and even now my my wife you know she had my last name and she’s like why do they always put an s on the end and i’m like i don’t know it’s

Speaker 0 | 01:19.357

just something you have to live with that’s right this is this is the bird you have to bear uh so your your role You’re currently the director of information technology. It’s a long title here. So is it specific? You’re the director of information technology focused on networking infrastructure. Tell us a little bit more, I guess.

Speaker 1 | 01:41.651

I mean, primarily it’s networking infrastructure, but really I do everything from identity access management to development work. So, I mean, it’s a long title, but I have many hats.

Speaker 0 | 01:55.719

And so you’re at a. You’re in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, is that accurate?

Speaker 1 | 02:02.337

Yeah, that’s where my company’s at. I’m actually about an hour and a half away. I live in rural Texas.

Speaker 0 | 02:09.339

I was seeing that, and I grew up in Austin myself. I don’t live there currently. I live in upstate New York, where my family is from and where I was born originally. But people don’t realize how vast Texas actually is. oh yeah it’s it’s crazy like when we went to south padre we drove down there for vacation last year and then it’s nine hours drive and you’re still in the state of texas uh-huh yeah it’s it’s a little bananas how how just geographically large and at least probably the the part you’re in is pretty is pretty flat too right like it’s like it’s you can see you can see an awful long way from any one point where you’re standing and it’s just like things just go on and on In most of the population of Texas, really, this lives in five cities, essentially. The Dallas-Fort Worth area, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. And so when it gets rural, it gets real rural, real fast. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 03:15.333

Like, there’s nothing here. I mean, there’s three restaurants, a couple gas stations, and that’s it.

Speaker 0 | 03:20.998

So 100% I’ve… We’re here to talk about you as a leader, but I am just curious, like, you made the choice to live out there. Like, you want to just be away from it all? Like, what made you want to live in where there’s probably more cattle than people?

Speaker 1 | 03:38.888

So I grew up in rural Oklahoma, and I’ve always lived in smaller towns. Now, this specific area that I live in, in Aledo, we chose this because the school system is, like, one of the top notch in Texas. So… We put my kids in school there. It’s funny. We moved back to Oklahoma like two years ago, and we were there for eight months and then came back and put them back in the same school they were in. So just crazy stuff. I move around a lot. I wear a lot of job titles, a lot of different things. So it seems one of the things my wife always gripes me about, not gripes, but critiques me is you always move. I moved 22 times in 18 years. So,

Speaker 0 | 04:23.924

well, that that is that’s a lot.

Speaker 1 | 04:27.206

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 04:27.506

So that’s more than once a year. Yeah. For for two over for two decades. Over two decades.

Speaker 1 | 04:33.629

I’ve always I don’t know. I get bored. Yeah. And I’m just, you know, I’m like, well, let’s go here or let’s experience this or why not try this? And then now now I’m going to stay here for a while.

Speaker 0 | 04:45.716

So it’s like a long period of like kind of like wanderlust about like experience experiences,

Speaker 1 | 04:51.859

changing jobs, different. different environments, different type of utilities, different type of industries. And it just, it always took me all over the place. And it. To be honest, it was pretty fun. Like, I really enjoyed, like, my parents grew up the normal, you stay in one job, you stay in one place your whole entire life, and you don’t ever leave it. That’s just what you do. And I just took a different path from my whole entire family. I moved states every time, and I don’t know, just something I enjoyed, look forward to do.

Speaker 0 | 05:28.721

So, getting back into… you and where you work, do you work for a place called MetroCare Services? And I’m asking this as a leading question because I already know the answer, but our listeners don’t know the answer about what MetroCare does. And for me, there’s a connection here because I’m a CITO as well. And as a consequence, the work that your company is doing is aligned, not in the same. not exactly the same, but similar to what I do. So I bet you we’re going to talk for a couple minutes about this a little more deeply, but can you tell us a little about what MetroCare Services does?

Speaker 1 | 06:09.152

Sure. So we’re a mental health provider. So we’re the largest in Dallas. There’s multiple different assets that we provide for autism and just general mental health issues and military issues. And this job specifically kind of… resonates more with me because i have a son with down syndrome so i understand the special needs and the stuff that goes into it so i you know as i’ve worked for electrical utilities or oil and gas in the past this one resonates with me because these people have to go do it because they want to do it and i do it because i have to do it at home you know so their mission and vision actually resonates with me you

Speaker 2 | 06:57.718

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Speaker 0 | 09:17.994

And the reason I say this is a leading question, so I work in the Rochester, New York area, upstate New York. And the place that I work for is called Coordinated Care Services, Inc. And we work in the mental and behavioral health space as well. So the work, now our specific focus, if I’m reading the MetroCare information, correctly you provide a lot of clinical services like you direct care to to people right yeah yeah so we’re we’re a little bit different in my space where we do a lot of we work with a lot of counties and the administration of mental health services um across you know new york state but um we do have some direct access with students and schools and and just the mental health space is so It’s so challenging to work in because it asks so much of the people that are doing the work every day. And you have to show up, ask to give a part of you to the work that’s being done, and then go home and still be able to show up for your family and the other people. And for you, you mentioned you’ve got a son with Down syndrome and how the things that you. You and the people have to do it. Just it, it, it, I could feel the personal piece there.

Speaker 1 | 10:39.551

Yeah. Again, like I got, so one of our data center closets is in one of the autistic center and I’m used to seeing children with autism because they’re normally in the classroom with my son and you know, it weighs on those people. And I know it does. And it, the, for them to show up every day and do their job and just. For you and I, in IT, we’re kind of detached from that stuff. So if I didn’t have the personal connection, I would never know. But no, I completely understand what they go through. And I’m like, no, that’s the first time I could ever be like, oh, no, I get it. You never know how hard your day is going to be. You and I, our day is hard because the computer malfunctioned or there’s a security vulnerability. But these people’s day is hard because it’s just emotionally hard. So. Yeah, I mean, shout out to all the clinicians and the people that work in that field because you have to want to do it. And if you don’t need to do it, it just takes that above average person to do that type of stuff.

Speaker 0 | 11:47.027

So I’m going to turn this right into a leadership question here because we’re in similar spaces where we’re asked to be technical leaders supporting people doing. human services work that is emotionally taxing and draining and how do you change your behavior you know maybe even thinking about what you’ve done in some of the other businesses you know you mentioned you were in oil and gas and some other stuff very different approaches to how you want to do your technology delivery and how you need to show up as a leader to be effective in those spaces so what what’s what’s different for you i mean it’s a lot more of a connection

Speaker 1 | 12:31.025

with people that work there at the, at, in this company, I will say, well, I haven’t worked for many other companies to do that, but for me, it’s more of a connection. Like when I talk to people in a meeting, I really try to figure out like, Hey, how are you? You doing good? What can I do? You know, like you need assistance. I’ll help you to where a lot of other utilities like oil and gas or electric, it’s very hot and dry. You know, you’re, you’re there for profit. And the business model isn’t so much of a everybody helping everybody it’s more of a you you do your job and make sure it’s done and this is your task and i i would say that’s the difference it’s just probably the people connection yeah i i find that too yeah it’s a little bit softer crowd you know it’s not so businessy i mean still business obviously but it’s not so cut and dry point and blank like we make power, we deliver power, but this is different. So I really do like it.

Speaker 0 | 13:35.654

Yeah. Yeah. I know that I found that to be effective in the leadership space in here, you often have to think about the personal appeal to the folks that are going to use these services. You know, if you’re, you know, to use your oil and gas industry, you know, analogy there. You go to them and you say, well, you know, the job is to, you know, get this oil out of the ground and get it up. And so here’s the tools you need to get that task done. You’re going to get paid for it. And like, that’s the end of it, if you will. And here you’re having to encourage people to do work and use your tools and take advantage of them while largely appealing to their. their desire to help others, you know, so what they you have to think about the frame of the mindset that they approach it with, are they coming at it saying, hey, I’ve got this new tool that it is showing me, is it effective to deliver the services to help this person with autism that’s in front of me, that I have to see every day and the 12 kids in the classroom that’s challenging that I have to work with?

Speaker 1 | 14:46.092

Yeah, I mean, it makes a difference. You know, you really want to make sure you don’t impact their ability to work. by implementing a tool that’s going to make it harder for them to do their job. So execution has to be pretty spot on because they’re already going to be stressed out and adding more difficulty for them to work while adding security. Adding security is always a good thing, but it has to be beneficial and it has to be easy to onboard and use.

Speaker 0 | 15:13.348

Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

Speaker 1 | 15:15.269

Oh, we went through an octa rollout. And that’s one thing that I really realized is, you know, we’re on a podcast and we can talk fluently. But one thing I figured out pretty quickly as I was building a training video and I couldn’t get through the training video talking without interruptions or something happening. And so I used AI to generate.

Speaker 0 | 15:35.798

the voiceover narration for me and that was a big win because every single time i did a take it just got messed up and i was like dang it so so you’re doing this is a great segue into how to use ai so i mean you’re a leader in this space uh in it was a director of it so how are you seeing this is what you just gave one example but are there other examples of how you’re able to use some of these new ai tools to drive benefit and value in the work that you’re doing in the job.

Speaker 1 | 16:08.055

Yeah. I mean, I personally use AI quite a bit to, if I need to write policies or if I need to come up with a transformation plan, I’ll use that. We’re starting to adopt AI slowly as a company, but it really does cut down my workload if I can tell it the parameters that I’m looking for. and just have it build the base document and then i go in and change every like whatever i need to change so it’s been beneficial for me just in that and my wife is in real estate and so i use ai to build her real estate contracts so it’s

Speaker 0 | 16:46.764

it’s it’s helpful it’s scary at the same time but it’s still helpful right did you did you fact check it when you put the contract together you don’t want it to be like the lawyers who put it together like yeah yeah i do invent stuff out of thin air you know, as the AI hallucinates on you. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 17:01.971

it still goes to lawyers. They still get their money, but at least it generates the basis of what we’re looking for.

Speaker 0 | 17:09.535

So I was going to pontificate for a second and say, where do you think the AI, these tools here, where do you think they’re going? What do you think the future is going to hold for you, for your team, the people you’re leading? What do you think that’s going to develop into?

Speaker 1 | 17:27.566

I don’t know. It’s a scary thing. You know, like immutable malware and stuff like that, that people are using the APIs to develop. That’s the scary part of AI. You know, I don’t think it’s going to be the Terminator situation to where, or the iRobot, you know, to where movies come from. Yeah, I don’t think you’re going to see stuff like that. But I do think that it’s probably developed a little bit too quickly, and they should probably put more regulation around it before they just unveil it. But… I think it will be something that’s beneficial. But again, on the too quickly part, everything on your phone now has AI in it. You know, you go to Facebook and now they have AI. You go to Google and now it has AI. And I just don’t know if we’re there for it to be a nationwide normal thing. But we’ll have to see what comes of it. You know, in computing, it always doubles every single year. The faster they build computers, the faster it gets smarter. So. It’s hard to anticipate where it’s heading.

Speaker 0 | 18:32.695

So I share, I think, a similar viewpoint on this is that my analysis of the lay of the land is that the AI folks are they’re essentially moving fast. And that’s what the news stories have been kind of been really digging up as well, where there’s this this. effort to bring in all this information because you know you feed more info you feed more stuff into it it gets you know conceptually it gets better but the there really isn’t any thought about there well it’s not a deep thought i should say i don’t think that it’s been thought too deeply about what the consequences of doing some of those steps are uh it’s just a it’s just a absolute marathon to get there and run it as fast as possible Just to make sure that somebody else doesn’t get there first. And that does seem like it’s a recipe for some bad outcomes in the interim.

Speaker 1 | 19:30.680

Right. It kind of reminds you of the space race back in what the early seventies.

Speaker 0 | 19:34.821

Yeah. The sixties and seventies.

Speaker 1 | 19:36.502

Yeah. Like, you know, they all rushed it to get up there first and we’ll see what comes of it. I mean, I don’t think it’ll be a world ending consequences, but I think you will see negative consequences from it.

Speaker 0 | 19:49.325

Yeah. Yeah. I would certainly agree. So let’s talk a little bit about your history on a personal level. We talked about MetroCare. We talked about the services that you provide, why it’s important. But the. You know, you yourself, you’ve worked in a lot of different places. You alluded to this. Tell us a little about your work history. Where’d you start? How’d you get into it? How’d you get, you know, into IT itself?

Speaker 1 | 20:15.620

So, believe it or not, what actually got me into IT was, do you remember the movie Hackers? Like, I think it was 1994.

Speaker 0 | 20:25.005

Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 20:26.346

Yeah. That movie, I watched it a thousand times when I was a kid. And I just fell in love with the idea. and really enjoyed the process of it, you know, sitting down and actually now it’s not as cool as they portray it to be in the movies. Like it’s a lot way different. You know that. But so I started trying to be like a computer hacker. I got my first computer when I was 16. I upgraded it. I would have to go to Barnes and Nobles, read a book. I couldn’t afford to buy the book. So I would just go read the book and then come home and practice the stuff that they preached in it. And from then on, I went to college to be in political science. I was going to be a political lawyer. And then it turns out my IT skills outweighed my political lawyer skills. So I worked for Atwood’s Farm and Ranch. I became an engineer for them right off the bat. And. That was back in 2007. And from there, I worked for retail, trucking, utilities, oil, and healthcare.

Speaker 0 | 21:34.811

So through that arc of careers, you’ve been in a lot of different industries. What was your favorite? What did you like working in the most and which one did you not like working in the most? Or what was the biggest challenge that you saw in some of those situations or maybe all the above questions?

Speaker 1 | 21:49.259

Sure. I mean, the one that I liked the least was retail. Yeah. and honestly it was just because the holidays that people normally take off you don’t get to take off because that’s the biggest time of the year you know like being a bartender right you’re yeah work your work with everyone else is having fun yeah so it’s like you work on the day after thanksgiving when they do all the sales you’re up all night all morning um that was the least fun They had the coolest stuff, though, because they had a private jet and they had helicopters that I got to fly on all the time. Oh,

Speaker 0 | 22:23.794

that seems okay.

Speaker 1 | 22:25.376

But then my favorite would probably be the electrical industry. That’s my favorite.

Speaker 0 | 22:32.282

And what about… So, cheat sheet here, I’ll use your LinkedIn profile. So, it was an electric cooperative. So, it’s kind of a maybe more specific type of business in the electric industry. a cooperative is a you know a member-owned organization so slightly different uh philosophy about how they operate as well probably yeah i mean they take more of a family approach even if they are big it’s more of a we

Speaker 1 | 23:02.988

are owned by the member owners and we work for them so we have to be good stewards of their money when we budget for stuff associated electric i got to do a lot of cool stuff there uh I was there for around six years. I was one. I was either. I’m not going to. Don’t quote me on this, but I was either the first or second to virtualize the whole energy management system and get it passed through NERPSIP regulations to where it was compliant by the government standards.

Speaker 0 | 23:34.599

I got news for you. My friend works for for Iberdola. So I’m going to totally take this info and I’m going to ask him.

Speaker 1 | 23:42.481

Yeah, I mean, it was bad. It was back in 2017. We flew out to California. What was it? LA Power. I can’t remember what their… It was the ones that controlled all of Los Angeles, Power Grid and Water Grid. And we met with them before I built the system. And then we flew to Arizona Power and Light and met with them. And they were in the process of virtualizing their EMS system. And then

Speaker 0 | 24:10.164

I had… No private jets this time, though, right?

Speaker 1 | 24:12.650

No, this was all commercial, unfortunately. Yeah. Just got to be normal people sometimes. But no, I mean, that’s the funnest. I think SCADA is like more, it’s one of my passions. Like I love securing SCADA networks and wrapping around all the security constraints because it’s critical infrastructure. You know, Associated Electric, they served almost a million members. So we had seven power plants. That stuff is interesting to me because I love the electrical industry because it intrigues me, but I’m not an electrical engineer. So,

Speaker 0 | 24:46.447

wow. So you said hackers is what got you into computers. So, so child of the late 80s and early 90s for yourself. So what other things, what things do you remember from back then that, you know?

Speaker 1 | 25:03.272

make you chuckle now i guess i mean the you know phone freaking remember the different crystals that you could use to generate the hurts to get free toll-free calls or a a big part of my not even just childhood but my adulthood was 2600 magazine yeah 2600 yeah i read those religiously and you know the old b boards that you could be in yeah dialing into a bbs yeah

Speaker 0 | 25:32.808

Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 25:33.368

it was so fun. And, you know, today it’s not like that. You know, you have Facebook, you have Twitter, everybody goes out there. But back then it was so new. No one knew it. And it just it was a lot more fun to discover stuff back then. Not not saying it’s not fun now, but it was just everything that you did was like, well, I did this. It was like, you did what?

Speaker 0 | 25:54.376

So we could make it where we’re all friends here on this podcast. We could make a kids these days don’t know what it was like back when we were.

Speaker 1 | 26:02.752

kids yeah right we could absolutely and that and that 20 years from now they’ll talk about that yeah okay sorry the cycle will repeat the cycle of life and it’s crazy my i’m like my my oldest son he’s so good at computers like he just he’s grown up around it he’s so good at it i’m like yeah you don’t have to ask me anything like you just set up like i bought him a racing wheel the other day he’s almost 17 he connected all the sim stuff together had it up and running he was like you want to try it i’m like And I’m impressed. You did that all by yourself. Like you didn’t have any help, got everything set up, everything mounted. So it’s definitely a different era.

Speaker 0 | 26:40.577

Mm hmm. Yeah. I remember taking apart computers to just to just to know how the pieces fit together and what the different components were and stuff like that in the 90s. And now you can’t even dismantle the thing now.

Speaker 1 | 26:57.148

Right.

Speaker 0 | 26:58.009

That a that a whole set of specialized tools and, you know. warming guns and you know extra glue and special tacky stuff to put it all back together like it’s it’s uh it’s definitely different than it was in the past when you think about that stuff so so movies like hackers bbs’s the 90s were you were you on were you on aol like were you an adult person yeah yeah did you did you rack up your parents bills like oh you were you’re like this is like 6.95 an hour are you nuts no i go i always got those trials you you know oh yeah yeah uh-huh and then uh gateway computers do you remember them they’re not found anymore but yeah gateways the cow box yeah yeah so so yeah so you’re an endless free trial on aol so like you you one of the people now i ran this is this is one of those uh you know fun facts about people i ran a star trek simulation group on aol it was like yeah And so I’m a big Star Trek fan. But, you know.

Speaker 1 | 28:03.815

Which Star Trek, though?

Speaker 0 | 28:05.456

Deep Space Nine.

Speaker 1 | 28:06.917

All right. Deep Space Nine was good. I’ll let you go. Next Generation was good.

Speaker 0 | 28:10.720

Yeah. Working through Next Generation right now with my son. My oldest son loves all things Star Trek. And we started with Enterprise. Yeah. We watched Enterprise. Which I never watched Enterprise all the way through the first time. I kind of dropped off after the end of the third season. And I found that I really enjoyed the show. I thought it was well done. And… I found it worthy, I guess, at the end of the day. Then we went back and we watched the new stuff, Discovery. Have you seen some of the new things that are out? Like Discovery and Space Shoot World? I would definitely recommend them. Particularly the first two seasons of Star Trek Discovery are just, I think they’re really excellent. The last couple seasons are just different than the first. I don’t want to call them not good because I enjoy watching them. But they’re very different than the first two seasons in terms of like… the way the characters flow and the way they talk about stuff and things like that but yeah i’m he’s working through we’re about we’re just finished with the fourth season of star trek the next generation right now so he is getting up to speed on those and yeah strange but then new stuff strange new worlds uh discovery and they have this cartoon called an animated series called lower decks and it’s a half hour and it’s it’s a comedy and it is absolutely hilarious so hey That’s my recommendation to you and to all of our listeners that you should tune in to Lower Decks because it is hilarious. It’s like a love letter to Star Trek fans in a lot of ways. All the inside jokes, references and everything else.

Speaker 1 | 29:38.160

I was checked it out.

Speaker 0 | 29:39.461

Yeah. So back in the 90s, what was your first computer? Like, how did you mention you had BBSs and that type of stuff? Did your parents buy you one? Did you go scavenge one from somebody? You know, somebody’s the neighbors. What exactly? How’d you get your computer? How’d you get going?

Speaker 1 | 29:57.592

So they bought me a compact. I remember it was $498 at Walmart. $498.

Speaker 0 | 30:03.592

That’s pretty cheap for a computer in the 90s.

Speaker 1 | 30:06.073

But it was like, you know, a Pentium 2, nothing crazy. And then before that, I just went to the library and used their computers to be in chat rooms and stuff like that. But once I got the Compaq, that was what really set it off. And then as I got older, they bought me a laptop. You know, computing started coming a lot farther along quicker. So I had up until 2000 and… 12 I had the laptop that they bought me back in 2002 And it was an HP that had a you know a DVD player in it Hmm, I just thought it was like the best thing ever and now you know computers are just crazy I have them set all over the house, you know now I only run MacBooks and mm-hmm, you know people my son has a MacBook my wife has MacBook and They don’t realize the struggle of what it was from like Windows XP to mac os now you know it’s completely different none of my family other than my son was technical so recently i gave my i had a macbook air a new macbook air that i had for my wife well i didn’t have my wife i bought it because it came out and i wanted it to just sat in the closet because i didn’t have a need for it and then she got into real estate and i’m like well here’s a brand new computer that i haven’t opened you’re like i bought this just for you yeah i’m like this is yours now I anticipated this happening. I didn’t spend the money because I 100%

Speaker 0 | 31:37.962

bought this thinking of you. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 31:40.183

exactly. Like, that’s why I did it a year in advance.

Speaker 0 | 31:46.085

So I was just thinking, I totally unspooled out a Star Trek story. But I started that conversation about you were telling me about AOL discs. And so the way I started the story, the reason I started that was I was on AOL for. a number of years and i did this like star trek simulation thing where we would you know it was like a text-based simulation game it was the 90s this is how we did things but you were you were constantly putting new discs in to get free trials over and over again so does that mean you would you were the one of those people who would show up as like tim k7284 and then next week when the trial ran out you’d be like tim k8725 oh absolutely showing back up you’d be like hey it’s me again it’s tim kitchen Same guy. I just got a new trial. The other one ran out. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 32:31.458

because every time I went to the grocery store back then, they would give me one. They’re like, oh, here’s this free trial. And I’m like, cool. Put that in? Back on the internet.

Speaker 0 | 32:42.686

Those heady days when AOL’s walled a garden was what we understood as this is what the future is going to look like. And all these different things were on there. There was so much stuff on there, at least at the time. was perceived i understand the internet’s so much more vast nowadays but relative to the content you had access to aol in the 90s was just crazy yeah absolutely it was like a brand new world that you’re in so you’ve been you’ve been a director but it steers back again into the leadership conversations here you’ve been a director for a number of years in a lot of different industries you’ve got some great lessons to share with our listeners about leadership and what it takes to be a leader. So can you tell us a little bit about what things you bring to the table every day to try and be the best IT leader you can and be effective?

Speaker 1 | 33:43.292

Sure. I mean, that’s one thing that I actually do pride myself on. You know, I looked for leadership when I first started out my career, and I just never really found it. So then once I… got better and started changing jobs and working with people, I figured out that I love mentoring people. I want to watch other people succeed. Like my goal is to build you up, knowing the fact that you’ll probably leave the position that you’re in as I build you up.

Speaker 0 | 34:14.701

I love this story already, just so we’re clear.

Speaker 1 | 34:17.341

But I get to watch you grow. You know, one of my colleagues, I worked with him at Tri-County Electric. And I told him, I mentored him and he was like, I wish you were my boss. And I’m like, well, I’m not, but I will work with you on stuff and we’ll learn it together. We’ll do it together. Well, I brought him with me to the company I work at now and he’s a high level position. And I got to watch him grow from what he was to what he is now. And I really try to make connections with people when I work. You know, there’s only. A handful of people across the different jobs that I’ve had that I keep in contact with, but we were always close and we always worked together and I always tried to bring them up, get their skills and shape. And that’s leadership to me. Trying to promote growth inside your internal team, knowing that it could be detrimental to your team, but that’s just part of the game. You want them to succeed, whether it’s with your company or with another company. You want them to be able to get poached or learn enough to where they go on and make more money and they’re successful. And that’s really what I look for. Like I just… It’s a goal of mine to always promote people first, you know? And so that’s where, that’s what leadership is to me. I know other people have different opinions that what leadership is, but I think that you should just build your internal people up to be successful.

Speaker 0 | 35:47.661

I, I ran into this a lot because when I talk to folks, I mean, I’ve been in a handful of different roles in leadership and then I have to transition to other folks when I depart and I’ll hear about. what my successors do. And it’s challenging when you hear about the difference in styles of leadership. So you mentioned about building people up, not minding if they leave, like their next opportunity may not be with me or this team. And that’s okay. I like to say we celebrate the people for the time that they’re here and we celebrate them for their opportunities as well. And- The, the, you know, there’s situations where you find somebody who, you know, is your successor and they don’t follow that philosophy. And it can be pretty jarring for the team when you, after you depart, where they’ve, as I described this, uh, they manage up and not down. So they’re, they’re busy talking to the people above them about how awesome the work that they’re doing or selling them. And then, but below them, they spend a lot of time not being. as as thoughtful and in considerate and just focus on building i mean i’ve sure i’m gonna guess you’ve experienced that but maybe i’ll ask have you experienced that where you’re following up and you’re kind of finding out where if you’re like man i wish they did a little differently after i was gone oh

Speaker 1 | 37:15.093

yeah i mean absolutely like um i mean i’ve been in i won’t name which company it was but of course i left because of a managerial change across the board and Once I left, the whole team got dissolved because everybody left. And it’s sad to see that because we built a solidified team over the years. And it just takes that one leadership change to take everything that you worked for and everything you built. And it just goes by the wayside.

Speaker 0 | 37:44.148

Yeah, like you can. That’s a really great and insightful story in the fragility of leadership. You lead in the moment. and you have no control when it’s gone and it’s it’s easier to tear something down than it is to build it up so it can happen real fast when you’re not there or when somebody’s not there mind in the store the right way yeah absolutely like you know you you it’s almost like a plant or a child you care and feed your team until they’re

Speaker 1 | 38:15.764

mature and you got a perfect running team and then it just takes one decision to take that team that and completely destroy it But I mean, it is part of the business. That’s one thing I’ve learned is nothing is ever permanent.

Speaker 0 | 38:29.919

That is very true. I feel that one. Of course, I spent 10 years in government service, which is sort of permanent. But even there, the changes are pretty dramatic from person to person, leader to leader, and things of that nature. So as you get older and you get more to look back on, you feel that. You do internalize that a little bit more. Sure. And. I would think about trying to be careful about internalizing that too much where you become essentially, what’s the word, blasé about it. You know, you don’t, you’re like, oh, well, I mean, change happens. But, you know, I’ve gone on long enough that it doesn’t affect me anymore. And I don’t ever want it to get to that level because I want to be, I want to feel it. But I also want to understand that I can’t fix things that I don’t have control over either.

Speaker 1 | 39:19.250

No, and I agree with that completely. I tell my people, I’m like. If there’s a change that you don’t like, you don’t have to work for the company. If they’re doing changes that you don’t like, you can move on. I take the opinion of don’t ever work at a company because you like the people that work there. Work at the company because you like the work that you do. And move on if you’re not doing the work the way you see fit. People will always be around, but you can’t just sit. and be stagnant and miserable if it’s affecting your work-life balance or your home life. You’ve got to move on and find something else. And a lot of people, I feel like a lot of people get into those situations to where they stay at the job because they like the people they work with. When they could be held back on moving up in a position and going somewhere else and being in a better position. So that’s one thing that I always tell my people. I’m like, you can’t depend on the people that you work with to be your friends. You don’t go off that judgment. You have to go off the judgment of what’s best for you and your family.

Speaker 0 | 40:24.523

Wow. So you’ve experienced adversity at different points in your career, challenges, challenging, you know, environments or bosses or anything else like that. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with. leading employees and staff in challenging environments.

Speaker 1 | 40:39.051

You know, it used to be hard. It would stay up late at night knowing he had to go in the next morning and maybe have an uncomfortable conversation with an employee or a boss or leadership or something like that. But I mean, I’ve been it for 17 years now. So now I have kind of shifted my mentality to where I think conflict is needed to help resolution. So I kind of embrace it more than fear it like I used to when I was younger in my career.

Speaker 0 | 41:10.567

So how do you, now, how do you help your team get through that? You know, like what advice do you have? And then I’ll say, I’ll frame this in the, what advice do you have for our listeners about how to challenge and deal with adversity in those moments? And how do you help your team learn to deal with it?

Speaker 1 | 41:28.016

I would say you pick your battles. I mean, obviously it has to be important enough to you to Either go to your boss or go to your superior or go to your other teammates and say, hey, I don’t think this is what we want to do. Let’s look at a different alternative method, a different solution. Let’s bring more people together. And I think that’s important. It’s knowing when it’s you kind of have to learn it or be taught it. Like, is this really something that you want? You know, I’ll use the letter. Do you want to die on the hill for this or not?

Speaker 0 | 41:58.169

I was just going to say, is this the hill you want to die on?

Speaker 1 | 42:00.590

Yeah. So you’ve got to pick. You gotta be smart and pick your battles. Some battles are worth fighting, and some are not. So, I think that comes with just experience, honestly. It takes a while to figure out, okay, I just don’t agree with this, so I’m gonna say something, or, you know, it’s not that big a deal. I’m just gonna let this slide.

Speaker 0 | 42:26.102

I had a friend years ago, he’s still my friend, but years ago he had told me… when we had some challenging situation that arose and it was not in it actually it was in a leadership for a a social organization that the community the organization that we were involved with together and there was some misunderstanding with some communication between me and somebody else and uh he was i was very insistent that the you the story be righted, if you will. That’s not what I meant, and that’s not what I said, and that’s not what I intended. And he’s like, you can be right and you can be dead right, but you don’t really want to be dead right. You don’t gain anything from it. And that’s an important lesson that often takes time for people to learn by being dead right a lot, or at least a couple intervals where they’re like, what did I actually gain from that? And the answer was not much.

Speaker 1 | 43:25.409

Well, I have a joke that I say. I’m 41. And so every year I have a new joke and I say, I haven’t been wrong in 41 years. Now, obviously, that’s not true. But it makes so many people mad when I say it. I’m like, yeah, you have to have that ability to be like, no, I’m just kidding. I’ve been wrong in 41 years. Yeah. And then, you know, on the leadership stuff, it’s just. You have to admit as a leader when you’re wrong, too. Did you make the wrong decision? Did you make the wrong move? You have to just own it. And it’s one thing I do right off the bat. If I mess up, then I tell people immediately that I messed up. And when other people mess up, I’m like, you’re going to mess up. It’s going to happen. Spend long enough in this career and you will cause catastrophic failure somewhere. But it’s not how you react to it. It’s how you learn from it. So that’s another big thing for me. I’m like, just because you fail doesn’t mean you’re a failure. You just got to learn from your mistakes and move on.

Speaker 0 | 44:29.165

Yeah. I think it speaks to the value of self-reflection. When you’re, as you become a leader, the ability to self-analyze and take that step back and say, you know, I understand how I came across and how this other person came across and why there was. You know, understanding their vantage point and understanding where I could have done differently and why that might have some different behavior for me might have changed. Even if I was, even if my point was right, the way that it landed or the way that I approached it or the way that I came into the room or whatever the case may be, may have set it up. for failure from before the start. And you have to really be able to self-reflect to understand that.

Speaker 1 | 45:10.515

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 | 45:12.655

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Speaker 0 | 47:32.612

So you mentioned about catastrophic failure. This just prompted me to think about what was the most catastrophic failure that you had. And I’m going to, I’ll start by sharing something for myself. This is intended to be humorous. One time I was an IT consultant and we had this room. This is a small manufacturer that I. helped out um they’re in elmira new york and they had an as400 in their their server room and it had you know the bane as400 and a and another expansion chassis next to it and the way their server room was set up it was not ideal pile of wires like spaghetti of wires on the floor and i had to step behind it in order to put cabling into a server that we were installing that day and i’m the outside consultant And it turns out that even though I was far away from the AS400, through the spaghetti of wires that I had to step on, there was no way not to step on it. A series of events happened that drew the power cord out of the expansion chassis of the AS400, but didn’t drop it out. Like it just pulled it out just enough that, and of course, for the people listening here, I’m making this like visual gesture that you can’t see. But, you know, the power cord. pulls out just far enough that it disconnects the power but doesn’t turn it off and of course you know hilarity ensues as they’re trying to figure out what’s going on and and it turns out that the outside contractor had pulled the plug on their as400 and it required uh what was no what’s known as an ipl which is a reboot that takes a long time to do so so yes that was that’s my catastrophic failure funny catastrophic failure story you

Speaker 1 | 49:18.862

I think my worst one is probably I decided to see if I could denial of service the core routers at a retail store I worked for using HPing and to ping at the nanosecond level from a VM that I created. Uh-huh. Yeah, I was able to denial of service the core routers right in the middle of a company-wide meeting, and I took all 52 stores down.

Speaker 0 | 49:46.853

Wow. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 49:49.411

I had to go down and unplug the server because it was unresponsive because everything was down. So I flew down to the data center, unplugged the virtual host, dropped all the virtual machines that were on the host because that one was pinging. I really didn’t ever tell anybody. I was like, I fixed it.

Speaker 0 | 50:07.339

This was my next question. Did you admit to it or were you like, I don’t know what happened, but I got it all fixed, guys. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 50:12.602

I pretty much just owned up to the fact that it was fixed. I was like, I got it. Don’t worry. But yeah, I dropped it. And as soon as I launched the command, I was like, I’ve seen all the monitoring tools go red. And I was like, oh, no. So, yeah, that’s probably my biggest one that I’ve ever done.

Speaker 0 | 50:32.094

Here it is. Listeners of the podcast, now you can figure out what job was it that you exist at. Somebody later on, they’ll be like, I remember when that happened. That was you? Oh my god, Tim, I can’t believe that was actually a real thing. It wasn’t just some accident?

Speaker 1 | 50:48.828

You said you fixed it. Well, I mean, I did, technically. I caused it,

Speaker 0 | 50:52.531

but I still fixed it. Absolutely. We’re coming to the end of our podcast here in our episode. I always make sure to ask our guests to share with our listeners and anybody who’s looking to be in leadership in IT, what are the most important lessons of leadership that you value and find and would want to share with somebody if they ask for your advice?

Speaker 1 | 51:18.960

Find someone that has differing opinions than you and listen to their opinions. That’s the one thing. I have a friend that I work with. I call him the other side because. Before I make any big decision or argument, I run it through him because he has different values, different opinions than I do. And that way it kind of ready states me. I’m like, am I in the wrong or am I in the right? And normally he’ll be like, no, you’re wrong. I’m like, yeah, okay. So I just try to understand what other people would think other than just coming right off the cuff and saying something that probably doesn’t help or benefit or maybe too rough around the edges. So try to build your team to where you have conflicting views so that you can understand, okay, well, I think this, but this person thinks this. And just use logic to put the two together and be like, okay, well, maybe I am wrong on this one, or maybe I need to take a different approach. That is the biggest thing that helps me. Nice.

Speaker 0 | 52:23.096

Any other last second advice for people?

Speaker 1 | 52:27.617

Don’t give up. It’s a long road. You’ll get tired of it. There’ll always be a boss or there’ll always be an employee that you may not see eye to eye with. But you just got to keep on and keep it on.

Speaker 0 | 52:38.448

Yeah. Well, so, Tim, I want to thank you so much for investing your time with us on the podcast today.

Speaker 1 | 52:45.370

Not a problem. I appreciate you having me.

Speaker 0 | 52:48.031

Absolutely. It’s been a real pleasure to be able to talk to you and really be honest, just you and I. statement, to be able to talk to somebody who really shares some background, like, professionally with what our day jobs are, about being able to serve people who have a lot of needs, you know, the mental health, behavioral health needs, and also stuff like that, and people with disabilities. So I definitely applaud you for being able to support that and put that work in to what’s so needed in all of our communities here. So thank you for that as well.

Speaker 1 | 53:25.714

Oh, absolutely. You too. It’s been a pleasure to speak with you.

Speaker 0 | 53:28.918

All right, everyone. That’s a wrap on today’s episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m Doug Kameen, and we look forward to coming to you on our next episode.