Speaker 0 | 00:07.260
Welcome, everyone, back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today we are talking with John Anderson. And as a side note, just so everyone knows that I am a human being and I deal with… I have issues in life. I have issues, too. I have issues in life,
Speaker 1 | 00:22.732
just like everyone else.
Speaker 0 | 00:24.053
So my day has begun with… I don’t know about you. Have you ever tried to fix anything in your house and had to deal with contractors? I’m batting, I would say, oh man, under 100. I’m batting under 100 when it comes to contractors. And yeah, I don’t know. Doing very well when it comes to vendors, when it comes to IT vendors, I do very, very well. Contractors, remodeling basements, doing drywall, things like that. I’m pretty much abysmal. And I should leave that up to my wife because she goes to the… Angie’s list right away. Do we have an Angie’s list, John, in the IT world? Is there an Angie’s list?
Speaker 2 | 01:02.177
You know, I don’t know, Phil, quite honestly. I never really did a big search on that. I usually stick with any of my vendors or contacts. I just talk to them directly.
Speaker 0 | 01:13.542
Yeah, I manage IT the way everyone else does. I’m just a really better Googler than most of our end users. That’s why I’m in charge. Welcome to the show. On a serious note, in pharmaceutical there’s not much pharmaceuticals going around these days so thank you for for being in that industry of sorts how did you let’s start with this because you seem to be of you seem to be a young fellow around the same age as me i’m assuming uh so so and this is how we carbon date people what was your first computer oh man my first computer you
Speaker 2 | 01:54.488
I don’t even remember the name of it. I think it was the precursor of the Compaq. It was an old PC that a friend of my father had given to us in hopes that my dad would learn how to use it. I think the thing had something like two megabytes of memory, and I think it was an old 8088 processor, quite honestly.
Speaker 0 | 02:16.734
Two megs? Yeah, a big,
Speaker 2 | 02:18.694
long box.
Speaker 0 | 02:20.075
Operating system software, do you remember?
Speaker 2 | 02:23.924
It started off as a DOS system, D-O-S. And then I remember trying to load Windows 3.X onto it with this big box of the three and a half compact diskettes.
Speaker 0 | 02:37.107
Just a stack of disks. Okay, good. So, good. We’re on the same page, so to speak. I just like reminiscing. I really do. So, what made you get into… IT because it’s usually never, um, I, it’s usually never a, well, I played around with computers back in the day and one thing led to the next and here I am actually quite often. It is that, but it wasn’t like you went to school for, um, what IT is today. There was no certifications. There was, there was no, it’s a good question. What was Cisco doing back then? Were they even in, were they in infancy? What were they? I don’t even know. Um, but you have some cert, you have a few certifications. Um, but anyways. Talk to me. How do you get to where you are?
Speaker 2 | 03:23.213
Well, I think I had a non-traditional path into IT, honestly, because I started out as an auto mechanic years and years ago.
Speaker 0 | 03:31.897
It makes complete sense. It honestly makes complete sense.
Speaker 2 | 03:38.601
My cheapness overwhelmed me, and I didn’t want to have to pay a big box store in order to fix my computer, so I learned how to do it myself. It started out as a hobby. In my hobby, I saw an opportunity at my one job. I was… working at in order to fill a need, which was they needed a local IT support guy for the office and for the servers and for the backups. And you know what? I like doing this. So let me talk to the management and see if they can help me out. I’d be more than happy to do this stuff and maybe I can pivot this thing into a career. And it worked out pretty well for me.
Speaker 0 | 04:13.062
I would say that that’s 90% of most of the CTOs, CIOs. the VPs of ITs nowadays. There’s a lot. I’ve even had one that was like, yeah, I was in the cafeteria and I spoke with a help desk guy when he came up to fill up his tray or something. And I was like, hey, how do I get over into IT? And then they’re like, oh, you’d be great. You can talk with people. And no, seriously. And now he’s the CIO. So it wasn’t like that back in the day. There was no… It was, yeah, a lot of kind of trial by error, maybe drinking from the fire hose, figuring things out, tinkering on boxes. Yeah, I can order this hard drive and install it into this metal box. And that was cool. I can upgrade RAM. It was very much one of those. addictive gaming things where there’s a lot of uh i don’t know power-ups and different items that you get and i don’t know skins and stuff this is i hear this stuff from my children so you get that you get the cheap thrill from successfully fixing something you know it’s like oh man i got this this computer it’s a you know it’s got the blue screen of death on it i don’t know what’s going on and well
Speaker 2 | 05:26.434
let me see what’s happening you discover it’s like a bad driver or bad memory stick or something Let me pull this one out. I got another one, throw it in there. And then you’re the hero of the day, you know, for whoever the issue, whoever was having the issue. So it’s, uh, you know, kind of like a cheap thrill.
Speaker 0 | 05:42.683
The, one of the themes that comes up in the show a lot is a continuous learning, uh, always be learning, always be learning, which obviously you had to do. I mean, there’s no way that anyone would be able to do anything nowadays without continuously learning that the, I’m trying to think of the right word here. The landscape, the technology landscape is, um, is very, very different. What did you do as time went on? Just read things and implement things? Or what’s your continuous learning journey look like? It’s like, oh, that’s cool. Let’s give that a try. Or what is it?
Speaker 2 | 06:17.388
Well, it usually starts off with something that piqued my interest. And then you go the route of searching on Google, trying to find other information, reading, and as scary as it might sound. YouTube is a great resource for trying to learn different things. The trick to it is you have to sift through all the crap in order to find the diamond in the rough that has to do with whatever the topic is that you’re looking into. For me, my continuous learning actually started with virtualization when I first got into IT. And I was fascinated by the whole concept of running old computers and software. How the heck does that work? So I bought a couple of books, VMware for Dummies, and I actually talked my company into sending me into one of these boot camps for VMware. I think it was 3.9 or 4.9, something like that, VMware VM Server. And it kind of just exploded from there for me. I really focused on a lot of the virtualization. And when things broke. whether it was a virtual machine or a network thing or something, it turned into research. I got to go figure out what’s happening now because I didn’t really have a lot of people to fall back on, call a colleague or something. Because when I was doing all of this stuff myself, I didn’t have too many other people, colleagues that were into it. So I was kind of on my own little island at the time.
Speaker 0 | 07:51.036
Side note, VMware being purchased by Broadcom. Any thoughts?
Speaker 2 | 07:56.711
Not particularly, because believe it or not, I hadn’t been paying too close attention to it. And I just realized that they were purchased when I got an email from Broadcom saying, hey, you’re going to have to put your support tickets in through Broadcom instead of VMware. It doesn’t really bother me too much from one perspective, because all these tech companies are always merging and separating all the time. It’s like a big Pac-Man game. Everybody’s trying to consume everybody else.
Speaker 0 | 08:25.715
Well, it brings up an interesting conundrum because, yes, that is the modern day IT director, IT manager, IT leader, CTO, CIO’s job is to deal with juggling a bunch of balls in the air, anywhere between 80 to 120 different applications, managing a spreadsheet of, I don’t know, contract dates and contact lists and things like this. And how do we streamline this all? And Then let’s turn that into an industry term and we’ll just call it, I don’t know, UCAS or something, unified communications. And then that doesn’t really unify everything because then, you know, it’s just not possible. And yes, the industry is a, I don’t even know if it’s still on my profile. I think I used to have like, you know, like a description of, you know, basically it’s a, it’s a mix of mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies. And ironic thing is. sometimes bankruptcy is good because then they’re like oh the bankruptcy was great because uh it was a pre no no it was a pre-packaged bankruptcy and what it allowed us to do was you know free up a bunch of cash flow so now we have a much more robust network because of this this and this and you hear that a lot yeah uh so for you to have to translate all that is a kind of interesting job you
Speaker 1 | 09:46.210
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Speaker 0 | 11:29.560
why is my internet connection down?
Speaker 1 | 11:31.361
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Speaker 0 | 11:43.305
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Speaker 1 | 11:44.346
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Speaker 0 | 11:48.108
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Speaker 1 | 11:50.330
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Speaker 0 | 12:02.018
and we’ll get right on it for you.
Speaker 1 | 12:03.559
Have a wonderful day.
Speaker 0 | 12:05.961
But you mentioned a more common theme, which is it does get kind of lonely at the top. What’s your, I don’t know, mentorship theory, or how do you stay connected with peers if you do at all?
Speaker 2 | 12:19.932
Well, I try to stay connected with a lot of former coworkers wherever possible. My previous job that I worked before my current one, I was there for almost 18 years. And I… grew up within the organization so that was i started in a different area of the organization it was actually a process technician so i was working on the process side of the job and i slowly moved out of it into it but when i moved into it i gained a lot of uh a lot of connections and colleagues with our headquarters that was in europe so with a lot of those connections i try to make sure that i keep in touch with a lot of those folks, at least the ones that are smart, you know, the ones that have the good head on their shoulders. And I have a couple other friends now, like outside personal friends that are in the IT field that I do have the opportunity to bounce ideas off of them or issues, you know, whenever I have a chance. Last week, I was golfing with a buddy of mine, and then we started talking about Zscaler. He’s trying to deploy it in his particular organization, and we’ve inherited it in my current organization. But unfortunately, I don’t have direct access to it. So I couldn’t help them out too much. But it’s more of just talking to the people that I’ve developed my relationships with. It’s not like I don’t have an opportunity a lot to go out to actively network with a lot of other people or a lot of other folks within the industry. But I try to talk with, you know, gain as much as I can talking with the people when I have the opportunity, especially my friends.
Speaker 0 | 13:59.042
We’ve been trying to figure that out for a long time. How do we do this on the show? Because we’re nearing like 300 shows now. So how do we get all the IT directors that have been on the show into some kind of collaboration environment where, I don’t know.
Speaker 2 | 14:10.992
Sounds like a convention.
Speaker 0 | 14:12.293
Yeah, but it has to be done in a way where, I don’t know, some nefarious individual doesn’t show up and try to sell us a bunch of stuff and take over the entire company. We’ll allow him to come and speak, but he’s got to pay. He’s got to pay for something and he can’t take up the whole, he can’t take the whole time. I don’t know.
Speaker 2 | 14:32.412
Yeah. We have to vote up and start trying to sell you a whole new slew range of servers or something.
Speaker 0 | 14:37.675
We have to vote on like, who do we allow in or something? I don’t know. No, but that’s a serious, I mean, it’s a serious thing. So, okay. So the theme of the whole point of that is golf. Take up golf. I grew up golfing, so I gave that up for Brazilian jiu-jitsu because I don’t have to go out for four hours twice a week minimum. I think you have to golf twice a week to really get that handicap down low, which I wouldn’t mind doing, but I think my family and wife would be more ticked off at me for that.
Speaker 2 | 15:09.507
You don’t have to get good at it. You just have to go out and enjoy yourself. That’s the whole point. You go out, you’re in the sunshine, you’re having fun with your boys.
Speaker 0 | 15:16.996
Can you golf if you’re not good and have fun doing it? I guess that’s the question. Absolutely. So the golfing and just remind me of some nicknames for the game that I probably shouldn’t mention. How big is your team right now? Or how many guys you have? How many people are on the help desk team? What are you guys trying to accomplish over there?
Speaker 2 | 15:40.394
Well, right now, it’s just currently at my site, it’s just three of us. It’s me and two other system engineers. who are basically keeping the pilot light on, helping the users with the support help desk. And then we do have a director above who basically dictates and guides a lot of the different projects that are associated. But at my level, it’s handling the user support side with my guys.
Speaker 0 | 16:07.258
What’s your feeling on end user support? And I guess, I don’t know, philosophy on… Yeah. on connecting with end users and what kind of app? I guess my question more is, I guess it should be more of what’s your environment like? What do you have to support for them? Is there a lot of personal interaction? What’s the typical complaints? These type of things.
Speaker 2 | 16:30.612
Oh, yeah. It always starts with personal interaction because at our site, we have approximately 300 individuals, 300 users. And of those users, a number of them are manufacturing. folks that a lot of them don’t have a lot of computer experience. So it’s the personal interaction comes from actually talking with the users after they’re reporting an issue and then figuring out what it is exactly the issue is. Because sometimes it’s a mystery. They say, oh, I can’t connect to my email or the computer’s broke. I need IT to come and help fix it. So now you’re You know something’s wrong, but you don’t know exactly what it’s wrong. So it turns into a mystery. You have to ask the right questions, and it turns into this exchange where it’s almost like an interview, you know, or almost like a cross-interrogation. They know what’s wrong, but you don’t know how to get the details out for what you need to know to fix the problem. You know what I mean?
Speaker 0 | 17:42.728
yes type of thing yes i i think we do take for granted a level of technology technological proficiency like there’s a certain level of technological is that am i saying that right technological proficiency um there’s a certain level that i think the whole world has exactly then when you but then when you actually connect with people you’re shocked you’re like yeah i’m You’re almost like, what do you mean you’ve never used Excel?
Speaker 2 | 18:16.045
Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 18:18.386
What do you mean? How do I send a calendar invite? So this is real stuff, which is actually kind of, I sit, I volunteer locally in the community and are on some nonprofits and in some more inner city type of areas. And I think there’s some general life skills that people just need to have, which is. how to set up an email signature how to send a calendar invite and it shocks me that there’d be people out there going to apply for a job that don’t know how to do these things that you absolutely need to know how to do any you have any suggestions for like are there any like cheat sheet courses or quick course i basically told me like hey just google google how to use google workspace um microsoft 365 uh excel um powerpoint and uh you could probably learn it all in i don’t know a day or two just go to some there’s got to be some youtube channel or something that shows you how to do all that well you know what i think i can do you one better in one respect on that from the standpoint of forget
Speaker 2 | 19:28.433
even trying to set up you know a an email signature it’s basic computer operation in many respects uh and when i say well let me rephrase that not operation but terminology One of the biggest, one of the biggest things that I run across. uh is when people or when end users say oh the internet’s down the internet’s broke i’m not able to do x y and z and it’s not the internet like you and i or people in the industry know the internet as the cloud you know this big omnipresent information repository but most of the common users you know they think just connecting the computer to a network is the internet you know we’re like internally when you have a user who is connecting their laptop or their workstation to an internal service you know some kind of web service and they say oh i’m not able to connect to the internet’s down well you go into the thing trying to figure out how come they can’t get to google or they can’t get out to the internet and they’re like no no no no it’s not that i’m trying to get into you know whatever you know like salesforce or something that’s the local service um and it’s it’s actually it’s something that i thought about over the years that You mentioned about volunteering, something that I’ve always wanted to do, at least for a lot of the elderly population. Like a lot of these folks have no idea how to use a computer or what it is like how to log in or like, you know, more specifically what you’re saying, like how to set up email. Like what’s the difference between email and going on to Google to check different things out? I’ve always wanted to try to volunteer time and teach folks that, you know, like those basic. understanding skills, which you assume when they come into a job or a new user comes into the job, like basic understanding of Microsoft Office and tools is what it’s a prerequisite. We automatically assume everyone knows that, but that’s never the case.
Speaker 0 | 21:29.893
I mean, it is actually a pretty serious task for some people that have already graduated high school. If I said, I need you to send me a spreadsheet with all the addresses on it. Um, can you take, I know you don’t know what an IP address is, but I need all these IP addresses listed out here. I need, um, I don’t know. Uh, I need the loop speed. I need the circuit speed. I need, um, can you put what model firewall is at every site? I need the addresses. I need the, um, you know, and then I need like, I don’t know, I’m just, I would, this was the example that just came up the other day and they’re like, I think I can learn it. Like, you know, I was like, oh no. And I don’t, again, I don’t, I was like, I think you can learn it too. I was like, I think you can learn it literally like right now. Type here, type there. Like just start,
Speaker 1 | 22:22.091
start clicking around because the crazy thing is,
Speaker 0 | 22:25.973
the crazy thing is, is that same person can tell me why a certain application on my iPhone’s not working.
Speaker 2 | 22:35.575
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 22:36.368
No, seriously, that same person who might be a Z generation, or I don’t even know what these generations are, millennials, something like late, late, young millennial, whatever it is,
Speaker 1 | 22:47.254
they’ll be able to tell me,
Speaker 0 | 22:48.554
oh no, you got to go into the settings on Instagram. Then you’ve got to go here, click here, click. Let me fix that for you real quick. Just give it to me. Same person will be able to do that. And I’ll just be annoyed because I don’t have like 15 social media apps on my phone. And I don’t. I know there’s APIs and whatever. I can’t remember what it came up. It’ll be like, I don’t know. I was dinking around with Facebook advertising or something for the…
Speaker 2 | 23:16.576
From the devil.
Speaker 0 | 23:18.278
Yeah, yeah, of course. No, of course. I think we were messing around with Facebook advertising on Instagram or something. So you have to have a Facebook business account. And then you have to know how to set things up in certain feeds. And… you know, target audiences and, and, you know, all these different things. And it’s actually fairly daunting, especially when you have to, you know, you know, and then make sure that this is connected and give me permissions over here. And that person will be able to do all of that. And they’re like, oh yeah. And then you got to go into YouTube and go to settings to go here and do that. But if I say, Hey, I need you to send me a spreadsheet with this. I’m like, Ooh, I don’t know, man. Yeah.
Speaker 2 | 23:59.336
Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s like, wait a second. And they don’t know. like some of those cases like you’re saying like they don’t know what in basic networking or ip addresses like you said firewall what’s what’s the firewall you know like what do you mean connecting with a cable like a network cable it’s i i understand exactly where you’re coming from it’s cat six it’s cat six is the cat six there is do you have dual drop or single drop uh what
Speaker 0 | 24:29.366
i know that the uh the thing on the ceiling is blinking blue you Um, with the wires coming out of it. Okay. Most hated, um, piece of equipment or it technology that you have to manage. Or we could say worst silo. By the way, I don’t want anyone to think I don’t know how to do Facebook messaging. Yes, they’re the yes thing. I can click around and do a lot of stuff, but there’s certain expertise when it comes to marketing and split testing things. And by the way, you’re not going to find my dissecting popular IT nerds ads on Facebook anymore. But if they do pop up in your feed, I have had someone one time say, hey, look who popped up in my feed. And they were on the show. But anyways.
Speaker 2 | 25:13.037
Most of it right away. Those aided signs.
Speaker 0 | 25:16.895
I have one, by the way, I have it highlighted in blue on your LinkedIn profile. I just have an ID. I have an ID. Because you have a list of things that you take care of. And I saw one that was a little antiquated that I’ve highlighted. I’m just wondering if you’re going to say it.
Speaker 2 | 25:33.607
I would have to say printing.
Speaker 0 | 25:37.770
Okay, that makes sense. Yes. That makes sense. Because all the Xerox companies are going out of business and the old copy machine companies and stuff are quickly turning into MSPs. Yeah. No, you don’t understand. We used to be the copy machine guys and the Minolta guys. We’re an MSP now. I’m serious. Yeah. No, but some are good MSPs. And they’re really like, why did we wait so long to do this? Some are not so good. But go ahead.
Speaker 2 | 26:10.434
No, I was just going to say the printers because there’s a certain expectation from, again, the end users about being able to print and scan. And I want to be able to put it to a share drive somewhere and, you know, trying to move away from share drives and do things on SharePoint. Can I just email it directly? And then if you have other kind of security features, you know, your firewall or. you’re blocked somewhere else within your network to get a scan email sent out, or you have some kind of limitations. You have to bring two other groups in because you don’t have access to get into the firewall. You don’t have access to get into, you know, you’re always 365 or stage online or whatever it might be. And actually the physical support of the servers, you know, toners, toners, my God, users don’t know how to change toners themselves.
Speaker 0 | 27:07.705
It’s a messy job. It’s a messy job. You got to pull out this tray, you got to flip a bunch of little plastic knobby deals, you got to shake it first, run the little green thing back and forth or something. I don’t know.
Speaker 2 | 27:21.212
Or replace paper. It’s the same thing. Adding paper. It’s like, look, you guys should be able to do this stuff yourself.
Speaker 0 | 27:28.816
I mean… I have a buddy that works for like, I think it’s Harvard University or something. He’s really like the AV printer guy. But he’s like, I think of him as IT because of that.
Speaker 1 | 27:43.921
I was like, oh, you’re in IT.
Speaker 0 | 27:44.842
He’s like, no, no,
Speaker 1 | 27:45.502
no, no, no.
Speaker 0 | 27:46.323
I go around and I handle all the printers and copy machines and papers. I’m like, oh, you’re in IT, which really it shouldn’t be. It’s kind of like, that’s the old joke I had because I used to ask people, what was the craziest ticket you ever got? One guy told me one time, he’s like, well, yeah, he’s like, we got a ticket to fix the hand dryer in the men’s bathroom. You know, we get all that stuff. you know hey uh can you show me and they i you know and people get hvac tickets i guess that’s like maybe the second worst one is a lot of people get like hey the the heat’s not like on the right temperature or something like that oh my god yeah i can tell you some stories about uh trying to trying
Speaker 2 | 28:24.537
to support um hvac uh from back in the day we we actually had a uh in in my old job we had an r&d lab And we had a lot of these R&D scientists that came in at the crack of dawn. They’d be in at like 4.30, 5 o’clock in the morning. And in the winter, it’d be cold as crap in there, in the lab. So in order to try to keep the lab up better to trigger the HVAC system, they would take heat guns to the thermostats on the wall. And they melted the thermostats on the wall because it got way too hot. They would put the heat gun on there in order to trigger. to trigger the HVAC.
Speaker 0 | 29:06.066
In order to cool it?
Speaker 2 | 29:07.647
To cool it, yeah. In the summer, excuse me, not the winter.
Speaker 0 | 29:14.469
In the wintertime, we just let the heat guns just fire into the air.
Speaker 2 | 29:18.510
Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 29:21.250
They melted the thermostat. Yeah,
Speaker 2 | 29:22.831
they melted the thermostat.
Speaker 0 | 29:24.491
Probably something my kids would do.
Speaker 2 | 29:26.812
We don’t understand why the HVAC doesn’t work or why the temperature doesn’t regulate when you go out there. The thermostat’s melted down the wall. It’s crazy.
Speaker 0 | 29:37.624
I had highlighted Avaya Modular Messaging and Communications Manager.
Speaker 2 | 29:42.862
Oh, you see, I put it out of my brain. That’s why I didn’t even consider it.
Speaker 0 | 29:46.325
Oh, was I close? Was I close then?
Speaker 2 | 29:48.587
Phone systems? Yeah. Yeah. My God.
Speaker 0 | 29:52.170
They’re my favorite.
Speaker 2 | 29:55.092
The system that we have now currently in my current job is a command line type of system that I inherited when I started the job. And I didn’t learn how to use it. I have no idea even how to get into it. In order to access.
Speaker 0 | 30:12.895
Wait, is it like an old star codes? Like you got to do it through the handset on the desk?
Speaker 2 | 30:16.999
No, no, no, not that old. There’s actually a, there’s actually a server. I believe it’s a Linux server that we have housed in a co-location that we have to remote connect into. And then you have to command line into it from there in order to get into the configuration for the system itself.
Speaker 0 | 30:36.715
It must be some SIP based voice over IP. I don’t know, asterisk box, maybe asterisk or something like that. I’m just trying to think of what it could possibly be. What kind of handsets do you guys have sitting on the desks?
Speaker 2 | 30:49.634
They are Avaya’s. They’re newer.
Speaker 0 | 30:55.780
They’re newer.
Speaker 2 | 30:57.821
Yeah. I mean, you’re not talking about any fancy space. He wants to do the video calling, you know, where you get the LCD screens, you know, where you can.
Speaker 0 | 31:07.186
I always knew that was a, I always knew that was a gimmicky thing. Like when you saw a video phone, did you ever think that that would catch on? No, for real. Like we’ve got Microsoft teams, we’ve got zoom, we’ve got, I mean, help you. Uh, well, you got Cisco WebEx, we’ve got, uh,
Speaker 2 | 31:24.619
Google me too.
Speaker 0 | 31:26.600
Oh yeah. So that’s a, I’ve just, um, that’s my bane. Every time I get a Google me, I’m just like, ah. And if I ever had to send one, I feel like I have to send out an apology note with it. It’s just no one uses. I mean, I’m a Teams fan. I am. I really am. I’m a Microsoft. I’m like one of the people in the Matrix. I’m one of the people in the Matrix that I mean, I know they control the world. I know that they’re like the largest nation ever. Like, I’m still a fan.
Speaker 2 | 32:00.845
I agree with you, man, because we like most of the. Places I’ve worked have been Microsoft shops. And I do like Teams. I like using it. I know it very well. As a matter of fact, my wife’s company had just instituted using Teams. So I had to give her a little once over on how to use it. And she started to become like the office superstar on how to use Teams in her place. So, you know.
Speaker 0 | 32:27.331
You just gave me an idea. I just had a great idea that we could do, that Dice-Hack and Puppeteer nerds could do. We should create inner office cheerleaders for IT.
Speaker 1 | 32:38.213
We should have an ad that’s like,
Speaker 0 | 32:39.775
do you have people that hate IT in your organization? Well, we’ve got the solution for you. Just send them to here and we’ll make them look awesome. And then you’ll love them. And they’ll tell everyone else in the community of your, I don’t know, workspace place how awesome IT is.
Speaker 2 | 32:57.830
Nice. Like your own personal hype.
Speaker 1 | 33:00.312
We could do that.
Speaker 2 | 33:01.273
And it’s a problem.
Speaker 1 | 33:01.773
Well.
Speaker 0 | 33:03.814
Have you ever had to be involved in a large rollout, ERP, some very lemon juice on paper cuts type of rollout where you’ve got a lot of problems and you know that there’s going to be a lot of complaints coming in?
Speaker 2 | 33:16.578
Well, yes, but smaller scale. Not large, but small scale.
Speaker 0 | 33:20.759
So the ones that I’ve always realized were, well, very difficult. I’m trying to remember years ago. I remember we had someone that had done like, I think, it was definitely over 200,000 users. It might’ve been 350,000 users migration from Microsoft to Google. Can you imagine?
Speaker 2 | 33:43.164
Oh my God.
Speaker 0 | 33:45.365
That’s nice. Can you just imagine, you know, it was insane. Right. And can you imagine like the calls coming in and the complaints and like, I just, it’s, it’s, it’s unfathomable.
Speaker 2 | 33:56.158
Yeah, especially because the technology is different.
Speaker 0 | 33:59.100
They did it and they did it like I would give them like 97% on the flawless rollout. It took months of free… I imagine like, okay, who can we put on our team that’s going to be cheerleaders for us? People outside of the IT organization. Okay, we need to first bring 10 people in. Let’s train them all. Tell them, hey, you’re going to get a burrito every day for every time you… Help us get rid of a negative Nancy.
Speaker 1 | 34:28.665
Something like that.
Speaker 0 | 34:29.846
And it was like, we’re going to put up, we’re going to put little stands up everywhere. Like demo stands are going to be like, and we’re going to like, it’s going to be like, this is the great new thing that’s coming out. It’s called no longer my address. We’re using Google. And like, here’s how you do it. And everyone’s going to get, I don’t know. You get a free, here’s a new workbook. No, you’re going to get these new workbooks. They’re so much better than a PC, you know?
Speaker 2 | 34:56.014
Yeah, tell them to give them a tablet. They’ll all be lining up. Yeah. I love that. Everybody wants a little doodad, you know, a gadget tablet of some sort.
Speaker 0 | 35:05.040
It just sounds like an insane, it sounds like an insane thing. But it all came from, yeah, like. these cheerleaders which you actually did inadvertently uh with your wife so whoever at your company you saved the it at that company um a bunch of help desk complaints or whatever and you know they you know you should uh do
Speaker 2 | 35:26.876
you know the it guy at your wife’s company no i don’t because it’s all uh it’s all third party contracted out ah it’s an msp so who cares it’s a it’s a it’s a whatever copy machine company
Speaker 0 | 35:40.204
It’s an ex-copy machine company that took over as an MSP. Oh, well. All right.
Speaker 2 | 35:44.165
But, you know, I like that idea, though, with a cheerleader because, I mean, like you said, you have somebody in your corner that’s going to help. Like, instead of the IT people or senior management, you know, dictating from on high, sending a bunch of emails saying, oh, get ready. You know, Monday, we’re going to switch this over. You know, you start to put the fear of God into some of your users. Like, oh, my God, you’re going to take away my tried and true. uh, tool that I’ve been using forever. I don’t want to change. And you know,
Speaker 0 | 36:13.577
you got to walk the halls, you got to walk the halls, you got to shake hands, you got to be in front of people. You got to find the people that are your cheerleaders and your champions. And then you’ve got to get those people champion and champion it. And then those people have got to just say, Hey, you know what? I don’t know. But, uh, you know, let me just say, John has been such a help. He’s made my job so much easier. I mean, even though we melted down the, even though we melted down the HVAC board, um, it’s cool enough in here and it was you know uh yeah it’s uh crazy important what’s um 18 seven years wait how many years were you at the previous company did you say 18 years yeah just short of 18 years how do you how was that transition was that a little shocking leaving a place for 18 years and going to a new place oh my god it was it was a huge culture shock for not only for the organization
Speaker 2 | 37:09.840
from the organizational standpoint for me personally as well i mean when you when you start you’re in an organization for that long um and when i had started at that organization it was very very small uh there were about maybe 30 people working there so it was it was like a family atmosphere you know you knew everybody you know what you you knew everybody’s almost their business you know their kids their pets their family what they’re working on what they’re doing And then as it grows and grows and grows, you know, you grow with it to the point where even though you may grow to 150 people, you still at least know all 150 people’s names. Right. You may not know everything about them, but you still know them, especially from an IT perspective, which I did. I was a one man army. So like there was no other IT people at this site. So I did everything. And I also provided. all of the onboarding and the IT training for the site. So every new body that came into that organization, I had met face-to-face, except for a few small exceptions. And we sat down for an hour, told them about the IT systems, told them about our policies, our procedures, all that type of stuff. But you have that level of intimacy and comfort. So you know everybody and you know who to go to to solve problems. You know who to go to to talk to. If you have an issue and who can help you get the information you need and then leaving that type of atmosphere and then getting dropped into a new organization where, you know, it’s like being in high school all over again and changing schools. You don’t know anybody outside of the people that you had interviewed with. And you’re lucky if you see them in the office at any point in time as well. So it’s a shock. It was a huge shock.
Speaker 0 | 39:08.640
Yeah, it’s a crazy thought. My brother and some other people have been at the same company for 34 years, 30 plus years. I can’t imagine.
Speaker 2 | 39:20.168
Yeah. I think that’s it. Well, I think it is. It’s a rarity nowadays, especially with a lot of the younger folks coming in. They just job hop in order to make the money. But for me, it was a comfort level. You actually reach a point in time where you’re too comfortable. You no longer challenge yourself or you no longer, maybe not technically, but you’re not. you’re not challenging yourself enough to get out there and take a chance on something new.
Speaker 0 | 39:49.892
Yeah. You know,
Speaker 2 | 39:50.812
and, and it was, you know, for me it was time to make the change.
Speaker 0 | 39:54.874
The so, okay. So then suggestions then coming into that environment. So because other people are going through that right now, they’re starting day one today starting or they’re on day 14 or they’re on day whatever. Uh, was there anything that stood out that was very helpful?
Speaker 2 | 40:08.840
Oh, wow. Um, not. Not particularly because some of the things that I had expected or anticipated where you would get a walk around, at least walk around the office and introduce, you know, hey, this is John. He’s our new IT manager. He’s going to be helping out with the IT. He’s going to be in charge of the systems, things like that. They unfortunately didn’t get that. I was basically instructed to send out emails and introduce myself. and try to schedule regular meetings with the different functional leaders of the different functional areas. Had I had an opportunity to meet each of these folks individually, face-to-face, with somebody acting as an arbiter, at least, to say, Hey, here’s John. He’s the new guy. Sit down and talk for just 10 minutes, 5 minutes, even that. You get that level of comfort, and it makes it easier in order. to start these types of meetings and schedules. That’s the biggest thing that I would recommend because it puts a face to the name, first of all, but then it also increases and helps that level of comfort. Once you get over that initial intimidation of meeting someone for the first time, you can kind of break the ice a little bit.
Speaker 0 | 41:32.829
Yeah, we need to brainstorm some icebreakers then. So…
Speaker 2 | 41:38.826
hi, how are you? What’d you have for dinner last night?
Speaker 0 | 41:42.567
No, I was thinking more along the lines of kind of like how we got connected, right? Like, how do I, like how there’s just some things that I think, I think how to be somewhat funny can be helpful. You know, like even like how we got connected, I was like, Hey, I know you wanted to connect with another, you know, bearded technology guy, you know, so, you know, or it’s like, Hey, I’m the new dude that, um, was, uh, that. they hired to hide in the server room and answer trouble tickets for you but but i decided to come out and become human today so hi my name is john you know my name is john you know what i mean like put some tape on your glasses you know i’m not wearing my glasses right now yeah you’re wearing them all day i should be you know like hey i’m the new nerd in the back um you got any problems with your keyboard or uh but don’t call me if your printer’s messed up okay i don’t do toner and the toner trainer you know i mean like no for real or like go around with like some kind of gift or something high i bring gifts of um from of you know and peace peace whatever offering from the from the most hated you know like no i i don’t speak cling on yeah
Speaker 2 | 42:50.310
how good we have or i do speak or i do speak cling on um like turn them off a little bit that might scare them but the humor part of it you’re absolutely right man like when you’re when you’re funny And you get that hook, you know, it works.
Speaker 1 | 43:06.347
Would you rather be feared or be in fear is the question.
Speaker 0 | 43:09.950
I would rather be feared than in fear. It’s like public speaking, right? It’s one of the most scariest things. I think Seinfeld said, you know, public speaking is the most feared thing more than death. So the person at the funeral giving the eulogy is, is, would rather be in the coffin.
Speaker 2 | 43:25.158
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I can, I can agree with that because I’ve, I’ve always had this type of intimidation and fear of. not even public speaking, but speaking in front of large groups of people. Over the years, I’m not fully over it, but I think I’ve got a little bit better control over the stammering or the stuttering.
Speaker 0 | 43:47.032
I was a terrified kid. I was a terrified kid in high school. Only now can I talk about it. For freshman and sophomore year, I thought I was just going to get locked in a locker. you know who knows what you know who knows what could have happened you know it was just the fear of the unknown and i could never do public speaking or any of this and like it’s kind of weird my kids are like i don’t believe you dad i’m like no it’s seriously it’s true look at me see here’s the pictures they’re like that’s not you yeah yeah yeah yeah um steroids help steroids help i am a proponent of everyone taking anabolic steroids that can get them prescribed to you legally uh anytime i don’t know late 30s on i think that’s very helpful but just a piece of advice is not as i am not your doctor i am i am not for public speaking how’s that no no no just for confidence level oh well maybe i don’t know let’s see This is going quickly off the deep end. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 44:47.363
No,
Speaker 0 | 44:47.563
public speaking. Be always prepared. This was my hack when I had to take, I eventually took a public speaking course because I was so terrified of it. And I don’t even know if the course helped. I just figured tricks of the trade out at the time. And I was like, wait a second. If I ask a question blatantly to the audience and I could call on anyone at random, now all of a sudden The fear is flipped. I flipped the script, right? Now, all of a sudden, the audience is like, oh, man, I hope he doesn’t call on me. And, you know, so you have a question. I am going to ask it randomly anytime throughout this IT presentation today for the definition of an IP address. And I need someone to tell me.
Speaker 1 | 45:30.876
I don’t know.
Speaker 0 | 45:31.677
I’m just, you know,
Speaker 1 | 45:33.077
I’m going to ask at any time today, when’s the last time you’ve changed your password?
Speaker 0 | 45:37.700
And if you are following the company security policy.
Speaker 2 | 45:40.702
Don’t do that. Don’t do that. My God, you’ll have nothing but terrified looks in the audience.
Speaker 0 | 45:45.005
Be ready. Be ready.
Speaker 1 | 45:48.288
I am going to reveal at any moment the last person that clicked on a phishing email.
Speaker 0 | 45:54.293
We know who you are. We know who you are. And no. But if you do as you’re told, and you listen,
Speaker 1 | 46:02.839
and you protect the company,
Speaker 0 | 46:04.120
you protect the company from loss. I just want to let you know, Mr. CEO, I know you’re in the audience. I just want to let you know, I’m doing my job. But if any of these people click on these phishing emails, you could lose $60,000 today, or they could shut us down. It could be a ransomware and we’re out of business. I just want to let you know that I will be calling on any of these 10 people that clicked on the last phishing emails. Their last name is Smith is one of them.
Speaker 2 | 46:27.510
Then you see,
Speaker 0 | 46:27.910
I don’t know.
Speaker 2 | 46:28.471
People all of a sudden just, they’re like,
Speaker 0 | 46:31.352
okay. Yeah. You know what I mean? But All of a sudden you’ve taken the, um, there’s a little bit of a comic edge, but there’s also a little bit of a, we are going to ask some questions today of, uh, do you want to know, uh, who knows how to use Excel? Um, specifically this formula, how to, we’re going to have you come up on stage and we’re going to have you demonstrate how to sum all of this and do a simple formula. Calling at random. This will not be volunteers.
Speaker 2 | 46:59.968
Hunkered up the entire audience.
Speaker 0 | 47:03.449
Nobody. Honestly, it’s kind of fun and it helps. Or one time I had to give a presentation for when I was back working in corporate America. And what was the presentation on? I think it was on some shared tenant platform or something. There was a competition between these different… We all had to come and give a talk. It was down to the last three. We all had to give a talk, right? So I was like, okay, how are we going to make an impact? It was me and… Who was it? Was it me and Brian grow? I’m trying to think Brian grow. I should give you a call out on this one. We had to get up and give a talk. And I was like, all right, he’s a car. We had to like meet the day before. I’m like, all right, what are we going to do? I was like, here’s what we’re going to do. We are going to write off. We are going to expense on $100 bill. We’re going to go into the bank. We are going to get 100 ones. We’re going to put a rubber band. We’re going to put a rumber band. We’re going to fold those in half to make it look even thicker. We’re going to have this big wad of money. And we’re going to say, Hey, who wants to, who wants to win this big lot of money today? And like, all of a sudden, like the audience just came alive, you know, because if you, if you pay attention and we ask these questions at the end of this talk, somebody is going to get this, uh, you know, a lot of money. And it was like, you know, I think it was a, it probably wasn’t, it created, uh, it might’ve created a small wrestling match or fight over when we’ve had to throw that out into the audience. Anyways, that’s, these are the public, these are the public speaking tricks. either throwing money putting people on the spot with a question that you know hardly none of the audience can answer um that of course you know and yeah i don’t know those are my those are my two public speaking tricks and uh yeah i like it i like it it’s it’s a heck of a lot better in the old fashion uh imagine the audience in their underwear i’m like some of them folks don’t think i want to see it no no no you do not And not do that. I’d pause. No, I didn’t even know that was a thing. That was a thing. I think I vaguely remember that, but that is yet. No, no, that’s not going to work for me.
Speaker 2 | 49:08.599
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 49:09.980
Yeah. So, um, but yes, I guess the, the theme of this whole thing is like new to a job can be intimidating. You don’t know anyone. Uh, there’s going to be people that try to big league you. I remember getting, I can clearly remember getting. big league did a job before and like this guy coming in and standing i was talking with a guy and a guy coming in and standing in between me and turning his back to us and talk with the other guy and i was like i was like that was rude there’s gonna be people there’s gonna be arrogant people there’s gonna be complainers there’s gonna be there’s all your types of people And you’ve got to learn to deal with each one appropriately. It can be very, and especially the thing about the IT is that everything that you do affects everybody. So it’s IT affects every single person. So we have to learn how to deal with every type of person. I should, we should put together an end user,
Speaker 2 | 50:00.432
the end user categories types of things.
Speaker 0 | 50:03.733
Yeah. Yeah. What do we call those? Man, what’s the word for it? It’s a, not. prototype or something.
Speaker 2 | 50:12.641
Stereotypes.
Speaker 0 | 50:13.741
Yeah, what was that, what was that, like, blue movie, that blue alien movie that came out recently where, like, the people with the weird ears and stuff out in space or something? What’s wrong with me? Anyways.
Speaker 2 | 50:24.607
Sci-fi guy, but I don’t know which one you’re talking about there.
Speaker 0 | 50:27.329
Yeah, I’m sounding real dumb. I don’t watch TV, so that was the best thing I ever gave up.
Speaker 1 | 50:34.993
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Speaker 0 | 52:54.912
Anywho, you gotta have, yeah, we have to profile people. He’s a… That’s the arrogant sales guy. That’s the whatever. Here’s how you deal with arrogant sales guy. Hey, man, I’ve got a potential referral for you. I’ve got a potential referral for you. How do you deal with negative Nancy? You’ve got to get the cheerleader to talk to the negative Nancy and be like, hey, I don’t know if you knew this, but HR is going to be penalizing anyone that does not embrace the new Google Workspace environment.
Speaker 2 | 53:26.720
I like that. I like that.
Speaker 0 | 53:28.020
You start playing stuff just coming up off the top of my head today. I don’t know where this is coming from. So what is the, um, no one has, no one’s given me a correct answer. No one’s given me an official answer to this yet or a really good answer, but I always ask it. What’s the end game for, um, what’s the end game for you? Any future plans? Is there an end game? Not really.
Speaker 2 | 53:48.926
Not really. Cause I tell everybody like, uh, like folks are looking to plan on retirement. You know, like I’m going to retire. I’m going to go travel the world. I’m going to do X, Y, and Z. Me, I’m old school, man. I figure I’m going to work till I’m dead. I’m not looking to really retire. I want to make sure that I’m comfortable and make sure my family’s taken care of. But otherwise, I’m going to keep going until I can’t go anymore. Because as soon as I stop moving, it gets bad. You know, like I start to go stir crazy after about a day or two of not doing anything. I need to have something to do.
Speaker 0 | 54:24.232
Well, the acceptable answer that is the, probably the most acceptable answer that I have heard actually. So the retirement retirement, what’s that?
Speaker 2 | 54:33.376
Um, I mean, you’re going to go, you’re going to sit on your houseboat or you’re going to travel around, you know, and, and Are you contributing actively to anything? I mean, are you pursuing anything that you want to do outside of, you know, looking at spaces or, you know?
Speaker 0 | 54:48.524
Well, there might have been like, I don’t know, if you said, I want to start a, by the way, did you ever learn how to fix cars? Are you good at fixing cars?
Speaker 2 | 54:55.608
I don’t know if I should answer that because I don’t know if anybody wants to contact. But yeah, I know what I’m doing when it comes to fixing cars.
Speaker 0 | 55:01.551
That’s sweet.
Speaker 1 | 55:02.852
I mean,
Speaker 0 | 55:03.192
maybe it’s like, hey, I want to, you know, I’m going to take all I’m going to save some money. I’m going to open up a nonprofit local, you know, auto mechanics training facility. And we’re going to fix. I don’t know. We’re going to make that. Who knows? I mean, there might, you know, that would have been acceptable, acceptable answer as well. But no, working till I die is fine. I’m going to die in front of a computer screen, Phil. I’m going to die. I’m going to probably if I don’t go blind first without wearing blue locker vests.
Speaker 2 | 55:31.868
I actually imagine myself dropping a hammer on my head or something, you know, instead of staring at a computer screen.
Speaker 0 | 55:39.790
Like,
Speaker 2 | 55:42.471
how the hell did you do that? I hit myself in the head with boom.
Speaker 0 | 55:46.992
I’ve actually had seen that happen, actually. You reminded me of my, I was in Home Depot. You know, Home Depot, they always say, like, be careful. We’ll end with that. I’ll give you the last word, but we’re going to end with this. I was in Home Depot and they say like, you know, don’t let your kids stand up in the carts or anything. And so I have my daughter strapped into the, into the front thing. She was like, I think maybe five years old. No, four. She had to been four at the time. And my son who was very responsible and kid that stayed by my side and wouldn’t run off and like try to climb the, uh, you know, the different racks, like some of my other kids do now. Um, he was like right there by my side. Well, I’m. looking at like some drill bits or something and there’s the hammer so you know me i was my fault or you’ll reaches out grabs a hammer from the heart and hits my head hits my son on the head oh my god like you’re sitting there like he starts crying and i’m like what are you doing and uh anyways she uh he was okay yeah i might have had a small bump on his head but uh i’m looking around did anyone see that no it seems to be okay And yeah, that was it.
Speaker 2 | 56:55.389
Nobody’s ever on that, right?
Speaker 0 | 56:58.331
Anyways, final words of advice to anyone else that is in your similar position, living around the world, in the world of IT. We have a lot of people that are miserable in their positions. And maybe you’ll, I don’t know, make their life better and give us some piece of advice or something that just is probably maybe the most important thing that you’ve learned in this field over the years. Well,
Speaker 2 | 57:20.108
actually, I think it’s two things. The first thing is look. personal touch, talking with people, you know, being able to talk and communicate with them and relate in some way to them. Don’t just treat them as another help desk ticket. You know, you have to learn to actively listen sometimes on what the problem is, because then you can listen between the lines, you know, maybe for some reason they, uh, they don’t want to tell you what the actual issue is, but then we’re about to conversation. They may reveal themselves or say, oh, yeah, well, they actually did delete the file by mistake. I’m like, okay. And reassure them, like, look, you know, everybody makes mistakes.
Speaker 0 | 58:01.495
That’s the piece of advice. Okay, so first of all, part one is, look, tell them, hey, look, this is between you and me and the four walls. Did you smash that computer out of a fit of rage? It’s okay, because I get it. I’ve done it, too. Like, I’m just going to let you know.
Speaker 2 | 58:14.263
Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 58:15.144
Like, did you delete that? Did you send it somewhere you shouldn’t have? Were you trying to, like, not get fired? That’s why you tried to delete all the… the emails and even though i just want to let you know we see those but it’s okay um uh yes um anyways okay so yours might be your information might be safe with me and
Speaker 2 | 58:36.659
i’m look i’m human too anyways keep going uh what was part b uh the second part of it was um was to teach teach them you know how they always say uh you know try to learn something new every day. I like to invert it a little bit and try to teach somebody something. It doesn’t matter what it is. It can be anybody. It can be grandma at the grocery store. It can be someone in your family or just, you know, introduce them to something new that they didn’t know. You know, I’m not saying sit down and talk about, you know, the IP, you know, addressing stack. it empowers them and then makes the world grow a little bit more too.
Speaker 0 | 59:20.103
I can honestly say, I can honestly say that that might be one of the best things I’ve ever heard on this program. No one, I can honestly say that. I think that’s probably the least selfish thing I’ve ever heard. And it’s one of the most important things because a lot of times maybe it might be in a position of arrogance where they think, Oh, this is so, but you actually said teach someone something. I would love somebody. I would. absolutely love it if someone taught me something. that I didn’t know every day. It actually went out of their way to do it without me asking. I would absolutely be very, very thankful for that. That is, that’s amazing.
Speaker 2 | 60:00.267
It’s something like, it’s something that I learned, you know, like what’s that other adage that they always say, you know, give a man a fish only for a day, but teach a man to fish and he could feed his family for a lifetime. Right? Knowledge is power. Like we always talk about and it should be shared. It should be shared, not kept.
Speaker 0 | 60:18.784
John, thank you so much for being on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 2 | 60:23.950
Yeah, thank you, Phil. I had a good time, man. I really appreciate it. It was great connecting with you. It was great talking with you today.
Speaker 0 | 60:29.498
Thank you.
