Speaker 0 | 00:10.265
Yes, you know, somebody could come to me because somebody told them being a network engineer is cool and you can make a lot of money or somebody told them working in security is great. So, you know, go work in security. But they’re like, how do I do that? And then that’s where they kind of find me. And so when people come to IT for questions, they’re like… You know, how do I get started? How do I get started in IT? Where are the steps that I take? So, you know, for IT career questions, it’s that fundamental level of, you know, where and what do I do to get started in this field? So that’s, you know, I guess that’s where I come into play and I kind of help people. And I guess really at that, like I said, that fundamental ground level of, you know, I ask. prompt them with questions back like what are you interested in what makes you interested in it in general or what are the different areas of it that excite you etc and we kind of filter through that so a lot of the a lot of the content that you find there is like trying to piece together i guess like these different journeys that people can take to transition their way through this field so From help desk to sysadmin to security to cloud to managers, directors, it’s, you know, let’s figure out what this journey looks like. So, you know, I’ll have not only myself on there kind of helping people, but I love to bring on guests, you know, from…
Speaker 1 | 01:36.944
People are going to be wondering what… We just… Just for two seconds, because people are going to be wondering, because I’m going to just start… We’re going to just do this podcast from… from wherever we start talking. So everyone out there listening, welcome back to Dissecting WIT Nerds. Today, we’re talking with Zach Hill. I’ll let you introduce yourself and everything. We’re kind of starting from the bottom. Typically, we start higher up on the food chain. IT director is dealing with, I don’t know, CEOs and trying to create the value of IT. But we’re starting more off at the bottom here today of, hey, how do I get into IT to begin with and go from there? How do I even choose the… career. And this is going to be helpful very selfishly for my son who keeps asking me every day, dad, how can I start coming and working for you and making money? And I’m like, I don’t know, take a networking course, you know, do this, do that. So this, this is going to be selfishly helpful for me as a father and, and, and I don’t know, directing my children, but you go, man, tell me, tell me what you do and let’s just go from there.
Speaker 0 | 02:35.826
Sure. Sure. Yeah. So yeah, Zach Hill, I started this YouTube channel called IT career questions. Like, seven years ago almost now, just as a way to help people. That’s really the whole reason it exists. I just wanted to help people. I saw an opportunity to share information about the world of information technology. And as I was saying before, there’s a lot of channels out there that existed at the time for programming development, but there wasn’t anything that focused more so on information technology as a whole. And I saw that opportunity and I kind of went with it. It’s kind of morphed into this thing that I never thought it would be ever. What made you think of it?
Speaker 1 | 03:16.010
Was it people asking you like friends and stuff like, hey man, how do I do what you do? Can I like get into technology and make money somehow?
Speaker 0 | 03:22.593
Yeah, it was a lot of people at my work and stuff that would like, hey, my kid wants to, just like you, like my kid wants to work in IT. Like, what would you tell them? And I would get that a lot. I would get a lot of people. I had a lot of friends online and they would kind of do the same thing. And I was like, hey, why don’t I, I was driving of all things. Like, It was just this random thing. I was driving to my friend’s house. It was like a two hour drive. I was like, I’m just going to record this, like this video of like, you know, what to expect, like working in IT. And it was just like this 20 minute video of me like blabbering to the camera while I’m driving. Like, these are like the weird things that you would like can expect working in IT. And like, it kind of like exploded at the time.
Speaker 1 | 04:01.292
I got to know what to expect. Oh, first of all, I have an idea of like what to expect. Like, hey,
Speaker 0 | 04:05.534
my video was like seven years ago. I can’t even remember. Like everything that it had, but it was just like, guys, just like basic fundamental things of like what to expect. Like when you’re trying to get into the field, like just really basic fundamental things, I think, you know, like as far as covering, like, you know, the fundamental knowledge of things that you know, and they would want to know, like covering like A plus things and, you know, like the CompTIA A plus, like that’s a great fundamental start. Um, you know, you don’t need to know everything to work in it and you don’t need to be a programmer and you’re not too old. And, um, you know, like it’s really covering like all these like things that, uh,
Speaker 1 | 04:48.026
can you be too young?
Speaker 0 | 04:49.366
Can you be too young? Never, man. Like I did.
Speaker 1 | 04:51.827
No, that’s like, I did a podcast with these two guys. Actually, it’s like, it’s four kids, but they started an MSP at age 18. like, and have like Cisco certifications, Compia, all that stuff. And I think that that’s Let’s just go down the list. Like, again, you’re me. I’m my son coming to you. Dad, what do I need to do? I want to get into IT. What would you tell him at 14 years old? Where would he start? Like, don’t drop out of school and go do this. What would you tell him? I tell my kid all the time, by the way, if I knew what I knew now, I probably wouldn’t have gone through the years of education that I have gone through. But at least I can write good emails.
Speaker 0 | 05:32.751
I mean, I dropped out of high school when I was 14 and I started learning HTML. So I can’t. I’m not a good example.
Speaker 1 | 05:39.562
You’re perfect for this.
Speaker 0 | 05:42.623
When people ask me that, it’s like, uh, you shouldn’t, maybe you shouldn’t ask me that. Cause I dropped out of high school. No, no, no.
Speaker 1 | 05:50.425
I do want to ask you that. Cause I wish I had dropped out. I wish I had wasted all the time that I wasted, uh, creative writing major, but Colorado school of diversity, creative writing. Now I’m in, I’m in telecom, I guess.
Speaker 0 | 06:04.189
You know, there’s a pros and cons of that, but, Yeah, whatever. It’s, you know, you can’t be driven.
Speaker 1 | 06:09.610
You just can’t be, you can’t drive. Well, you gotta be driven at some point, I guess. I don’t really know why you dropped out. I’m hoping you dropped out because you were driven of some sort. And you said this waste of time.
Speaker 0 | 06:17.914
I mean, I dropped out because I was like depressed. There’s a lot of, a lot of bad things, I guess, at that time. But,
Speaker 1 | 06:24.156
but,
Speaker 0 | 06:24.757
but, but, you know,
Speaker 1 | 06:25.717
like people don’t drop out for those same reasons.
Speaker 0 | 06:28.918
What’s up?
Speaker 1 | 06:29.599
People don’t drop out for those same reasons.
Speaker 0 | 06:31.880
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 06:32.180
People are depressed because I’m here because someone told me I had to be here not because I really…
Speaker 0 | 06:36.522
chose it myself so that’s a whole nother story but yeah but it was like this it was like a blessing in disguise almost because without without whatever happened to me I never would have discovered my passion which is technology like I never would have discovered this path because I was the biggest jock in the world you know like I played football and hockey and extremely active in sports so if I wouldn’t have dropped out like I don’t think I would have been the nerd that I am today you know so uh But yeah, anyway, you asked about like, what would I tell a 14 year old? And I would definitely, I tell everybody, like if they’re just trying to get started in IT, like CompTIA A+, because that has like the fundamentals of freaking everything. I mean, that just lays down so much stuff. And so many people give the CompTIA A+, crap. Like they neglect to see the value in that because so many people are, I think, past the value that that certification offers. But. In reality, like that certification has the fundamentals of just about everything that you would need to know to get started in IT. I mean, you’re covering hardware and software applications, networking. I mean, it covers cloud, virtualization, scripting now. I mean, it’s got everything that you need. And it’s a DoD requirement. So, you know, it’s a certification that actually has a lot of bearing.
Speaker 1 | 08:00.914
Maybe I’ll go do it. You know, we should have salespeople take that. Like technology salespeople should have to take this.
Speaker 0 | 08:06.457
Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of salespeople could have certifications for sure. Yeah, I mean, that’s what I tell people. Like that’s a great certification because like when you start like studying for that certification, you start to learn about some of these, like I said, you learn about networking, you learn about scripting, you learn about cloud, you learn about virtualization. So you start getting familiar with some of these different technologies. From there, you can start to… gain an interest in these different areas that you might be interested in, you know? So, um, it’s just a great way to start learning about or figuring out what you could be interested in, um, in the vast, you know, world of IT because there is so much to learn. Um, but it’s, you know, it’s just like inch thick, mile long certification, of course, but it’s just a great way to kind of break down the doors, man.
Speaker 1 | 08:56.561
Yeah. And may the Lord above help you if you go into security. that one scares me it’s so advanced i’m just saying security in general it’s like the security i feel like there’s this mass migration to i’m getting into security and i just see everything security now everything’s about security yeah there’s definitely a lot more focus on that nowadays for sure it’s uh that would be torture for me the the job that never the job that never i don’t know it’s like the job you can only get fired from
Speaker 0 | 09:31.327
Yeah. It would seem that way,
Speaker 1 | 09:32.628
right? A thankless job that you can only get fired from and you must really be like diehard. If there was the, what’s the most important thing you do right now for IT people? You know, looking to, you know, if you’re looking to grow your career, if you say, if someone asks you like, really, what’s the most important thing you do? Why you exist on the face of this earth?
Speaker 0 | 09:54.466
I mean, I create IT futures. That’s what I say.
Speaker 1 | 09:58.049
Nice.
Speaker 0 | 09:59.658
I help people, man. Like technology is my passion and helping others is my purpose. That’s literally what I say. Like that’s my tagline on my YouTube channel and everything. That’s literally what I stand by.
Speaker 1 | 10:12.363
What if you had an IT guy that’s already gone through all of this? He’s stuck at a, I don’t know, he’s just stuck. Would you say there’s some IT people can get stuck at a company?
Speaker 0 | 10:22.830
Yeah, people get stuck in the help desk. Like you would, I mean, people, yeah, people get stuck all the time for sure. It happens. Like you just, yeah, you get stagnant. You’re not sure what to do. You’re not sure how to evolve. You just, you get comfortable. Um, that. that constantly happens and then you get, you get jaded and you get lots of negative feelings and you’re going to ask me, what’s my advice to these people? Yeah. I think that’s how, yeah, there’s so much more, like there’s so much more advice that I have for that. That’s just outside of technology because I think for people who get those types of feelings, I think it’s more or less, it’s not so much the technology and the job that’s more, I think it’s more personal than, you know, the job. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1 | 11:09.974
Like pick up a hobby, go find something, find a reason to quit your job or find a reason that would make you want to ignore your job for months. I get that every now and then.
Speaker 0 | 11:19.098
Yeah, something like that. You know, I mean, if you’re if you feel if you feel that negative about the job, like you start applying for all of the jobs, right? Like, just get the hell out. Like, there’s so many others, so many opportunities out there. I mean, especially nowadays with all these remote jobs like you’re. you don’t have to feel stagnant and you don’t have to feel stuck. And I know it’s, for many people, what I’ve seen is they feel like they’re not adequate to advance themselves. They feel, and a lot of times it’s because like the jobs that they’re in, you know, their management, their directors, whoever that they’re working with, they don’t give them the opportunity to advance. They don’t give them the opportunity for more responsibility. So a lot of times, like I’m telling these people like, hey, go ask your coworkers, go ask your managers for more responsibility, for more projects to do, from just go, go find stuff to do and keep yourself busy. Like if you want to stay there, that’s what you’re going to have to do. Otherwise, like if you’re just that completely miserable, like, you know, start building labs at home, start studying for certification, start trying to figure out ways that you can advance yourself and educate yourself further. So you can get the heck out and do better for yourself.
Speaker 1 | 12:37.611
Do you think people don’t progress because they’re afraid or they don’t put themselves in situations that are… I had a boss once that said, get comfortable being uncomfortable. And I can remember I started this job when I quit restaurant management and I had to go to this Cisco startup company. And… We were selling like these Cisco internet access devices with dynamic allocation back when T ones were like a big deal and you could still say, dude, I got a T one and that was, you know, like 1.5 megs. And then Comcast came around with their cable and everyone laughed at you. But I remember having to like really push myself through some very, very uncomfortable situations and some very uncomfortable conversations where I could have just walked the other way and ignored the conversation. But the more that I did that, the more kind of it’s as uncomfortable as it is. And as these tongue tied and really poor conversations go wrong, you get better at it. And you start to realize how to have conversations with multiple different types of people through very complex business transactions and various different scenarios that come up. But if you never did that, you would never have the, you’d never have the experience, nor would you never grow or gain that confidence that. you may have not realized even existed or was possible inside of you.
Speaker 0 | 14:05.425
That’s part of the evolution of life, man. Like the evolution of working in tech, especially, you know, because I think so many of us are introverts, you know. And I think so many of us are drawn to technology because for so long, the world of IT is… It’s kind of marketed as this world of people where the workers are introverts, right? But that’s just not the case anymore. We’re not all introverts. A lot of us are, yes. But what I’m trying to say, I guess, is we evolve with it, I guess. Because I guess when I started in this field, I was, I hated talking to people. Like, I just couldn’t do it. I hated it. But as I started putting myself in these uncomfortable situations and in these situations where I just had to talk to people, like, I figured out. what I had to do. I figured out how to talk to them and I figured out, you know, I guess I just figured it out. You know, it was just like this evolution of what I needed to do. And I think a lot of people kind of go through that. And that’s what I’ve seen through these years is like, you just kind of figure out like how you deal with people. And I don’t know if that makes sense to you or not. Like it makes sense to me in my head. Um, but it’s just like,
Speaker 1 | 15:39.838
trick myself and have various different like things that I would tell myself to step out of my own body, so to speak, which was really make it all about them. Really, this is about them. This is about helping them. And when you go out and you realize that it’s, it’s, it’s not about you being afraid. It’s not about you failing or being successful or not. If you really make it like, look, this it’s about this person. I’m just going to do the best that I can to help them or help the company or grow the company or whatever the goal is. I’m going to connect, discover, respond with people and find out what their needs are. And, and As long as I make it about everybody else but myself, and I can’t remember who it was. It might have been like a Brian Tracy or Zig Ziglar back in my listening to motivational speaker days. He said, I think it was Brian Tracy. He said, right. He’s like, imagine on their forehead that it says, like, I’m the most important person in the world or something like that. He’s like, just imagine that that’s who you’re speaking to, you know, the most important person in the world. Treat everyone like they’re the most important person in the world. And that kind of took all the anxiety away. It took all day. Cause now you’re on a mission. You’re on a mission to do something. You’re no longer like, you can’t fail. It’s not really about you. You just have to do it. If that makes sense.
Speaker 0 | 16:46.799
Yeah, no, totally makes sense. Um, you know, one of the things that I always do and still to this day is like, I take every like experience as a, it’s a learning experience. So like there were so many situations that I would go into, or it was uncomfortable or I didn’t want to do it or whatever the case may be. You know, I may walk into a situation where I didn’t do well in the conversation or, you know, said things wrong or, you know, I look back and it’s like, why did I say that? But the point of it was, is like, that was the, that was a learning experience. So I can’t beat myself up over it. And I can’t look back and be like, gosh, I was such an idiot or whatever. It’s like, I have to look back at that and say like, okay, here’s what I did wrong. Like, here’s what I’ve learned from it, you know? And that’s what I’ve kind of done throughout, you know, the years of. working in this field and trying to figure out how to get over these fears of like communicating with people and working through these things. It’s just like, okay, it’s a learning experience. I’ve learned from this, that scenario, you know, I’m not going to let that happen again. And I think a lot of people need to take that time to say like, okay, like I have to give myself a little bit of credit or I have to like, you know, give myself a break. Because so many times, like, people walk into situations or, you know, they say something stupid, right? Like, so many times, especially people just starting out in IT, like, they say something stupid and they kick themselves. And they’re constantly, like, grieving themselves because they said something or did something stupid or, you know, they took down the network, right? And they’re just kicking themselves in the butt constantly. But, like, hey, these are learning mistakes that we all go through. So, like, as long as you treat that as a learning mistake, like, you’re… more than likely not going to do that again. Like you’re going to learn from that. Like that’s the important, that’s the most important thing that you’re going to gain from this. Don’t look at it as a mistake. Look at it as a learning opportunity. Always, first and foremost. Like don’t be like worried about embarrassing yourself because we’re always going to embarrass ourselves. Like that’s just part of humanity. Like it’s going to happen.
Speaker 1 | 18:56.054
Someone’s going to take down Microsoft’s network or something.
Speaker 0 | 18:59.457
Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 | 19:00.578
A little Cisco startup, not even little, it ended up selling for almost, I don’t know, half a billion or something. But I remember talking with the CTO one time and we’re like, hey, you know, whatever happened, what caused that massive nationwide network outage? He’s like, oh, that’s a good question. That was the worst day of my entire career, but also the biggest learning experience of my life. He’s like, I basically sent out some. update to one edge router or something, but it caused like a, you know, like some sort of like, you know, like it sent out, it basically made all the routers like reset across the entire nationwide network. And it was only supposed to be that one, but some, I don’t know, somehow made every single router like reset and took down the entire network. So now you had, I don’t know, 10,000 customers down in like a day. Like a whole day, like something just absolutely ridiculous with thousands of calls and, you know, however many thousands of employees all going, what the hell is going on? Anyways.
Speaker 0 | 20:06.596
Huge mistake, but you definitely, you learn from it for sure.
Speaker 1 | 20:09.778
Couldn’t get much worse than that. You know, that’s pretty bad. We need, maybe we should come up with some like, you know, IT career confidence events. Like here, you’ve never played paintball today. You’re leading the squad. Go. Yeah. I think it’s my, you ever played paintball?
Speaker 0 | 20:27.964
I haven’t. I always wanted to. I hear it hurts kind of bad, but.
Speaker 1 | 20:31.345
Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s part of the learning experience, I guess you could say, right? It’s like, you go into this and you’re like, I heard it hurts. I’ve heard all these metaphors. I’ve heard this is terrible. you’re so nervous, you’re fogging up your mask because you’re breathing so heavy. And I played a lot in college with my friends. And eventually, you get used to it and now it becomes more tactical. So now you’re like, how do we put together various different, whatever, flank this and different things. And you’re no longer, you’re past the nervous stage. So you’re standing more confidently, your mask isn’t fogged up. And then it’s just like… I don’t know, sniper practice almost. It’s just, I don’t know, it’s a weird thing. There’s events like that where you just have to get past the anxiety and the nervousness. And the anxiety and nervousness doesn’t do you any good. All it does is fog up your mask and get you shot.
Speaker 0 | 21:25.987
For sure. That makes sense.
Speaker 1 | 21:29.608
What’s some of the other things that come across? What’s like one of the most common themes that comes across, you know, IT career? What are some of the most common themes that you’ve found lately? Maybe even with COVID, you know, with COVID coming up, like, you know, home networks and stuff, problems coming up, or anything that’s been common lately?
Speaker 0 | 21:47.918
Problems or just… I don’t know,
Speaker 1 | 21:50.199
themes, common themes. Yeah, themes.
Speaker 0 | 21:52.340
I mean, no, it’s like, it’s, I mean, it’s always consistent. I think it’s just like, am I too old? I guess like the most recent thing would be, is it going to be harder to get into IT now that, you know?
Speaker 1 | 22:05.920
That’s a great question.
Speaker 0 | 22:06.820
Now that COVID happened. No, not really. I mean, I don’t, nothing’s really changed.
Speaker 1 | 22:12.922
Too old?
Speaker 0 | 22:14.023
Can you be too old? No. The first like official. Older, better, maybe. Yeah. No, first infrastructure job that I had, the person that actually trained me, it was his first IT job and I was taking over for him and he retired from ComEd and he was like 58 years old. No, 60. 62. 62 years old. And he started working there when he was 60.
Speaker 1 | 22:41.241
You just have to be a little bit smarter than everybody else.
Speaker 0 | 22:44.162
You just know how to Google. Google better than anybody else, you’re fine.
Speaker 1 | 22:48.663
It really is true. My dad…
Speaker 0 | 22:50.864
Especially like, you know, a lot of the entry-level IT jobs are all customer service-based. So, you know, if you have a good rapport with people and you’re able to speak with people well, you have good communication. Like… you’re probably going to be okay. Like, especially with a lot of the, you know, especially again, entry-level jobs, like all that stuff can be trained easily. Like that stuff can be learned. I’m a big advocate. I, one of the things I really want to push a lot more for is apprenticeships with organizations. I would love to get more organizations involved with doing apprenticeships. I think the whole educational system when it comes to it, I think it’s going to be a really good opportunity. It’s just wrong. It’s just, it doesn’t work anymore. It’s not right. The whole college system is wrong. Yes.
Speaker 1 | 23:40.716
Amen. It’s overpriced.
Speaker 0 | 23:44.439
When I look at the way, when I look at IT, it represents more of a trade to me than anything else nowadays. And we should be treating it more like that. And more organizations should be onboarding employees as apprentices. Because of the nature of our businesses, you know, we do things, you know, we’re using the same technologies across the board, but we’re utilizing them in such different ways, right? Like Active Directory, for instance, right? Like we can set that up like 18 different ways from one another. So, you know, let’s just using it as an example, for instance, but let’s onboard our new people into this field as apprentices. and teach them the way that they want to do things in our organizations. Like, let’s really get them hands on into the way that we want things to be done, right? Like, let’s get them, let’s get their hands dirty. Let’s really get them into these technologies right off the bat and show them how we want things done. And there’s so much more to that. I think that, you know, I would love to say, but… Yeah, that’s where I would love to see.
Speaker 1 | 25:04.354
Go to school for business and then get into IT apprenticeship. Go to school for business or something instead, then get into the IT piece if you’re going to do that. So you can understand, so you can at least speak the language of business a little bit. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 0 | 25:17.177
Well, so like, that’s just like another side of it too. It’s just like, you know, when you see like a big complaint that I see from people, this is the biggest complaint that I see from the industry, especially from new people who are trying to get in. If you go and look at any entry-level IT job that’s posted online right now, you’ll see that a majority of them require like two to five years of experience. for an entry-level job, which makes no sense because it’s an entry-level job. How the heck are you supposed to get experience for an entry-level job, right? And a lot of times I have to explain like, well, yeah, like there’s a lot involved with that. You know, like it’s not just experience in IT. Like a lot of companies like just want you to kind of have experience in a business, right? Like there’s so many different policies, procedures, and just knowing and understanding how an organization works. Like that’s experience that… We can’t teach you. You can’t really go through college or some type of training program to understand how a business works, how a business, the day-to-day procedures and policies of an organization works. You unfortunately have to go into a business and experience that just like anybody else would.
Speaker 1 | 26:30.674
I’ve been calling people for years, they should hire Starbucks store managers.
Speaker 0 | 26:34.716
Yeah, well, that’s why I always tell people, hey, while you’re going through college, while you’re going through your certifications, Go work at Starbucks, go work at, you know, Burger King,
Speaker 1 | 26:43.241
even Burger King.
Speaker 0 | 26:44.222
Go get your customer service like experience and go get like that experience because it’s going to be helpful. But again, this is where the apprenticeship stuff comes in handy, because if you go through an apprenticeship like, hey, not only are you going to learn these technical skills that are actually going to be very valuable, you’re going to actually learn how a business works, which is going to be even more valuable because that’s what we really need in these people who are trying to get in the IT field. It’s not just the technical skills. It’s just like, hey. how does an actual business work when it comes to it? Like those are, these are the things that, you know, that we’re looking for in people that, that, that they don’t have, unfortunately. Right.
Speaker 1 | 27:18.938
There’ll be a loophole of something that we can create. Like we don’t call it an internship because there’s all kinds of like laws around that and like paying people or not paying people.
Speaker 0 | 27:27.543
Apprenticeship. That’s an apprentice.
Speaker 1 | 27:29.705
Okay. Apprenticeship.
Speaker 0 | 27:31.206
You can pay them.
Speaker 1 | 27:32.547
You can. Okay. But for like years, I was thinking like, how do I do a summer internship where we get like 20 guys to come in and like.
Speaker 0 | 27:39.692
benefit the company somehow and you know there’s all kinds of like different laws so but if an apprenticeship we can call it i mean so apprenticeship you can pay them in an internship you you’re not required to pay them i believe okay so yeah there’s but yeah apprenticeships um yeah i would love to see that model take
Speaker 1 | 27:58.501
hold and i am seeing a little bit more like what’s the model to it like what is the model is there you Yeah. Is it a like, I mean,
Speaker 0 | 28:06.304
you just take like, take any like a pipe fitter or a mill, right. Or like any of those trades, man. And just like, turn it into it. Like literally like, let’s just take that mold and go with it.
Speaker 1 | 28:17.529
Do they have to have like, what would we say? Like comp T plus or what would they, you know, what would they need? Like anything to get into it? Would it be a temporary apprenticeship? Would it be no?
Speaker 0 | 28:27.913
Yeah. It’s just like they say. So like you take like an electrician for instance, right? Like they go through two years. of an apprenticeship before they’re…
Speaker 1 | 28:36.818
My friend just graduated or he’s just finished his apprenticeship as an electrician.
Speaker 0 | 28:40.660
Yeah, so now he’s a journeyman or whatever, right? Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 28:42.982
yeah, yeah,
Speaker 0 | 28:43.422
exactly. So it’d be like, you know, it could be essentially the same thing. Like you go through two years of an apprenticeship and then from there, like you could kind of, you like, you would get to maybe from that point kind of choose which path you take, you know? Like you can go into like security or networking or system administration or cloud or what have you, you know? But the whole point is like those first two years is just like you’re diving right into like entry level. And, you know, an entry level IT jobs like you get everything thrown your way. You know, like you’re picking up the phone and you got somebody talking to you about a printer issue. You got somebody talking to you. They can’t connect to the Internet. They can’t connect to Microsoft Teams. Like you get everything thrown your way. So, yeah, like to me, it’s like a no brainer, I guess. But
Speaker 1 | 29:32.155
I. One of the things that comes up a lot on the show, which I’m a little shocked, a lot of times I ask even IT directors, CTOs, do you have mentors? It’s a little bit higher now, but I would say 50% of them say, no, I didn’t have a mentor. I think that’s problematic.
Speaker 0 | 29:48.320
I think it’s interesting. They didn’t have a mentor or they don’t have a mentor now?
Speaker 1 | 29:50.901
They did not. They did not. So that kind of goes along the lines with the apprenticeship. Now, that might just be because maybe they were older and around since, you know, tape backups. And there just was no, like they should be the mentor, right? Like maybe younger people, maybe younger people are mentors now. or have mentors?
Speaker 0 | 30:10.530
There’s a lot more mentors and mentorships available now than I’ve ever seen before. And this is even the last couple of years, I’ve seen a lot more opportunity available for that. And that’s something that I always tell people to like find a mentor, find some people that you could talk to. LinkedIn is just, LinkedIn is like the most invaluable reason, like it is gold for so many opportunities, for just job opportunities, for mentorship opportunities. LinkedIn is like everything for IT. I always tell people, find a mentor, no matter what you want to do when it comes to IT. And you can find multiple mentors. So if you’re just starting, you know, you’re just looking to get into IT, find a mentor that’s, you know, can help you at that level. And then when you’re, you know, transitioning to whatever sector it is that you’re looking to get into, find a mentor for that section. And, you know, as it goes on, like… you find different mentors and people that you kind of collaborate with and work with to kind of bounce your questions, ideas, and get to get advice from. Like, I believe that is, that’s crucial. It’s very important because you can’t just simply rely on your own thoughts, feelings, and information that you’ve gathered. There’s so many people out here in the information technology community who are willing to share their advice and experiences with one another. I think that’s one of the greatest things about the IT community as a whole that I’ve experienced and witnessed over the last, you know, gosh, however many years. Like, there’s so many people out here willing to share their advice and experiences with you to help. And LinkedIn has been, like I said, tremendous for that. Mentorships, yes. A plus.
Speaker 1 | 31:59.860
Definitely. I’m just froze. I’m froze for a second. The. From the security standpoint, me, it’s so overwhelming. How do you not allow that to be so overwhelming?
Speaker 0 | 32:21.173
How do I not allow it?
Speaker 1 | 32:21.794
How do we not get overwhelmed by security? And is that even possible?
Speaker 0 | 32:25.896
I mean, I’m very passionate about the security side of things. So I don’t, I mean, well, what overwhelms you about it, I guess? Just like the overarching, like…
Speaker 1 | 32:38.343
All the areas of failure, I guess. Just the multiple layers of failure. So let’s say you’re an IT director. You got maybe a couple guys on your team. You got a software dev guy. You got your help desk guys. I don’t know. Maybe you got a network administrator. And you’re in an almost billion-dollar company. And hey, make sure we don’t get hacked.
Speaker 0 | 33:02.430
Yeah, it just, it goes back to like, you can only do what you can do and you can only do what you’re allowed, you know, allocated to do at the end of the day. Like you’re like, that’s like a very crappy answer, but at the same time, like, but it’s the truth because like as a director, like you’re only limited to, you know, your spend, like, you know, you’re only limited to what you’re able to do based on what, you know, what dollar amount you’re able to spend on either employees or. whatever resources you’re able to obtain.
Speaker 1 | 33:33.419
So let’s say you go and you’re like, guys, like we’re vulnerable to in various different areas. We don’t have the budget for it. You probably don’t want to give us the budget for it because nothing’s happened. And you haven’t thought that, you know, maybe we need the budget for it yet. But this is what I’m losing sleep at night over. And you should be losing sleep over this as well. Where would we. I guess this is a better way. Where are some of the quick hits? What are the quick security hits for IT director? Where should he be focusing? If he’s asking for money for something, what would be some of the quick hits? Firewall aside, network, general.
Speaker 0 | 34:12.938
I mean, to me, it’s end users, man. The end user is always the weakest link.
Speaker 1 | 34:18.242
Training end users?
Speaker 0 | 34:20.484
Something with the end users, because the end user, to me, is always going to be your weakest link. You can spend… a billion dollars on the best firewall. It doesn’t mean anything when your end user is going to willingly open a password. You know what I mean? Like, don’t matter.
Speaker 1 | 34:39.745
So true.
Speaker 0 | 34:40.385
It always falls back to the end user to me. Always. So I guess for me, I always look at it differently because I don’t care about all the money and dollars that you’re going to spend on all these fancy equipment and software and applications. I always look at the end users and the best way to educate and service them. And I don’t think at this point in time there’s a right answer for that. And LinkedIn is another, I think, valuable resource for that because I see so many times like security awareness trainers fighting back and forth on, you know, the proper way to educate end users through, you know, you know, phishing training and whether what’s right or wrong and, you know, etc. I don’t think at this point we know the best way to train our end users, but I do know that we do need to spend time educating them in some fashion.
Speaker 1 | 35:38.618
I’ve tried so hard to educate my father to not talk with Steve from Microsoft. Yeah. I’ve tried so hard. So I have his bank account set up to me. I have his bank account set up to send me notifications if he gets charged anything over $500 from like an out-of-state entity, right? So I got this notification the other day that was like, you know, technology, like, you know, gurus of, you know, Dallas, you know, $500. Like, did you approve this? I’m like, no. And, uh. And then, so I called this bank. I’m like, what’s going on? They’re like, yeah, so technology groups, they first tried to charge $400 and they tried to try $450 and they tried to call it $500. I called my dad. I’m like, hey, dad, what’s going on? How are you doing?
Speaker 0 | 36:17.570
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 | 36:19.111
And there’s a problem with my computer because, you know, so-and-so from whatever called me and told me that, you know, there’s a problem with my computer and I need to pay him to fix it. I’m like, please don’t do that. He’s like, oh, no, no, no. I didn’t. I was like, you’re sure you didn’t? Because I just got the notification. Like, how do I tell him? I’ve told him thousands of times. do not talk with anybody that wants to log into your computer and fix it for you. Is there anything wrong with it? He’s like, not that I can tell. I was like, exactly. Stop doing that. And all they’ll do is like, you know, some sort of weird, you know, I don’t know, clear his cache in charge of like $500 for that. And that’s probably an extreme example of it.
Speaker 0 | 36:58.357
No, it’s probably pretty accurate though. But yeah, I mean, so before I did this YouTube, YouTube thing full time, I was working IT. for a hospital. And I did, I was in charge of our mobile device management and our security awareness training. And that was probably like the funnest job that I did. I love doing that. But it was also like, I had to work with our, our directors and our management on like what was appropriate to send out for our phishing simulations.
Speaker 1 | 37:28.097
Okay.
Speaker 0 | 37:28.837
And it was never, you know, I always like wanted to go a little bit above and beyond. Like, hey, like, We really need to test these guys. We really need to push harder to really simulate an actual email. Right? But they’re like, No, we got to… We have to give them the benefit of the doubt. We just need to ease this in, blah, blah, blah. I just say this because it’s just the constant struggle that I see, even on LinkedIn, of people going back and forth on this still to this day. Do you make it as realistic as possible? Or do you not make it as realistic as possible? Are you supposed to train these users based on very realistic scenarios or not very realistic scenarios?
Speaker 1 | 38:20.380
I don’t know why you want to do very realistic scenarios. I can’t think of any reason why not to.
Speaker 0 | 38:24.323
Because then you create this distrust with your users. And these security awareness trainers go into this back and forth. Oh,
Speaker 1 | 38:33.069
just tell them you’re going to do that. Well, I can tell you that my sister being an RN at a hospital is very paranoid. So whoever their IT guy is, a security guy, has done a great job because she would not even download WhatsApp. I was like… like download WhatsApp so you can talk with, you know, my brother over in Germany or something like what, you know, I sent you like a link or I’m not clicking on this. I’m like, okay. I’m like, tell your IT guy, whoever he is, like, you know, good job. Like, you know, Bravo. I was like, trust me. You can, it’s from me. I’m sending it to you. You can click on it. No, I don’t think so. I’m not going to do that.
Speaker 0 | 39:09.893
I still have people calling my phone. Like after I left, like, Hey, can you check this for me? Like, yeah,
Speaker 1 | 39:16.356
that’s good. So All right. It’s been a pleasure. Last thing, if there was, I don’t know, first of all, tell me, what’s the best way for people to get ahold of you or, and, or view YouTube channel?
Speaker 0 | 39:33.629
So you can find me on the YouTubes, just at IT career questions. And then LinkedIn, I’m at, I am nerdy, I think. That’s nice. On Twitter, I think it’s just at IT career help.
Speaker 1 | 39:47.926
And I’ll put everyone there. There’s a link. There’ll be a link in the episode and on the website as well to to all of that to connect with you. If you had any like, you know, one final message or anything like that to deliver, what would it be?
Speaker 0 | 40:04.266
Start more apprenticeship programs, please.
Speaker 1 | 40:07.986
We can do that. I did. I am going to ask you another question just because I’m curious what and I ask most people this. Well, what was your first computer and how did you get started in this whole thing?
Speaker 0 | 40:19.691
What was my first computer? I couldn’t even tell you what it was. So my my mom and dad, they were young.
Speaker 1 | 40:25.554
So you’re young then?
Speaker 0 | 40:27.254
Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, this was back in like 1989. I remember my parents had like this. It was some Apple computer. But it had like eight inch floppies on it. So whatever Apple was back then.
Speaker 1 | 40:38.461
Yeah. Apple 2C, Apple, it was probably Apple 2C or, you know, 2E or something. It had stacked disk drives. So you had the five and a quarter big square floppy disk, play Oregon trail. It had a mouse that you had no, I remember we had a mouse where like, what do we use this for? Like no one used the mouse. Like there was nothing to click on. There was no windows.
Speaker 0 | 40:59.239
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 40:59.740
Mouse. Like you can move this little. thing around, I guess, or draw with it. Draw. We had like a real basic drawing program where you could like, you know, draw with a pencil.
Speaker 0 | 41:10.362
Yeah. So that was 1989. So I was like four, five years old. Five years old.
Speaker 1 | 41:18.727
And then what?
Speaker 0 | 41:20.248
And then… In like 91, we had like this Toshiba laptop. It was like that thick. You know, it was like three inches thick. I couldn’t tell you what it was.
Speaker 1 | 41:28.313
Dot matrix type screen.
Speaker 0 | 41:30.814
yeah and then we got like uh god it was at some point i remember getting a packard bell something like a 386 and like what it was 90 cd-rom five maybe sure
Speaker 1 | 41:46.285
we had cd-roms we played mist or whatever those games were the was there was there any point where you’re like now i’m gonna get into it i mean because you were kind of like a jock and played football and stuff yeah well yeah so in 1999 um
Speaker 0 | 41:59.626
1999 is when I dropped out of high school or well 1998 I actually dropped out of high school it was like towards the end of 1998 but in 1999 um a friend of mine uh was doing websites and I was just like sitting on the internet doing nothing like what am I going to do with my life and I saw him doing websites and I was like oh that’s cool I want to do that so 1999 I picked up a book called HTML for Dummies and that that is literally like history like that that would be like If my Wikipedia page was existent, like that’s what started it all. HTML for dummies. It’s amazing how good those books are. Yeah. That, I mean, between that and being able to view the source of everybody else’s website, it’s like I was able to learn. You can copy. Yeah. I was able to learn everything, man. And then, uh, from, so from like 1999 until about 2008, all I did was web development. And then, um. From 2005 to 2008, I got involved in doing a lot of search engine optimization work and web development for small business and stuff. And everybody assumed like, oh, you do web development, you know about computers. Can you help us with our computers? I’m like, no, I don’t really know. But I’ll try because I like to help people. And as that kind of progressed, I discovered that I actually like the infrastructure side of things more. And about like 2009 is when I transitioned completely over to infrastructure.
Speaker 1 | 43:30.758
Yeah. The web stuff gets tiring.
Speaker 0 | 43:33.141
Yeah. I couldn’t, I hate looking at the code.
Speaker 1 | 43:37.124
Exhausting. Like a serious question there. Oh, well the, again, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show. You know, please. If you ever got something really, really important that has to come out, please, please let me know so we can have you back on the show.
Speaker 0 | 43:56.495
For sure, man. Thank you. Appreciate it.
