I looked over my first report card and smiled to myself.  ‘A’s across the board.  I was proud of what I’d accomplished after my first quarter at ITT Tech.  I had worked really hard up to this point, studying and retyping notes almost every night after I would get off of work.  While the classes thus far were not exactly what I would call “challenging,” I still gave them 100% of my efforts.

As I was nearing the end of my first year as a technology student, I was made aware of a career fair that was being sponsored by the school.  All students were encouraged to attend.  I was skeptical at first, as I have a natural tendency to underestimate myself, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to make that leap yet.  I have a difficult time stepping out of my proverbial comfort zone.  Nevertheless, I put on a tie for maybe the third time in my life, and headed out the door with a stack of resumes on fancy paper.

The fair was held in a massive meeting hall at a hotel approximately 20 minutes or so from the school.  Upon arriving, I was greeted by a couple of my instructors who were meandering around the various tables and booths.  The air was filled with the mixed voices of various business professionals discussing job opportunities with the hundreds of prospects who were already there.  Unsure of where to go or what to do, I started at a booth at one end of the room and started working my way down the line.

There were quite a few companies who had come for the event.  As I made my way through the rows, I felt myself becoming more and more discouraged.  At every booth, they would tell me a little bit about their company, tell me that they were ideally looking for someone with a couple of years’ experience (i.e. “not me”), and would take my resume and stuff it into a large folder with about about a hundred others.

There were a lot of companies there that I’d never heard of.  There were a few with which I was familiar, and one in particular that sounded exactly like where I wanted to work.  I figured my hopes of getting on at any of these places were dismal at best.

One day, I got a random phone call.  Answering it, I realized it was the company in which I’d been most interested at the fair.  I was stunned, and needless to say, very nervous.

I’ve written about my interview process here before, so I won’t bore you by repeating it all again.  Long story short, I ended up getting a job there as a first-level help desk agent.

As I drove into work on the first day, I was unbelievably nervous.  It would be my first day at a real “big boy” job, and I had no idea what to expect.  I just knew that I didn’t want to blow it.  Walking up the stairs to the reception desk, I told the lady there who I was.  She called up to one of the managers, and he came down to get me.

Up to this point, I’d been studying like a madman – even more than usual.  I reviewed all of the material we had covered in all of my classes, hoping to retain at least some of it.  Within ten minutes of being there, I realized my efforts had been in vain.  I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, nor what any of the people around me were talking about.  What the hell was a loadbalancer?  You want what kind of DNS record?  There is an operating system called Solaris?  How am I supposed to open a ticket for these people if I don’t even know what half of these fields mean?

I’d jumped into the deep end, and my floaties were leaking.

I had been hired to work a 4 pm to midnight shift.  I was terrified to learn that the fellow training me worked a swing shift, and would be leaving at 8:00.  After he departed I tried to find someone else with whom to sit.  All of them were stuck on calls, and didn’t appear to be making themselves available anytime soon.

Rather than sit around and do nothing, I jumped on the company’s intranet website and started poking around, trying to find information relevant to my job.  Since I still had only a vague understanding of what my job was at this point, my success was minimal.

For the first month or so, I went home every night feeling sick to my stomach.  I had concluded that I was completely incompetent, and had no business being there.  Every day, I would come in to find emails from various co-workers explaining to me that I had screwed up something, or requesting a status on something I’d never even heard of.  I hated it.

My hatred was short-lived, though.  As time went on, I began to pick up more and more little things here and there.  I was learning how to manage my tickets, and learning who the various teams within the company were.  I was also starting to become more confident when dealing with clients, as some of the terms they used were beginning to become more familiar to me.

As my skills steadily improved, so did my reputation.  I was starting to overhear people on the morning shift say, “If you have something important, make sure you give it to Mike before you leave, because he’ll make sure it’s taken care of.”

Within a few months, I was offered an opportunity to come to the morning shift, which meant I was able to begin sleeping like a normal person.  As time went on, I started being promoted up through the ranks, learning more and more in each one.

Unfortunately, although things were going well at work, things were going downhill at school.  I found myself continually walking into classes on the first day and being told by the instructor, “This isn’t really my area of expertise, but they needed someone to fill the spot, so I’ll do my best to get through this with you.”  For the exorbitant amount of money they were charging me to be there, I expected much more from them.

As is the experience with most people, I came to realize that I was going to learn far more at work than I would at school.  I began to form good relationships with the higher-ranking engineers at my company.  When I’d get tickets sent up to me that had me completely stumped, rather than just escalate them up to the next tier, I’d ask if they’d be willing to come down and show me what to do.  I found that many of them were more than happy to do so.  Quickly, I learned that these guys were a wealth of knowledge, and were quite eager to share that knowledge with people who wanted to learn.  I would start rolling down to sit by them when I could, attempting to glean whatever I could from them.

One of the engineers in particular was excited by my eagerness to learn, and decided to take me under his wing.  He had a love for the Linux operating system, and could usually be found with his nose in a Linux book of some sort.  Anytime he would learn something new, he would call me down and excitedly demonstrate his acquired skills.  Although I had no idea what he was talking about much of the time, I asked questions, and made an effort to form an understanding of whatever the subject at hand happened to be.

Most of the classes I’d taken at school revolved around the Windows operating system, so Linux was still relatively foreign to me at this point.  The Linux class I’d taken had been taught by a web developer who had “been brought in because they needed someone to fill the spot.”  Anytime something went wrong during the labs, he would tell us to reinstall the operating system and start over.  As you can imagine, few real-world companies will accept wiping their servers as a solution to a problem.

As I sat with the Linux guy more and more, I became increasingly interested in it.  I saw it as a new challenge, and started experimenting on my own.  I had an old computer at my apartment on which I installed Linux.  I would spend hours “breaking” it and finding ways to fix it.  The more I began to understand how everything worked, the more I liked it, and the less I liked Windows.  My job at the time required me to work on Windows, Linux, (and Solaris – now that I knew what it was), I would find myself grumbling more and more anytime I had to work a ticket involving a Windows machine.

Moving up again, my next job required me to work on the complete trio of operating systems again, but it was in a totally different environment.  Rather than working on the help desk, I was actually configuring machines for new customer orders.  As before, I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge required for the job.  I began to learn that we had a lot of clients who wanted very specific, customized stuff.

My boss in this new position, though, was absolutely phenomenal, and treated all of us like gold.  He also did an excellent job during the hiring process, because I was part of a very diverse team.  Each of us had a different interest or set of skills that we brought to the table.  Anytime something would come up, between the six of us, one of us could usually figure it out.

I was hired onto the team at the same time as another guy.  He and I quickly bonded, as we tried to come up to speed with the rest of the team.  I wasn’t sure about him at first, as he was almost my exact opposite.  Aside from loving Windows and greatly disliking Linux, he was very opinionated, and we held completely different views on just about every topic you can think of.  In spite of this, we got along well.  Even though we had different ways of looking at things, I enjoyed talking to him.  It’s no fun having discussions with someone who agrees with you all the time.  I liked hearing his perspective on a lot of things, and found that many of his views made sense.  He was a smart guy, and taught me quite a bit.

I also found that he was willing to trade server installation orders with me, which made me happy.  Frequently, I would give him a Windows order and take one of his Linux ones, and vice-versa.  We started becoming quite good at our operating system of choice, and helped each other out quite a bit.

One week, my employer offered to pay for me to attend a Red Hat Linux certification course, which I successfully completed, earning my RHCSA certificate.  I’m working on my second Linux certification as we speak.

Recently, I was offered a position as the dedicated UNIX/Linux engineer for our number-one client.  While hesitant to take it at first, I eventually accepted.  Last week was actually my first week on the job.  As before, I feel like I’ve been thrown in the deep end with an anvil tied around my ankles, but if history repeats itself, I’ll be up to speed soon enough.

And that, my friends, is how I went from being a customer service manager at the hometown Wal-Mart to being a UNIX engineer for the top client of a prominent global hosting and network corporation.  Looking back, I feel like I’ve come a long way, even though I’ve only hit the very tip of the iceberg with regard to learning.  Who knows what the years ahead hold in store?

My parents-in-law got me this shirt for Christmas. I love it.

Thanks to Julia for suggesting that I write about my experiences that led to my present career.
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