This blog is an attempt to bring myself in the Web 2.x world. I intend to keep this site professional and educational, clearly documenting my career and thoughts. I’ve turned off posting since I have never gotten constructive criticism once via blogging.
Professionally and personally speaking not really too much to write home about, at least nothing that will wow you. I was pretty content working for Sears for most of my youth just selling appliances, but after the K-Mart… I’ll stay positive and just say, it’s wasn’t the job for me any longer.
From there, I decided I needed a “real” career, I figured anything had to be better than retail. I had heard the Comptia A+ certification was a great way to started in IT when I was in high school, so I studied for that and grabbed a job at the Geek Squad fixing computers (they used to be full service in store). I spent a year and a half there as an AM tech, learned a lot about working on computers and general home networking. I left when they outsourced all the real IT work.
After all that, I went ahead and picked up a tier 1 help desk job at Bank of the West. It was one very strict departmentalized place! They didn’t capitalize on their talent as well as I would have liked, but otherwise good people and a great opportunity to finally see how IT is deployed in a professional enterprise environment via ITIL and MOF. I would certainly work there again, no regrets.
But almost out of no-where I got a phone call and offered an interview for a small but highly profitable division of the Bank. I was offered an opportunity to get a great vantage of how the process of application development and deployment intersects the varying business needs. A lot of unpaid overtime combined with the fact I wasn’t really getting enough hands on technical time or training so I left.
I snagged a job at a service desk for an IT managed services company in San Francisco, so far I have had more technical challenges that I did with my other jobs all at once. I support mainly small/medium businesses.
So home, small business, medium and the enterprise, some real good exposure.
As far as education, I have never been too much of a fan of the school systems. I got my AA degree and even attended Cal-State Hayward (since renamed Cal-State East Bay) and in the middle of studying outdated technologies I realized it was a bit of a waste of time and I needed to work on my career more, bills were piling up. Leaving was solidified when I found myself studying a book on Assembly programming for the 8086 processor written in 1986. (yes, 86!) I spoke with the instructor there and when he told me, “The computer science department here is a joke; you won’t get a job with any of this”
I think I made the right call there, I might go back after I pick up a few certifications and Danielle gets done with school.
