So as you may be able to gather from the title I have transitioned out of the automotive industry (FINALLY!) and into the IT sector. The transition wasn’t as smooth as one would have hoped but it finally came. I am going to be intentionally vague and leave the name of the company I am working for out of this as well as off my public facing resume. After that disclaimer I have been hired by a non-profit company as a “Help Desk/System Admin” hybrid. Essentially my formal title says Help Desk but my roles and responsibilities is more in line with System Administrator.
I have found that the knowledge base that I have gained from doing independent learning, formal schooling, and the diagnostic mindset that was fostered in automotive have been critical to me being able to thrive in this role. The parts of networking I have struggled with (memorizing ports/protocols and cable ratings) have played little to no role in my current job. As for training this has been great for me, I spent a week over at the main HQ for our IT division shadowing my new co workers and getting my feet wet. Then week two I was on my own as the only IT staff in the region I live in. This means a couple of great things, first off I get my own private office in an administrative building that I get to tailor to my liking. Second being that I am the feet on the ground for all of the locations in my region which is a nice handful (about 38% of the companies locations fall in my region). The last thing is an interesting worker retraining note, apparently my predecessor ran things vastly differently than the way I intend to, that person basically segregated themselves entirely from the main body of the company and made themselves the ONLY source of IT support for this region. I on the other hand do not want to be the only IT support for this region, I would like it to be a group effort, where the entire team works together to support the entire company and if there is a physical requirement for someone to be on premise at a site that is where I take over. I wouldn’t expect a co-worker to to travel an hour plus to do something that I can accomplish in a quarter of the time. It has been a user re-education since most of the people in my region know I am the local person and contact me directly and I have been redirecting to the main IT communications.
Learning how the network I am working on is set up and the different methods we use to manage them has been awesome! I feel like I am soaking it up like a sponge even though I don’t have a ton of experience with a lot of the interfaces. My co-workers have been telling me that they have been pleasantly surprised by my technical acumen and the only reason it exists is because of my flat out obsession with understanding all of the angles of how computers work, communicate, or break. I have had several people shocked at the fact this is my first IT job and I am less than 3 months into the position which feels amazing and almost validating the years of what has felt like unrewarded hard work. At the end of the day I got lucky finding this position, but I also put a ton of work on the back end to make sure once the opportunity revealed itself I could snatch it up and run away with it. Keep pushing towards your dreams, I am on finally on my launch pad just enjoying being in the field and continuing my learning while I work. In down time I am doing research, playing with different things that I have got access to and seeing how to best interact with it.