I discussed my first full time experience in Tech with my Cybr 250 class last week.  For a few minutes, I had them on the edge of their seats.  As a Professor (teacher or Sherpa) my goal is to guide, provide a safe environment for self-expression and just maybe inspire them to take action, take active role in there learning pursuits.    Students often comment, that I talk about stuff other professors don't.  To be honest, just about anyone can get really good at computers with enough effort.  My role as a mentor (I like the word -Sherpa better, Sherpa convenes my role and intent better)  is to inspire, reflect, guide and discuss my failures most importantly.   My wins most of the time aren't worth talking about.  But processes are definitely worth talking about.

You can pull my LinkedIn profile to see my work history.  Cutting to the chase, I graduated with a BA in Economics in December 1992.  One of the girls I dated father asked, 'What is he going to do with that?'  I had it mapped out, one of my fraternity brother's fathers was a broker on the Chicago Board of Trade.  At 19, my friend had a brand-new BMW.  I, on the other hand, even being the son of an Airline Capitan drove a 'shitbox.'  Even at 19, it didn't take much thought that there might be riches in the commodity industry.  I was even offered a internship my junior year on CBOT floor.  It paid $63 a day.  (or about $1250 per month)  Even in 1990, that wasn't much.  I was also scared about going to the Big City for the summer.  Actually, one of a very short list of regrets.   When I graduated, I took at part time job at Johnson County Community College.  One of my High School friends worked there all through High School and College.  After about two months, I needed additional income.  I put on my best suit (only suit) and went down to the Kansas City Board of Trade.  I met the VP or Operations for the Exchange.  He offered me a job.  Grain hours are better than banking hours, even for a pit reporter.  They started me upstairs off the floor, in a little room, for keyboard operators.  I was so bad at it, they promoted me.  lol.  I found myself down on the floor in the Wheats Options Pit.  The broker, Matt, had a reputation for making Pit Reports cry.  Matt and I actually got along fairly well.  (Matt taught me one of the most important lessons in my whole life.  "The value of information."  -that will be a story for another time.)  I was in the Pit Reporter role for about 1 year, almost to the day.  The position paid $8 per hour, but the Wheat Options Pit wasn't exactly the Corn Pit at the CBOT (Cira 1995-96 CBOT Corn Pit had 500 traders in it.)  When it was slow, traders would teach me option pricing theory.  Talk about their positions.  From a learning standpoint, think, Sutter's Mill 1848.  Also, Grain hours, at the time, were 9:30AM - 1:15PM CST.  I was done everyday by 2:00PM, which allowed me to go to the Johnson County Library every day to do research about the markets.   I generated some interesting and successful investment ideas during this time.  (Major issue however, lack of Capital.)  

In this industry, I came to two revelations:

In April of 1997, I took a job at Sprint Corp's enterprise internal helpdesk.  It was rough the first year.  Lots of long days.  But here's a formula that I used for success.  It's pretty simple.  It involves work ethic and math, probability theory to be exact.  I didn't have this worked out in advance, but it will (should) work in all walks of life.

I often tell students people in IT can be really cruel if you don't know the basics and should.  Punching them out, just weakens you.  Even if it might be the remedy for the situation.  My first day on the phones, I shadowed someone, we will call him Pete for privacy proposes.  First call, Pete answered, "Let's Ping it (to see if it's down.)"  My response, "Ping, What's that!"  Pete through his hands in the air and proclaimed, "I can't believe the people they hire."

I knew from this interaction, I needed to do things differently.  Here's the requirements for the position and what I did:

a.  I got better faster than my peers, because I was taking more calls on average.  I just saw more.  It's that simple. (Even if the peers could type better, knew more about IT, or were simply smarter than me.  -- I still did better on average.)  Why?  Calls were about 16-19 minutes each.  I took about 4  more calls in that extra hour.  Common Question:  In that hour, did I work for free.  Yep, I was on salary.  I was not required to do it.  I however wanted to succeed, so it was the only, actually cheapest way to level the playing field with my peers.

b.  Now some basic Math.  In a given day, I was required to be on the phone for 7 hours.  (420 minutes.)  Each call, 16 -19 minutes.  We will say 17.5 minutes per call on average.   That's 24 calls per day.  Key measure at a Helpdesk is first time call resolution.  Plain English, did you resolve the customers issue the first time they called in?  Sprint Corp's stat. was 80% required by Analysts.  Well, how does the math work out?  In that extra hour, I took 3.43 more calls.  If I got easy calls, then it padded my statistics.  Sometimes it worked against me, but on average it was a win.

An Update:  Here's the actual stat's from my 1997 performance review:

1997 Helpdesk Stat's for myself   (also at the bottom)

Simple put, because I worked harder, I saw more issues per day than peers.  I got better, faster than peers simply because I saw more issues and got exposed to more technology than others.  

The skills sets included:

Move Quote:  "Higher, Further, Faster -Baby"  - Which Move?


a.  Be Curious.  At Sprint Corp., I found out the Executives were using PDA's.  (about 8 yrs before iPhones. lol)  Something, I often say to students:  "You don't have to be the best in the room, All you have to do is figure out who the best person is and do what they do."  Here's what I did.  I bought PDA's with my own money.  I found out what PDA was Sprint's standard.  I got one of those too.  Then I started writing job-aids on how to do networking via them.  Guess who ended up being the subject matter expert (SME) for that Tech, yep me.

b.  Most 'Rock Stars' in Tech, have test labs at home.  In some cases, five figure test labs.  Most significant others, (wives or husbands) don't usually say anything.  Most of time, the spouse has watched with awe, the more the techy learns, the more they get paid.  With Cloud Computing, I have basically junked my test lab for AWS.  Arthur C. Clarke Quote might be appropriate here.

c.  Industry Cert's:  My first industry certification, Microsoft's Understanding Networking Essentials was taken in 1998.  I failed the first time by a question or two.  A week or so later, took it again.  It took me a year and half or so, to pass all 6 exams for my MCSE.  I have friend from junior high that wanted to teach MCSE classes, so he took and passed all 6 exams in the same day.  Little surreal.  Here's an important lesson,  it doesn't matter if you fall short of others, their expectations.  Everyone started from a different position.  All that matters, where are you now, based on where you have been.

d.  Degrees:  Important.  Yep.  Why?  More importantly than opening HR doors, it shows a couple of things:

i.  You can stick with something over several years to obtain a recognized goal, a degree.

ii. The older you get the more valuable it becomes.  Weird statement.  What happens if any of the following happen:

Couple of key points to sum up this monologue.

vr mzl

PS.  These are my views alone.  :)

PPS.  Maybe the next article, I will discuss what Matt taught me.  Maybe more interesting.