Ethan Gatzow

What do you do?

I work for TAK Communications, a telecommunications company that covers a wide variety of services, as a Technical Operations Supervisor. As a company we cover a wide variety of services, for many companies such as Charter and Comcast. Some of these include Cable Installation (Television/Internet/Phone) to every day homes, Aerial and Underground construction using Coaxial cable and Fiber Optics, Direct Sales, as well as rewiring businesses, apartment complexes, and homes with coax and ethernet.

I work with several of our offices all over the US to help manage and train personnel in many roles within the company from top to bottom. Teaching new technicians the basics of running cable, installing equipment, understanding signal levels within our systems to make sure everything is working properly. Many of the items are what a lot of us use every day in the home, with your cable boxes, modems, routers, and VOIP telephone equipment. Some other roles include teaching supervisors and managers how to work with the software we use for routing jobs out to the technicians, and being able to handle teams of 15-20 employees throughout the day for maximum efficiency.

More on the computer science side skill sets of things I handle, are creating, understanding, and simplifying all kinds of reports in order for our teams to use in order to improve efficiency and quality out in the field. Some of the commonly known software I deal with regularly for these include Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, while occasionally working with Visual Basic coding to create new functions to work inside of excel. When needed I’ll also help with any general IT items in the office that everyone runs into. Setting up the routers and laptops within the office along with the upkeep required, and running ethernet through the building as needed. At times we also have custom projects dealing with setting up and configuring wireless networks for various projects.

There’s many other roles and items I also take care of, or help with as they come about. One of the enjoyable things with the business is there’s always something new around the corner with the ever-changing technology.

How did you get there?

During high school I focused as much as possible on Computer Science and Math classes, taking Visual Basic, C++, and Java programming classes, as well as Computer Networking I & II, Web Design, Keyboarding, and everything else that was available at the time. We also setup a few teams for a programming competition at MSOE in Milwaukee during our programming classes. Following high school I continued my education at Gateway Technical in Elkhorn, again taking computer programming, web design, and networking classes along with my general education. I received my Associates in Computer Networking from the Tech School after about 2 years before getting into the field for IT work.

I started doing contracting work for various companies, at first simply replacing computer towers, monitors, and other devices for some government buildings. After that, I began doing some commercial wiring for security cameras at a few local business during their remodels, such as Walmart. Once I finished these contract jobs, I decided to find something more consistent and was approached by a company to become a cable technician. After accepting the position, I ended up working as a cable tech for roughly 6 years doing installs, and trouble calls (trouble shooting problems at a location). The shop eventually closed, and afterwards I worked outside of the IT/Communications field for a little while before moving to Minneapolis to take a Supervisor position, where the duties included taking care of the Warehouse, training new technicians, and quality control. One of my roles in the new position included flying out to California to manage a crew, which led into coming back and taking over the Minneapolis office where my team was the best performing in the cities under my leadership, for several months.

Shortly after taking over as Manager for my company in Minneapolis, I made the decision to move back to Whitewater, to open an office for another company out of the Madison/Janesville area. After opening the office, my assignment was to build a team to cover work in the area I started my career. This opened many other opportunities for other areas to work, in which I traveled to many other offices to help train, and build their teams.

Between the three companies I’ve worked for, traveling around the US became a pretty large part of it all. This allowed me to work in over a dozen different states, and learn something new in each area.

What advice do you have for current computer science students?

There’s so many pieces of advice that I only wish were given to me during my education, or in some cases, advice I actually believed. Take any and every opportunity you can, in order to gain experience (internships, jobs, or helping a friend). Paid or unpaid it will be valuable to you at some point within your career. Find out what part of the IT field is most enjoyable to you, and stick with it. Finding an area that is fun will only make your job easier in the long time, and allow you to learn and grow into bigger opportunities. It’s not always about the highest paid job, in the end if you don’t enjoy what you do it will eventually feel like a burden, more than a life long career. Make a set of goals, stay patient, and keep working towards them.

Contact information:

Ethan.gatzow@gmail.com

https://linkedin.com/in/egatzow

Posted January 3, 2019