Nice to meet me, part 2

If you haven't read about my pre-career tech history, you can check that post out here if you're interested.

I may have gotten into console gaming at the end of the '80s and started branching out with personal tech in the late '90s, but I didn't get my first paying IT role until 2012. For as much as I knew, I was about to get hit with a firehose of knowledge over the next several years.

As many do, I got my start in a helpdesk role. This one happened to be at a local hospital. I got my first few days of training from a more senior co-worker, met my day shift coworker once before they went on medical leave, and then got tossed into running the shift solo for the next couple of months. As much as it was a struggle, it was an excellent way to learn by immersion. Not only was I learning the hard skills to help keep users working, but it was also invaluable in building a customer service attitude and mindset. For as many users that are pleasant and cooperative, you'll eventually run into some that aren't. They don't want to tell you what the problem is, they don't want to help you figure it out by telling you what they've experienced, they just want you to make it work. These are the users that push your diplomatic abilities to new heights.

So what about those hard tech skills? My time in helpdesk taught me a wide range of things. I got comfortable with Microsoft Office, particularly Outlook 2010. I learned about VNC for remote assistance of users, and RDP for remote management of servers. Even though having a print server was a cool concept at first, I discovered that printers suck way more in an enterprise environment than they do at home. I replaced a lot of phone cords, network cables, keyboards, and toner cartridges. I learned how to pull Excel reports from our mainframe system, and got pretty good about helping users troubleshoot applications that I didn't have credentials for and wouldn't be trained to use.

When you pick things up quickly, don't constantly ask for help on things you've done a dozen times, and show up to work consistently, people notice. After around a year and a half, I began training with a more senior coworker to be a workstation tech to help with replacing hundreds of aging PCs and laptops. Within another six months, I was completely out of the helpdesk. This introduced me to imaging technologies like Acronis, managing user and device objects in Active Directory, and the "joy" of warranty service from hardware vendors. I also learned to configure and replace printers in conjunction with the previously mentioned Microsoft Print servers, install, test, and replace rackmount UPS units and move IT equipment for entire departments from one location to another for various reasons. I shadowed the phone guy and learned the basics of an Avaya phone system.

Fast forward about two more years and there was an opening for a sysadmin role when a coworker left to work elsewhere. I wanted it. I had no solid idea what it entailed outside of the vague job description. I was ready to ask my manager for it. But...

It was offered to me before I got the chance!

I was completely caught off guard and incredibly proud of myself. There's no doubt in my mind that this was accomplished by being curious, teachable, reliable, and willing to take on tasks even if I barely knew where to start. I think some of our users had readjustment fits when they couldn't call the helpdesk and ask for me anymore, and I would occasionally hear "Oh, you do still work here" when I would venture out into the halls, but there was growth and skillz to be had.

One of the first new skills I acquired was racking, cabling, and provisioning bare-metal servers, and I deployed 50+ over a few years. I reviewed and set up a PoC for a thin-client management system that moved into production and created all of the endpoint configurations to go with it. I took over server backup and restore activities which were on tape(!) at the time, and later became the administrator for the disk-based backup system that we transitioned to. I managed Windows updates for user workstations with Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), learned to create GPOs for large-scale configurations, and replaced Server 2008R2 domain controllers with Server 2016 allowing for a forest functional level upgrade. Best change? Removing the 15-minute replication delay between AD sites via ADSI Edit. No more waiting for password resets initiated at one site to replicate to another meant less repeat calls to helpdesk.

My love for automation also started here; we adopted some commercial software that helped with deploying software silently over the network and I spent weeks scraping for silent install parameters and building deployment packages for everything I could. I deployed things that I wasn't supposed to be able to and used scripts mid-deployment to fix things that installers broke. It was also great for non-Microsoft patch management.

I managed antivirus and XDR platforms, and learned enough networking to configure switches for new sites and replacements. I helped with day-to-day Exchange mailbox management and did compliance exports for legal, helped maintain user account lifecycle management, and increased security group usage for streamlined file server permissions.

Although I learned a wide variety of technical skills over the years, my greatest accomplishment was earning a level of trust that few others had. Outside of managers that had been there for a decade or more, I was one of the first to be trusted with a handful of things that were considered too fragile for anyone to touch. I also found that my input was being valued and considered in situations that would have traditionally been top-down decisions, and I enjoyed a level of autonomy in getting things done that was unheard of.

Pro-tip: learn communication skills and be personable. If you work in IT, you work in customer service. You will likely work with internal users, project managers, and/or customer/vendor contacts.

Pro-tip 2: learn the technical things, but relate them to the bigger picture and understand how to support and improve the organization.

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