Show Notes

In this episode of Career Downloads, we’re joined by Oscar Diaz, a seasoned tech professional who takes us through the second half of his career journey. Oscar shares his experiences transitioning from government IT roles to becoming a Technical Account Manager, offering valuable insights for both newcomers and veterans in the tech industry.

Key discussion points include:

Oscar’s story is a testament to the diverse opportunities within the tech world. He emphasizes that it’s never too late to enter the field or pivot your career, as long as you’re passionate and willing to learn. His journey showcases how skills from various IT roles can culminate in positions like Technical Account Management, where understanding both the technical and business sides is crucial.

Whether you’re considering a career in tech, looking to advance in your current IT role, or curious about the day-to-day of a Technical Account Manager, this episode provides practical advice and real-world insights. Oscar’s experiences highlight the interconnectedness of technology across industries and the importance of adaptability in building a successful tech career.

Tune in to hear Oscar’s perspective on the challenges and rewards of working in tech, and gain valuable advice for navigating your own career path in this dynamic field.

Show Notes

In this engaging episode of Career Downloads, host Manuel Martinez sits down with Oscar Diaz, a seasoned tech professional with a unique career path. Oscar’s journey in the world of IT is both inspiring and informative, offering valuable insights for anyone looking to build a successful career in technology.

Episode Highlights:

Throughout the episode, Oscar provides practical advice on seizing opportunities, staying curious, and adapting to new challenges in the ever-evolving tech landscape. Whether you’re just starting your IT career or looking to take it to the next level, this episode of Career Downloads offers valuable insights and inspiration.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from Oscar’s experiences and gain actionable tips for your own career growth in the technology sector!

Show Notes

Career Downloads: Manuel Martinez’s Tech Journey Continues

In this episode of Career Downloads, we dive back into the fascinating career of our host, Manuel Martinez, as he shares the second half of his tech journey. Get ready for an engaging ride through the ups and downs of his professional life, packed with valuable lessons and insider tips!

Key Points:

1. From Server Manager to Value-Added Reseller (VAR)

Highlights:

Career Lessons:

What’s Next:

Stay tuned for future episodes where Manuel will share more insights from his tech career and bring on exciting guests to share their stories!

Show Notes

Ever wondered how a casino cage cashier ends up as an IT professional? Join us for this special episode of Career Downloads where host Manuel Martinez takes the hot seat to share his own tech career journey. From accidentally discovering his passion for IT to navigating the world of certifications and management roles, Manuel’s story is a rollercoaster of determination, continuous learning, and seizing opportunities.

Show Notes:

Key Takeaways:

Featured in this episode: Manuel Martinez – Host of Career Downloads and IT Professional: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelmartinez-it/

Resources mentioned:

Get in touch:

Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review Career Downloads on your favorite podcast platform. Your support helps us bring more inspiring tech career stories to aspiring IT professionals!

#CareerDownloads #TechCareers #ITJourney #CertificationTips #CareerProgression

Transcription

Hi I’m Manuel Martinez and welcome to Career Downloads. For each episode, I hit the refresh button and bring on a different guest to learn more about their background, their job history, and discover any techniques that they’ve used to be able to manage their career. This episode, unfortunately we were in the process of moving studios, so as you can see the background looks a little bit different for this one. So due to scheduling, we weren’t able to bring on a different guest. So you’re going to get to learn a little bit more about me and kind of the journey that I took along my career. So with that, I’ll go ahead and get started. So I was born and raised here in Las Vegas, Nevada. My family, my dad worked construction here for many years. So that’s kind of where I grew up and began a lot of my networking. I ended up going into UNLV with the intentions of being an architect. That was my goal. That was what I had always wanted to do since I was a kid. Once I started getting into it, I really started to learn and discover computers. Understood that it was a growing industry and pivoted from architecture over into management information systems. So in there, I took a bunch of college courses, met a good friend of mine, and we went through and finished and ended up finishing and graduating with a degree in management information systems. And like most naive college students, I thought that it would be just easy. Once I got a degree, I’d start putting in applications and everybody was just going to want to hire me because I have a degree who wouldn’t want to. I quickly discovered that while a degree is nice to have, I needed to have real-world experience. That’s what people were looking for. I didn’t, in the process of attending college, decided to, I didn’t even know that it was possible to try and get internships, again, to try and develop some of that experience. So I went through, graduated, and after not being able to land a job for probably about a good month, I ended up going and working for my dad in his masonry company. So I did that for quite a few months, still putting in applications, word of mouth, just trying to talk to different people to find out and see if there were any openings and see if I could find anybody that would want to hire me. That didn’t pan out. So at some point, the frequency of which I was putting in job applications started to slow down, started talking to my dad and trying to learn the business, thinking that maybe my career path was going to lead me towards going and really taking over the family business. Well, in some of those discussions, one of my best friends that I had known since junior high school, he was working at a, one of the local casinos here, and he reached out to me knowing that, you know, we talked all the time. He knew that I was struggling to get a job. So he actually put me in contact with someone that he had known for a couple of years in the casino that he was working for. And she talked to him, basically told me to come in for an interview as a casino cage cashier. So the person that, you know, when you get a bunch of chips or when you would get your, you know, your slot ticket out of the slot machines, you know, you’d come and cash it in. I was the person counting out the bills for you or if you needed to break a hundred, that was what I was doing. She hired me on and basically said that she would help me. She was pretty good friends with the person that was in charge of the help desk. And what she had said was, if I worked for her, saw that I had a good work ethic, did a good job. What she would do is we could put in for an internal transfer after six months and then be able to go in and move over to the help desk. So she would work to help me get that interview and be able to put in the internal transfer. So I thought, well, I’d be inside air conditioning. All I’d have to do is just stand around and cash out, you know, talk to people. So I figured it’s a lot better than being outside in the 110 degree heat carrying cinder blocks around all day. I had to go through and move forward with that. And I did the cage cashier for actually eight months. So after my six months, true to her words, she went in and put in the help me put in the internal transfer. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a position open, but it only took an additional two months for that opening to happen. I had done my interview, things went well, and eventually I transferred over and started at the help desk for one of the local casinos here in town. So at the help desk, they actually had a number of properties not only here locally, but they had a number outside of Las Vegas as well. So I did help desk. I was on I was doing training there during the day shift. So the actual opening that they had was for the graveyard shift. So I came in, did my training during the day, and then got shipped off to the night shift working midnight to 8am. So I did that. And most of the time what you’re doing is you’re answering phones, right? So help desk for me was just answering phones. People had problems. Hey, I don’t know my password, you’re doing password resets, helping them do basic PC troubleshooting. One of the other things that we had to do also is the office where we were at was actually not on property at a casino, but it was actually right behind it. One of the responsibilities was to do the nightly tape backups. So as part of that process, you’d have to walk over at a certain time, switch over tapes at what used to be the old Stardust casino before it got imploded, and change out the tape backups, and then head on back over to man the phones. So I did that for quite a while. And while it was good to learn and be able to troubleshoot, it’s one thing to troubleshoot when you’ve got something right in front of you and you can test things out, but be able to walk through, walk somebody through the process of fixing their computer without being able to actually see. So this is right around the time there was starting to be some remote management tools, but most of what we were doing, some of those might be like AS 400 terminals where there is no way to remote in. So you just kind of had to walk somebody through that. So that was pretty interesting. I was only there at the help desk for a few months, and then a position became open for what’s called a computer operator, still within kind of the help desk realm. And that was on the day shift. And I quickly jumped on it and said, I’ll take it. It was basically doing a lot of management for the AS 400 systems, really didn’t know anything about the A...

Show Notes

Episode Description:

Show Notes:

Key Takeaways:

Featured Guest: Jose Esparza

Resources Mentioned:

Call-to-Action:

Join our community:

Have a question or topic suggestion? Message us on any of the social platforms

Transcription

Manuel: Welcome everybody. So my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to really understand a little bit more about their background, their job history, any tips and tricks that they may have picked up along the way that they’re willing to share and just understand how they navigated through their career and how they continue to do that now. So for today, I have with me Jose Esparza. So we worked together for a little while. I obviously know a little bit about his background, so we’re going to kind of touch in to that and there’s a couple topics that I really want to make sure to discuss. So with that, thanks for coming Jose.

Jose: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Manuel: Appreciate it.

Jose: It’s been, you know, I’ve known you for a bit and with me being new to Vegas, I enjoyed getting to know you and you showed me a little bit more about the area and really the profession out here, which is tech, IT, given that you’ve been out here for quite some time.

Manuel: Yeah, I mean born and raised, so I would say it’s been a little while.

Jose: Yeah.

Manuel: Yeah, you know the ins and outs.

Jose: Yeah.

Manuel: Well, and a lot of that comes with just networking with other people in the industry and just, you know, kind of growing up. Again, my family was here, my dad, I know, touched on us a little bit. So he is, you know, they did construction. So we all over the valley. So I knew the area were like, Hey, let’s go here. Let’s go do this. And so you start to learn a little bit.

Jose: Yeah, that’s that’s one thing that I’ll eventually do.

Manuel: Cool. So as we get started here, so if you want to take just a couple minutes, right, to just give us a little bit of background on kind of where you grew up, you know, how you kind of, you know, we don’t have to go into super detail, but just a little bit of background how you grew up, then also what got you interested in tech. So if you kind of like, Hey, you know, this is where I grew up. This is what kind of got me interested in tech and then what kind of segue into how eventually you started in IT.

Jose: Okay. Yeah. I actually was born in. Born and raised in Mexico until I was 14 years old. We,my parents, my dad being a musician, working in the music industry moved out here just for some different opportunities that were presented to him. So at some point he thought it would be best to move the family with him and brought us over here.

Manuel: And you guys moved over to where?

Jose: We moved to Southern California, kind of moved around that area a few times, pretty much wherever his work would need him. And it was, you know, it’s difficult moving to a different country, especially when you don’t know the language as much or the culture. Given that I think my siblings and I, particularly, especially me, I always liked video games as an example. I always found the need to understand and really dive into that portion. And eventually at some point when, you know, you get your first computer, I really wanted to know everything there was about it. And that’s, so we were here, we lived in a town called Hesperia, California, which is in the Southern California area. And I knew at that point that I really wanted to do something with computers or tech. And that’s when I, even in high school, I took CCNA classes, and even though I never had a computer or knew anything about switches, I still passed the class. So I still knew some stuff, and then doing like graphic design, coding, anything that, you know, typically your senior year, you have a lot of room for electives. I’m not going to lie to you, four out of my six classes were computer based, just because I had time. I just wanted to learn. And then I already kind of knew I was going to go to, I actually went to DeVry University in Southern California. And I already kind of knew I wanted to get into tech, and I took, I think it was computer information systems, the program that I joined. So it was a lot more development, like coding, just was not necessarily the most fun for me once I got into it. I eventually pivoted to more Sys(tem) Administration and Networking.

Manuel: And what is it about the coding that really didn’t interest you?

Jose: I think coding is, I still use it, you know, because being in IT, you can’t just limit yourself to not want to do something, right? There’s still always case, whether it’s System Administration or Networking, you’re going to need to go through code at some point. So it is, it is a skill set that you need. I just didn’t want to just do coding, just sitting in front of a computer and look at lines of code and that whole process. I just wanted to do more than that. And now that I think about it all, so it’s just, I didn’t want to be sitting down all day. I like to move. I like to talk to people. I like to not be confined to the desk in front of the screen. I want to get my hands on things. And I think that’s why I kind of changed that career path along the way.

Manuel: Nice. And then is that something you did while at DeVry? Was there a different path or you just decided to leave DeVry? What was that process?

Jose: At that point, because schooling is expensive, I picked up a job and I came into a web hosting company. They did a lot of IIS servers, SQL servers, few MySQLs, few UNIX, primarily Windows shop. And I came in working as a technician building the servers, meaning they would buy the parts, processors, fans, hard drives, cases, power supplies, all of that. And my job was to, because it was a very fast growing company, I was probably putting together 15, 20 servers a week. And that meant burn in tests, configuration, all of that. And I started off as a part-time, but eventually moved to full-time, doing half-time as server building and the other half as Help Desk. And that’s when I started getting a little bit more into understanding the Windows servers, databases, and I kind of liked that a lot better. So I switched my path at that point.

Manuel: At that point, okay. And then did you end up finishing at DeVry or did you decide to just, hey, now that you’re working full-time and you seem to have found at least a role or an area that you really seem to enjoy, what did you decide to do?

Jose: I think I probably, it was about my third year in, just because being a DeVry, not necessarily being the cheapest, and ...

Show Notes

Join us as we dive into the tech career journey of Erick Dimalanta, from video game enthusiast to senior systems engineer. Discover how passion, continuous learning, and community involvement can propel your IT career to new heights.

Show Notes:

Key Takeaways:

Featured in this episode:

Resources mentioned:

Join our community on the social platforms:

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share with a friend who’s navigating their tech career!

#TechCareers #ITJourney #CareerGrowth #VMware #NetworkingTips #ContinuousLearning #CareerDownloads #CareerAdvice #TechCareers #SystemEngineering #CareerDevelopment #TechIndustry #PersonalGrowth #SkillAcquisition

Transcription

Manuel: So, welcome everybody to another episode of Career Downloads. Today’s episode, I have Erick Dimalanta with us today, and he’s going to be talking and sharing some of his experiences, kind of his, the way that he’s navigated his career. So really, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you can do me a favor and just go ahead and follow us on all the socials, do all the stuff that you need to do to make sure that you’re notified, really help us grow the channel and then interact with us on the social platforms to help us understand, you know, what type of content that you’re looking for, right, what types of roles, what type of people you want on here, so it’d be really beneficial. So with that, go ahead and plug in and download the knowledge. So thank you, Erick.

Erick: Yeah. No, thank you for having me.

Manuel: No, I appreciate it. And I’m really excited. So I know that we know each other. We’ve never actually worked together. We’ve met together a few times through a user group.

Erick: Yep. Through the VMUG, yeah.

Manuel: Through the VMUG. That’s the topic that I definitely want to get into and just kind of give your thoughts on, you know, those types of groups.

Erick: Yeah.

Manuel: And as we get started, again, nothing too in-depth, but if you can just kind of give me a brief summary of kind of your background, you know, kind of where you grew up and then slowly how you decided, you know, if you were always into tech or what kind of got you into, you know, exploring technology.

Erick: Yeah. Yeah, no. Sure. Happy to do it. So, I mean, I’m not sure how far we want to kind of dial it back, but essentially I’ve always been that kind of video game nerd. I’ve always just, I mean, once I had a controller in my hand, me against my brother playing Street Fighter, anything like that, it was just this is, you know, growing up in that era, this is something that really resonated and stuck with me. So I proceeded to go through life. I lived in a few places. My father was in the military, so we moved around a little bit, lived in Hawaii, California, now here. And when I was here, you know, I started going to high school and during that time, you try to figure out and navigate kind of who you are, what you want to do, and, you know, there’s all those career fairs and things that try to set you up, but you never really know. At that time, still a big nerd, right? Like I still, as the biggest video game nerd, always hung out with like certain groups of people in school in that zone. Well, from that, you know, I finished high school, go a little bit of college route, meet my wife there, but I ended up landing a job at GameStop. And it was just interesting. I was like, I had a buddy who worked there, and he’s like, hey man, you should, you know, where we’re hiring, did you need a job? And prior to that, I was working at a casino at the Mirage as a mini bar technician. And so I left that, I decided to jump into GameStop, I’m like, man, I love video games, this is it. And now I get to sell it, now I get to tell people why they’re wrong, on what video games are good and what’s not. And you know, from just working there, I shot up pretty quick during my tenure there, I was pretty decent at, I guess like just retail sales. And I was promoted into like they had like a key holder and then ultimately a store manager. And it was interesting because, you know, I’d get on forecast calls every week talking about sales, I’d be responsible for hiring, and firing people, and I was a young guy at that time, so I didn’t really know what was going on. So it was all new to me. I’ve moved through different stores. But anyway, while I was there, I was like, you know what, this is, I’m not sure if I like this. You know, when people say their job’s hard, it sucks working like a Black Friday for retail because it’s tough dealing with all the customer service people. Anyway, so I grabbed an A+ book and I was like, I need to change this, I can’t do this. So this was, I don’t even know, maybe circa 2005-ish or so. I grabbed an A+ book, I started studying it. Around the same time, it just so happened that my buddy got a job at Geek Squad and they were hiring. And I consider Geek Squad my first foray into like kind of IT, right? So I went into Geek Squad, I left GameStop, went into Geek Squad, and it was cool, right? Like we, I mean, we basically, people bring their computers in and there’s so many crazy stories that I have from that. [Laughter] But they’ll bring their computers in and they’re like, hey, I need this fixed, right? Like I remember this, not to get off too much on a tangent, but I remember this woman brought in her computer and she’s like, oh, my computer doesn’t work. And I’m like, okay. I was like, yeah, if you bring it in, that’d be great. She’s like, oh, it’s right here. But it was just a monitor. And I was like, oh, no, no, we need the tower. Like and you know, just people that don’t know at the time. And so I’ve just had some interesting interactions there. But what’s funny is from Geek Squad, they expected us to not only troubleshoot and restore machines back up, but they also wanted us to do some sales, right? Because ultimately it’s a retail giant that wants to sell products and services. I was like number one in the district for selling kind of in-home consultation services, which is funny because it brings me back to sales, right? And so I sold, they sent me out to California to tell people what my secret was and I just told them, I just talked to people and just find out what they really need.

Manuel: So there’s no secret sauce, no special pitch?

Erick: No, and I wouldn’t say a special pitch exactly, but it’s more of how can we alleviate you having to set all this up yourself, right? It’s like, hey, listen, we can just do this for you and this is your bill out the door and we’ll handle it all. And for the most part, you know, when you’re targeting a lot of, like, not really targeting, but just you have those that aren’t very computer savvy and they need that kind of help, they rather pay the money, right? And in my life sometimes, if the money can solve it and I could save me like a day or two of like trying to figure things out, then it’s fine. But anyway, while I was there, I met this lawyer and at the time I was trying to marry my wife and this lawyer, he, we started talking, he brought his computer in for repair and we just started chit-chatting, but he actually wanted a side guy like to do IT work with and I was like, yeah, I’m happy to like, you know, do some stuff and we started talking, so I started going over doing a little bit of side work for him here and there, but you might recognize his name. It’s Farhan Naqvi, like Naqvi, like the billboards. So yeah, like I was probably his like second employee. He had like a paralegal and him and his wife and me, we all like had this office. I was like his kind of admin guy. So during the time I was at Geek Squad, I was like partially working there as well.

Manuel: So I’m assuming this is because his services, sorry, his business has grown a lot. I’m assuming this is when he was just kind of starting his name.

Erick: Yep, very beginning. Very beginning. Yeah, he hadn’t even really launched too much yet and yeah, we, you know, it was cool because we kept in touch for a little while, you know, he wanted me to fix his kid’s computer, but anyway. So I was working both jobs at the time and I really wanted to get like real IT, right? Like I was doing like sys admin stuff for him. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just Googling things like I do today at work, but you know, just all that stuff and then working at Geek Squad, it was still retail even though it was like part technical. And so I started looking at other roles and there was a role for one of the major casinos which was Wynn.

Manuel: ...

Show Notes

In this episode of Career Downloads, host Manuel Martinez sits down with John Esposito, a tech enthusiast turned entrepreneur, to explore his fascinating journey from building computers for gaming as a kid to founding a innovative loyalty rewards app. John shares invaluable insights on career pivots, the art of pitching to investors, and the importance of resilience in the face of rejection.

Meet John Esposito: Las Vegas native, tech enthusiast, and co-founder of Loyal Unlimited

Key takeaways for aspiring entrepreneurs and job seekers:

Quotes: “Learn from those noes, that’s all I can say. There’s a reason why people are saying no. There’s a reason why someone is going to say yes. Go through all the noes and then implement the yeses and then you’ll eventually win.” – John Esposito

“Technology is another language in itself, right? So trying to translate that is definitely a skill.” – John Esposito

“Just because someone has money doesn’t mean they’re going to like your idea or just throw money at you, right? You have to find someone that’s going to, I guess, like the idea that you have and continue to go with it and be your mentor and try to make sure that the money that they’re giving you is actually going to get a return on their end in the long run.” – John Esposito

Resources Mentioned:

Connect with John:

Call-to-Action: Don’t forget to subscribe to Career Downloads for more inspiring stories and practical advice on advancing your tech career. If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review and share it with a friend who’s looking to level up their IT skills!

Connect with Us:

#careerdownloads #careeradvice #techstartups #entrepreneurship #jobhunting #techcareers #loyalty #recruiting #techcareers #networkengineering #continuouslearning #careerdevelopment #techindustry #personalgrowth #skillacquisition

Transcription

Manuel: Welcome everybody, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is Career Downloads where I basically hit the refresh button every episode, bring on a different guest to really learn about their background, their career, tips and tricks that they’ve probably learned along the way through their journey and really get a chance to learn from them how they’ve managed their career and hopefully you pick up some useful, actionable advice as part of the conversation. So for today’s episode I have with me John Esposito. So welcome John.

John: Hey everybody. Thanks for having me.

Manuel: Hey, pleasure to have you. So we’ve been talking earlier and you’re kind of curious like why I would want to go through and interview you and once I started looking at your resume, right, I knew a little bit of kind of what you had done, asked you before and once I saw your resume I was like, oh my gosh, there’s so much that I was curious about, so many items that I was like, man I could learn so much me personally. So I think that hopefully other people will get benefit out of this as well. So to kind of start off, can you just give me, again, we don’t have to go into super detail, but just a brief description of kind of where you kind of grew up and.

John: Yeah, born and raised in Las Vegas, went to Bishop Gorman High School, I got three siblings. Actually none of my siblings grew up with a tech family at all. So I kind of had to learn the kind of tech around on my own just by being familiar with computers growing up. I grew up with AIM and AOL back in grade school, absolutely loved coming home from school every single day and trying to figure out how to type 100 words minute after I just got done talking to all my friends for a couple hours a day. But by 12 years old I built my very first computer from scratch and that was like a hands-on learning experience for me, wanted to understand exactly how computers worked, got into video games when I was younger and just kind of snowballed from there really, got into high school and I had a better computer system than all my friends. So it was like one of those things where everybody wanted to come over to my house and try to see what kind of equipment that I was using and why I was always better. My parents didn’t really understand anything until I kind of got addicted to the whole tech field and the computer went out the window because I was spending 10 hours a day on video games. Well, now I had to build another computer at 16 and that’s where I guess the tech spark actually ignited. Went off to college, actually have a journalism degree in media studies and educational technology so I kind of got a minor in teaching people how to do specific things within the technology sector while using technology so it’s kind of a convoluted subject but it actually kind of worked out. With the journalism major, I found out that technology and content rule the web and I didn’t really understand it myself until I realized that Google on how you get ranked to get any single website up on the high algorithms is you must have relevant content. And I started my career right after school with a company called Ultius Incorporated and Ultius.

Manuel: So when you picked up your understanding of, you know, content and journalism, what year was that? Was it while you were in school? Was it after school? Kind of when did you learn that part?

John: It was actually definitely after school. Honestly, I went to college not really understanding exactly where my future was going to bring me. I went to San Diego State. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s a party school, I’m a desert kid myself, grew up in Las Vegas. I wanted to go someplace warm but I knew I wanted to get away from Las Vegas. So I went to the beach, picked a major which I thought kind of interesting, but I kind of want to go into sports journalism, grew up playing baseball, volleyball, and didn’t really knew where I was really going to go. But it wasn’t until after I graduated where I realized that content really rules everything in regards to the web sites. When I graduated in 2011 from school, 2012, I started working for Keller Williams Realty as a lead generator for a realtor. He wanted to be able to post specific things online to generate lead sales for the housing industry. Well, coming out of journalism, I had no idea what I was doing. This realtor, he also wanted a website, hired somebody to come into the office where I was doing these lead generations. I saw him building these websites for this particular player that I was working for. I was really interested in it. We ended up sharing the same office, we started talking back and forth, and the next thing I know, I started working for this guy.

Manuel: Building websites.

John: Building websites for a company called Ultius Corporation. And Ultius is Latin for revenge, that’s what it means. But the person who I was working for, he ended up being a college dropout, didn’t really have a, I guess, direction, but he was extremely tech savvy, he was a coder, a developer, and he built a platform that allows college students to be able to submit their papers towards you can have that paper written for you and then turn it in for a grade. Well, next thing you know, I’m a journalism major, next thing you know, he’s got a website that caters to this kind of service, and next thing you know, I’m writing papers for college students.

Manuel: Making a little extra side money.

John: Little side money, right? So, not only now am I starting to learn how the website content creation works, but I’m also learning how actual content is actually relative in the industry where people will actually pay for it. It’s not just for college students as well, it’s for businesses that want to do blogs, it’s for social media posts, for companies that actually want content out there so they can get recognition for their brand or company or whatever it takes. Yeah, that was really interesting for me to know that I was writing college papers, not knowing exactly what I was doing in this so-called journalism field that I went for for sports journalism and ended up in the realty and housing market.

Manuel: That’s pretty crazy. It’s funny, I’ve had a couple of guests on and each story, I was like, I thought, oh okay, it’s pretty strai...

Show Notes

Description: In this episode of Career Downloads, host Manuel Martinez sits down with Allen Tyson, a seasoned network engineering professional, to discuss his fascinating journey into the tech world. Discover how Allen transitioned from aspiring teacher to tech expert, and learn valuable insights on skill development, career pivots, and the importance of continuous learning in the fast-paced tech industry.

Key Topics:

Quotes: “If you’re not humble to be able to want to improve, if you think you know everything, then when it comes to getting feedback, you don’t want it and you’re certainly not going to go get it.” – Allen Tyson

“Your stress should be the people you work with… If when the drama of the people goes away and you’ve got that work, whatever that work is, and you look at it and you’re like ‘I don’t want to do this,’ then there’s a problem.” – Allen Tyson

Resources Mentioned:

Connect with Allen Tyson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-tyson-9067b45/

Call-to-Action: Love the show? Subscribe, rate, and review Career Downloads on your favorite podcast platform. Don’t forget to share this episode with a friend who’s looking to level up their tech career!

Tags: #CareerDownloads #TechCareers #NetworkEngineering #ContinuousLearning #CareerDevelopment #TechIndustry #PersonalGrowth #SkillAcquisition

Transcription

Manuel: Hi everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads. Where each week and each episode I come and I hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn a little bit more about their career, their journey, tips and tricks that they’ve learned along the way. And today I’m very excited, I have a good friend of mine is Allen Tyson and with that welcome Allen.

Allen: How you doing? Hey good to see you man thanks for having me. I know you talked about it and you know it’s off the ground you got an awesome space here so thank you. I’m looking forward to it.

Manuel: Yeah it’s it took a little bit of work but it’s definitely I think it’s something that will be really beneficial to you know people in our industry and just looking to get into it. Maybe who are curious or if they’re looking to either get into tech which again we’ve talked before tech is very broad.

Allen: Yeah definitely.

Manuel: So having different perspectives from different people that do not only have different backgrounds but also are in different roles. Even if you and me had gone through the same the same path right hey we went to the same places where our experiences are going to be very different right. So I’m very excited and even if people who are already in the industry maybe they pick up some tips for their current role or if they’re looking to make a role a role change into something different.

Allen: Yeah and I think that’s one of the things that we kind of talked about too is you know when we were first getting into tech and just kind of figuring some things out there really wasn’t a platform like this right. I mean there really wasn’t you know a way that you could kind of say okay well let me see what somebody else who’s successful or you know who’s had some level of success like what have they done, but more importantly like what are the things they wish they didn’t do right. So we kind of have that ability now you know to kind of share some of those things and I think just like you and I were talking a little bit you know offline there’s so many more tools and resources that you have today to just scaffold and just be so much more successful so much quicker, but a lot of times people don’t you know, know about those things. pefully, like we can chat we can share some of those things and kind of put people in a better position than we were when we kind of first got started you know.

Manuel: Exactly so let’s start off and just kind of give me again it doesn’t have to be very in depth but just give me a little bit of background of kind of where you grew up and how you kind of slowly started and got interested in tech.

Allen: Yeah, so I was born originally in Ohio and I kind of lived there for a few years but I would say like you know my my hometown where I grew up is in Colorado. I grew up in Aurora, Colorado I’m kind of went to school there you know went to some college there got my certs there and for me tech wasn’t really where I was focused at. So you know my sister you know is one of my heroes right you know my sister Cynthia and she kind of went to school and got her PhD and I wanted to be a teacher. So that’s the direction that I was going I was going to school to be a teacher and I was working for a cable company just to be able to get the school benefits to be able to go to school. I mean and back then I mean I hate to admit it but I didn’t know a lot about printers and I could put paper in and you know I just was not like a tech guy. So I worked you know in customer service to be able to do that to be able to go to school. There was a job that actually paid more money in a data center. Knew absolutely nothing about data center didn’t know anything about computers or any of that. But I knew that if I got the night shift job I could go to school during the day and I talked to the manager there and I said look I don’t know a lot about technology I’m applying for the job because I’m internal if you give me an opportunity I mean I will definitely learn it. I want to be a teacher here’s what some of my goals are and he’s like okay and getting into the data center exposed me to like computers and exposed me to technology and then I was able to find out like what a router was and what a switch was and that just kind of ignited you know like this desire to learn more about tech. And then from there it’s sort of like deviated away from wanting to be a teacher. I started getting more into tech started learning more about it started getting more certifications and figuring some of those things out and then that led me to like navigate to Network Engineering and then being a Senior Network Engineer and then you know being in the Director role for a while and wanting to get back into Engineering and then working for like some major ISPs and you know working here in Vegas. So it ended up kind of being a roundabout way to find something that I was really passionate about but I had no idea because originally I wanted to to be a teacher because that’s something that I loved and sharing things was something I love and I think I kind of got that from my sister too. So yeah it was a very different journey for me when it came to tech I wasn’t one of those people that just grew up and always wanted to know how stuff works I was like way on the opposite.

Manuel: So but did you always have a natural curiosity like just in general? I mean I know not for tech like hey how does this work but just were you a curious person? Did you enjoy challenges? Like what what really kind of sparked your interest in technology once you got exposed?

Allen: Well I mean I always liked learning right I always liked learning new things and you know neuroscience and meta learning. Which are some of the things that we’ve talked about before were always like hobbies because I always found it like fascinating that how do you acquire a new skill and once you acquire that new skill how do you maintain it and then how do you make sure you don’t forget that new skill. Which leads to things like how does space repetition work and how do we forget. So those type of things were always interesting to me and I think I gravitated towards those more on the cognitive side because it was related to teaching. So I was thinking about like if I had students like how would I reach them. How would I make sure I’m part of that information to them so a lot of experimentation and because of that when I got into technology it was some of those same things. Like okay well you know how does this work? I mean when you click Enter here what happens or when routes need to go out to the internet like what do they do? You know how do they operate? And so that curiosity I think was just very important and I think that’s definitely something you have to have no matter what it is you know that that you’re learning. One you need to be curious about it you know. Two you have to be interested but if you’re not interested in it it’s it’s very very hard to acquire the knowledge it’s very very hard to you know maintain it you know. And I don’t want to go off you know like too far on a tangent but you know you have to have some kind of way to keep yourself engaged in whatever it is. You know that you’re studying that you’re trying to learn that you want to become good at if you can’t keep yourself engaged you know in it and understand how you learn then you know ultimately you’ll do yourself a disservice. And you may find out yo...

Show Notes

Description:

Key Topics:

Highlights:

Quotes:

“Have a plan, like you’re not going to get jobs aren’t going to come to you, you got to go to them, promotions aren’t going to come to you, raises aren’t going to come to you, you have to go get it.” – Matthew Wedlow

Resources Mentioned:

Call-to-Action:

Connect with Us:

Join our community on the social platforms:

Tags:

Transcription

Manuel: Welcome everybody, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads where I hit the refresh button every week and bring on a new guest to have them talk about their career, lessons that they’ve learned, any tips and tricks that they’ve learned along the way and today I have with me Matthew Wedlow. So Matthew has a background in networking, he’s co-authored a book, he’s also done a little bit of teaching at some point during his career. So thank you Matthew for coming on.

Matthew: No, thanks Manny, I’m glad to be here.

Manuel: Appreciate it. So get started so what I’ve been kind of asking a couple people is just give me a little bit background on you and kind of where you grew up and are you originally from Vegas?

Matthew: Okay, yeah, yeah. So I’ve lived in Vegas most of my life. I’ve been here since I was a little kid but I was born in Japan, I come from a military family. So family worked overseas, went to Korea, went after Japan and then we came to California and then we came to Vegas. But since then I’ve been here for most of the time. I did leave for a job for a few years in North Carolina and came back. But yeah, that’s the skinny.

Manuel: All right, cool. So and when you started out, did you go to college for IT or did you even go to college at all?

Matthew: Yeah, yeah. So I went to college four times, dropped out twice. [Laughter]

Manuel: and finally decided to complete it.

Matthew: And then at the time, you know, pressure, society, teachers, everyone pushes you to go to school. But even if you don’t know what you want to do or if you don’t have any aims or goals like school, school, school, no matter what. So I went to school and hated it. I think the first degree I picked was just computer science, which I love the computer science part of it. I like the math. I like the tech part. But there’s all this other education that is completely unrelated. You have to do Philosophy, you have to do English, you have to do, you know, all these prereqs. And that that killed it for me. And I just lost motivation and two separate times I dropped out. I did end up finishing eventually, I did go back, I did get a Bachelor’s in IT and even I have Associates on IT as well. But it took me a while to get there. [Laugher]

Manuel: And so when you, you said, you know, you dropped out, did you, what were you doing in between there? So you dropped out and decided to start working or?

Matthew: just working normal jobs like here in Vegas. So working at the casinos, I think I was my longest job at the time was a bus boy where I was at one of the local casinos for like four years, which at the time was that was like four that was a dedicated job. And it was really easy and it paid the money was good enough where I was, you know, at that age was good enough to pay for my toys and living at home, living the good life. And I actually met an IT guy at the casino and funny, you know, as well, one of our mutual friends over the years, he was in IT, started talking to him. And he sent me down the path. And I didn’t even know what IT meant until I started talking to him. And he let me kind of shadow him at work. And I think that’s what really kickstarted it. And that’s when I went back to school, got my got some certs and history from there.

Manuel: Nice. So when you were shadowing him at work, is this during your working hours? Were you doing this outside of?

Matthew: A little bit of both actually?

Manuel: Oh, really?

Matthew: It started just being curious. We had the same the same coworkers. So a bunch of guys like the Engineering guys, the we were the Food and Beverage team, the Food and Beverage guys, and then the IT guys. But I didn’t really know what they did. They go in and out of secret rooms that are unlabeled. [Chuckle] They always had like they had every key to the whole building that that giant like janitor key ring. They always look clean. They dressed up. They were just different. Like what are the what do those guys do? So I just one day his name was Chance talk to Chance. Like, what, what do you guys do? And he’s like, you know what? Like, when are you off? I said, whatever, you know, whatever day it was, he’s like, just come in. Just come in when I’ll be there that day. I’ll let you follow me around. So he just let me follow him around on one of my off days. And he’s shown me like all the MDFs, the data centers, all the stuff. And I don’t understand anything. It’s all over my head, but I’m pretending like, oh, yeah, yeah, I get it.

Manuel: This is easy stuff.

Matthew: I do this stuff all the time. And then he kind of let me know that, “Hey, I’m going to quit. I’m actually quitting this job in like six weeks. So if you want, like I can tell you you’re interested. If you want, I’ll I can’t get you the job, but I can get you an interview So if you want to just shadow me until I quit on your own time, like, you know, you can work your job, but then come over here and work with me.” I was like, hell yeah. [Laughter] Like, again, I didn’t even know what he did. I didn’t understand it. He was, he was, you know, logging into switches and routers and stuff and making configuration changes. And he’s right over my head. But I could, it seemed interesting. And it seemed real versus the stuff I was even in school was like programming, coding for boring apps at the time. It just, it didn’t have the same immediate effect. Like you make some configuration changes and you can see it in the casino, something changed. Those slot machines now all report differently, or they were all, they had that red light at the top. Now that’s gone. I don’t know what he did, but he fixed it. [Laughter] And yeah, so it was like, it was basically an internship unofficially.

Manuel: Okay, nice. And then so you were you able to pick up enough skills during that six weeks for the interview or?

Matthew: I got the interview, but he didn’t hire me.

Manuel: Got it.

Matthew: So yeah, that was my first, my first letdown of many, you know, jumping, I was jumping in too deep. He was right. I didn’t have, I didn’t have the skill. I didn’t, I still didn’t know very much at all. I had started studying for the Net+, the CompTIA, like one of the, you know, the big three, A+, Net+, Security+.

Manuel: Right.

Matthew: And I hadn’t gotten it yet, but interview, I thought it went well, but he’s like, you know, I just, you’re just, he told me right away. Like he didn’t, he didn’t make me wait. He’s like, you just don’t have enough experience. Like, you know, if you can go out and get some experience, we’ll hire you because you already worked for the same company. So they hired some other guy, something happened with that other guy. I don’t know what, I don’t, I don’t think I’ve ever met him, but he ends up quitting about three months later. And that manager said, you know what, let’s take a shot on, on, on Matt. So he gave me a call one day, has he been studying? Did you get that cert? And I was like, yeah. And I had, in that time, I had gotten it at that point. He’s like, if you come in for another interview, we’ll give you another ...

Show Notes

Episode Summary:

Host: Manuel Martinez

Key Topics:

Memorable Quotes:

“Networking is huge. Schools don’t teach the power of it, but it’s often who you know that gets you in the door.”

“I got a call from a recruiter who told me I was grossly underpaid.”

Connect with Us:

Tune in next week for another episode of Career Downloads where we explore more inspiring career journeys and professional growth stories. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review.

Transcription

Manuel: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Career Downloads. I have a very special guest today. So this is Janetta Dunbar, and I’m going to give you a quick introduction on her. So she is a wife, a mother, an athlete, an entrepreneur. She was a TV technical director, and she’s also an Army veteran. Apart from that, she was probably the first one that taught Beyonce how to break the internet. So with that, I have Janetta Dunbar.

Janetta: Hi. Hey, Manny.

Manuel: So I appreciate you.

Janetta: Good to hang with you, man.

Manuel: Yeah, it’s been a while. So we haven’t seen each other in person in a while.

Janetta: Yeah, maybe a year or something.

Manuel: It’s probably, yeah.

Janetta: No, no, December. It was Christmas time.

Manuel: Okay. Yeah. So it’s only been a few months.

Janetta: Yeah.

Manuel: It just feels like longer.

Janetta: Yeah.

Manuel: So I’m very excited to kind of have you on here and dig into your career, your background, skills that you’ve picked up. So I know some of them, but I’m sure they’re just like in the conversation we had probably about a week ago, I learned additional things that I didn’t know. So I’m pretty excited. So to start off, just kind of give me a general idea of kind of where you grew up.

Janetta: Ah, I grew up in Texas. Yes. Fort Worth. So I was about 30 minutes from Dallas.

Manuel: Okay.

Janetta: So it was a medium-sized town, but the area I grew up, everybody kind of knew everybody. And the parents of the kids who went to the high school there, their grandparents went to high school there, that kind of thing, it’s kind of small town-y.

Manuel: Small town-y.

Janetta: Yeah.

Manuel: Got it. And then eventually, obviously, you moved out of there and did keep up with the generational town.

Janetta: Nah, no, no.

Manuel: That’s not for you.

Janetta: Well, you know, in my opinion, right, Texas people are special. They think Texas is everything. And so did I. I grew up that way. And I never thought I would leave, but then my dad got a job. He was a carpenter.

Manuel: Okay.

Janetta: And Texas is a right to work state and up here, there’s union in Vegas. There’s union. So when I was a freshman in college, I was at the University of North Texas. That summer, after my freshman year, my parents decided to move to Vegas. So I transferred to UNLV that summer of my freshman year right before my sophomore year of college. And that’s how we ended up leaving. And it was honestly the first time I had been somewhere other than Texas for an extended period of time. And it opened my eyes. There’s a story I have. Coming up, we had, you know, the counselor’s office in high school and how they have the college catalogs, right? Well, the colleges you can go to. I don’t remember one school that wasn’t in Texas in the counselor’s office. It was that like Texas centric. So when I moved here and saw my parents like ascend rather quickly, I realized that Texas wasn’t, you know, the best place to be for everybody. You know what I’m saying?

Manuel: Yeah. No, that makes sense, right? Because you’re limited to your exposure, right, in that environment.

Janetta: Big time.

Manuel: Wow.

Janetta: Yeah.

Manuel: And that’s curious. I mean, it’s very interesting because I know that Texas is a big state and there’s a lot of colleges, but I would think that, because even when they go here, they teach you or they expose you to UNLV, UNR, right, like our two big universities here in Nevada. But you also get exposure to like, hey, there’s this one in California, there’s Arizona and not like that in Texas.

Janetta: No.

Manuel: It’s very interesting.

Janetta: I don’t ever, a lot of them, my relatives and stuff, they’d never see themselves leaving. They thought my parents were nuts for leaving. [Laughter] It’s crazy, but it’s true. And now I say, I’ll never move back.

Manuel: Never move back.

Janetta: No. It never changes. You know? I go home and I’m kind of sad because I don’t see any kind of, at least in my circles, forward movement and, you know, I’m all about like, what’s next? And they really, you know, the people in my circle. They really don’t have curiosity like that. Right. So, yeah. It just makes me want to leave. [Laughter]

Manuel: So when you transferred over here to UNLV, what did you go to school for? Like, what was your, what was your idea of like, your career path?

Janetta: So I was a civil engineering major at UNT, was the name of the school, but they didn’t have civil engineering at the time at UNLV. The closest thing they had was like architecture related engineering. So I just went into that thinking, that’s what I wanted to do.

Manuel: Okay.

Janetta: Yeah. Just in general, I thought that’s what I wanted. But then I took a pre-cal. I didn’t take calculus in high school and I barely passed it. I got a D on a scale. So I really got a, probably a F, but the teacher was nice. He graded on a curve and I passed, but I was like, because I would have to go to calculus three and I was like, no, that’s not happening. So I bounced around. I was a marketing major. I like sports. So I was a sports injury major. So like personal trainer type person that like gets your ankles wrapped up before games and stuff like that. I thought maybe that’s interesting. Then I realized you got to learn a lot about bones and there’s a lot of bones in your body. So I was like, nah, that ain’t for me. [Laughter] So eventually I got to my junior year and I had one core class left that I had avoided. And I had all these different, you know, cores and different like ancillary classes that you can kind of fill in, you know, make it work. And then I was running out of time and the last class, that core class that I had to take was public speaking and I avoided it like the plague.

Manuel: Really?

Janetta: Yes. I loved it. I took it and I loved it. The next semester I became a communications major and that’s how I ended up in mass media. So I was only a communications major the last year and a half of my degree. I ended up with like 160 credits and only needed 120 to graduate because I changed my [Laughter] major so many times. So yeah, that’s how I ended up with my communication degree.

Manuel: Interesting.

Janetta: Yeah.

Manuel: So the one thing that you thought like, hey, I want nothing to do with this.

Janetta: Yep.

Manuel: Interesting.

Janetta: Life be like that though.

Manuel: Yeah. So then you got your degree in communications and then what did you think was going to happen after that? Like what did you envision yourself going into the career, obviously into the communications field?

Janetta: Right.

Manuel: Doing what?

Janetta: A television production in particular, like the behind the scenes. In school we had projects where we would very similar to here where you set up cameras. There’s talent. I didn’t want to be the talent. There were some people in that major who wanted to be journalists and interview people like you. And then there were people like me who don’t want to be in front of the camera. I want to be behind the camera, very technical editing, things like that, putting stories together and kind of making them flow. So that’s what I thought I wanted to do. But like a lot of things I think when you’re young, you think ideally things are going to go a certain way and they don’t, right? So I ultimately ended up at ESPN Zone. You remember at New York, New York, there was ESPN Zone and it was a restaurant. But then they had all these TVs everywhere, like 150 or something. And there was something called Production Assistance there. And our job was to program all the TVs. So depending on what event was happening that day, the main screens, the big, huge screens had particular sports on them. And then the littler screens had less popular sports like lacrosse or something like that. So you had to kind of decide based on your own knowledge like what sports or what events were going to be the most popular that day. So like this NFL playoffs or NBA playoffs, th...