Career Downloads

Show Notes

Episode Summary:

Guest: Sirinda Glasgow

Key Topics:

– Transitioning back to a familiar environment.

Memorable Quotes:

“I needed to make the decision whether I was going to stay and be part of this opening where a lot of things are changing or make my exit.”

“Whatever career you go into, at a certain point, you become responsible for that business. You’re on call whether you think you’re on call or not.”

Tune in to gain insights from Sirinda’s rich experience and learn how to navigate career changes, embrace new challenges, and find a balance between professional and personal life.

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Transcription

Manuel: Hi. I’m Manny Martinez. Are you looking to level up your career? Then welcome to Career Downloads. Each episode I’m going to hit the refresh button with different guests and dive deep into the journeys of these inspiring professionals. I’ll unpack their educational paths, explore their job histories, and discover the strategies they use to navigate the ever-evolving job landscape. So whether you’re just starting your journey or you’re really looking to make a more strategic move, you’ll be able to gain valuable insights and actionable advice from the diverse minds in the industry. So plug in, download the knowledge, and join me on Career Downloads.

Sirinda: As they got close to opening, coming out of bankruptcy, the folks that came in were going to make a lot of changes. And it’s about a year out from opening. Either I make a decision and they had me on a contract and the contract came up. So I needed to make the decision whether I was going to stay and be part of this opening where a lot of things are changing. It makes me a little nervous, right? And a whole new team. Or is this the time that I make my exit? Because everything’s changing, they don’t necessarily need me at this point, right? Like I’ve delivered all this way. And now if you’re not going to kind of implement what we’ve already done.

Manuel: If you’re not going to utilize me the way that I was brought out to do.

Sirinda: Do I need to stay? And MGM resorts asked me to come back. So I went back.

Manuel: And when the MGM, was it the same person, a different person?

Sirinda: Some, same. There are a lot of people that were there for a long time. And so I knew a lot of the people when I went back, it was kind of like going home.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: And the only bad thing is, is I get back. I’m super happy. System Engineering role. And they started outsourcing. [Laughter] So I got to be a part of like that whole outsource planning. Like what does that look like? What is a RACI? Who’s responsible?

Manuel: So when you say outsourcing, they were looking to outsource all the internal like everything or portions of it? Like what?

Sirinda: It was supposed to, so they had outsourced one portion previously and now they were going to outsource more. More of the like infrastructure pieces, right? So they brought in some different companies, evaluated about five, narrowed it down and then picked one outsource provider. And so once I turned over a lot of my stuff, so I worked a lot with the Linux/Unix guy, he was actually from Ireland. So they’re scattered. They’re a big global company, which the only problem and challenge there is you had all Las Vegas people, if you had to take down the casinos and multiple casinos running on a central system. Now, like over the years, we had come to a point where you want to take advantage of those like players club systems where multiple casinos are all connected to the same back end systems, right? So if you need to take that down, you’re affecting multiple properties. So you’re going to do it on the middle of the week at the slowest possible time for those casinos in the middle of the night. And you have somebody taking down the front end, right? So the Help Desk could coordinate with the users. You’re going to take down those front end of the application, then you’re going to take down that middle tier, then you have your application, your database, and then the storage, the RS/6000. There was an RS/6000 that was part of like what we would be taking down. That was maybe a team of five people that had to coordinate and bring that down and bring it all back up within a very short window. Now, that storage guy might be in California, the AIX person’s in Dallas, the database people are in India, the Linux/UNIX guy is in Ireland, like you’re spread all over. So now, you can just imagine it’s kind of a challenge to take it up and down as fast as we were able to. And that’s the stuff that gets missed when you’re kind of outsourcing that you’re not accounting for, like how well, how efficient some of the people that were here, that were local to Las Vegas, had become very good at being able to do what they did and understand the business. To this day, outsourced companies will sometimes say, well, let’s take that down on the weekend. No, this is Las Vegas. We’re not taking anything down on the weekend, right?

Manuel: And that’s kind of going back to what you said before, right? Most businesses, nine to five, Monday through Friday. So the casinos are very unique in that aspect, right? They’re 24 by seven. You say the slowest time, but they’re still people, right? They’re still people eating or playing the slot machines or their operations are still going. So they don’t just say, hey, we’re going to close the doors for a little bit, come back in the morning.

Sirinda: Which is really cool about if we get there within, if we have enough time to keep going, but to what we do today, to make sure that we’re able to keep things up, that we’re using some new technologies, microservices, that you can just take down a little piece of the application instead of the whole thing. Because you just heard me talk about taking down this whole monolithic architecture, even if you have high availability or disaster recovery built in, if you need to do some kind of maintenance that requires you to take down the application or the

Manuel: Database.

Sirinda: Yeah, it’s painful.

Manuel: All right. So then.

Sirinda: So I went back for the outsourcing. Finished everything I was supposed to do, just like I’ve talked about before, finished my project. And I think they were talking about putting me over the Desktop Engineers, which that was the farthest from anything I had really done. So I guess I could have looked at it as a new challenge. Well, early in my career, I installed terminals and point of sale equipment. But while we were in a few meetings, the Dell Sales Engineer had gotten promoted. And he said, Sindy, I’d like to recommend you for my job. And I was very surprised when he said that. And I said, you know, I don’t think I can do that. I have three kids. I can’t travel. He said, you’re going to cover Nevada and Arizona. Sindy, that’s like a day trip, not even 45 minutes up to Reno.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: Quick trip down to Phoenix and back. You’d be home at night every time. He said, you can do it. And I’m like, huh, let me think about it. And I remember calling my brother and saying, if anything were to happen, that a flight’s delayed, that I get stuck, you know, would you guys be there to help back me up? Because I’m going to need somebody for the kids.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: And they were a little bit older by then. Not old enough to be home alone, though.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: And at the time too, like when they were in middle school is when my kids, I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. And they almost in unison, it was the scariest moment, looked at me and said, not what you do. I was like, I like what I do. They said, you’re on call all the time, mom. So this is right after the Bellagio Easter, three days out. I was on call a lot for a little while. So Dell gave me the opportunity to dial that back. If I had stayed at MGM, even with outsourcing, ultimately, even those executives there on believe me, that’s the one thing I try to impart on my kids. Whatever career you go into, at a certain point, you become responsible for that business. You’re on call whether you think you’re on call or not. Right.

Manuel: It may not say, hey, on call ours, but you’re part of that.

Sirinda: You’ll be called in. Yeah. Look at doctors, they’re on call. There’s lots of comparisons I could do. But even when my on call went away, there were times and like at Qualcomm, well, no, I did have on call there. There were times when I didn’t have a lot of on call, but you would sti...

Show Notes

Paving the Path in IT: From Family Business to Industry Leader with Sirinda “Sindy” Glasgow

Host: Manuel Martinez

Episode Summary:

Key Topics Covered:

– Introduction to Career Downloads and Sirinda Glasgow

– Early Life and Education

– Entry into IT

– Working in the Family Business

– Skills and Training

– Challenges and Gender Dynamics in IT

– Transition to Mirage Resorts

– Career Growth and Mentorship

– Career Decision to Stay or Leave

Actionable Advice:

Connect with Us:

Next Episode:

Transcription

Manuel: Hi. I’m Manny Martinez. Are you looking to level up your career? Then welcome to Career Downloads. Each episode I’m going to hit the refresh button with different guests and dive deep into the journeys of these inspiring professionals. I’ll unpack their educational paths, explore their job histories, and discover the strategies they use to navigate the ever-evolving job landscape. So whether you’re just starting your journey or you’re really looking to make a more strategic move, you’ll be able to gain valuable insights and actionable advice from the diverse minds in the industry. So plug in, download the knowledge, and join me on Career Downloads.

All right. So on today’s episode, I have Sirinda known as Sindy Glasgow. And I’m going to be getting additional info about her and her career. So let me give you a quick introduction about Sindy. So I’ve known her for quite a few years now. And I’m pretty sure that if there’s any type of infrastructure, IT software that has been deployed in Las Vegas, there’s a good chance that Sindy has had her hand in either setting it up or getting in touch with the people that have deployed it. So with that, I’d like to introduce Sindy. So welcome.

Sirinda: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Manuel: And of course, so I’m really excited to really get to know more about you. So I know we’ve talked before in the past about your career, you know, kind of things that you’ve moved up. We have similar paths. I know if this is the second time that we’ve crossed career paths.

Sirinda: Yeah.

Manuel: So I just really, I want to start and kind of go back a little bit and understand. I know that you’re born and raised here in Vegas.

Sirinda: Not born.

Manuel: Oh, not born.

Sirinda: We moved here when I was five.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: So almost.

Manuel: Almost so pretty close.

Sirinda: Yeah.

Manuel: And what made you stay in Vegas all that time?

Sirinda: Well, interesting story. My grandparents retired here and bought a little motel. And we would come visit. And when my grandfather passed away, my mom and dad decided to move down here. So it was the two of them and my brother and myself. And we’ve been here ever since the motel. I did live in the motel for a little bit. So that was kind of interesting, you know, childhood playing in the alley and swimming in the hotel or motel swimming pool. And a lot of the lounge performers in Las Vegas, so old school, stayed at my grandma’s motel because it was a weekly rental. And I guess that was kind of a one off. There weren’t as many weekly rentals at the time.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: Yeah. So kind of interesting. I used to watch them all leave for their shows when I was a little kid.

Manuel: Nice. That’s interesting. Yeah. So obviously, you continued on, you went to school here, graduated from UNLV, correct?

Sirinda: I did not graduate. So that’s interesting. And there are other people in technology that you’re running to that didn’t graduate. It was really hard to find classes for what I was doing at work while I was going to UNLV. So I actually started in IT while I was at UNLV. And I was challenged for finding classes that were relevant to the work I was doing. And little by little, I got busier at work, challenge finding classes. I literally left because I didn’t know what to major in and they weren’t going to let me register until I declared. And I’m like, you don’t have the classes I need for what I want to do. So I didn’t finish.

Manuel: Okay. So interesting. So that when I kind of looked, I must have missed up my timeline. So then you actually started working in IT prior to going to college?

Sirinda: Just around college. So before that, I worked kind of retail jobs. So I didn’t really work in IT until I started college, but right away. And interesting enough, it was very similar. My dad worked for a technology company and then started his own business. So my first 13 years were working for him. Company was called Computer Business Solutions. They called on some of the hotel casinos here in town, lots of small businesses. In fact, really close to where we’re meeting right now, a couple of his customers, I would deliver terminals, cables. And I did that for, like I said, about 13 years. And I started as a runner, like delivering things.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: One day I came back from my college classes and my desk had a big toolbox on it. And it had all the equipment to do cabling. So RS232 cabling, pin crimper, soldering iron, if I needed it, like cable stripper, like everything to do the cable connections. Because back then, for those mid-range systems that were proprietary, you’d order these really long cable lengths, you’d hire someone to run them and you’d end up with like a spool of cable at the end. And then they’d turn it over to the tech team to do the ends. And they would come preconfigured. That’s how they would ship to us. But the customer doesn’t want like 50 extra feet under their desk. [Laughter] This is that big, thick coax type cable.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: So they bought me the toolbox to go clean up cabling everywhere I went. And next thing you know, I’m actually doing the installs in the data center. I’m doing the installs of, you know, customer would convert from one system to the next and I’d show up and I’d do all the cabling.

Manuel: So is that something your dad obviously at the toolbox had shown up? So do they kind of go through and show you, hey, this is how this works?

Sirinda: He showed me quickly how to do that. His company, so he started, when they moved here, he was just delivering Coke for Coca-Cola. And he delivered to a company called NCR, National Cash Register. And they gave him a test. They really liked him. He had delivered for quite a while. And they were looking for people and think about trying to find tech talent when it was so new. So they gave him a test and they hired him as a Programmer. Next thing you know, they made him a Salesman. He’s like million dollar salesman, quite a few years. His manager went to work for a company called MAI Basic Four. My dad followed him. And again, continued to sell very well, not just for NCR, but for Basic Four. And he ended up buying his business from them. They said, how can we promote you? You’re going to need to move to California. He said, let me buy the office, which he did. And around the time I went to work for him, he was selling Basic Four, which was proprietary, like disk platters. I’m really dating myself. [Laughter] So yeah. Well, they started to go out of business. And he had sent me to IBM for RS6000 training. So Basic Four at the end had an AT&T 386 Unix box, not to get super technical, but yeah, it’s what I do. And then IBM’s RS6000, AIX is a Unix-based operating system. I was trained at IBM in Southern California. So then I was installing RS6000s all over the valley. And typically, we’d have point of sale or accounting systems. We had a lot of the title companies here in town, a big company called Las Vegas Auto Parts that was here. That’s their warehouses or their old warehouses close by here.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: Yeah. All types of businesses, some of the nurseries, Star Nursery, which is a local Las Vegas staple. I installed point of sale equipment and it all connected back to an RS6000. So that’s kind of what I did for several years.

Manuel: So then, again, not trying to date it, right, but starting back then, there wasn’t, I can’t imagine that there were many females in that industry. So I mean, you were probably like the one. So what was that experience like as you were coming in and you’re like, Hey, I’m here to kind of, you know, clean up your cab...

Hi my name is Manuel Martinez. Are you looking to level up your career? Then welcome to the Career Downloads podcast. Where each episode I’m going to hit the refresh button with different guests and dive deep in the journeys of these inspiring professionals. I’ll unpack their educational paths, explore their job histories and discover the strategies they used to navigate the ever evolving job landscape. So whether you are just starting your journey or you’re looking to make a more strategic move. You’ll be able to gain valuable insights and actionable advice from the diverse minds in the industry. So plug in, download the knowledge and join me on Career Downloads.