Journey From Mexico to IT Management with Jose Esparza | Episode 007

Episode Description:
In this captivating episode of Career Downloads, host Manuel Martinez sits down with Jose Esparza, an IT professional who shares his inspiring journey from Mexico to the United States and his rise through the tech industry. Discover how Jose’s passion for video games led him to a successful career in IT, and learn valuable insights for your own professional growth.

Show Notes:

• Introduction to Jose Esparza and his background
• Jose’s move from Mexico to Southern California at age 14
• How video games sparked Jose’s interest in technology
• Early experiences with CCNA classes and computer electives in high school
• Attending DeVry University and pivoting from coding to system administration
• First IT job: Building servers from scratch
• Transitioning to Help Desk roles and developing critical thinking skills
• Moving up to Level 2 support and gaining technical depth
• Challenges and rewards of working for a managed service provider
• Transitioning to enterprise-level IT and managing thousands of users
• The importance of communication skills in IT
• Learning to share knowledge and help others grow
• Balancing work-life and valuing time in one’s career
• Overcoming shyness and cultural barriers in the workplace
• The power of positivity and helpfulness in career growth

Key Takeaways:

• Embrace challenges and continuous learning to advance your IT career
• Develop strong communication skills to complement your technical expertise
• Share knowledge with colleagues to foster a collaborative work environment
• Maintain a positive attitude and helpful demeanor to open new opportunities
• Balance work responsibilities with personal life for long-term career satisfaction

Featured Guest: Jose Esparza
Connect with Jose on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esparzajose/

Resources Mentioned:
CCNA certification
DeVry University

Call-to-Action:
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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 me not being able to live at home. So I was always renting rooms, working to kind of sustain myself. At that point I had to drop out just because it just wasn’t feasible for me to be able to do everything at once. So it is unfortunately one of my, well, it’s a regret not being able to complete school, but that’s, you know, throughout my career I just work. And I think that’s, I’m not saying it’s the best route because definitely going to school opens a lot of doors and really it’s a very nice, good accomplishment to have. But I kind of dove into the working experience more at that time. So I’ve been working in IT since I’ve been 21, 22 at the latest, probably a little bit earlier than that, so always, always working.

Manuel: That’s cool. And how long did you end up in that role? And I’m surprised that you said that you were building everything from scratch because most companies, at least in my experience, they’re usually buying off the shelf like a Dell and HP, Lenovo, like they’re buying something.

Jose: And this was, so this was probably in like 2004, 2005, so a lot of, well, Dell and HPs are there. If you’re a small startup company and it’s cheaper for you to build your own, that’s what we did. Because it was a lot cheaper, it was a lot, you could just get some really quick, put them up. It wasn’t more, it wasn’t the quality or the stability, we were just trying to put out as many as we could to fulfill the demand, meeting it with the supply. I probably did that for a good six months before they just moved me to Help Desk because truly that was where I was excelling a lot more, doing live chats, talking to customers on the phone, doing tickets, all of that, like being able to just immerse myself into that nonstop, doing it for extended periods of time. I really found no problem with it. I liked that a lot more.

Manuel: And so that was a traditional Help Desk role where you’re just answering phones, troubleshooting with end users or?

Jose: Yeah, user calls, they have a problem with their web services, website database, they have a question about this, that building anything.

Manuel: So these are external users, external customers? This is not internal?

Jose: This would be external customers that are paying for your services, right?

Manuel: Okay.

Jose: Like any company that you go to and they would be in live chat as well and tickets. So typically you had like a quota of tickets that you had to hit a day, while you’re doing live chats, while you’re doing phones, typically means one phone call, few live chats going at the same time and doing your tickets at the same time. And that I liked more because you’re not, you’re not sitting still, you’re just, you just need to figure it out and move on to the next and there’s no room for breaks or anything like that.

Manuel: Right. Kept you busy, made the day you go by.

Jose: Yeah.

Manuel: But also, were you able with that amount of kind of influx of requests that are coming in? Do you think that that helped accelerate how much and how quickly you were learning?

Jose: Yes and no. I wasn’t able to get in depth with a lot of the issues at that time. I was more, I think at that time, because you know, you’re kind of drowning in a lot of work. It helped develop some of the critical thinking just because you can’t dwell on things too long, you have to. Hey, what do I do for this situation? You already have in your head like the first three, four things and there’s, you just have to do them really fast and move on to the next few things. You run into an issue. Maybe you ask one of the higher level support members for help, they’ll help you a little bit. Hey, you put that in your bank, your memory bank and then you start using it. There was not much time for downtime. I probably did that for a good maybe six months to a year, yeah, six months to a year somewhere along the line and then they moved me more towards like level two support, which then I was a little bit more room to breathe dealing with some of the more difficult tickets, more difficult problems and that’s when you can start maybe creating some of that technical depth that I wanted.

Manuel: Ok. That technical depth is that you said you wanted it, so were you doing a lot of that on your own learning? Did you have the ability to do that there on the job? How did you continue to grow your skill set and your knowledge?

Jose: It was a little bit of both at work, given that you still have to output, right? You’re only able to have so much downtime to be able to learn or to spend on developing some of those skill sets. Some of it had to be done on my personal time, but like anything, especially when you’re starting up, developing your own lab, your own test environments is super beneficial. That meant that if I’m at home with my personal time, maybe creating my own websites, web services, just really trying to learn from that side of the house, like the end user, the customer, what they’re seeing, what you’re experiencing and then slowly build up that skill.

Manuel: Did they give you the ability or the opportunity to build on their platform, basically your own, as an external user, because I know some businesses want you to kind of understand and say, hey, you can’t build 50 or 100 of these, but maybe build one or two to test?

Jose: We did have our own dev environments that they provide you, but because I didn’t want them to know everything that I was in learning or getting into, I always had like third party accounts under maybe different name or maybe with a different provider, just so that I’m able to try a few things. At least for my side, not only do I want to know what I’m providing, but what other people are providing their customers, that to me is very important. I don’t know what I don’t know, so I want to make sure that I’m covering all the bases, because if you ask me, well, how do I do this or why can’t I do this in your system? I need to know what they’ve done in other services, right? I can’t just say, well, we don’t do that here. No, it’s, hey, maybe there’s some wiggle room or maybe, hey, you did it a specific way with another service provider, here it’s going to be a little bit different, but this is how you might migrate something.

Manuel: So then how long were you in that role and then what made you decide to start either looking to move on to the next?

Jose: At some point, the company got to a size where they started to slightly outsource some of the roles, just because it was growing to a very large size and living in California, the cost of wages is a lot for a company, especially when they’re starting up. And then really I had learned most of what I wanted to learn so that I could move on to something that would not only be a little more aligned with what I wanted to do in the future, but of course, the pay as well. I’m always trying to find that good balance of I need to get paid for the skillsets that I now have, but also find the next opportunity that’s going to help me grow, because it’s not just about what can I provide to the company, but what can the company provide for me? And if at some point they get to a place where maybe I’m not learning, then maybe that’s where I may have to go to the next place, just so I can continue learning and improving so that I don’t get stale, because technology doesn’t stop, it keeps moving. And if you don’t keep moving, you’ll get left behind because there will always be somebody that has not stopped learning.

Manuel: And you mentioned it keeps moving, but that doesn’t also necessarily mean that every company will keep moving with it. I’ve run into that situation where I’ve had people that will stay, not a long time, but maybe a little bit longer, like you said, technology is moving, their company is not necessarily moving with it. And now they’ve got a, you know, not a ton, right? But maybe like a year or two behind and they’re like, oh, now we’re moving to this and I need to figure that out.

Jose: Yeah. And I’m not saying like staying at a company too long is necessarily a bad thing because ultimately, if you’re happy with your job and they treat you well and you like what you’re doing and you’re finding like meaningful work to do, that’s perfectly okay. But for me, I just, I always wanted to grow and I always wanted to do better than where I was maybe the year prior.

Manuel: So then what were you looking for in your next role? So obviously you get to the point where, hey, I’ve got this new skill set. I want to make a little bit more money. What was the type of role that you were looking for next?

Jose: I think right after that, I kind of hit like a, trying to figure what my next roles would be. I kind of jumped around a few smaller jobs, doing some Linux Administration for some providers. I did Quality Assurance, I did Help Desk role for some hardware like manufacturers doing support for like the items that they would sell like pre-built computers and or parts and things like that. And I kind of jumped around a few times just because I thought I wanted to do it, but it turned out to not be as maybe glamorous or maybe just wasn’t what I felt would be good for me or what I really enjoyed. I like building computers for my personal time, but maybe not the best thing to do for my career at that time. So I kind of jumped a few times and then I jumped as a Help Desk person or a Help Desk member in another Windows provider company, Windows web hosting provider company. And I probably worked there for a few years, moved from Help Desk one to Help Desk level two again. And then at some point I became a Junior Sys Admin within the same company. And I think at that point I was learning what I wanted to learn in terms of the software side, a little bit of hardware, a little bit of networking, a little bit of just everything mixed and bundled in. But I probably stayed there for about seven years, six, seven years, which is probably a long, long time in what I think my career has been. That’s probably the job that I’ve had the longest. It was good. There was a lot of great people, management was great. But I think that was during the last time of one of the economic recessions. So when there was downscaling of the organization, I was one of the ones that was removed from the team.

Manuel: Now, you said that, hey, I was there probably a little bit longer, but it sounded like there was career growth, you’re moving up in positions, you’re obviously learning new skill sets. So would you say that that’s kind of what made you determine to stay there that long? Like you said, hey, if you’re comfortable, you’re enjoying the work, you’re finding a feeling, obviously you’re learning, that probably all contributed to you staying there as long as you did, right?

Jose: Yeah. And it’s that combination of the hours were good, the work was good, the pay was good. I was just starting to build a family, so that kind of all played into effect. But with my departure of that team, it was time for me to get out again and start seeing what I wanted to do.

Manuel: And how did you handle that? So I know different companies have different policies. So was there like a severance package? Did they give you notice, like, hey, a month, we’re going to let you go, or was it one day to the next? Kind of what, you can just, again, you don’t have to go into super detail, just give me a little bit more understanding of what that was like.

Jose: It was just one day they just said, hey, this is what’s happening, we’re going to have to terminate, and then it was rough because you don’t expect it, it’s never nice to hear. But you go through the stages of maybe you’re a little upset, maybe you don’t understand, and then you’re, over time, you’re like, yeah, it’s fine.

Manuel: It’s business.

Jose: It’s business at the end of the day, and if somebody had to go, you can think all you want, but if they decided to terminate you, then I think I told my wife at the time, I need to make sure that I continue to grow my skills, and maybe I did stay there for a very long time, but how do I make it so that my skills are always growing or always evolving? How do I immerse myself into the business? How do I learn as much about the business, about how everything’s working, so that I am an integral part of the business, so that hopefully that doesn’t happen to me again, especially now that I have a family, I have my wife, kids starting to be born, trying to buy a house, trying to develop my life as well, that became more important, and you want to retain that, so becoming more tied to the business, to where you are more connected with them.

Manuel: Become a little bit more valuable in your role and in what you provide to them.

Jose: It’s not that I want the business to depend on me, but really see me as a valuable asset. That to me has always, I think from that point onwards, has always been very important to me, so I always try to go down that path.

Manuel: And how long did it take for you to find that next role, and what were you doing, obviously you’re searching for jobs, but were you doing anything else as far as self-improvement at the same time?

Jose: At that time, I was working on creating some services myself to be able to provide on the side, but obviously there’s overhead, operating costs, running, hardware equipment, networking, all that is kind of at play. So I think at the time, I just decided to maybe not limit myself to that industry so much, and another company in that Southern California area gave me an opportunity to work for a managed service provider, and I think that was probably one of the jobs that really boosted my career to where I am now. Working with a managed service provider where you really touch everything and you’re in charge of every single aspect of just IT, whether it’s VoIP, our dreaded printers, servers, networking, ISPs, a little bit of contract management, software management, NOC services, help desk as well, project management, having the ability to touch all that was really, I think it was great. I can’t ever be thankful enough for that opportunity just because I was able to learn so much over the period of like two, three years that it kind of started the career to where I am right now.

Manuel: Oh, that’s awesome. And that managed service provider, right? You’re touching a lot of things, but you’re also touching a lot of different environments at the same time, right?

Jose: Correct. And meaning that you have not just the end users that you’re supporting, but customers, right? Meaning that if you have a customer or a business that you provide these services to visiting them, talking to them, understanding what their needs are, knowing what some of their issues are, not just in terms of issues with IT, but maybe as a business so that you’re able to provide maybe a service or a solution that they had never thought of that would make their business more efficient or easier to perform. It’s not just about, hey, I’m your IT provider. This is where the line is drawn is I’m your partner now. We’re in this together. Your success is my success. So what do you need? If you have a problem, I may not necessarily be able to fix it with giving you another server or giving you another software. But maybe it’s something that we need to work on a process that I can help you get started and then you plug in your information or your business specific processes or tasks and we can go from there.

Manuel: And I think you touched on a very important part is that a lot of times, especially when you’re starting out, you’re thinking IT is just the technology. But the technology just helps them run their business. At the end of the day, they don’t care. The decision makers don’t care about the technology. They want to know how is it helping them improve their business? How is it making them more efficient, make it make more money? So to your point, not giving them more technology, hey, here’s another server, here’s more printers, but going through an understanding, what are you trying to accomplish? What are your business needs? What are your objectives to try and really answer?

Jose: And as you get more ingrained with a lot of these organizations and businesses, you understand that IT is not necessarily, it’s not a profit, it’s not something that they’re making money on. They’re always going to be spending money on IT. But how do we turn that into you’re spending money and we’re going to give you this and then more? It’s not just that we’re providing you this IT service that we’re making sure that your computers are working is how do we give you more than that? Whether it’s talking to you about some of the issues, sometimes unfortunately you do have to just lend an ear out, talk to them about some of the issues that they may be having or things that are coming down the pipeline, but also knowing what they’re going to need before they need it is very important.

Manuel: Changing that mindset from you’re not just a cost center, but there is a little bit of value in there.

Jose: Correct.

Manuel: Ok, cool. So you’re picking up all these skills, understanding different areas of IT, you’re starting to establish yourself as kind of a business partner, so what does that lead you to or what made you decide, actually before you go on to the next one, what made you decide that it’s time to leave that role?

Jose: At that time, I had already been there for over two and a half years and I wanted more, I wanted to do more, I wanted to be more of an asset to the organization, I wanted to do bigger things than maybe small, medium businesses, move to enterprise, move to big environments, so I started looking and a few months later I landed a role with a slightly big way, well a big organization, an enterprise with thousands of users, a big environment, high availability, DRs, like multiple locations, it was good, it was good and I came in as the Network Engineer by role, but really doing Network Engineer, System Administration, Help Desk, high level support to assist the help desk members and it was challenging, definitely challenging, especially in a business or in an organization where downtime means loss in sales potentially in retail, moving to a, that type of role, it really tested how fast you could react or move and I think what’s most important is all the other jobs that I had being able to apply all my knowledge and what I had learned or what I had experienced applying it in real time, really fast in order to allow the business to succeed, it was pretty rewarding and I knew at that point, this is why I came over here, this is why we made the jump and it was good, it was good.

Manuel: I want to kind of go back and I want to dig a little bit deeper into kind of that process and just understand your experience because I have my experience but I’m curious to understand how you felt, how you looked at it, so you’re dealing with small, medium business, right, now some of these could be, even for a small, medium business, a decent size, right, and then moving into that more enterprise role, right, you’re talking about thousands of users, what, what were you looking for when you’re doing your job search to say, you know, were you looking just at company, like company names like, hey, I know this is a bigger company, I’m going to go there and then also you’re looking at the job descriptions and what, what gave you the confidence or what made you at least feel comfortable enough to say, I can do that or at least I feel that I have a chance to at least, like you said, I can get my foot in the door and then know that I will grow my skillset.

Jose: And I think working in the managed service provider helped develop my social skills and the ability to grow, to talk to people, being able to understand what they need, really listen to, to them, really listen to them, not just hearing them speak but, but listen to what they’re, what they’re trying to explain to you. So when I…

Manuel: I didn’t mean to cut you off there, so when you’re saying, listening versus hearing them, can you explain a little bit of what you, what you mean?

Jose: Yeah, and especially with IT, you know, when you’re, when you’re talking and you can apply this to anybody, whether it’s management or an end user, when, when the end user is having frustrations or something’s not working and, you know, if they pick up the phone and call you, hey, this computer doesn’t work, this, this software is not working, it’s not behaving the way it is, I’m not able to do my work. I think at that point, knowing that they’re calling you because they’re not just frustrated with their laptop, but because maybe there is a combination of things that is preventing them from doing their work is, is not that they just need you to fix that immediate problem, but maybe there’s more issues that are occurring that may be IT related or not IT related, but just talking to them, asking them how they’re doing, what’s the issue, maybe while you’re looking up some, some potential fixes or working on it, talking to them, developing that relationship, de-escalating the, the, the situation, helping them calm down so that they’re able to provide you with the important information, because if, if you’re upset, you’re just going to tell them it just doesn’t work, but in reality it’s like, hey, it doesn’t work, this happened yesterday or this happened a week ago or a month ago, hey, that, that could be something else, right? Like, I’m like, oh, well, if it’s been happening, then maybe I got to look into history, maybe we’ve, we’ve done changes in the environment, but if the user is upset, maybe they wouldn’t be able to tell you that information because they’re just seeing the issue in front of them, and that’s where talking to the user, understanding what they need, what, what their woes or problems might be, is, is where it’s, it’s important to, to learn to talk to them. It does make your life a lot easier when, when you start developing those relationships. And then the next time they run into an issue, they’ll call you and hopefully they won’t be as upset because they’ll, they’ll know you’ll take care of them, and that you have their best interest in mind.

Manuel: So then I’m assuming a lot of that communication skills you were able to then also apply during the interview process. Yeah. And is that interview, what did you think that that interview, again, moving from small medium to more enterprise? Did you feel that it was a large combination, kind of, was it more technical knowledge that they were looking for, or were you able to also kind of put in some of that personal communication skills to kind of offset and?

Jose: I think developing, especially in IT, developing the communication skills or personal skills, all that, is really what has helped me a lot afterwards, just because a lot of people can do IT, but the communication aspect, especially at that level, at that time, it’s just not something that many people were getting. Somebody that would be willing to communicate with the end users, talk to them, explain to them that you have their best interests in mind, that you’re trying to solve problems, working with them, following up afterwards. It’s not maybe something that a lot of IT at that level, at that range, would probably do. Most of the IT is probably like, hey, you get a ticket, you do it, close it, you’re done, next, right? But having the opportunity or the ability to maybe, oh, I got a few moments, let me follow up on so-and-so, make sure they’re okay, email them, they email you back. If everything is good, then we’re good. And they’ll probably, hopefully, think that or believe that you do have their best interests, that you’re following up, making sure they’re okay, giving them that feeling that they’re being taken care of, is really what was, I think, setting me apart. And when you go to interviews, knowing how to talk to people, not just talking about, well, this is what I do, this is my resume, this is everything that you see here, is what I’m able to do. No, but really having a conversation about what they’re looking for, how you can align your resume to the specific issues that they’re having or the gaps that they’re trying to cover or where they need to go to is what will, what has set me apart most of the time.

Manuel: So then now you get into this new role, right? And obviously, it’s a step up, it’s a bigger environment. How did you initially handle that? And what was the size of the team as you’re kind of getting into this? Because it is a bigger group, so I’m just curious.

Jose: Right. And there was probably about seven, eight servers on production with a DR environment, 51 remote locations, over 5,000 users, and we had helpdesk doing tier one and some of the field work. And then I was in charge of anything that was server-related and network-related, which meant ISPs, server administration, Active Directory, group policies, backups, VoIP, all of that. It fell on me, which was, it was a lot. Definitely going in there, it wasn’t one thing where you come in and you start taking a look at everything, making all these changes, but really go in, what’s critical. Assess that first, take a look at it, take another look at it, and then start working with the teams to figure out what changes you may need to make. Coming into an environment and making changes right off the bat, we all know, it’s never a good idea, right? Because you don’t have the full picture. So taking my time and trying to understand and working with some of the Help Desk people, learning from them, helping them be better at their jobs and teaching them things, is where I started to learn how really how nice it is to help others, especially within your own team. Not just help the customers, but really help your team, help your peers develop their own skill sets.

Manuel: Yeah, I agree. I feel that that’s something that over time, I’ve developed a passion for, right? Just helping teaching and just helping other people, watching other people grow. I think I probably get as much and sometimes maybe even more satisfaction than doing it myself. Because I know I can do it, but helping somebody else do it and seeing them accomplish that, it’s just, there’s something to that.

Jose: And I don’t know if that’s part of also becoming a parent, that you no longer see your own success as much as seeing others, like others being able to do what you think they’re able to do. Like, I know I can do it, but if I can get you there, your success is my success.

Manuel: I never kind of put those two together that around that time, it is when I started to become a parent. You know, when they’re babies, it’s not so much, right? But once they start walking around talking and kind of developing, and again, you learn quickly, you can’t tell a child what to do, you’re much better at trying to explain and guide them in the direction they’re trying to go.

Jose: Yeah. And I think at that time, it’s just, I don’t want to say you become a little bit more less selfish with that knowledge, but you learn that it’s okay to let go of that knowledge too, is I can’t be the only one that knows everything. And slowly but surely, you know, you change a lot throughout your careers. I was a whole different person when I started my career. I always wanted to, hey, give me all the work, give me all the knowledge. It’s me, me, me. But at some point, you understand that what you maybe think is good for you, it’s also not good for the business. Because if you have one tech that can do it all, that also means that I’m very important, but that also means I can’t take time off. Whereas if I have, if I can bring people to know what I know and share that knowledge, then it’s better for the organization because now you have a bunch of people that are capable. And now I can take my vacation, I can take my PTO. Now I can have that life work balance that I, you know, you seek at that time.

Manuel: And it’s a different type of value to the business, right? Because you’re talking about it before, right? Hey, I want to make myself valuable to the business and more integrated, but not by being that single point of contact. Instead, they’ll see the value and hey, okay, he’s only so good, but he’s even better because it’s not just him. He’s also bringing up four or five other people at the same time. And that’s something that I had done in my career, call it selfish or unselfish. I think there’s a little bit of both. I wanted to be able to take those vacations. I wanted to be able to move up. So I would always teach other people, I would document a lot of stuff because the only way to free myself up. And as you’re starting to get moving up and it sounds like in this role, maybe you might have been on call. I don’t know.

Jose: Given that I was the only Network and Sys Admin, it was 24 seven on call. That means if there’s a server or network down, it was always available.

Manuel: On you. Yeah. So again, I did a lot of that to try and, the more I can teach them, the less I have to do this stuff. And now I can learn something. I can move on to something else. Otherwise, I feel like I’m being held or you’re getting a lot of those calls because that was the one thing that, and I don’t know if you had a similar experience, but when I started and I was Help Desk, I worked at the casinos 24 seven, right? And we had these Sys Admins, these Network Engineers, and we would go through and troubleshoot and we would have to call people. And I worked at one point, swing shift, and then even the graveyard. So like, I would have to call somebody at two o’clock in the morning, right? And wake somebody up. And I absolutely dreaded calling certain people because no matter how much, I mean, I would do extra work to try and troubleshoot and be like, okay, I’m calling this person because this is again, I had just started out. This is my limited knowledge. I’d ask around. I’ve done everything I can. This is where I’ve tested your call in this person. And it was the worst when they would pick up the phone. God, what do you want? You know, like, because they were just, I get it. I woke you up and I try and give them time. Like you said, try to hear them and not just listen to what they’re saying. Like, Hey, sorry, if you need a minute, I can call you back in a couple minutes or at night, you know, and I never wanted to be that person when I got to that role. So again, trying to teach people, Hey, you woke me up at two in the morning. What can I do so that that doesn’t happen again? What can I teach this person to do so that now they’re not calling me at two in the morning? Maybe they can try something. Maybe they can do enough to where maybe they’re calling me at six now, right? Like delay as much as we could.

Jose: To be fair, if they, if somebody called me at two a.m. as nice as I may be most of the time, I will probably react the same way initially. Before I have my coffee in the morning, I’m pretty rough. [Laughter] But really understanding that, you know, sometimes, especially if you’re in a position where you might be the senior in the team, right? Um, if they still rely on you for some of these things, that’s also not always their fault. It’s, you also have to say, well, crap, it’s my fault. I haven’t taught them this or we haven’t documented this. We haven’t discussed this or they don’t have the right troubleshooting skills or they can’t. I haven’t helped you yet with that. So it is, it is especially once you get into like much later on positions of management or leadership is the team, if they can’t do something or they can’t react to a situation and they’re relying on you is, well, how do we make it so that you’re able to hopefully not call me? But maybe if you do call me, give me the right information so that I can just give you the answers and then you can not react accordingly. It’s more of a, it’s on you also. It’s not just them, the Help Desk or the some of the newer team members. It’s, you have to admit that at some point, you may have to collaborate more with them. And that goes with the whole, you might be there because of your experiences, what you’ve learned over the years and you want to teach them and they’re going to reach out to you. But how do I, how do I give them the information that they’re going to need? How do I teach them? What’s, what’s critical? What’s going to help them on a day to day? It’s, it’s a, it’s challenging and it doesn’t end, but it’s, it’s rewarding.

Manuel: And how, I know we’re getting close to the time here, but I want to have just touch a little bit more on your current role and then I want to get some, some experience based stuff from you. So how long were you doing that? And did you do any kind of growth within that role?

Jose: I did. I learned a lot more about the organization. I learned about big environments, how to properly separate, how to like organize active directory, how to work more hands-on with, with firewalls. I had always done small business solutions, right? Like one server with local storage, maybe two. And now I was moving to like clusters with SAN storage, backups, DR environments, VoIP, all of it connected like through MPLS circuits at the time. And, and it was, it was a good, like a lot of learning thrown at you at once ultimately, because if I was the only one, it’s either you learn it or no one else will learn it. So there’s really no, you can’t just say, well, I don’t know that because you are the technical expert. So you have to figure it out.

Manuel: You got to take that initiative.

Jose: There’s no lifelines. [Laughter] You learn it or everything’s down. So you kind of have to. And, and I, that was a, that was a good opportunity. But as I said, because I was the only one and because of changes in management, they just didn’t have opportunities to bring in additional help for me. I made the, the decision to, to leave, just because I just wasn’t getting much time off. I would take vacations and they would call me about outages and I’m like, I didn’t bring my laptop for a reason, right? I can help you over the phone, but that’s about as much as I can do. And I just, I decided to look for other opportunities.

Manuel: So before we get into that, we’re probably not going to have time. I just kind of want to ask you, just looking at that time period that we have discussed, what’s one of the, and I don’t know if you received any, but what do you think is some of the best advice you got during that time period? Was there anything that stands out as like, Hey, this is probably some of the best advice I got during that time period or the worst, right? Maybe you got terrible advice.

Jose: I’ve gotten mixed advice, as we all have, right? Not everything’s a hit out there. There’s always been those key times in your life where somebody tells you something and you, you remember it and it doesn’t make sense. And at some point later on, it clicks. I did have one of my managers tell me that at the time, I can’t remember what age I was, but we did a calculation based on life expectancy for males at that time. And he said, you’re going to be on this earth for x amount of hours on average. What do you want to do? Do you want to keep doing this or do you want to do something else? And I was like, well, that’s kind of a mean comment. But I think that’s one of the ones that stuck because I’m not, we’re not going to be here for a long, long time. I’m not going to spend time doing something that I don’t like because we have limited time and not to say limited time at work, limited time where I need to be with my family. I’m not going to spend 40 hours a week doing something that I don’t like. And I will do everything I can to change that. That means either I need to learn or I need to figure out why I don’t like it and what my next path is going to be or if I can change it inside of that same environment. But I’m finding what makes you happy at work is key.

Manuel: And this was a manager kind of just kind of helping you with career growth?

Jose: That was the president of the organization. And yeah, I thought it was kind of a weird comment. But it makes sense. If I’m not happy doing something, probably figure it out. Because I don’t want to be at a place where I’m not happy and I make those around me not happy as well. I don’t want to be that person in the team. If I’m not positive, if I’m not working, collaborating, enjoying what I do, it’s not worth my time. I value my time a lot better than that.

Manuel: And now also during that time period, what would you say is probably one of the biggest challenges that you had to overcome? I know it’s early on in your career and maybe you feel like there weren’t as many, but what do you think was the biggest challenge, hurdle, obstacle that you had to kind of?

Jose: I was always very shy. I never really talked a lot. I was very quiet, very introverted. But once I was let go from an organization and I was working at the managed services provider, I told my wife, especially when the manager said that comment or the president said that comment, I’m like, life’s too short to not put yourself out there. So I just, I’m like, you know what? I’m just going to talk and learn how to come build those relationships, change it up. At some point, if you’re not getting what you want out of your career or out of life, you have to change. You have to look at yourself and change. And I became a lot more chatty afterwards over time. It doesn’t happen overnight. My wife might take a lot of the credit, but I think I had a little bit to do with it too.

Manuel: Do you think that that’s just part of that is coming into a different country, a different culture? Or were you always probably more of a shy person in general?

Jose: No, that’s probably more of coming from a different country, mainly because my English was not very strong. So I was a lot more self-conscious. And then over time, while the thick accent slowly went away, as much as it could, I still felt a little awkward about it or different ways that you say different things or the culture even. At some point, you just learned that it’s okay, because I think I had an accent, a Hispanic accent until I was late 20s. So at some point, do you learn that it’s okay? I’m not the only one, not the first, not the last. It’s okay.

Manuel: And in these roles, were you primarily, were there other Hispanics that you were dealing with in IT? So again, I know that a lot of this is in Southern California. I don’t know if your experience is different than mine, but here in Vegas, while there were Hispanics, there were hardly any in IT. I was primarily the Hispanic in IT, like in general. I did know one other person and we’ve worked with them together it was Oscar. So when we worked together, the fact that there was three of us was, it sounds weird, but it was probably a highlight, especially being in IT, like at the highlight of my career, just knowing that I could talk to somebody else in tech, but then also have like that cultural connection with the same time. Again, not that I don’t, I have friends from all different nationalities and backgrounds, but I’m just curious what your experience is there, because that to me, I’m telling you, that was a highlight to say, man, I can talk to this because other Hispanics that I knew, they weren’t in IT. So I didn’t have that full depth and breath of topics to talk about.

Jose: Yeah. And I think the amount, the number of Hispanics in IT was, at the time, there was probably not many. I could probably still maybe in my, I’ve been working for like 20 years, right? And I can probably count the amount of Hispanic peers that I’ve had in both hands. It has not been many. And it’s a mixed bag of everything, which is, it’s also good because that just means that there’s just so many cultures that are working in that, in that industry or that role. I think we, I don’t know if it’s because we as Hispanics have not weren’t diving too much into that, into that aspect or that career or the profession as much at that time. I think it’s changed now based on what I’m seeing out in the market, especially out here, local. But, but I think originally there was, it was a little bit more difficult. And not only that, but the the pay scales were a little bit different back then. It probably depends on, are you looking at help desk or more of a high end professional at the roles that I was working on. Not a lot of them were like Sys Admin, Network Engineers, they were probably looking more to be Help Desk or early level one. And they had been there for a while too. So I don’t know exactly if maybe there wasn’t a drive or there wasn’t, they weren’t getting the right amount of opportunities. It’s just there wasn’t many to begin with. And early on at that stage of a career, it’s either you’re learning it so that you can move up or that’s it. You’re stuck where you’re at.

Manuel: And last question before we wrap this up, so far in this part of your career, and maybe even if you look at your whole 20 years, what would you say, how would you describe either yourself or your career? Like if you had to sum up like, hey, throughout my IT career, I have had to be, you know, it could be a word, it could be a statement, like, you know, I’ve had to be very proactive or I’ve had to be, you know, resilient. Do you know, is there a way to kind of describe your IT career in that way?

Jose: It’s hard to summarize in one word, but I think… Or it could be a statement. Honestly, just try to be positive and helpful to not just your users, customers, but to your peers. It’s much better when everybody’s on board, when everybody wants to help you, when you want to help everybody. Positive as in, you’re always looking forward to work to what the next challenge is going to be. If somebody gives you a project, you say, let’s go, let’s figure it out. There’s no real reason why we should push people away or defer to others. It’s our job. And I think when you do that and you like your job, a lot of doors open for you and a lot of opportunities. Everybody wants to work with the guy that is going to be helpful and be positive at all times. And that is not necessarily may not be a skill set, but when you behave that way and when you learn that it’s okay, that that’s a good place to be, I feel like that’s going to boost your career a lot. Everybody wants that person in their team. It’s good for culture, good for the organization.

Manuel: I agree with you, man. This has been awesome. I know we probably only got about halfway through your career, so I definitely would love to bring you back for a part two at some point and continue on and see what else you’ve learned and developed and understand more about how you’ve managed your career.

Jose: Yeah, thank you very much for having me.

Manuel: I appreciate it. So everyone, I hope you enjoyed this. And like I’ve said before in the past, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Career Downloads. And make sure you plug in and download this knowl.dge. Thank you.