Eric (0:0) Hey Hey there, and welcome to episode 13 of the IT guy show. (0:17) I'm your host, Eric, the IT guy Hendrix. Speaker 2 (0:19) And today, I'm also going to be my own guest. (0:22) So one of the things I've always wanted to try with a podcast is kinda set up episode arcs. (0:28) You know, you watch a TV show and you get two or three episodes strung together where it it kinda follows the same storyline, the same thread. (0:36) So that's what we're gonna do. (0:38) So in this episode, I'm gonna kinda set it up. Speaker 2 (0:40) I wanna talk a little bit about my own story, how I got into IT, some of the things that I learned along the way, not just to tell you about myself, but in the hopes that my journey might spark yours too. (0:53) Maybe you've been talking about changing directions. (0:56) Maybe you're new to the industry and you just wanna get deeper involved in tech. (1:01) Well, I wanna share my own story. (1:03) It felt like a wild and crazy journey, but looking back, it all makes perfect sense to get me to where I am today. Speaker 2 (1:10) And then in the next couple of episodes, wanna bring on some friends, colleagues. (1:16) One's a systems administrator, one's a developer. (1:18) We're gonna talk a little bit about their journeys. (1:20) So you'll definitely wanna catch this episode before watching those just to kinda get some of the context. (1:26) So I've been involved in technology since I was very young, like five or six years old maybe, maybe a little older. Speaker 2 (1:34) But my my first memory of working on computers, of working with technology, I was sitting at my dad's Mac two, and I guess I guess it would have been an Apple two, and changing the desktop wallpaper and moving the desktop icons around. (1:50) And he just had no idea how I did it. (1:54) To be honest, I'm not sure how I figured it out either, but it was cool because instead of vertical lines, you had, like, hash shaped lines and, you know, that's what you get with a grayscale monitor. (2:04) But that was kind of my first real dive into technology, And it just just kinda continued on from there when I was so I I grew up in the nineties and eighties maybe, though. (2:17) Eighties maybe, and still love me some some journey and whatnot. Speaker 2 (2:21) But going through high school, college, I had one of the first BlackBerrys. (2:28) I had a BlackBerry Pearl. (2:29) Before that, I had some kind of a PalmPilot. (2:33) I don't remember who whose it was. (2:34) But on my senior year of high school, I had a PalmPilot. Speaker 2 (2:39) And my buddy and I would sit in science class and play hearts on on this PalmPilot with the with the stylus that you had to tap really hard on the screen, and you were always afraid that the stylus was going to go through the screen because the sensitivity wasn't there. (2:53) But then getting a BlackBerry Pearl and hooking it up up to an exchange server so I could get work emails on my phone. (3:00) It was it was really exciting. (3:04) See, what other devices did I have? (3:06) Like, I I had one of the first iPad one of the first iPods, and, you know, in college, LimeWire and how amazing that was. Speaker 2 (3:16) But I just I've always been involved with technology. (3:20) It seems like for most of my career, I've been involved with the installation and configuration and deployment of systems. (3:27) I I was a big distro hopper for years. (3:32) Well, I can't say big. (3:33) There's people that jump from crazy different distros to different distros beyond that. Speaker 2 (3:41) I I I would jump between Ubuntu and Arch and and Fedora. (3:48) And I tried Red Hat Enterprise Linux as as a as a desktop one. (3:53) Great server. (3:54) Not a great not a great workstation experience, at least not fifteen years ago. (3:58) And so I I can remember being a freshman in college and a buddy of mine telling me about this Ubuntu thing. Speaker 2 (4:07) And it was so cool because it wasn't Windows. (4:11) Of course, it was a pain to get the wire Wi Fi card working. (4:15) I tried Ubuntu, and it just couldn't work on on this Dell XPS back in the back in the day. (4:21) So I went with what was at the time known as Fedora Core, and this would've been, you know, mid two thousands. (4:28) So the split between Red Hat Linux and Fedora Core would've just happened, and Fedora Core actually works. Speaker 2 (4:35) The wireless card, you didn't have to, like, reconfigure or anything. (4:38) I can remember sitting in the in the cafeteria at DeVry in Kansas City and installing Pandora for the first time and playing with it and and taking an introduction to the introduction to Linux class. (4:54) It was it was it's kind of kind of a joke looking back. (4:58) It was this is the desktop environment. (5:01) This is how you install a printer on on Linux. Speaker 2 (5:03) It it was very workstation focused. (5:05) It wasn't server focused like I would have expected. (5:09) That's really funny because, you know, over the past few weeks, I'm just getting started as a professor at Johnson County Community College here in Kansas City. (5:20) So I I've just I've been involved with Linux on the desktop, on the server side. (5:25) I was was heavily involved in installation and and configuration of of systems. Speaker 2 (5:32) And then I got my first job as as an IT guy. (5:37) I worked as an intern for the city elite summit, a a suburb of Kansas City. (5:41) And my first job was working with it was at the time Symantec Ghost. (5:45) It was Norton Ghost building images for workstations. (5:50) Sadly, it was all Windows. Speaker 2 (5:53) But it was kind of cool to think about, well, if I if I drop all these drivers on on the c directory and then I point the the configuration media to this to that directory in the c drive, then I can build one image that not only works on our laptops, but also on our desktops. (6:10) And everyone needs Internet Explorer I mean, Explorer. (6:15) And I'm just thinking things through. (6:17) Like like, one of the dumb things that I would add to the image was a picture of Lee's Summit City Hall as the desktop background. (6:26) It just it made it feel more official, and it was it was kind of fun to just build out these images, kinda think through what people might need, what what might not need, making sure that those images were up to date. Speaker 2 (6:37) Maybe one time accidentally did a multicast image across the production network instead of our instead of our workbench network, and they have severely slowed down the network for a few minutes until the network administrator, who I still talk to to this day, you know, I go to the same community group at our church. (6:56) And he just came in and and said, you're not you're not imaging these desktops, are you? (7:03) I said, yeah. (7:04) Why? (7:06) Well, turns out when you multicast to the wrong NIC, that multi all those multicast packets might go out across your network instead of instead of to the workbench switch that you're targeting or that you thought you were targeting. Speaker 2 (7:20) So I really enjoyed my my internship with the City of Lee Summit because it gave me a chance to experience different things. (7:27) I I got to configure exchange inboxes. (7:30) I got to manage GPOs and active directory objects. (7:35) One thing it taught me was how much I didn't like working on Windows administration, but that'll come into into play a little bit later. (7:43) It was a lot of fun though because I got to I got to learn a lot. Speaker 2 (7:46) I got to put my hands on a lot of different technologies. (7:49) I got to see what it was like to be a network administrator and work on Cisco switches and deal with tape drives and backups. (7:57) So it was about a year long internship. (7:59) I I got to stretch mine for, like, fifteen or sixteen months. (8:02) It really taught me a lot. Speaker 2 (8:04) It it was really great working for the city. (8:06) And and at the same time, I was working part time as an intern. (8:09) I was also going through DeVry working on a bachelor's degree. (8:14) The the downside is whenever you talk to at at least this was the case, you know, x number of years ago, we won't fill in x. (8:22) It was a long time ago. Speaker 2 (8:24) Alright. (8:25) So it was, like, twenty years ago. (8:27) Jeez. (8:28) So one one of the things, at least twenty years ago, when you talk to when you talk to the recruiter for the college or you talk to your career coach, you say, wanna work on. (8:39) I wanna work in IT. Speaker 2 (8:41) They have just, by default, would send you down the programming course, down the development computer science degree. (8:48) So I took I took Visual Basic back in the day. (8:52) Even then, it was it was a dead language and was really only used in labs to teach development principles and arrays and if then statements, you know, things like that. (9:04) But I got halfway through a c sharp class. (9:06) Yeah. Speaker 2 (9:06) C sharp. (9:08) And I went to my my I went to my career coach and basically said, this isn't for me. (9:15) I I couldn't write code like this all day every day for forty years. (9:19) I would lose my mind. (9:22) Now being a little bit newer to the space, and I didn't know what what a networking lab was, but I was like, hey. Speaker 2 (9:29) When I walk to class, there's this room, and there's nothing but but big computers and and these these other these these network switch things that have just dozens of cables coming up here and there's flashing lights everywhere. (9:43) That's what I wanna do. (9:44) How do I work on that? (9:45) And so Devry had actually just introduced a network communications management degree, an NCM degree, for their bachelor's program. (9:53) And so I was like, let let's let's do that. Speaker 2 (9:55) So next semester, I switched switched degree programs and started taking machine networking courses based on CCNA for Cisco switching. (10:06) I learned about Wi Fi networks. (10:08) I've learned I learned about WAN networks and what it was like to build out different what what the what cell towers were and that kind of thing at the time. (10:22) Of course, none of that information is relevant. (10:25) Twenty years later, wireless and and Wi Fi network technology has changed so much since then. Speaker 2 (10:31) I I actually only had two operating system classes. (10:34) I took one one class on Windows, one class on Linux, and we kinda mentioned that it was it's kind of a joke based on what I know now. (10:44) But it was enough that coupled with my internship at the Sidoti Summit, I knew I wanted to be on the server side. (10:50) I knew I wanted to be on the administration side. (10:52) So when I finally graduated college, I actually got headhunted by a recruiter from Cerner was one of, like, two medical software companies back in the early two thousands, and they they like to to head hunt college grads out of just out of college. Speaker 2 (11:12) And and so I interviewed and got got a job there. (11:18) I actually got the choice to either work on their medical software or to be a systems administrator, basically, an applications administrator, Java apps on their internal Internet, basically social basically, an internal social media platform before that was really even a thing. (11:38) I mean, Facebook was barely getting off the ground, and Cerner was trying to build an intranet based on I think it was called Jive back in the day. (11:51) I did that for for about a year and a half, and as we'll talk about here in a future episode, I actually ended up being laid off from that job and then took a more traditional route into systems administration. (12:03) I learned that Java is a nightmare, that companies don't always have your personal best interest at heart. Speaker 2 (12:11) Cerner was was very eye opening and and a lot of fun. (12:16) I learned a lot of different technology on top of Linux. (12:20) Also, got my feet wet with things like HPUX and AIX. (12:25) But then as as I said, I got laid off and and kinda took a more traditional approach. (12:30) I went back into desktop support, working on trouble tickets, but also managing some some servers, even non Windows based servers. Speaker 2 (12:41) So there's there's this pile of Linux boxes over in the corner, first week, in in the data center that no one at the company I was working for wanted to deal with. (12:49) So I was like, I'll take this one. (12:50) And basically, servers, you know, PHP based LAMP stacks. (12:55) You know, nothing nothing all that exciting, but it it was still Linux. (13:00) I can remember, you know, mid twenty eleven or so, standing in a Borders bookstore. Speaker 2 (13:06) Those new young people, bookstores were these places where you actually had four walls and a roof filled with books, paper things. (13:14) It was crazy. (13:15) It was great. (13:16) You'd go and you'd spend hours looking and you'd come home with six books and you'd read two of them, and everything else was on the table. (13:22) So I distinctly remember standing in a Borders bookstore, and in one hand, I had an RHCSA, Red Hat Certified Systems Administrator Study Guide. Speaker 2 (13:31) And in the other, I had one of the introductory level Windows Server Administrator books. (13:37) And I thought about it for days. (13:39) I looked at these two books, and I've I've dabbled in this Linux thing. (13:44) I I like to learn more. (13:45) It's a lot more it's a lot more challenging, a lot more fun than this Windows stuff. Speaker 2 (13:50) You know, Windows is always clear the registry and, you know, delete these g p o GPO objects, just your policy. (13:58) Just if you never have to deal with GPOs, you you you have a successful career. (14:04) But I remember I remember deciding that, okay. (14:07) I wanna do this one thing. (14:08) I wanna go all in. Speaker 2 (14:10) And so I went home that day with an RHCSA study guide, ended up changing jobs, and ended up getting hired on as a Linux systems administrator. (14:20) Not even a junior, a Linux systems administrator. (14:23) One of the guys that I worked for was he had been moving over from AIX to Linux, and the other guy was a VMS server administrator. (14:35) And they had both of them were switching over to Linux. (14:39) And so I actually went in and was able to learn with them, and we grew our environment together. Speaker 2 (14:45) I I got my first exposure to Puppet and Spacewalk at the time. (14:50) Other things like Nagios and OpenNMS, different open source tools. (14:56) But open source hadn't really even entered my my thinking yet. (14:59) It was just Linux and some really cool free software that you could run on top of Linux. (15:07) I ended up getting my RHCSA. Speaker 2 (15:08) I I almost got my RHC, missed it by, like, five points. (15:12) I was devastated. (15:13) But I got my CSA. (15:15) And we ran Oracle Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux side by side. (15:22) And, you know, it was so much fun. Speaker 2 (15:26) I I never should've left that job. (15:28) In fact, something I learned that was grass isn't always greener. (15:33) When you got a good thing going, even if you're a little tired, even if you're a little burned out, figure out a way to take time off or or to switch gears, work on a different project or something. (15:44) But when you got a good thing going, don't just abandon it. (15:48) The next company I worked for ended up wanting a Linux systems administrator, but it frequently happens in smaller businesses. Speaker 2 (15:56) I ended up as the backup administrator, the storage administrator, the on call Windows admin, the tape drive administrator. (16:05) And my boss wanted me to learn a little bit about the networking stack and some of the switches and routers that we had. (16:12) I was like, we're in the middle of a of an Oracle RAC database upgrade a company that I just started at. (16:17) They didn't even have UIDs and GIDs in alignment between systems. (16:22) So in case you don't know what that means, when you create a user on a Linux system, say, Eric, and you look at the ID of that user, you'll see that group is Eric, user is Eric, and then UID is a numerical value for that user. Speaker 2 (16:38) So it could be a thousand, a thousand and one, that kind thing. (16:41) And then you'd have a group ID as well. (16:43) Well, when they set up these systems, they didn't build them similarly. (16:48) So they'd create users in different times. (16:50) And so across systems, you'd run into this conflict where UIDs wouldn't line up. Speaker 2 (16:56) So you can just directly SSH from one system to another and copy data over without having to do some permission changes. (17:04) It was it was just such a pain. (17:06) And I think that's why I love automation tools and infrastructure as code and and tools like image builder that build things identically no matter where you deploy them. (17:19) So so that that job didn't didn't last long. (17:22) And I kinda bounced around for a few years to different jobs. Speaker 2 (17:26) I would I would work and usually would end up as as the patching guy. (17:31) It it became kind of a trope of my career that the first thing I always managed was patches. (17:37) And so it was it was kind of a rough journey, mostly because I realized that I never quite got to do what I wanted to do. (17:47) And I don't mean that I didn't get to work on projects I wanted to work on, or I didn't get to do some fun thing at work. (17:53) No. Speaker 2 (17:53) It was it was a mismatch of skills. (17:59) I I was at conflict with this whole, let me talk to everybody on the team and hang out in people's cubicles and and get to know what they're working on and and actually just sitting down for hours at a time and working on Linux systems. (18:15) It was kind of an interesting conflict because I've known forever that I'm an introvert, that I like talking to people. (18:21) So how does how does that how does that correlate itself out? (18:26) So that led to a lot of searches online, a lot of googling around, and what makes a good systems administrator? Speaker 2 (18:32) So I came out across podcasts and telegram groups of different people working on Linux. (18:40) And I realized that Linux wasn't just open source as a license, but open source was actually a bigger community outside of Linux itself. (18:48) So it was really interesting. (18:50) I mean, it was just it it blew my mind. (18:53) And I came across podcasts like the Linux action show and Linux unplugged and future broadcasting. Speaker 2 (19:00) I came across things like gosh. (19:04) I don't even remember Floss Weekly was a thing yet, but just different podcasts that talked about nothing but Linux and this open source. (19:11) So I got to learn a lot about Linux, a lot about self hosting. (19:16) Around around this time, I bought my first home server. (19:20) And I used that term loosely because I basically had a custom built desktop that I used for gaming inside. Speaker 2 (19:28) I started dual booting Fedora or Ubuntu or Arch on it. (19:32) So I basically took that one and then converted it over to running CentOS Linux as a server. (19:39) And my first project was running Minecraft. (19:42) I wanted something that I could use, but also something that would help me learn a little bit about Linux. (19:48) So I stood up my first Minecraft server. Speaker 2 (19:50) And that led to, okay. (19:51) Cool. (19:51) What other things can I do with this? (19:53) And so I, you know, ended up building an identical tower, and that became my workstation. (19:58) And I had this massive PC that started running Minecraft, and then and then, eventually, stood up something like Nextcloud. Speaker 2 (20:08) And then I realized you could host your own media. (20:13) And so years and years and years ago, over ten years ago, I bought a flex life cycle or life lifelong membership at flex premium or whatever it was called at the time. (20:25) And so I've I've hosted my own home lab for years. (20:29) It's it's taken different forms. (20:31) I've tried enterprise grade hardware, which I'm trying to get out of. Speaker 2 (20:35) I've I've tried building my own custom builds. (20:39) I've used DigitalOcean to host most, if not all, of my home labs. (20:44) So it's it's taken a lot of different a lot of different forms over the years. (20:49) But then I found that to be one of the biggest strengths of being a Linux systems administrator is play with it outside of work. (20:57) In space where you can learn and make mistakes and grow and and just always learn, always try new things. Speaker 2 (21:06) So I grew from being a Linux systems administrator to being a Linux systems engineer, but there was still this whole problem with, I like working on Linux systems. (21:14) I like building things out new. (21:16) I didn't so much like the day to day investigation of trying to figure out why this bug was happening or or track this log file or keep these systems running. (21:27) And and I didn't like being stuck at my desk all day. (21:29) I like talking to people. Speaker 2 (21:30) I like getting to know what they're working on and learning. (21:34) And so I I went to a conference here in Kansas City in 2018, dev ops based Casey, and listened to all these talks about automation and how this company built out the this massive multi thousand node Linux environment that it's been up in the data center and then overflow out to the cloud. (21:56) And I listened to people talk about how they merged dev workflows into ops and used tools like SaltStack, which was one which was my first automation love. (22:10) And and declarative states and and infrastructure that wouldn't deal with configuration drift. (22:17) And it's just so cool. Speaker 2 (22:19) And so during one of the breaks, I was walking through the Expo Hall, and I think this is why I love going to conferences even today. (22:25) I walked around the Expo Hall and I came across a booth with this tanooki that looked like an orange fox. (22:30) And I was like, oh, I know I know you guys. (22:33) It it turned out it was GitLab, and we were using the self hosted GitLab at the company I was at to store full stack integrations into big files for our Linux servers. (22:43) I was like, I I really like your tool. Speaker 2 (22:45) This is great. (22:45) We use it for SaltStack. (22:46) And I got talking to to the guy. (22:48) He turned out to be one of the one of the sales guys for GitLab back right after the whole hashtag move to GitLab, you know, when Microsoft bought GitHub and everybody thought that was the that was the end of open source because GitHub is now owned by the enemy. (23:03) Funny how that didn't didn't pan out the way we thought it would. Speaker 2 (23:07) But he's like, you know, you what what brings you here? (23:10) You got to ask him some questions. (23:11) He's like, you know what? (23:13) You've got a lot of personality for someone who claims that their system is administrator. (23:18) You I won't forget the way he said it. Speaker 2 (23:21) He said, don't get a choice. (23:22) Go home tonight. (23:23) Put in an application. (23:24) I'll put my name on it, and we'll see what happens. (23:27) You you should come work at your lab. Speaker 2 (23:28) We we can really use that energy. (23:30) And so I did because when someone tells you, you don't have a choice, you tend to do what they say. (23:35) And so I went home and applied. (23:36) I got I had an amazing interview and got to do my first demo. (23:44) It was really cool. Speaker 2 (23:46) And I got hired on. (23:47) In fact, my my former manager, Joel Kruswick, was on on the show a couple of episodes ago. (23:52) We we got to chat and catch up. (23:55) And he's he's still one of my mentors and one of my friends in in the in the industry today. (24:02) And it was this beautiful blend of learning technology and showing people how things work and building new things that don't have to survive more than a day. Speaker 2 (24:12) It was just a really great experience to go into sales and do demos and to go conferences. (24:18) I met so many of you at places like North Northwest or Southeast, days. (24:27) I got to go to conferences and give talks, I I guessed it on I I was invested I was a guest on podcasts like Linux and The Ask Noise Show, Destination Linux. (24:39) It was just such a cool change in my career. (24:43) So while I will will always see myself as a systems administrator, I see myself so much more than that. Speaker 2 (24:49) And today, I I was at GitLab for a year. (24:53) I tried sales for couple of years, first in GitLab, then at Red Hat, and then I found technical marketing. (24:59) And that was content creation, blog writing, building demos, and doing podcasts and livestreams, and sometimes doing demos live on air, like, into the terminal where things broke. (25:10) You got to fix it on on the air while, you know, dozens of people are watching. (25:14) And it just really blew up my my whole vision of what the world would look like. Speaker 2 (25:19) It it just completely expanded what I had thought the industry looked like. (25:24) It seemed like you're either a developer, systems administration, a manager, or a networking guy, maybe a security guy, and that was that was kind of it. (25:32) It was only so I figured when I was done being a systems administrator that I just have to become a people manager. (25:38) And now, more than a decade later, I look at my career and go, there's so many more options. (25:44) There's so many things out there that you can do in tech. Speaker 2 (25:48) It doesn't necessarily mean you just sit in front of a desk all day. (25:52) I I kind of pictured myself as, like, this guy who worked directly on the matrix. (25:56) You know? (25:57) That I can read all those characters as they as they scrolled across the screen and guide Neo to doing amazing things only to realize that, you know, maybe I was more like Marcus. (26:07) I'd go out and recruit people and show them the ropes and and set them on their path. Speaker 2 (26:12) That's what I see myself as doing. (26:14) And I never would have imagined changing my dad's desktop wallpaper on his on his first family computer or going to DePry that one day I would be a professor. (26:24) I'd never imagined that I'd go and talk in front of people at conference or that I'd have my own podcast. (26:29) None of that seemed like what what what my career was going to be. (26:34) So there's people like Noah Talia and Joel Krusick and Brandon Johnson and and all these people that I've engaged with, people that have amazing careers that have guided me along the way. Speaker 2 (26:47) So that's that's one of the things I try and do with this show, and I think it's important early on in the life of this show to to establish that. (26:54) I see myself as a teacher, as a coach, as someone who doesn't have all the answers, but I can definitely help you along your path. (27:02) And that's what I love about this show. (27:04) That's what I love about the community of people that we're building on our Discord. (27:08) I mean, it's just a great community to network with people and to know that there's there's no expectations. Speaker 2 (27:15) There's no right or wrong. (27:18) There's just a group of nerds hanging out, talking about D and D and Linux and and growing together as people. (27:26) So what are what are some of the lessons I learned? (27:29) You've gotta evolve with the industry. (27:31) And right now, systems administrators are a bit of a turning point. Speaker 2 (27:35) If you're not using Ansible or SaltStack or Terraform or something to build out your your network, to build out your enterprise of servers, you really need to think about what you're working on. (27:47) Because things are moving faster. (27:48) We're expecting to do more with less now more than ever. (27:53) And then there's there's technologies like AI. (27:55) I'm sure you may scoff at that. Speaker 2 (27:57) I trust you. (27:58) I I did a little bit too. (28:00) But AI tools like Red Hat Lightspeed or ChatGPT even are getting so powerful and so knowledgeable about things like Ansible playbooks. (28:10) Now you can sit at your desk and do peer programming with an AI chat interface and build out hundreds of lines of Ansible playbooks to automate your infrastructure. (28:19) That's something that I'm doing right now here in my home. Speaker 2 (28:23) And then that's that's expanding even further so fast. (28:26) And nowadays, there's even things like MCP's which allow AI to interact with their systems or interact with tools like Grafana. (28:34) I mean, it's just amazing how fast the industry is changing. (28:39) That doesn't mean that systems administrators, you know, hardware junkies like us, you know, goofs that would go into the data center and run run tables for hours aren't necessary anymore. (28:50) Sure. Speaker 2 (28:51) Our job has changed. (28:53) And I remember when we used to have to buy a single piece of hardware for every operating system, and we went to virtualization, and then we went to cloud, and then we went to containers, and then we went to things like Kubernetes. (29:04) There's just so much out there, and things are changing. (29:07) That doesn't mean that what you do isn't still important. (29:10) So I often get asked what skills still matter today. Speaker 2 (29:14) And I think above all, it's not a technology. (29:18) It's the soft skills. (29:19) And I hated hearing that when when I was trying to learn. (29:22) Tools come and go. (29:24) You know? Speaker 2 (29:24) It used to be Puppet was the only name in in IT automation, and now there's Puppet and Ansible and Terraform and and some of the offshoots of of of that, like OpenTopu. (29:38) There's just so many options out there, you just gotta find the one that works for you and works for your environment. (29:42) But to me, the skill that has made the biggest difference in my life is never stop learning. (29:48) Always try something new. (29:50) Don't ever settle for the status quo. Speaker 2 (29:53) Always keep learning. (29:55) One of the other questions I get asked often is, what would I do differently if I started over? (30:00) Honestly, nothing. (30:02) You know, I mentioned in the intro that this that my career seemed like such a weird jump from place to place and doing different things and having different different job titles and then going into marketing. (30:15) But looking back, everything I did, all the different places I went from working full time at a company for years to doing a couple of six months and a couple of twelve month contracts, all of that helped me get to where I am today, to where I feel like I can share my experiences. Speaker 2 (30:31) And I just I hope and pray that when I do, that someone out there listening learns from it, doesn't make some of the mistakes I made, or finds a new love for their career, or somehow helps start a new chapter or the first chapter of of a career. (30:49) I don't know that I'd do anything differently. (30:53) The one thing I will say though, the question that I get asked is, what happens if you're just not good enough? (30:58) Oh, buddy. (30:59) Let me tell you. Speaker 2 (31:00) I have never felt like I was good enough at a job. (31:02) I've always dealt with impostor syndrome. (31:05) But I look at my career, and I've gone from managing 500 Linux systems to a thousand Linux systems. (31:13) I went from working at small businesses that no one will ever know existed because they made specialty hardware for a certain type of car, and they don't exist anymore to working with big names like GitLab and Red Hat. (31:26) You know, it's it's been a wild ride, and I don't feel worth it. Speaker 2 (31:31) And so that's just something that you have to accept, something you have to move ahead with and not not let it hinder you, but let it challenge you. (31:40) If you don't think you're the smartest person in the room, go learn something new. (31:43) Go pick up the Udemy course. (31:45) Go watch demos on YouTube. (31:47) There's just so much material out there more than ever. Speaker 2 (31:52) But don't ever feel like you're not good enough. (31:54) Go out and change something. (31:55) Go out and make a make a difference. (31:58) So that's been a bit about my story. (32:02) I've I've told pieces of this from time to time, but I've never really sat down and kinda talked it through. Speaker 2 (32:06) Even even if I was recording this, I was like, oh my gosh. (32:09) I forgot about that anecdote. (32:11) I forgot about that story, or I forgot about that time that I'm casting ghost traffic onto the main network instead of the war station network. (32:18) No. (32:18) It's just there's there's so much to talk about, and I I love going to conferences and the after conference, you know, hanging out with different people, grabbing a drink, telling stories, and sharing pains, and solving the world's problems with open source. Speaker 2 (32:35) It it just it's been such a fulfilling career, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where this current chapter goes. (32:41) If you wanna be part of that journey, you can definitely definitely hit the subscribe button. (32:46) Make sure that you get every new episode. (32:48) I've got these content scheduled towards the end of the year. (32:51) We've got so many episodes, so many amazing guests that are more dynamic and exciting to listen to than than myself. Speaker 2 (32:58) So definitely hit the subscribe button. (33:00) And as I mentioned at the beginning, I'm going to be joined by Nate Lager, RedHatter and a friend of mine. (33:06) He's going to talk about his experience in systems administration and what it was like working in education, some of his hobbies and interests. (33:14) So Nate's going to be joining me again in two or, again, Nate's going to be joining me in two weeks when I post the next episode. (33:22) Please, like I know it's dumb, but just hit the little thumbs up button. Speaker 2 (33:26) It really helps grease the algorithm so that more people can find this channel. (33:31) And if if you wanna get involved in the conversation, there's links in the show notes to my blog, to our Discord server, and to our matrix server. (33:41) So there's plenty of ways to get in touch with me. (33:43) Definitely head out and check the show notes. (33:45) But until then, this has been episode 13 of the IT guy show, how to be famous as Edmund. Speaker 2 (33:51) I really look forward to talking to you all again real soon. (33:54) Thank you much.