One of my coworkers always tells me I'm such a techie. I immediately correct her, as I absolutely do NOT consider myself to be a techie, nor do I like technology very much, other than how it can save me time or make something easier to do. But I have no desire to spend hours learning new technology or keeping current on existing technology ... it's freaking boring. Unless it's art related, and even then, I find most tutorials, especially video, frustratingly annoying.
Oh ... I did first level support for years, even though I was a Word Processor. But that involved other employees coming to me with a problem, me verifying there was a problem that wasn't fixed by rebooting, calling the real tech support people, explaining the problem, and scheduling their visit. That eventually expanded to being responsible for budgeting and purchasing software, as well as installing and maintaining the legality of company software. Which then led to being trained and becoming the network administrator for our office when the company installed Banyan Vines in all offices. That led to planning, budgeting, and installing the network when we moved to a new building, as well as for the Boise office when it was opened.
My favorite story is when our branch manager was planning the move to the new building, he demanded Corporate do the network install. Not only did the Corporate IT Director inform my branch manager I was more then capable of the network install, he gave a glowing review of my abilities. He stated I was one of the top network administrators in the company, which was one of the top environmental engineering companies in the country. He put all that in writing, and called me to tell me about it. I was totally blown away by all of it. I had no idea I was thought of that highly by anyone, much less an IT Director I'd only met a few times, but was apparently quite aware of how I was doing. I was far more used to being underestimated by my managers. Since I worked in the office that managed the Washington, Oregon, and Idaho offices, we had a branch manager, office manager, and administrative office manager. Both the branch and office managers were engineers ... which probably explains why they underestimated me
I worked a lot with two other network administrators while with that company. One was a corporate network guy (which explains how the Corporate IT Director knew so much about me) and the other was another branch's network administrator, both in California. They were great guys, brilliant, supportive, and we communicated often through email and over the phone. Amazingly, when we'd be on a conference call troubleshooting a problem, it was often my suggestion that led to the solution. But that was intuition, not any great techie skill. Although, intuition is a valuable techie skill.
That network administrator experience led to being hired by my current employer as a network administrator/tech, which turned out to be 99% computer tech and 1%, if that, network administration. Um ... right. The computer tech stuff was never mentioned in the interview, nor was I questioned about any of my experience troubleshooting and repairing computers. I might have still accepted the position since I was new to the area, needed the job, and it was the first non secretarial/word processing job I'd been able to interview on, but I doubt it would have been offered to me if they knew how little experience I had with computer repair. All they questioned me about was network administration.
A few years later, and with a new manager, I was given the responsibility of researching, implementing, and managing a Help Desk system. I love to include that managing piece in there. Even though I was the entire Help Desk. It got me off the floor and out of the guts of computers, so I loved that. After another few years, it was decided we needed to develop our own Help Desk system, so I became part time Help Desk and part time Domino Lotus Notes programmer. When we moved from programming in Domino Lotus Notes to Visual Studio, I moved into development full time.
So ... there we have it. A very odd trek into the world of IT. One which still has me scratching my head as to how I got there.
Damn it, Jim, I'm an Artist! Not a techie!
yep...