This was a post that followed up on the “mental toughness” theme, but was a bit shorter. I’ve added to the intro because I realized the Medium article started with a line that didn’t give context or deliver on what it meant to face Colorado weather. Again, this post includes things I hear or see in team comms that are nothing but deflating, and the killer to my personal IT drive are sitting around and waiting for things to happen, or being comfortable in my knowledge.
Death to the Comfort Zone
In Colorado, we can see storms coming over the mountains but sometimes they still manage to surprise us. It isn’t that we’re not ready, it isn’t that we’re expecting one thing and caught flat-footed. No, the way we think about weather here is a more “jack of all” situation. We are ready for everything, and when something surprises us we just say “well that’s Colorado for you” and we deal with it. Recently my wife and I went to see some lights at the Botanical Garden – a beautiful display on a frigid night, we had a blast seeing a homestead from the 19th century lit up and all the kids running around having fun petting reindeer. As we left, we knew it was supposed to be cold, but didn’t know it was going to be THAT cold – a bit of a surprise but we had our coats, hats, glovevs, etc. What we definitely didn’t expect was a near-blizzard as we got to the car. We got in, and looked at each other and simply laughed about it as we both couldn’t do much but shrug and get on with the night. “That’s Colorado for you”.
Stagnation and the comfort zone are dirty words to me, and should be to anyone in IT or the greater tech community. A few years ago it was different, you could somewhat consider a career as a SysAdmin pretty low-key. As long as your environment was stable, you had inventory and monitoring under control, and a semblance of a maturity plan, you could coast for years at a time. Those days, are for the most part, over. If you want to build a strong career in IT/Tech, you can’t afford to master only one technology one time, you’ve got to iterate just like the software you’re managing does. I’m not talking about simply getting up on the latest VMWare updates, I mean scripting, cloud capabilities, machine learning, whatever you think might be a) interesting and/or b) marketable for you. So then, how?
Kill “not my job” and “I don’t know” with fire from your vocab
I’m an “engineer”, I do “engineering”. My official title currently dictates all I really need to do is smile and make sure the users are happy, their workstations are working, and install software when they need it. If you’re like me and you read that as “yawn” you’ll know why I instantly mastered that realm and immediately ventured into “show me” and “I’ll learn myself” territory quickly.
I hate DNS, not because I don’t get it or think it’s important, but because it seems to be the root of all problems (therefore, evil). 6 Months ago I truly didn’t get DNS but knew it was the running joke. I didn’t know a thing other than what DNS stood for and that I sounded competent blaming it. I also didn’t know much about Exchange 2013, or Office 365, or SQL, or HTML/CSS/JavaScript. What did I do? I knew that issues would come up, and as they did, I either dove in myself, head first with the Google at my side, or pinged high-level resources that I knew had the answer, and watched. I have a OneNote where I keep my PowerShell’s handy. I read some TechNet articles, hopped on Transcender, PluralSight, and CBT Nuggets as well as YouTube to figure out whatever issue was going on at the moment. This wide-net policy might not be great for everyone, but I love having a wide berth of knowledge without explicit expertise. I love saying “I’ve seen this before” or “I’ll get my pro on it and we’ll get this ASAP”.
When you say “I don’t know” you’re not admitting defeat, but if you don’t follow that up with a “I’ll find out” you’re giving up and not even giving yourself a chance to find out or get better. I learned everything I know now from two basic philosophies: a) I’m smarter than I think, I can probably figure it out and b) someone else has seen this before.
With no comfort, comes great responsibility
When you jump outside your realm of comfort, it’s easy to feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, because chances are you don’t, and that’s awesome. Trusting your gut is part of it, but another part is trusting that gut when it says “this might result in some ‘bad’ stuff”. If you remove that certificate, what’s the worst that can happen? Well, potentially a lot. What if I just run this PowerShell command? Who knows, but you should probably test/ask/verify first since the O’Reilly “F*** IT WE’LL DO IT LIVE” is a thrilling approach, it’s just not generally viewed as a “best practice”.
As a tech, when you escalate or collaborate with teammate, the first thing they want to see is what you’ve done. Nothing has eyes rolling and sighs sounding quicker than a response of “nothing”. Something is always preferred, and anything is welcome. As with most anything it comes down to communication, getting away from the “I don’t know” and “just escalate” culture, every tech should feel empowered and able to resolve an issue — when we look at what the end result is, it’s all down to business continuity. If you’re at an MSP that means your client gets back/stays up and they’re making money again faster. If you’re dedicated/on-staff that means you get to tell senior leadership that you were able to resolve and all is clear — getting your name circulating as a problem solver. If you end up escalating without just “throwing it over the fence” you get a reputation as someone willing to help, and maybe recognition from that team.
What it really boils down to is owning your journey on a daily basis. You’re the one in power, you control what you do and do not learn, and you ultimately have the most control in getting that raise/promotion/new job. If you’ve put in the work to learn by doing, assist teammates, and be a true driver for the team, you’ll see dividends sooner than later.
