My Pops taught me to be myself. Everybody puts their pants on the same way -- even if you have a butler to help you do it. He also taught me to not be afraid to experiment from time to time, and that is how I wound up in IT, lol. Always something to learn and tinker with. I learned from both of my folks the importance of family -- blood or not... and that has probably been the biggest career influence for me. I like being close to home, and I like being in a job where my bosses know (and understand) that family comes first.

@dbeato said in Episode 3 of Nerd Journey Now Available: @NetworkNerd I enjoyed the whole subject of Hero Worship in the IT/Tech World. Thanks for the feedback, and we're glad you enjoyed it.

@wirestyle22 said in Fighting the Impostor Within: I struggle with this daily. One of my biggest problems in life. You are definitely not alone in that. Hang in there! And always know fellow community members are here to help.

Congrats!

It's amazing how much strain we can take if we simply keep calm and focus... and above all... we should always remember:

It cannot be stated enough how important community is. Since joining ML in 2016, all of you have effectively been my IT mentors.

@storageninja said in Resume Critique: @eddiejennings said in Resume Critique: I'm still young within my IT career, so it's not going to be possible for me to craft an impressive, look-at-what-all-I-have-built-and-managed resume and have that resume be connected to reality at this time. It is not about age or time in the field. I had a resume better than most people with 10-15 years experience less than 3 years in the field. Find the right job (Consulting for a partner/VAR/MSP) and this can change VERY VERY quickly. And focus on your lab, and what’s missing from your resume.

@sully93 I have a video from MangoCon 2016 where instead of talking about "what isn't IT" I talk about what it is. I have a recent SAMIT video on separating IT from SE. I'll do one soon on separating IT from Bench.

@crustachio said in The Most Needed Skills in IT: I enjoyed this section of the article: The second big skill needed in IT departments today is an understanding of business – both business in general and the business referring to the specific business of their own organization. As I said at the beginning of this article, IT is a business enabler. If IT professionals do not understand how IT relates to their business they will be poorly positioned to valuate IT needs and make recommendations in the context of the business. Everything that IT does it does for the business, not for technology and not for its own purposes. With that in mind, what are some recommendations to improve one's business acumen from an IT perspective? Hypothetical scenario: Someone has worked at a small IT shop for years and is a comfortable sysadmin, but is considering an IT administrative position at a much more "corporate" environment. Their role will involve a lot more interfacing with other departments or agencies, as well as driving "big picture" projects and purchasing decisions. What resources could they use to improve their understanding of how to fit in in the business realm, and to develop the proper understanding of IT in such an environment? Are there any particularly good books on this subject? This is an area where university classes can be really beneficial, if you have access to the right ones. Classes on communications, business, accounting, psychology and such can be huge. There are three main areas that I can think of that really matter: Understanding people Understanding communications Understanding business And you might add on the more specific "understanding THE business" as well. The more that you have any of these, the easier things get. Even if you are a great communicator, if you don't understand the business and its needs at all, you won't have much to communicate. I don't know of any specific books around this. Maybe things like Open University or something would have resources.

That's kind of what I meant. Either you should be watched over and not need to prove yourself... or you should be trusted and only do it when you want to.

@wirestyle22 I agree... and I like that better than the usual "you look like Anthony Michael Hall."

@antonit said: I am referring to the following: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional AWS Certified Developer - Associate AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional Which one of these would fit the bill better for my career? Solutions Architect is not what you have done in the past and not where you are looking at being currently. So those are more for a change in career direction more than anything. The Developer is not at all what you do, so that is out. DevOps, likewise, would be a major career change. Not a bad one, but it's a very different role and would be a long term transition. SysOps Admin would be the logical starting point as it leverages where you have been and where you have been thinking of going. For all of them, Associate is the starting point, you would do that before considering the Professional level.

@ryanblahnik said: If a lot of these seem to have more value from the material studied than from the cert itself, are there any others that stand out as covering important ground? I found the process of getting my certs to be incredibly valuable. Probably on par with any of my top learning for my career. It was the late 1990s and I did every CompTIA exam at the time and the hardest, longest Microsoft track and a huge number of Brainbench certs all over just like two or three years. I never once attended a class, I bought loads of books, got an ancient Pentium server (yes the original 586 single proc box!) and about five old desktops mostly 486, one Pentium and two PPros and built everything from scratch and did every lab and tested every configuration. No virtualization back then. And MS trials were 90 days, not 180. And an NT4 install could take two days!! And 33Kb/s dial up Internet access at best. Reading the books, cover to cover, doing every example as I went forced me to learn the material including the concepts. Doing the actual certs forced me to not skip over details that seemed unimportant. It made me work to completeness and many of the concepts that I would have ignored when I was young turned out to be very important and the people writing the books had a good idea of what I needed to know