Why I Love Working in IT: Helpful Expertise

This is the first of a few posts I have regarding IT. When I say “IT” I don’t mean the 1986 Stephen King novel nor related 1990 TV mini-series with Tim Curry as the amazingly creepy clown. Nor do I mean the 1927 Clara Bow movie which popularized the term “It Girl.”
IT in this case is pronounced “Eye-Tee” standing for Information Technology which sounds so dated when I spell it out. Ugh! I’ll save the reasons I don’t love IT for another time, as this post’s about why I do love IT. As I’ve worked in IT for twenty years (20!) I have lots of reasons to keep working in IT, and probably the biggest one is I love being a Helpful Expert.



History Lesson
Most of my jobs in IT leveraged my tech skills in a way that directly helps people. Sometimes I had helpdesk jobs where I was responding to an individual person’s tech problem, sometimes I was a system administrator working on processes that multiple people used, and sometimes I was a manager building up other IT folks’ skills. I would always do jobs that had an impact on people to help them do work.
My first tech job was in “LAN Support” at Wells Fargo Bank. I’d say it was about half-time being really good at shipping things. At the time Wells Fargo was merging/acquiring/eating First Interstate Bank and replacing the branch computers, and I got really good at purchasing machines, receiving and unboxing them, imaging them to company spec, and repackaging and shipping them to the branches. I wore a tie every day– it was a bank though not a branch office. It was a floor of software developers (one of whom was my Dad!), and the other half of my job was handling a lot of hardware replacements and crawling around under desks. This was still the age of terminals and the nascent beginnings of Windows desktops (running NT!), so troubleshooting was Not A Thing. It was mostly confirming problems and exchanging hardware. I’d always had a knack for computery things having built my computer for gaming, and at the time I was just starting taking classes for my major of Computer Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo (Go Mustangs!).

Why Were You In Computer Engineering Instead of IT?
There wasn’t really an IT major. At Cal Poly there was an “MIS” (Management of Information Systems) degree, but it was run out of the school of business, and I went to Cal Poly for an Engineering degree. In retrospect I’m not sure why except it seemed more prestigious (still does), and it was kind of a guess that if I liked computers before college I’d really like computers after and should plan my major accordingly. Cal-Poly wants one to declare a major at application time, and I thought it was the best one to pick. I didn’t know until I got in that it was probably one of the most impacted majors with the heaviest class schedule and at the time Cal Poly’s average graduation rate after 6 years was 50%. I made it in 5. Luckily I stuck with it, and I did well. I will admit that I did more electrical engineering than I ever expected, and I did just enough programming to be a good system administrator- a job which involves a lot of scripting and automation. Oh, and I also met my future wife in my first computer science class ever, so that was kinda nice too. We didn’t start dating right away as she had a boyfriend… but now I’m getting really off track. I’ll have to tell finish that history lesson another time.
At Cal Poly I learned that the majority of folks in Computer Engineering (and in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering which was the bulk of my classes) were not like me. This wasn’t obvious at first, but it snapped into focus after my first job. After about a year in the major, I saw IT as having two different but related camps: one group was building the IT and systems and one group was supporting it. It’s a gross generalization, but the first group included the software developers, architects, and the database and network administrators while the second one was the helpdesk techs, field support, and lab admins. I was in the second camp, and Cal Poly Engineering was really geared towards the first camp. Assignments were mostly individual effort and even the group projects often devolved into one person doing the majority of the work. I blame the compressed 10-week quarter system, but I also attribute it to a large number of the engineering folks I know are deep introverts while I’m an incorrigible extrovert.
Maybe my favorite story about this is while in a Software Engineering class the concept of “Extreme Programming” was introduced which encouraged –besides Mountain Dew, EXTREME!– pair programming where one person would run the keyboard while the other served as a reference and live syntax checker. Only in Computer Science would the concept of working with a partner be considered Extreme.


But Why IT At All If You’re Such An Extrovert?
At Wells Fargo much of my job was solitary – building and shipping computers was something I was definitely good at, but what I really enjoyed was the part of the job that involved walking the floor and talking to people and helping them get running again or get running faster or better than they were before.
Helping people with things was always part of me. Even before IT was a Thing or even computers were involved, I had a reputation of being that guy who knew stuff. I was an expert. I was a really smart all through school and picked a lot of conceptual problems up really quickly, and I still do! My secret skill for continuing that understanding was that I helped people with their homework. I had figured out that if I could help a person through complex problems that I was internalizing and better learning how to solve that problem.
Being a Helpful Expert has always been a facet of my career, and it’s reinforced a lot of my skills over the years. Having the focus be in IT was partially luck of the draw; I think really any field that I had associated myself with would have shared a similar development path. The big reason for IT was my interest in Cal Poly’s motto: Discere Faciendo.

Okay, What?
Side note: I did take four years of Latin in high school including an AP test (I got a 4 out of 5). I can’t speak nor read Latin in any real capacity, but I discovered the complexity of Latin helped me understand a lot of English grammar, and every once in a while I get a good Latin-derived word. E.g. (hahah) Conspire is “con” which is a modifier that means “with” and “spire” which means “breathe” so to conspire comes from breathing with others. Neat, right?
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Discere Faciendo means “To Learn By Doing” which is exactly what I was practicing by being that Helpful Expert! Actually doing something rather than just theoretically contemplating it uses different mental pathways and exposes a lot of real world side-effects. I’m a huge proponent of it– I just didn’t know anybody else was. Also in taking the classes I did regarding Computer Engineering and seeing the tech landscape from that point of view I discovered that IT as a job path was primarily a self-taught discipline and a great expression of Cal Poly’s motto. While there are certifications and classes in IT (including that MIS degree), I’ve found through my years in the industry that experience still reigns supreme.
I got into IT at a good time and grew in skill with the industry at a good pace exemplifying Learning By Doing and developing my reputation as a Helpful Expert. As I enter the 20th year of working in IT I’ve developed a lot of other feelings about the industry, and I’m really looking forward to developing those into more posts.