May 21, 2024 • 54 mins
Summary
Ernest Gibbs III shares his journey into the tech industry, starting from his early interest in computers and troubleshooting. He pursued the A+ certification and landed his first tech job in a call center. Ernest then transitioned to a new tech job where he gained more experience and considered pursuing the Network+ certification. Eventually, he found a role as a DevOps engineer and continues to grow in his career. This conversation explores the importance of representation in the tech industry and the challenges faced by underrepresented individuals. It highlights the desire for influence and advocacy, as well as the journey of transitioning to different tech roles. The conversation also touches on dealing with rejection, finding inspiration, and the benefits of tech programs and bootcamps. It concludes with insights into the job application and interview process, career progression, and advice for those interested in tech.
Takeaways
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/dem-tech-folks--5753456/support.
Ernest Gibbs III shares his journey into the tech industry, starting from his early interest in computers and troubleshooting. He pursued the A+ certification and landed his first tech job in a call center. Ernest then transitioned to a new tech job where he gained more experience and considered pursuing the Network+ certification. Eventually, he found a role as a DevOps engineer and continues to grow in his career. This conversation explores the importance of representation in the tech industry and the challenges faced by underrepresented individuals. It highlights the desire for influence and advocacy, as well as the journey of transitioning to different tech roles. The conversation also touches on dealing with rejection, finding inspiration, and the benefits of tech programs and bootcamps. It concludes with insights into the job application and interview process, career progression, and advice for those interested in tech.
Takeaways
- Developing troubleshooting skills and being the go-to tech person in your family can lead to a career in tech.
- Certifications like A+ and Network+ can provide a solid foundation and open doors to job opportunities.
- Networking and job shadowing can help in finding new tech roles and advancing in your career.
- Continued learning and staying motivated are key to success in the tech industry. Representation in the tech industry is crucial for creating a sense of belonging and ensuring equal opportunities for underrepresented individuals.
- Feeling like an outsider in the tech industry can be discouraging, but taking a chance and pursuing opportunities can lead to personal growth and success.
- Having mentors and advocates who look like you can make a significant difference in your career journey.
- Tech programs and bootcamps provide valuable learning opportunities and can help individuals gain the skills and knowledge needed to enter the tech industry.
- Dealing with rejection is a part of the journey, but it's important to stay motivated and continue learning and growing.
- Finding inspiration and motivation from others' success stories can help fuel your own journey in tech.
- Career progression in tech involves continuous learning and staying up-to-date with new technologies and skills.
- Choosing between technical and program management roles requires understanding your own interests and strengths.
- Always be curious and explore different paths in tech to find what excites you the most.
- Pay it forward by helping others and creating opportunities for the next generation of tech professionals.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/dem-tech-folks--5753456/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
My name is Ernest Gipps the third. I am from rock Kill, South
Carolina. Rock Killer is more soknown for putting out NFL football players,
not you know, the next BillGates or the next Martin Zuckerberg. I
would go up and say, mytech journey has started. Since I've been
(00:22):
a kid, I've always been intocomputers, more so going back to like
the Windows ninety five days where Iwas just playing, you know, just
computer games on the computer. Myfirst trouble shooting step, or I can
say that my first trouble shooting stepwas controlled a delete whenever I ran to
(00:44):
a computer issue or just turned thecomputer on the back off as well,
which something that kind of followed meinto like my first career path, which
was tech support. But I can'ttake no loss. I don't even hit
the ground in and go off.Yeh, hit the ground then to go
off. Yet I can't take noloss yet, I don't even know what
(01:06):
I hit the ground in and gooff. So welcome back to the show.
This is them tech folks, andI'm reco around to your host and
I'm joined by Ernest Gibbs the third. So we're gonna talk about Ernest's that
background, how how how he gotinto tech and what he's doing right now
and what is uh what his aspirationsare moving forward? Take us back to
(01:27):
you know, where you come fromand that kind of stuff and how you
got introduced right So, just tokind of you know, speed the clock
up. After high school, Ikind of expressed the desire to get into
doing computers my or what was itlike something in high school that kind of
(01:48):
like turned you Was it like aclass or something? What what make you
decide you want to do it?I would say at that time, I
was basically my families go to techperson or when things were not working,
like you know, hey, youknow, can you go up and fix
this for me? And basically thatwas that was pretty much my role within
the family, like you know,just kind of fixing tech things, whether
(02:08):
it would be a computer issue orjust a gaming issue on like a you
know, gaming console that was me, or just kind of setting stuff up
on the TV. That was basicallyall me got it. Yeah, And
my my pops was like, youknow, hey, maybe you might want
(02:30):
to get into you know, computers, and because that's basically kind of like
your niche and that's a really goodfeel to beg in. That's what a
lot of people told me when Iwas basically kind of like having that interested
against starting out. You the cousinthat you the cousin that could fix it
if nobody else could. Pretty much. So yeah, that's right. You
(02:53):
get a lot of people running runningtowards you that, Hey, can you
make a website? Yeah? Yeah, so this day exactly world computers are
work in tech. I've been meaningto make a website. Yeah. Anyway,
(03:15):
so you you you were always alogically driven person that could figure it
out. Right, You decided topursue a career in tech. Did that
Did that change anything about how youwent about school? The exposure to tech
in high school was to the computerclub, but I really didn't attend the
(03:37):
meetings or whatnot following. Basically itwas basically okay, hey, let's go
up and pick out a clip.We want to go up and join,
and it was a computer club,but we never had meetings and I never
attended meetings either. So that waspretty much like my brush with check at
that point. I would say thatafter high school, my original plan was
(04:01):
to do two years at the TechnicalSchool in rock Hill and then transfer over
to a university. It did notgo as planned because by two years that
I had planned, it turned intosix years. And then I was just
kind of in and out of schoolat that point until I went back in
(04:24):
twenty fifteen and then kind of finishedup my degree in twenty sixteen. But
in twenty fifteen that's when I foundout about the CompTIA certifications. You know,
at that time, everybody was tellingme, oh, you got to
go and have the A plus topretty much kind of get into tech.
I was like, okay, sowhat's the A plus? So I went
(04:45):
and and this is after the sixyears. Yeah, after the six years?
What what? What? What?Was? It? Was? It
a situation? The reason for thetwo years going into sixth was that just
like not really knowing what direct youwanted to go. Was it like a
lot of distracting. I know alot of us get distracted in college,
and it was a mixture of distractionsand not being motivated, and it was
(05:13):
a I didn't have a role mapon how to get into tech. I
always told people counsel times, Okay, yeah, I want to go up
and go to school and do somethingin tech, but you don't have Nobody
had a I didn't have a mentor, and I didn't have the worldthaw lthough
know how to basically go on thecomputer and look up information about how you
(05:35):
can get into it. So that'sthree different things, right that you've you've
pointed out right it was you know, uh, inability to be focused right
on what you were doing, lackof a path, and well yeah she
(05:57):
motivation motivation, right, thank you. And the reason why I point that
out isn't to just un necessarily highlightthat, Yeah, you were supposed to
be in school for two years andit went three x right, that that's
life, right, and life happens. And the reason why I want to,
you know, highlight that is becauseyour journey met you with these three
(06:18):
obstacles, right, and at somepoint, whether that be just time growth,
maybe it was a person that thatyou meant to help you find alignment
and identify correct path, but therewas there was there was a situation that
that you had to overcome. Right. Those those are the milestones, Those
(06:40):
those are the blockers that you hadovercome in order to you know, excel.
I think that's important because a lotof people they don't get to the
point where you are, right nowwhere those obstacles are. Now, you
know testimonies. Now you can sayI went through this. You know,
I will stopped by this, butI ended up going through it, or
(07:00):
I made it way around it orwhatever, I figured it out, you
know. So I just wanted topause for a second, how like that
So people can maybe they can pullsome encouragement because they're not feeling motivated,
or they can understand that, hey, I just don't have a path.
I neither link up with somebody thatcan help me identify my path or you
(07:21):
know, validated for me. Youwere I think you were at explaining how
you found out about the A plustoo. Come. Yes, So around
that time I just kind of readup on the A plus and what the
certification was about, and basically ittaught you hardware skills and software skills on
the computer. The A plus isbasically like a buffet of information about computers
(07:46):
and it just kind of gives youjust a little bit of everything. At
that point in twenty sixteen was whenI actually got my first tech job,
which was I was a tech supportto cognition at a call center where basically
we just serviced just different companies thatneeded technical support for their products. One
(08:13):
of the main ones was like anISP. I was located in Charleston,
South Carolina, and that's where Ikind of cut my teeth in learning about
just different technical jargons, learning aboutrods and modems, and some of the
calls were about, you know,helping somebody fix their TV and just fixing
(08:35):
their phone and just learning about justdifferent just technical issues that I would just
come across, you know, justkind of coming in my own tech journey.
And yes, I was actually studyingthe A plus at my first tech
(08:56):
job every day about three hours aday while basically working my tech job working
at McDonald's and basically at that timeI transferred into university as well. You
take job. Your job was atMcDonald's doing tech. I was working at
(09:18):
McDonald's as well as working at thecall center, working two jobs. Yeah,
man, man, no days off, no days off, stuff like.
So you did say, you knowA plus that that's that's that's pretty
accurate, right. A plus doescover a lot of things because A plus
(09:39):
is centered around you know, that'stalk you know from the client side,
right, So from the client side, you could be dealing with the you
know, peripherals, the actual systemsome networking situations. I mean, even
though to you know, having tounderstand it goes to the route because you
know, the IP addres and whatever, maybe not not in the same segment
(10:03):
as the gateway, you know,just right. So A PLUS is a
great that's a great start because itgives you a little bit of a taste
of everything. I mean, Ican I can remember even like looking at
I don't know if they still doit now, but when I did A
PLUS like years ago, I've actuallylike I had to learn about buffers like
(10:24):
working two jobs call center and McDonald'sand studying, so that's almost three jobs,
three hours a day. Study.Yeah, I was studying at work
when I could, in between mycalls, just to kind of prepare for
the actual At that time, itwas the nine one in the NINEO two
(10:46):
was basically the two exams that yougot to go to that did you have
to go through in order to getthe actual certification itself. So I didn't
have the actual confidence to take thetest initially, So I started taking the
(11:07):
exams in twenty eighteen. Once Iactually felt comfortable with the material and once
I got like a couple of yearsunder my belt, at my tech job
to go up and start you know, going accurate, because you know,
a lot of information. For afirst timer who has never really been in
tech before, it was a lotto go up and deal with. I
(11:28):
basically just kind of learned things alongthe way, and I started seeing as
I was going through my first techjob, I started seeing things creeping up
that were from the A plus startedto creep up. I was like,
okay, this is what this does. Okay, and this is what this
does. That was kind of coolto go up and experience because it means
I was starting to retain the informationmore and starting to understand, Okay,
(11:50):
this is why this happens. Whenevera personal calls in about the internet not
working were issued with their computer.It's a lot different when you just reading
something and versus you read it andthen it's actually happening right in front of
you. I'm going through going throughaudiobook right now. I can't think of
the name of it, but they'reactually they actually talk about, like,
(12:13):
you know, ways to learn moreefficiently and recall is like it's the top
thing that they study with that andit's actually like doing it. So you're
doing it on a daily basis whilealso learning it, you've also been learning
it, so a lot of stuffthat you've learned as you're interfacing with it,
(12:33):
you know, in the real world, kind of transitioning from twenty eighteen
going to twenty nineteen. I gotthe nine O two in February of twenty
nineteen, and at that point that'swhen, you know, I posted it
on LinkedIn, got a lot ofcongratulations for it. How a lot of
(12:54):
people kind of hitting me up,like, oh, how'd you go about,
you know, passing a plus?And I got a couple of job
offers out of that. But Ididn't think I was ready because yeah,
I didn't think I was ready becauseI never really opened up a computer and
whatnot and kind of played around withit. What I did do was I
actually ended up putting an application inwith another ISP that was local in rock
(13:20):
Hill. But the benefits of itwas it was more money and then they
had job shadowing too, which wassomething that was not I didn't have it
my first tech job because I wason I was basically training for like two
weeks before they three on the phone, and it was basically pretty much a
sinkle swim. So when I gotto my second tech job, which was
(13:43):
Internet Support specialist. I basically wasin training for like six months, just
kind of just learning the ropes ofwhat the customer expects. And instead of
servicing several ISPs in a call center, I was service from one throughout just
different regions in both North and SouthCarolina. I was wanting to go up
(14:09):
and do the network Plus. Thefirst time I took it, I was
like twenty points away from passing,and my score regressed as I went back
to go take the network Plus.I took it like maybe by work.
Yeah, it got worse over timebecause I don't I don't think I was
committed enough to it to basically likebe locked in with it. And that's
(14:35):
when the pandemic happened and around Yeah, this is kind of yeah, so
this is like when the A thecomptier exams were like I remember when come
TIA exams, like the super cheapyou know not like I didn't know that.
Wow, okay, that's how that'show out of the loop i've been
(14:58):
with you got. So I didn'tknow that, yeah, said, let
me look this up from my mistakenit was like one eighty five and like
one fifty at one point in timemistaken two forty six eight eight net plus,
Oh my security plus. I thinkI paid that for mys P a
(15:22):
long time ago, class fifty eight. A man, people getting paid off
these shirts like both ways here wow, and if you pass it, you'll
get paid if you know how tosell yourself. Really man, I think
I think I think COMPTE exams werelike I want to say, like eighty
(15:43):
five, but they would definitely knowhowher than like one twenty five. Yeah,
around one forty at that time.That that's crazy. Yeah, that
that's I've been out of the loop. Lie people. You get enough people
saying that they had like job offers, like coming out the wool, where's
(16:04):
officer just having a plus? Yeah, come to here's gonna raise the prices
of the demand. So so youdid that the two A plus exams,
the two exams required for an Aplus there was not a one now two,
And then you started going for anetwork plus, Like why why network
(16:26):
plus? I had the mindset thatwhen you get the A plus, you
get the network plus after that,and I low key wanted to be like
a net. I want to belike the network part of tech, like
a network administrator or maybe like anetwork engineer at that point, so,
(16:47):
yeah, a Cisco guy. Ieven sat up there and went and thought
about doing the Yeah, the cCNA. I was thinking about wanting to
go up and do that at thetime around twenty nineteen and twenty twenty,
but I just wasn't really committed enoughto go and go after it. Because
(17:08):
I'm not going to say I gotcomplacent, but when you're making the money
you want to go up and makeand whatnot. At that point, you
know, it kind of feels likeyou're there now. You feel like you've
arrived at that point. And Iwas just okay with making the money that
I was making at that point andone time and I just didn't go back
(17:33):
to go after the network. Plusthe way I should have, like McDonald's
and call center is like behind youat this point, right. Yes,
I left McDonald's in twenty nineteen.At that once, I got, you
know, my second tech job,not not fries on the ground in his
moon. Look here, when theyoffer you nineteen dollars an hour over nine
(17:56):
dollars, you have to go upand take that pretty much solf. So
yeah, so around that time,I was just getting introduced from just so
many different things. And just likecompany perks, because this was a medium
size but a corporate company, Igot the chance to work from home.
(18:21):
Job shadowing, like I mentioned before, which is job shadowing is what kind
of led me to where I'm atnow as a develops engineer. And I'll
kind of get to that. SoI got to learn just how did you
come to, you know, know, this role? I mean, was
it was it like a cold callfor somebody seeing your accolades on LinkedIn?
(18:42):
Or was it a friend or somethingsome kind of I always knew about Corporium,
and that's the name of the company, Comporium, and they always said
that Comporium was basically a good companyto work for rock Hill, and I
always heard things like, okay,you they treat you really well at Comporium,
(19:06):
and you know, you get paidpretty much. So and I went
on their website one particular day andI seen if they had an Internet support
specialist position open, and that waslike between December of twenty eighteen going into
January of twenty nineteen. So Iwas looking at the qualifications for it and
(19:30):
I was like, wow, that'spretty much what I do now. So
I went and just kind of putmy application in and put my resume with
it and just see what happened.And about maybe a week later, I
had gotten a call to basically kindof you know, interview for the job.
(19:51):
I made it to like the secondround, but I never heard back.
And the next day after that waswhen I at the nine to two
COMPTA exam and passed it. ButI never heard anything between February up until
May until they gave me a callback again and asked me if I was
(20:12):
interested in position. So yeah,I went back in May, and this
time around, I was in frontof a black manager, black supervisor for
the role the white person, whiteguy, and he actually we're still cool
(20:36):
to this day. He's been likeinstrumental in my journey. And he kind
of explained to me, like,you know why they didn't go for me
the first time, So I guesshe took the manager at that time,
they chose another person over me.But what they did was HR sent them
(21:00):
sent the department my resume and basicallythey showed an example of you know,
could portum turning down employees and theyhave the necessary skills to do the job.
So, you know, my formerboss at that time just kind of
went and they interviewed me, andyou know, they saw that I had
(21:22):
the skills and I had the Aplus certification, so I had the experience,
so why not go up and takea chance on me. And when
I got into the department, youknow, I flourished at the top of
my team for like four straight months, and you know, I was just
(21:42):
doing X, Y and Z.I was really reliable on the team in
the end of the department and Iwas bringing in. It wasn't anything that
overtly found it being nefarious on anybody'spart, like you might hook it up
a friend anything like that or no, no, not at all. It
was basically they went with like anothercandidate at that time. So but you
(22:07):
know, I do feel like whenyou do have people who are in those
positions who look like you, theywill advocate for you and they will go
and give you a shot, becauseeverybody deserves a shot. In the tech
board of my personal was it inperson interview like around the COVID time,
(22:27):
So no, this was before COVID. Actually this was like twenty nineteen,
so it was like a full yearbefore COVID happens. So yeah, yeah,
and I was actually talking to somebodyabout this same thing, like,
you know, a week ago,and they were asking about because I was
I was talking about representation right intech and like why it was important to
(22:52):
me, you know, and it'sa situation. The analege I gave was
that, you know, imagine theimagine the tech industry is like this,
since their area. You're on theoutside. You walk up and you see
everybody like having a good time,solve problem, making friends, making money.
Yeah, man, I think usesome of that money. I like
making friends and I like solving problems. That sounds interesting, It looks interesting.
(23:18):
How do I get in there?But you're looking in there and you're
like, nobody looks like you orasks like you. Is that a space
for me? You know? Youyou got to ask yourself is that a
space for me? You know someof us we say no because it doesn't
look like it's Some of us taketo take a chance anyways and get in
there, and then we maybe wonderwhile we're on the inside, damn,
(23:41):
is this my space? You know, it's just a space for me.
There's not a whole lot of peoplelike me, and maybe they treat me
different, or maybe they ask meweird questions like why you talk like this
or whatever. So it's important toyou know, raise the level of representation
Andy, so that people do feellike they can ascend to you know,
(24:03):
come inside the fence and play witheverybody else that we all feel like it's
a space for us, and youknow, the ones that are in already,
you know that we do feel athome and we feel understood and advocate
for right truth. I've been insituations like that where you've had, you
(24:25):
know, a person that looked likeyou that had to come up and kind
of speak up, you know,to the masses because I mean, your
little voice, you know, youjust you knew or maybe you're not even
on the inside to where your voicecan even be heard. So that's very
important, very important. Yeah,and he was very respected and still respected
to this day at Comportia, sothey looked at him just for ideas and
(24:49):
new ideas and whatnot. And youknow, that's real cool to go up
and be black and then have thattype of influence like that. And that's
something that I aspired to gold andbe in my own tech journey, just
to kind of speed it up alittle bit in the timeline, you know,
(25:11):
twenty twenty, COVID happens everybody's home. We were basically home for two
years, and you know, thatwas an experience in its own stuff because
I had never had the experience ofworking from home and never had a work
from home job ever at all,So that was something that was mostly new
(25:34):
to me. So around that time, between twenty twenty and twenty twenty one,
I kind of had the itch ofwanting to do something different apart from
tech support and basically being on thephone every day fixing the same issues,
(25:55):
you know, for six or soyears at that because I was basically hitting
my ceiling in terms of, Okay, I'm doing this repeatedly every day.
So I started looking at different thingsthat you could go up and do and
tech my four Voss ended up leavingto become like the digital product owner for
(26:21):
Comporium at that point, so Iwent and kind of had a curiosity about
what his role entailed, and that'swhen I found out about Scrum. That's
when I found out about sprints.He was basically in charge of creating a
chat bot for the company and basicallycreating a knowledge base that customers can access
(26:47):
whenever they have issues. So Ifound that'd be pretty cool because he was
working with Salesforce and basically just creatingthe chatbot out of Salesforce, and I
was like, wow, that islike so freezing cool, and like,
you know, you're working like basicallyat your own pace, you have self
autonomy, you're just basically just livinga good life pretty much so that any
(27:15):
tech person wants to go up anddo. So what I did was,
this is between twenty twenty one andtwenty two. I just basically kind of
like I went for Salesforce first andkind of learned Salesforce, and then I
figured out, you know what,I don't exactly like Salesforce like that because
it's Salesforce is very detailed and it'sa lot of work. Most people don't
(27:37):
understand that. Because there's a lotto learn in Salesforce. I think I
can run of the first certification youcan go up and get, like the
Salesforce administrator or something like that.And then I went back to the drawing
board and I was like, Okay, maybe I don't want to go up
and do that. So I wentjust kind of all in on the product
owner thing and just learning about scrumand what a product owner does. I
(28:00):
was downloading courses from you to mejust to kind of understand, you know,
what the stakeholders expect, what theproduct is, how you lead the
product from idegation to you know,adding the features to it and all that.
It came time for them to likepretty much kind of expand on the
(28:22):
product owner team. Although I didn'thave the experience of a product owner.
I kind of went in to theinterview when I basically signed up for it
just kind of off of what Iknew. I didn't get the job.
And the reason why I did notget the job was because I was too
quiet and they felt like they feltlike I couldn't basically be in a room
(28:48):
full of executives and I guess,you know, take control of the room
and convey my point as to whythese features are needed in this product UK.
So that kind of put me downand it's kind of had me bombed
out of everything. And then Ihad like a lot of personal things going
(29:11):
on at that time over the summeraround twenty twenty two that I was dealing
with. And so was that arejection that you just kind of rejected in
itself? Like you? I mean, because sometimes like you you'll miss a
shot and you'll be like, youknow what, Yeah, I know I
missed that. You know, Iknow I didn't get that. But were
you kind of like, yeah,this should have got that job, or
(29:33):
how did you feel it was arejection that I took at that time,
I took personally because here I wascommitting myself to something that I really kind
of like pretty much fell in lovewith and to own the basis kind of
(29:57):
be told like, okay, you'renot there. You know, being turned
down that point was just one toomany times for me, And you know
it, with that situation, theywent with someone I guess who really thought,
excuse me, that they were qualified, and I just don't know how
(30:18):
they could have been qualified if Ididn't hear anything about them putting in the
actual work, Like you how youpersonally felt about yourself versus you know,
you next to somebody else that theystacked higher. Because I felt like in
my heart I could have learned therole if given the opportunity, but I
(30:40):
don't know, I didn't know thetimeline or like you know, if they
wanted to get the ball roller andthey may not have had the time to
go betray somebody in the role,but like, like you're saying, sometimes
they will afford you to grow intoa role. So yeah, I feel
you there. So I just kindof stayed upset about it, you know,
(31:03):
over the summer, and I say, you know what, my sister
who I helped is kind of inspiredlike get into tech. She was working
with a WS. I said.My mom told me, like, you
know, you know, your sister'sworking with a WS and whatnot. And
I'm like, hold on for asecond, she's working with Cloud Technologies and
she's like yeah. I was like, okay, well, if she can
(31:26):
go up to do that. Thisis my younger sister, my baby sister.
Actually, So when I found outthat she was working with like AWS,
I'm like, if she can dothat, I know for a fact
I can maybe go up and godo that. So let me go up
and just download the course. AndI downloaded the Cloud Practitioner Course from AWS.
(31:48):
It was the Stefan Merricks of courseon you to me, so I
got the yeah, he's a reallycool dude. His information was just like
super insightful when I first looked itup and just started looking and learning,
you know, what S three does, what EC two does, all those
(32:10):
technologies. It was basically like relearningthe A plus again. That's that feeling
that I had when I was lookingover the cloud practitioner. Of course I
got motivated again, Yeah, prettymuch. So, So I was talking
to my mom and whatnot, andI sent her a video. I'm not
(32:32):
sure if you ever heard of CyrusHarbin tech Us the New Black. I've
heard of that, yeah, yeah, yes, so he runs, yeah,
he runs tech Us the New Black. And what was crazy was I
sent my mam a video of himdancing in the road basically talking about his
life, how he went from basicallybeing homeless to basically being you know,
(32:55):
high paying, you know, salesengineer. So she was like, you
know, if why don't you goup to look at a boot camp because
he went to a boot camp andyou know, he's basically doing well for
himself. You know what do youhave to go up and lose? I
say, you know what, youare kind of telling the truth about that
moth. So I had been seeinglevel up in tech online for you know,
(33:22):
a couple of years, because broadUs I think started around twenty twenty,
I believe in twenty twenty one.So I went, look, you
know, just kind of vetted theprogram because at that time, I really
it was always told that you kindof stay away from boot camps because of
a how expense they are, andyou know, what's the returner on the
(33:43):
investment of putting, you know,your money into a boot camp because a
lot of people put like tens ofthousands of dollars into a boot camp and
they don't get anything back from it. So I vented the program. I
just kind of went and just kindof got my own the detective work,
you know before I kind of likeyou know, gave the folks over their
(34:06):
call and you know, they explainedto me the program and how it worked
and the pricing and everything else ofthat nature. So I got into the
program in September of twenty twenty two, and from there I was just learning
from the ground level Linux. Iwas learning Lynx like four weeks and I
(34:31):
took my first Linux Exam and didn'tpass it the first time, but the
second time I got my Linux Examon the second goal round. Did that
for four that was the LPIES CentralsLinux Essentials certification that was from basically Linux
Institution. Did that for four weeksand then got into AWS, which was
(34:58):
the ABS Developers Associate, and it'skind of relying on the skills and knowledge
that I picked up over the summerfrom the Cloud practitioner. It made it
more easily digestible when I was learningthe Developer Associate, and it's kind of
learning how you use those skills outa developer level using EC two S three
(35:22):
downmod dB, learning VPCS, allthat. In between that we were basically
doing projects, working on projects,kind of putting our work out there on
LinkedIn, and it's kind of showedwhat we've done over a course of a
few weeks. Every time we werelearning a new technology and learning a new
(35:45):
skill. I was learning Python,made a couple of projects off of that,
and then on my off time,I was basically learning how to code
on my off time, and youknow, showcasing that on Lincoln as well.
I got to learn Docker, Igot to learn Kupernettes, I got
(36:07):
to learn terror Form, And thiswas all kind of wrapped into twenty four
weeks of just relentless studying and relentlessprojects. And then at that point we
were basically getting ready for our resumewriting. Our resumes were getting tailored for
(36:28):
basically putting resumes in at companies atthat point. That's a crazy progression.
Man. It sounds like they coveredout down on all the basis. What
are you also doing like marketing abusefor you guys to make sure you were
prepared if you got you know,brought into a yeah. Nice and that
right there. That's what sold meon getting into Levelopment Tech because of the
(36:52):
bad interview experience that I had ayear prior with the product owner interview,
and because here I was I couldactually speak to the experience that I had
as a DevOps engineer or a cloudengineer and basically just be like, Okay,
(37:13):
you know I know about this technologybecause I have a project on that.
Let me tell you a by thetime where I had a situation where
this wasn't working and I use X, Y and Z skill to solve it.
That's basically speaking with confidence and speakingwith experience too. So that's what
(37:34):
really pretty much sold me on theprogram because they had mock interviews in interview
with prep and then we did thatfor like three weeks. Okay, your
graduation mean is there a graduation oris it just kind of like, hey,
you got all the certifications, yourresume looks great. There is a
(38:00):
graduation week for people who go intolow up and tech and then you know,
once you've how the process works isyou basically turn in like fifteen projects
and you have to have at leastabout one or two certifications in order to
basically be out of a graduation.And I basically had all my requirements at
(38:22):
that point. Nice what was someof the projects like making so at the
ground so at that time they've kindof changed up the project since I've been
in the program, But at theground level, we were basically spinning up
a web server for like enginets andwhatnot. And basically each project had like
(38:51):
a level, like an intermediate level, advanced level, and like a more
advanced level, and our murders tothis day, it was basically an intermediate
project or how to spend up aserver in Linux. Another project was how
to fork a repository and clone itBash scripting basically create a bass script that
(39:16):
automates your commands and basically set upa server going into yeah, going into
like AWS, spinning up an ECtwo instance and basically adding a whib server
to the EC two instance. Doyou use of that? What would you
(39:37):
say, would be your favorite projectyou did. Well, This thing that
we did was doing basically creating aDonamo dB table kind of based off of
your top ten favorite moves or yourtop ten video games. I was a
(40:00):
little catchy with a lot of mytitles for my projects. So the let's
play donamal dB was basically setting upa donald dB table of your of my
top favorite games of all time.And basically you have to set it up
to where it basically has reader Ican read only policy on the IM and
(40:25):
you basically have to confirm that nobodycan write to that database. They can
only read it. And basically that'swhat I did. I set up the
database and I set up the IMrole for it to where it can only
be read but not written on ornot basically touched. Yeah. When he
(40:45):
says, I am, that's anIdentity Access management AWS turn, Yeah,
there you go. I remixed theproject in terrorform and I did a terraform
edition out of it, and basicallythe idea of it kind of played it
off on like Street Fighter two.Rememberbody back in the day where they had
like street Fighter two termine editions,street Fighter Turbos, street Rout Turbo so
(41:09):
I did it that way, butthat was like my most favorite project that
I did. At that point,I was just basically just doing more projects
even after I graduated from level up, just in preparation for the job to
go up and pretty much give mea call for an interview because I was
(41:30):
The real job is basically putting inapplications to get a company to take a
chance on you. That's basically prettymuch a job within a job. I
was basically putting in applications daily,and just one particular day in March of
last year, I put an applicationin with a company and they got back
(41:52):
to me a couple hours later forlike an interview. And the interview,
yeah, asked a cool question onaverage, how many apps? How many
applications do you think you were puttingin on a daily basis. I was
maybe at least putting in about fivea day, five a day. So
(42:15):
if you're out there and you puttingin less than five a day, don't
be complaining. They were requiring usto put in They were requiring us to
put in ten, you know.And when I say that, I'm not
like saying, hey, you needto you know, feel bad about yourself.
(42:36):
What I'm saying is, yeah,he's got a job, and you're
not necessarily compete with it. Heain't putting five applications in the day now
right maybe probably not even like fivein three months, but because you got
people looking for you right now.But what I'm saying is that there's people
that were just as hungry as Ernestwas out there right now, doing the
(42:58):
same level of work, working harder. So you're working against them, is
what I want to say. Butbut go ahead, brother. Oh no.
Basically, you know, they gotback to me in the same day,
and I had a little bit ofhope at that point. I was
like super excited the process over all. I went through like four interviews with
(43:25):
this company before I got the actualoffer a day before my birthday, And
just to kind of describe it,it was basically an interview with the recruiter
first, and then I got aninterview you know, a week later with
like a member of the team.The third interview was basically with like the
(43:49):
staff double ops engineer of the team, just to kind of see what I
knew, and then the last interviewwas basically it was two hours and basically
it was like a like a fourlevel interview where I learned about the product
and had questions. And the secondinterview was basically a behavior interview. There
(44:10):
was asked me questions like, youknow, you know, how do you
study? You know, what areyour studying habits? You know what drives
you in develops. The third interviewwas the technical stout interview where they were
just kind of quizzing me on justdifferent things. And then the last interview
was basically with like the director orthe the vice president of our department currently,
(44:38):
and that was, you know,like a fifteen minute interview. You
asked me if I had any sortof questions, and you know how I
did on the coding assessment. Youknow, I used chat GPT, but
you know, at that time,so I was kind of honest about that
by me, I told him,like, you know, I used chat
(44:58):
GPT as a learning assistant, notto template like a template, because you
know, as someone who had sixmonths of experience and not enough you know,
coding experience, you have to prettymuch just kind of lean on an
assistant to kind of help you understandwhat you're trying to solve in the code
(45:22):
and understand the code itself. Andthat's that's the difference. That's the difference
that will be you know, spelledout in the coming in the near future.
Right, there's some people that arelooking for chat GBT to do their
jobs for them, and there's othersof us that are only using chat GPT
to augmentate what we do. Soand now you have this rise in AI
(45:49):
where it's going to become. Itfeels like a gold rush now with AI
because you can do so many thingswith AI. It's like it's just the
skies is pretty much the limit withAI now because you can create chat bots,
you can make pictures, you cando all the short videos with AI.
(46:14):
You know, that's where the technologyis going now because now it was
at first it was cloud and nowhave AI in the mix. What can
you do now with I? Rememberwhen it was virtualization, you got cloud,
and then it's containerization and now it'syou know a lot of this AI
(46:37):
stuff. So, yeah, you'reright, it's always there's always something to
learn, right, There's always somethingnew. It's not like it's not like
plumbing. I don't know when lasttime plumbing had enough dream right if ever,
stuff you're literally learning something new everyyou know, even if you are
(47:00):
Yeah, it's changed quite a bit. I'm super I feel like I'm super
young in my devlops career right now. So the main goal is to learn
the technology that I work with everyday at work. In like my first
year the second year, I definitelywant to be more involved in projects,
(47:25):
and it's kind of just learning justdifferent skills outside of work too, because
your professional growth outside of work ismore important too, along with your professional
growth inside of work as well.So I want to be well versed in
(47:46):
other technologies and more versatile as adevelops engineer, so you know, just
one skill in software to other timesfor me because right now currently I'm using
Sneak right now, we've picked upSneak at our job, and basically Sneak
(48:07):
is a software tool that will identifyvulnerabilities in your code or your infrastructure as
code scripts. So I definitely wantto be a subject matter expert in that
because that's something that I've kind oftaken on at work and I've worked with
(48:27):
a couple of tickets for it tokind of be interesting to me and learn
outside of work too, so thatI can take that knowledge from outside of
work into it. And it's kindof like Okay, you know, hey,
this is why I've been learning,and this is how I've been using
sneak outside of work. So Iwould say just to kind of get back
to the question just kind of learninga new technology, you know, one
(48:51):
at a time, because when youtake it all at once, you know,
you can kind of become confusing.But I definitely want to get in
to jen AI as well. Andit's kind of word how to use AI
as the business uses it. Sowith all these like immensely technical roles,
(49:13):
right devlops, you got the generativeAI, you know AI stuff as well,
did these kind of like take theforefront to your desires to you know,
pursue the program management role or isthat would that still be something that
will be exciting for you or youjust find like new excitement and these new
challenges I found. I basically feellike I've found something that I can grow
(49:37):
in versus you know a few yearsago, I didn't have like an actual
path on where I want to goup and go you know, and cloud.
You know, there's so many avenuesyou can get into with Cloud and
develops. So I feel like I'vefound something for right now that basically keeps
(50:01):
me interested and it keeps me wantingto learn new things daily, and that's
key. That's definitely key. There'schallenges on both sides. On both of
those roads, there different challenges.So you have to ensure that the challenge
that you're you know, gravitating towardsis an alignment to you know, the
(50:22):
things that actually make you most excited. If it's if it's a technical challenge,
okay, cool, I want tostay on the side of the house.
Otherwise, if it's if it's ayou know, maybe a political or
the organizational challenge, dealing dealing roadblocks, are getting some product or you
know, the future you know,into a product, and maybe on the
(50:45):
other side, you know. Soit's important to understand these things so that
ignorance is not getting in your waybecause a lot of times people like,
oh, well what do I wantto do? Well, you probably don't
know enough about the roles one orneither role. So get educated on your
options and now you can move forwarda little more confidence and decision. Always
(51:10):
be curious about, you know,what path you want to get into.
We live in a world now towhere you can get the information just like
that at that time when I waskind of pretty much starting out, we
didn't have TikTok where you can goup and see what a day in the
(51:32):
life of a DevOps engineer is,or a cloud engineer or a network engineer,
and it's kind of you know,you have people giving you the information
out now more than ever. SoI would say use that to your advantage
if you want to get into tech, and you know, that can kind
(51:54):
of give you a sense of whatyou want to go up and do or
even this is the right path foryou. Another thing I want to go
and believe is that you know,if you are in tech, you know,
always try to create the jet packfor the next person you know behind
(52:15):
you to go and use to climbup the ranks or just ascend into disguis
because tech is such a bad placethat speaks volumes to you know, the
type of person you are. I'vehad like so many mentors, and you
know, one of the biggest mentorone of the most impactful that I've had.
(52:38):
He always tells me when I thinkhim for you know, how he
helped me through some challenging situations atmy current job, and just pay it
forward. You know, it's crazybecause it's the same thing I tell people,
and now I just tell them loudI said, just paying forward,
just paying forward. So it's goodto see people, you know, outside
(52:59):
of my circle that that's that's doingthe same thing, and they're they're trying
to make the same things go viral, right, being crying and looking out
and making positive movements to reshape,you know, the culture and how we
move as people. So I reallyappreciate that, and and thank you for
(53:20):
sitting down with me again for thesecond time. Of course, of course
I wanted to. I want togo each time. I've thought. It's
been a great conversation. Man.You are very intelligent and inspirational, and
I do genuinely thank you for Shay'sstory. It's definitely if it helps at
(53:43):
least one person, this is ourl spend. Yeah. If it doesn't,
yeah, I feel you. It'sall good man. I'm always here
to go up this fire people,so it's a good
My name is Ernest Gipps the third. I am from rock Kill, South
Carolina. Rock Killer is more soknown for putting out NFL football players,
not you know, the next BillGates or the next Martin Zuckerberg. I
would go up and say, mytech journey has started. Since I've been
(00:22):
a kid, I've always been intocomputers, more so going back to like
the Windows ninety five days where Iwas just playing, you know, just
computer games on the computer. Myfirst trouble shooting step, or I can
say that my first trouble shooting stepwas controlled a delete whenever I ran to
(00:44):
a computer issue or just turned thecomputer on the back off as well,
which something that kind of followed meinto like my first career path, which
was tech support. But I can'ttake no loss. I don't even hit
the ground in and go off.Yeh, hit the ground then to go
off. Yet I can't take noloss yet, I don't even know what
(01:06):
I hit the ground in and gooff. So welcome back to the show.
This is them tech folks, andI'm reco around to your host and
I'm joined by Ernest Gibbs the third. So we're gonna talk about Ernest's that
background, how how how he gotinto tech and what he's doing right now
and what is uh what his aspirationsare moving forward? Take us back to
(01:27):
you know, where you come fromand that kind of stuff and how you
got introduced right So, just tokind of you know, speed the clock
up. After high school, Ikind of expressed the desire to get into
doing computers my or what was itlike something in high school that kind of
(01:48):
like turned you Was it like aclass or something? What what make you
decide you want to do it?I would say at that time, I
was basically my families go to techperson or when things were not working,
like you know, hey, youknow, can you go up and fix
this for me? And basically thatwas that was pretty much my role within
the family, like you know,just kind of fixing tech things, whether
(02:08):
it would be a computer issue orjust a gaming issue on like a you
know, gaming console that was me, or just kind of setting stuff up
on the TV. That was basicallyall me got it. Yeah, And
my my pops was like, youknow, hey, maybe you might want
(02:30):
to get into you know, computers, and because that's basically kind of like
your niche and that's a really goodfeel to beg in. That's what a
lot of people told me when Iwas basically kind of like having that interested
against starting out. You the cousinthat you the cousin that could fix it
if nobody else could. Pretty much. So yeah, that's right. You
(02:53):
get a lot of people running runningtowards you that, Hey, can you
make a website? Yeah? Yeah, so this day exactly world computers are
work in tech. I've been meaningto make a website. Yeah. Anyway,
(03:15):
so you you you were always alogically driven person that could figure it
out. Right, You decided topursue a career in tech. Did that
Did that change anything about how youwent about school? The exposure to tech
in high school was to the computerclub, but I really didn't attend the
(03:37):
meetings or whatnot following. Basically itwas basically okay, hey, let's go
up and pick out a clip.We want to go up and join,
and it was a computer club,but we never had meetings and I never
attended meetings either. So that waspretty much like my brush with check at
that point. I would say thatafter high school, my original plan was
(04:01):
to do two years at the TechnicalSchool in rock Hill and then transfer over
to a university. It did notgo as planned because by two years that
I had planned, it turned intosix years. And then I was just
kind of in and out of schoolat that point until I went back in
(04:24):
twenty fifteen and then kind of finishedup my degree in twenty sixteen. But
in twenty fifteen that's when I foundout about the CompTIA certifications. You know,
at that time, everybody was tellingme, oh, you got to
go and have the A plus topretty much kind of get into tech.
I was like, okay, sowhat's the A plus? So I went
(04:45):
and and this is after the sixyears. Yeah, after the six years?
What what? What? What?Was? It? Was? It
a situation? The reason for thetwo years going into sixth was that just
like not really knowing what direct youwanted to go. Was it like a
lot of distracting. I know alot of us get distracted in college,
and it was a mixture of distractionsand not being motivated, and it was
(05:13):
a I didn't have a role mapon how to get into tech. I
always told people counsel times, Okay, yeah, I want to go up
and go to school and do somethingin tech, but you don't have Nobody
had a I didn't have a mentor, and I didn't have the worldthaw lthough
know how to basically go on thecomputer and look up information about how you
(05:35):
can get into it. So that'sthree different things, right that you've you've
pointed out right it was you know, uh, inability to be focused right
on what you were doing, lackof a path, and well yeah she
(05:57):
motivation motivation, right, thank you. And the reason why I point that
out isn't to just un necessarily highlightthat, Yeah, you were supposed to
be in school for two years andit went three x right, that that's
life, right, and life happens. And the reason why I want to,
you know, highlight that is becauseyour journey met you with these three
(06:18):
obstacles, right, and at somepoint, whether that be just time growth,
maybe it was a person that thatyou meant to help you find alignment
and identify correct path, but therewas there was there was a situation that
that you had to overcome. Right. Those those are the milestones, Those
(06:40):
those are the blockers that you hadovercome in order to you know, excel.
I think that's important because a lotof people they don't get to the
point where you are, right nowwhere those obstacles are. Now, you
know testimonies. Now you can sayI went through this. You know,
I will stopped by this, butI ended up going through it, or
(07:00):
I made it way around it orwhatever, I figured it out, you
know. So I just wanted topause for a second, how like that
So people can maybe they can pullsome encouragement because they're not feeling motivated,
or they can understand that, hey, I just don't have a path.
I neither link up with somebody thatcan help me identify my path or you
(07:21):
know, validated for me. Youwere I think you were at explaining how
you found out about the A plustoo. Come. Yes, So around
that time I just kind of readup on the A plus and what the
certification was about, and basically ittaught you hardware skills and software skills on
the computer. The A plus isbasically like a buffet of information about computers
(07:46):
and it just kind of gives youjust a little bit of everything. At
that point in twenty sixteen was whenI actually got my first tech job,
which was I was a tech supportto cognition at a call center where basically
we just serviced just different companies thatneeded technical support for their products. One
(08:13):
of the main ones was like anISP. I was located in Charleston,
South Carolina, and that's where Ikind of cut my teeth in learning about
just different technical jargons, learning aboutrods and modems, and some of the
calls were about, you know,helping somebody fix their TV and just fixing
(08:35):
their phone and just learning about justdifferent just technical issues that I would just
come across, you know, justkind of coming in my own tech journey.
And yes, I was actually studyingthe A plus at my first tech
(08:56):
job every day about three hours aday while basically working my tech job working
at McDonald's and basically at that timeI transferred into university as well. You
take job. Your job was atMcDonald's doing tech. I was working at
(09:18):
McDonald's as well as working at thecall center, working two jobs. Yeah,
man, man, no days off, no days off, stuff like.
So you did say, you knowA plus that that's that's that's pretty
accurate, right. A plus doescover a lot of things because A plus
(09:39):
is centered around you know, that'stalk you know from the client side,
right, So from the client side, you could be dealing with the you
know, peripherals, the actual systemsome networking situations. I mean, even
though to you know, having tounderstand it goes to the route because you
know, the IP addres and whatever, maybe not not in the same segment
(10:03):
as the gateway, you know,just right. So A PLUS is a
great that's a great start because itgives you a little bit of a taste
of everything. I mean, Ican I can remember even like looking at
I don't know if they still doit now, but when I did A
PLUS like years ago, I've actuallylike I had to learn about buffers like
(10:24):
working two jobs call center and McDonald'sand studying, so that's almost three jobs,
three hours a day. Study.Yeah, I was studying at work
when I could, in between mycalls, just to kind of prepare for
the actual At that time, itwas the nine one in the NINEO two
(10:46):
was basically the two exams that yougot to go to that did you have
to go through in order to getthe actual certification itself. So I didn't
have the actual confidence to take thetest initially, So I started taking the
(11:07):
exams in twenty eighteen. Once Iactually felt comfortable with the material and once
I got like a couple of yearsunder my belt, at my tech job
to go up and start you know, going accurate, because you know,
a lot of information. For afirst timer who has never really been in
tech before, it was a lotto go up and deal with. I
(11:28):
basically just kind of learned things alongthe way, and I started seeing as
I was going through my first techjob, I started seeing things creeping up
that were from the A plus startedto creep up. I was like,
okay, this is what this does. Okay, and this is what this
does. That was kind of coolto go up and experience because it means
I was starting to retain the informationmore and starting to understand, Okay,
(11:50):
this is why this happens. Whenevera personal calls in about the internet not
working were issued with their computer.It's a lot different when you just reading
something and versus you read it andthen it's actually happening right in front of
you. I'm going through going throughaudiobook right now. I can't think of
the name of it, but they'reactually they actually talk about, like,
(12:13):
you know, ways to learn moreefficiently and recall is like it's the top
thing that they study with that andit's actually like doing it. So you're
doing it on a daily basis whilealso learning it, you've also been learning
it, so a lot of stuffthat you've learned as you're interfacing with it,
(12:33):
you know, in the real world, kind of transitioning from twenty eighteen
going to twenty nineteen. I gotthe nine O two in February of twenty
nineteen, and at that point that'swhen, you know, I posted it
on LinkedIn, got a lot ofcongratulations for it. How a lot of
(12:54):
people kind of hitting me up,like, oh, how'd you go about,
you know, passing a plus?And I got a couple of job
offers out of that. But Ididn't think I was ready because yeah,
I didn't think I was ready becauseI never really opened up a computer and
whatnot and kind of played around withit. What I did do was I
actually ended up putting an application inwith another ISP that was local in rock
(13:20):
Hill. But the benefits of itwas it was more money and then they
had job shadowing too, which wassomething that was not I didn't have it
my first tech job because I wason I was basically training for like two
weeks before they three on the phone, and it was basically pretty much a
sinkle swim. So when I gotto my second tech job, which was
(13:43):
Internet Support specialist. I basically wasin training for like six months, just
kind of just learning the ropes ofwhat the customer expects. And instead of
servicing several ISPs in a call center, I was service from one throughout just
different regions in both North and SouthCarolina. I was wanting to go up
(14:09):
and do the network Plus. Thefirst time I took it, I was
like twenty points away from passing,and my score regressed as I went back
to go take the network Plus.I took it like maybe by work.
Yeah, it got worse over timebecause I don't I don't think I was
committed enough to it to basically likebe locked in with it. And that's
(14:35):
when the pandemic happened and around Yeah, this is kind of yeah, so
this is like when the A thecomptier exams were like I remember when come
TIA exams, like the super cheapyou know not like I didn't know that.
Wow, okay, that's how that'show out of the loop i've been
(14:58):
with you got. So I didn'tknow that, yeah, said, let
me look this up from my mistakenit was like one eighty five and like
one fifty at one point in timemistaken two forty six eight eight net plus,
Oh my security plus. I thinkI paid that for mys P a
(15:22):
long time ago, class fifty eight. A man, people getting paid off
these shirts like both ways here wow, and if you pass it, you'll
get paid if you know how tosell yourself. Really man, I think
I think I think COMPTE exams werelike I want to say, like eighty
(15:43):
five, but they would definitely knowhowher than like one twenty five. Yeah,
around one forty at that time.That that's crazy. Yeah, that
that's I've been out of the loop. Lie people. You get enough people
saying that they had like job offers, like coming out the wool, where's
(16:04):
officer just having a plus? Yeah, come to here's gonna raise the prices
of the demand. So so youdid that the two A plus exams,
the two exams required for an Aplus there was not a one now two,
And then you started going for anetwork plus, Like why why network
(16:26):
plus? I had the mindset thatwhen you get the A plus, you
get the network plus after that,and I low key wanted to be like
a net. I want to belike the network part of tech, like
a network administrator or maybe like anetwork engineer at that point, so,
(16:47):
yeah, a Cisco guy. Ieven sat up there and went and thought
about doing the Yeah, the cCNA. I was thinking about wanting to
go up and do that at thetime around twenty nineteen and twenty twenty,
but I just wasn't really committed enoughto go and go after it. Because
(17:08):
I'm not going to say I gotcomplacent, but when you're making the money
you want to go up and makeand whatnot. At that point, you
know, it kind of feels likeyou're there now. You feel like you've
arrived at that point. And Iwas just okay with making the money that
I was making at that point andone time and I just didn't go back
(17:33):
to go after the network. Plusthe way I should have, like McDonald's
and call center is like behind youat this point, right. Yes,
I left McDonald's in twenty nineteen.At that once, I got, you
know, my second tech job,not not fries on the ground in his
moon. Look here, when theyoffer you nineteen dollars an hour over nine
(17:56):
dollars, you have to go upand take that pretty much solf. So
yeah, so around that time,I was just getting introduced from just so
many different things. And just likecompany perks, because this was a medium
size but a corporate company, Igot the chance to work from home.
(18:21):
Job shadowing, like I mentioned before, which is job shadowing is what kind
of led me to where I'm atnow as a develops engineer. And I'll
kind of get to that. SoI got to learn just how did you
come to, you know, know, this role? I mean, was
it was it like a cold callfor somebody seeing your accolades on LinkedIn?
(18:42):
Or was it a friend or somethingsome kind of I always knew about Corporium,
and that's the name of the company, Comporium, and they always said
that Comporium was basically a good companyto work for rock Hill, and I
always heard things like, okay,you they treat you really well at Comporium,
(19:06):
and you know, you get paidpretty much. So and I went
on their website one particular day andI seen if they had an Internet support
specialist position open, and that waslike between December of twenty eighteen going into
January of twenty nineteen. So Iwas looking at the qualifications for it and
(19:30):
I was like, wow, that'spretty much what I do now. So
I went and just kind of putmy application in and put my resume with
it and just see what happened.And about maybe a week later, I
had gotten a call to basically kindof you know, interview for the job.
(19:51):
I made it to like the secondround, but I never heard back.
And the next day after that waswhen I at the nine to two
COMPTA exam and passed it. ButI never heard anything between February up until
May until they gave me a callback again and asked me if I was
(20:12):
interested in position. So yeah,I went back in May, and this
time around, I was in frontof a black manager, black supervisor for
the role the white person, whiteguy, and he actually we're still cool
(20:36):
to this day. He's been likeinstrumental in my journey. And he kind
of explained to me, like,you know why they didn't go for me
the first time, So I guesshe took the manager at that time,
they chose another person over me.But what they did was HR sent them
(21:00):
sent the department my resume and basicallythey showed an example of you know,
could portum turning down employees and theyhave the necessary skills to do the job.
So, you know, my formerboss at that time just kind of
went and they interviewed me, andyou know, they saw that I had
(21:22):
the skills and I had the Aplus certification, so I had the experience,
so why not go up and takea chance on me. And when
I got into the department, youknow, I flourished at the top of
my team for like four straight months, and you know, I was just
(21:42):
doing X, Y and Z.I was really reliable on the team in
the end of the department and Iwas bringing in. It wasn't anything that
overtly found it being nefarious on anybody'spart, like you might hook it up
a friend anything like that or no, no, not at all. It
was basically they went with like anothercandidate at that time. So but you
(22:07):
know, I do feel like whenyou do have people who are in those
positions who look like you, theywill advocate for you and they will go
and give you a shot, becauseeverybody deserves a shot. In the tech
board of my personal was it inperson interview like around the COVID time,
(22:27):
So no, this was before COVID. Actually this was like twenty nineteen,
so it was like a full yearbefore COVID happens. So yeah, yeah,
and I was actually talking to somebodyabout this same thing, like,
you know, a week ago,and they were asking about because I was
I was talking about representation right intech and like why it was important to
(22:52):
me, you know, and it'sa situation. The analege I gave was
that, you know, imagine theimagine the tech industry is like this,
since their area. You're on theoutside. You walk up and you see
everybody like having a good time,solve problem, making friends, making money.
Yeah, man, I think usesome of that money. I like
making friends and I like solving problems. That sounds interesting, It looks interesting.
(23:18):
How do I get in there?But you're looking in there and you're
like, nobody looks like you orasks like you. Is that a space
for me? You know? Youyou got to ask yourself is that a
space for me? You know someof us we say no because it doesn't
look like it's Some of us taketo take a chance anyways and get in
there, and then we maybe wonderwhile we're on the inside, damn,
(23:41):
is this my space? You know, it's just a space for me.
There's not a whole lot of peoplelike me, and maybe they treat me
different, or maybe they ask meweird questions like why you talk like this
or whatever. So it's important toyou know, raise the level of representation
Andy, so that people do feellike they can ascend to you know,
(24:03):
come inside the fence and play witheverybody else that we all feel like it's
a space for us, and youknow, the ones that are in already,
you know that we do feel athome and we feel understood and advocate
for right truth. I've been insituations like that where you've had, you
(24:25):
know, a person that looked likeyou that had to come up and kind
of speak up, you know,to the masses because I mean, your
little voice, you know, youjust you knew or maybe you're not even
on the inside to where your voicecan even be heard. So that's very
important, very important. Yeah,and he was very respected and still respected
to this day at Comportia, sothey looked at him just for ideas and
(24:49):
new ideas and whatnot. And youknow, that's real cool to go up
and be black and then have thattype of influence like that. And that's
something that I aspired to gold andbe in my own tech journey, just
to kind of speed it up alittle bit in the timeline, you know,
(25:11):
twenty twenty, COVID happens everybody's home. We were basically home for two
years, and you know, thatwas an experience in its own stuff because
I had never had the experience ofworking from home and never had a work
from home job ever at all,So that was something that was mostly new
(25:34):
to me. So around that time, between twenty twenty and twenty twenty one,
I kind of had the itch ofwanting to do something different apart from
tech support and basically being on thephone every day fixing the same issues,
(25:55):
you know, for six or soyears at that because I was basically hitting
my ceiling in terms of, Okay, I'm doing this repeatedly every day.
So I started looking at different thingsthat you could go up and do and
tech my four Voss ended up leavingto become like the digital product owner for
(26:21):
Comporium at that point, so Iwent and kind of had a curiosity about
what his role entailed, and that'swhen I found out about Scrum. That's
when I found out about sprints.He was basically in charge of creating a
chat bot for the company and basicallycreating a knowledge base that customers can access
(26:47):
whenever they have issues. So Ifound that'd be pretty cool because he was
working with Salesforce and basically just creatingthe chatbot out of Salesforce, and I
was like, wow, that islike so freezing cool, and like,
you know, you're working like basicallyat your own pace, you have self
autonomy, you're just basically just livinga good life pretty much so that any
(27:15):
tech person wants to go up anddo. So what I did was,
this is between twenty twenty one andtwenty two. I just basically kind of
like I went for Salesforce first andkind of learned Salesforce, and then I
figured out, you know what,I don't exactly like Salesforce like that because
it's Salesforce is very detailed and it'sa lot of work. Most people don't
(27:37):
understand that. Because there's a lotto learn in Salesforce. I think I
can run of the first certification youcan go up and get, like the
Salesforce administrator or something like that.And then I went back to the drawing
board and I was like, Okay, maybe I don't want to go up
and do that. So I wentjust kind of all in on the product
owner thing and just learning about scrumand what a product owner does. I
(28:00):
was downloading courses from you to mejust to kind of understand, you know,
what the stakeholders expect, what theproduct is, how you lead the
product from idegation to you know,adding the features to it and all that.
It came time for them to likepretty much kind of expand on the
(28:22):
product owner team. Although I didn'thave the experience of a product owner.
I kind of went in to theinterview when I basically signed up for it
just kind of off of what Iknew. I didn't get the job.
And the reason why I did notget the job was because I was too
quiet and they felt like they feltlike I couldn't basically be in a room
(28:48):
full of executives and I guess,you know, take control of the room
and convey my point as to whythese features are needed in this product UK.
So that kind of put me downand it's kind of had me bombed
out of everything. And then Ihad like a lot of personal things going
(29:11):
on at that time over the summeraround twenty twenty two that I was dealing
with. And so was that arejection that you just kind of rejected in
itself? Like you? I mean, because sometimes like you you'll miss a
shot and you'll be like, youknow what, Yeah, I know I
missed that. You know, Iknow I didn't get that. But were
you kind of like, yeah,this should have got that job, or
(29:33):
how did you feel it was arejection that I took at that time,
I took personally because here I wascommitting myself to something that I really kind
of like pretty much fell in lovewith and to own the basis kind of
(29:57):
be told like, okay, you'renot there. You know, being turned
down that point was just one toomany times for me, And you know
it, with that situation, theywent with someone I guess who really thought,
excuse me, that they were qualified, and I just don't know how
(30:18):
they could have been qualified if Ididn't hear anything about them putting in the
actual work, Like you how youpersonally felt about yourself versus you know,
you next to somebody else that theystacked higher. Because I felt like in
my heart I could have learned therole if given the opportunity, but I
(30:40):
don't know, I didn't know thetimeline or like you know, if they
wanted to get the ball roller andthey may not have had the time to
go betray somebody in the role,but like, like you're saying, sometimes
they will afford you to grow intoa role. So yeah, I feel
you there. So I just kindof stayed upset about it, you know,
(31:03):
over the summer, and I say, you know what, my sister
who I helped is kind of inspiredlike get into tech. She was working
with a WS. I said.My mom told me, like, you
know, you know, your sister'sworking with a WS and whatnot. And
I'm like, hold on for asecond, she's working with Cloud Technologies and
she's like yeah. I was like, okay, well, if she can
(31:26):
go up to do that. Thisis my younger sister, my baby sister.
Actually, So when I found outthat she was working with like AWS,
I'm like, if she can dothat, I know for a fact
I can maybe go up and godo that. So let me go up
and just download the course. AndI downloaded the Cloud Practitioner Course from AWS.
(31:48):
It was the Stefan Merricks of courseon you to me, so I
got the yeah, he's a reallycool dude. His information was just like
super insightful when I first looked itup and just started looking and learning,
you know, what S three does, what EC two does, all those
(32:10):
technologies. It was basically like relearningthe A plus again. That's that feeling
that I had when I was lookingover the cloud practitioner. Of course I
got motivated again, Yeah, prettymuch. So, So I was talking
to my mom and whatnot, andI sent her a video. I'm not
(32:32):
sure if you ever heard of CyrusHarbin tech Us the New Black. I've
heard of that, yeah, yeah, yes, so he runs, yeah,
he runs tech Us the New Black. And what was crazy was I
sent my mam a video of himdancing in the road basically talking about his
life, how he went from basicallybeing homeless to basically being you know,
(32:55):
high paying, you know, salesengineer. So she was like, you
know, if why don't you goup to look at a boot camp because
he went to a boot camp andyou know, he's basically doing well for
himself. You know what do youhave to go up and lose? I
say, you know what, youare kind of telling the truth about that
moth. So I had been seeinglevel up in tech online for you know,
(33:22):
a couple of years, because broadUs I think started around twenty twenty,
I believe in twenty twenty one.So I went, look, you
know, just kind of vetted theprogram because at that time, I really
it was always told that you kindof stay away from boot camps because of
a how expense they are, andyou know, what's the returner on the
(33:43):
investment of putting, you know,your money into a boot camp because a
lot of people put like tens ofthousands of dollars into a boot camp and
they don't get anything back from it. So I vented the program. I
just kind of went and just kindof got my own the detective work,
you know before I kind of likeyou know, gave the folks over their
(34:06):
call and you know, they explainedto me the program and how it worked
and the pricing and everything else ofthat nature. So I got into the
program in September of twenty twenty two, and from there I was just learning
from the ground level Linux. Iwas learning Lynx like four weeks and I
(34:31):
took my first Linux Exam and didn'tpass it the first time, but the
second time I got my Linux Examon the second goal round. Did that
for four that was the LPIES CentralsLinux Essentials certification that was from basically Linux
Institution. Did that for four weeksand then got into AWS, which was
(34:58):
the ABS Developers Associate, and it'skind of relying on the skills and knowledge
that I picked up over the summerfrom the Cloud practitioner. It made it
more easily digestible when I was learningthe Developer Associate, and it's kind of
learning how you use those skills outa developer level using EC two S three
(35:22):
downmod dB, learning VPCS, allthat. In between that we were basically
doing projects, working on projects,kind of putting our work out there on
LinkedIn, and it's kind of showedwhat we've done over a course of a
few weeks. Every time we werelearning a new technology and learning a new
(35:45):
skill. I was learning Python,made a couple of projects off of that,
and then on my off time,I was basically learning how to code
on my off time, and youknow, showcasing that on Lincoln as well.
I got to learn Docker, Igot to learn Kupernettes, I got
(36:07):
to learn terror Form, And thiswas all kind of wrapped into twenty four
weeks of just relentless studying and relentlessprojects. And then at that point we
were basically getting ready for our resumewriting. Our resumes were getting tailored for
(36:28):
basically putting resumes in at companies atthat point. That's a crazy progression.
Man. It sounds like they coveredout down on all the basis. What
are you also doing like marketing abusefor you guys to make sure you were
prepared if you got you know,brought into a yeah. Nice and that
right there. That's what sold meon getting into Levelopment Tech because of the
(36:52):
bad interview experience that I had ayear prior with the product owner interview,
and because here I was I couldactually speak to the experience that I had
as a DevOps engineer or a cloudengineer and basically just be like, Okay,
(37:13):
you know I know about this technologybecause I have a project on that.
Let me tell you a by thetime where I had a situation where
this wasn't working and I use X, Y and Z skill to solve it.
That's basically speaking with confidence and speakingwith experience too. So that's what
(37:34):
really pretty much sold me on theprogram because they had mock interviews in interview
with prep and then we did thatfor like three weeks. Okay, your
graduation mean is there a graduation oris it just kind of like, hey,
you got all the certifications, yourresume looks great. There is a
(38:00):
graduation week for people who go intolow up and tech and then you know,
once you've how the process works isyou basically turn in like fifteen projects
and you have to have at leastabout one or two certifications in order to
basically be out of a graduation.And I basically had all my requirements at
(38:22):
that point. Nice what was someof the projects like making so at the
ground so at that time they've kindof changed up the project since I've been
in the program, But at theground level, we were basically spinning up
a web server for like enginets andwhatnot. And basically each project had like
(38:51):
a level, like an intermediate level, advanced level, and like a more
advanced level, and our murders tothis day, it was basically an intermediate
project or how to spend up aserver in Linux. Another project was how
to fork a repository and clone itBash scripting basically create a bass script that
(39:16):
automates your commands and basically set upa server going into yeah, going into
like AWS, spinning up an ECtwo instance and basically adding a whib server
to the EC two instance. Doyou use of that? What would you
(39:37):
say, would be your favorite projectyou did. Well, This thing that
we did was doing basically creating aDonamo dB table kind of based off of
your top ten favorite moves or yourtop ten video games. I was a
(40:00):
little catchy with a lot of mytitles for my projects. So the let's
play donamal dB was basically setting upa donald dB table of your of my
top favorite games of all time.And basically you have to set it up
to where it basically has reader Ican read only policy on the IM and
(40:25):
you basically have to confirm that nobodycan write to that database. They can
only read it. And basically that'swhat I did. I set up the
database and I set up the IMrole for it to where it can only
be read but not written on ornot basically touched. Yeah. When he
(40:45):
says, I am, that's anIdentity Access management AWS turn, Yeah,
there you go. I remixed theproject in terrorform and I did a terraform
edition out of it, and basicallythe idea of it kind of played it
off on like Street Fighter two.Rememberbody back in the day where they had
like street Fighter two termine editions,street Fighter Turbos, street Rout Turbo so
(41:09):
I did it that way, butthat was like my most favorite project that
I did. At that point,I was just basically just doing more projects
even after I graduated from level up, just in preparation for the job to
go up and pretty much give mea call for an interview because I was
(41:30):
The real job is basically putting inapplications to get a company to take a
chance on you. That's basically prettymuch a job within a job. I
was basically putting in applications daily,and just one particular day in March of
last year, I put an applicationin with a company and they got back
(41:52):
to me a couple hours later forlike an interview. And the interview,
yeah, asked a cool question onaverage, how many apps? How many
applications do you think you were puttingin on a daily basis. I was
maybe at least putting in about fivea day, five a day. So
(42:15):
if you're out there and you puttingin less than five a day, don't
be complaining. They were requiring usto put in They were requiring us to
put in ten, you know.And when I say that, I'm not
like saying, hey, you needto you know, feel bad about yourself.
(42:36):
What I'm saying is, yeah,he's got a job, and you're
not necessarily compete with it. Heain't putting five applications in the day now
right maybe probably not even like fivein three months, but because you got
people looking for you right now.But what I'm saying is that there's people
that were just as hungry as Ernestwas out there right now, doing the
(42:58):
same level of work, working harder. So you're working against them, is
what I want to say. Butbut go ahead, brother. Oh no.
Basically, you know, they gotback to me in the same day,
and I had a little bit ofhope at that point. I was
like super excited the process over all. I went through like four interviews with
(43:25):
this company before I got the actualoffer a day before my birthday, And
just to kind of describe it,it was basically an interview with the recruiter
first, and then I got aninterview you know, a week later with
like a member of the team.The third interview was basically with like the
(43:49):
staff double ops engineer of the team, just to kind of see what I
knew, and then the last interviewwas basically it was two hours and basically
it was like a like a fourlevel interview where I learned about the product
and had questions. And the secondinterview was basically a behavior interview. There
(44:10):
was asked me questions like, youknow, you know, how do you
study? You know, what areyour studying habits? You know what drives
you in develops. The third interviewwas the technical stout interview where they were
just kind of quizzing me on justdifferent things. And then the last interview
was basically with like the director orthe the vice president of our department currently,
(44:38):
and that was, you know,like a fifteen minute interview. You
asked me if I had any sortof questions, and you know how I
did on the coding assessment. Youknow, I used chat GPT, but
you know, at that time,so I was kind of honest about that
by me, I told him,like, you know, I used chat
(44:58):
GPT as a learning assistant, notto template like a template, because you
know, as someone who had sixmonths of experience and not enough you know,
coding experience, you have to prettymuch just kind of lean on an
assistant to kind of help you understandwhat you're trying to solve in the code
(45:22):
and understand the code itself. Andthat's that's the difference. That's the difference
that will be you know, spelledout in the coming in the near future.
Right, there's some people that arelooking for chat GBT to do their
jobs for them, and there's othersof us that are only using chat GPT
to augmentate what we do. Soand now you have this rise in AI
(45:49):
where it's going to become. Itfeels like a gold rush now with AI
because you can do so many thingswith AI. It's like it's just the
skies is pretty much the limit withAI now because you can create chat bots,
you can make pictures, you cando all the short videos with AI.
(46:14):
You know, that's where the technologyis going now because now it was
at first it was cloud and nowhave AI in the mix. What can
you do now with I? Rememberwhen it was virtualization, you got cloud,
and then it's containerization and now it'syou know a lot of this AI
(46:37):
stuff. So, yeah, you'reright, it's always there's always something to
learn, right, There's always somethingnew. It's not like it's not like
plumbing. I don't know when lasttime plumbing had enough dream right if ever,
stuff you're literally learning something new everyyou know, even if you are
(47:00):
Yeah, it's changed quite a bit. I'm super I feel like I'm super
young in my devlops career right now. So the main goal is to learn
the technology that I work with everyday at work. In like my first
year the second year, I definitelywant to be more involved in projects,
(47:25):
and it's kind of just learning justdifferent skills outside of work too, because
your professional growth outside of work ismore important too, along with your professional
growth inside of work as well.So I want to be well versed in
(47:46):
other technologies and more versatile as adevelops engineer, so you know, just
one skill in software to other timesfor me because right now currently I'm using
Sneak right now, we've picked upSneak at our job, and basically Sneak
(48:07):
is a software tool that will identifyvulnerabilities in your code or your infrastructure as
code scripts. So I definitely wantto be a subject matter expert in that
because that's something that I've kind oftaken on at work and I've worked with
(48:27):
a couple of tickets for it tokind of be interesting to me and learn
outside of work too, so thatI can take that knowledge from outside of
work into it. And it's kindof like Okay, you know, hey,
this is why I've been learning,and this is how I've been using
sneak outside of work. So Iwould say just to kind of get back
to the question just kind of learninga new technology, you know, one
(48:51):
at a time, because when youtake it all at once, you know,
you can kind of become confusing.But I definitely want to get in
to jen AI as well. Andit's kind of word how to use AI
as the business uses it. Sowith all these like immensely technical roles,
(49:13):
right devlops, you got the generativeAI, you know AI stuff as well,
did these kind of like take theforefront to your desires to you know,
pursue the program management role or isthat would that still be something that
will be exciting for you or youjust find like new excitement and these new
challenges I found. I basically feellike I've found something that I can grow
(49:37):
in versus you know a few yearsago, I didn't have like an actual
path on where I want to goup and go you know, and cloud.
You know, there's so many avenuesyou can get into with Cloud and
develops. So I feel like I'vefound something for right now that basically keeps
(50:01):
me interested and it keeps me wantingto learn new things daily, and that's
key. That's definitely key. There'schallenges on both sides. On both of
those roads, there different challenges.So you have to ensure that the challenge
that you're you know, gravitating towardsis an alignment to you know, the
(50:22):
things that actually make you most excited. If it's if it's a technical challenge,
okay, cool, I want tostay on the side of the house.
Otherwise, if it's if it's ayou know, maybe a political or
the organizational challenge, dealing dealing roadblocks, are getting some product or you
know, the future you know,into a product, and maybe on the
(50:45):
other side, you know. Soit's important to understand these things so that
ignorance is not getting in your waybecause a lot of times people like,
oh, well what do I wantto do? Well, you probably don't
know enough about the roles one orneither role. So get educated on your
options and now you can move forwarda little more confidence and decision. Always
(51:10):
be curious about, you know,what path you want to get into.
We live in a world now towhere you can get the information just like
that at that time when I waskind of pretty much starting out, we
didn't have TikTok where you can goup and see what a day in the
(51:32):
life of a DevOps engineer is,or a cloud engineer or a network engineer,
and it's kind of you know,you have people giving you the information
out now more than ever. SoI would say use that to your advantage
if you want to get into tech, and you know, that can kind
(51:54):
of give you a sense of whatyou want to go up and do or
even this is the right path foryou. Another thing I want to go
and believe is that you know,if you are in tech, you know,
always try to create the jet packfor the next person you know behind
(52:15):
you to go and use to climbup the ranks or just ascend into disguis
because tech is such a bad placethat speaks volumes to you know, the
type of person you are. I'vehad like so many mentors, and you
know, one of the biggest mentorone of the most impactful that I've had.
(52:38):
He always tells me when I thinkhim for you know, how he
helped me through some challenging situations atmy current job, and just pay it
forward. You know, it's crazybecause it's the same thing I tell people,
and now I just tell them loudI said, just paying forward,
just paying forward. So it's goodto see people, you know, outside
(52:59):
of my circle that that's that's doingthe same thing, and they're they're trying
to make the same things go viral, right, being crying and looking out
and making positive movements to reshape,you know, the culture and how we
move as people. So I reallyappreciate that, and and thank you for
(53:20):
sitting down with me again for thesecond time. Of course, of course
I wanted to. I want togo each time. I've thought. It's
been a great conversation. Man.You are very intelligent and inspirational, and
I do genuinely thank you for Shay'sstory. It's definitely if it helps at
(53:43):
least one person, this is ourl spend. Yeah. If it doesn't,
yeah, I feel you. It'sall good man. I'm always here
to go up this fire people,so it's a good
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