My Journey into Tech

After having an unintentional break from blogging after a busy period I’m excited to start a new series. This is all going to be able how to navigate the world of IT as a millennial or generation z plus whoever’s next, I’m not claiming to have all the answers but I hope after spending the last 7 years of my life in IT I at least might be able to help someone looking into the massive world of technology and give them a little bit of insight. I don’t want this to be segregating either, for baby boomers, Gen Y etc you can get into IT at any age. Or even if you’ve been in IT a long time it can give you a bit of perspective of how you might help people entering into the industry. so let’s get started.

My Journey into Tech

When I was 18 the only time I had looked into IT was an IT GCSE, furthering my excel knowledge not really giving me much of a passion around it. After finishing my A-levels in let’s face it very unrelated areas of chemistry maths and food technology (odd combination I know) I was unsure what to do next everyone was going to university but I didn’t really have an idea of what I wanted to do my thinking at the time was something like event planning or event management but I didn’t really have much of a clue. before starting to apply to universities in event planning, my parents found an opportunity in apprenticeships. Now when I was 18 apprenticeships weren’t all the rage it was known as something you did if you couldn’t go to university or if you didn’t get the grades. so I was very unsure about this idea.For those who don’t know there are many different styles of apprenticeship some in my personal opinion better than going University. In another blog article later I’ll talk more about the apprenticeships that VMware now offers. but my apprenticeship worked as an alternative to doing A-levels which you could use in the exact same way to apply to university you would do that once a week every month and other weeks of the month you will spend on placement. As I said I was hesitant so I was unsure if this would go anywhere but I went to the interview anyway and the first interview I went to I got, I was to be an IT apprentice in a secondary school.

This was the biggest turning point for me I loved it one of the best aspects of problem-solving and the feeling you would get after you’d cracked a particularly hard problem. When the school had a network outage I was at my best resolving the issue alongside my team members that’s when I knew IT was the career for me.

The company who ran the IT for the school then offered me a job to assist them with upgrading school networks over summer holidays. I really enjoyed this but I have to say I can’t credit where I am now to myself at all I’ll speak later about mentors unintentional and intentional but if my parents haven’t shown me an apprenticeship and if one of the directors of the company hadn’t pushed for me to go to university I might not be in the position I am today. I owe a lot to them. With the backing of my family and my work colleagues I applied to go to university to study computer networks.

Two years into my degree I did was called a sandwich placement which is a year in industry I did this at a company in London which is Europe’s leading quantitative finance research firm. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and this cemented my career path for me. Back at university in my third year I was approached on LinkedIn by the company which I knew very well at this stage VMware I was very honoured to be considered and I leapt at the chance of doing an interview.

Starting at one of the leading software firms in the world can be very daunting but as I’ll speak about in my next article it’s been helped incredibly by the culture and people I get to work with every day.

I hope a long introduction about myself wasn’t too sleep inducing over the next few articles I can really get into the grit of helping others realise their potential in technology