How has technology changed your job?
Technology is my job. I literally wouldn’t have a career as an IT Manager if it weren’t for technology. I love what I do and it still challenges me daily. I have been able to experience may facets of the IT space in my 22 years. The first part was in the Army. Yes, my job was to setup phone and internet for other units and maintain that connection, but I also started web development and video editing on the side. I learned Photoshop and graphic manipulation. All these things, I taught myself. Instead of doing college courses in my spare time, I was creating images, videos, and web pages.
After the Army I was fortunate to jump right into corporate IT and take what I knew and truly expand my skills and knowledge through some certs, a little college, but mostly experience.
I’ve been asked many times how to start my career in IT. My answer is always, be willing to start from the bottom and work your way up. You may have all the book knowledge but thinking outside the box and customer service skills can’t be taught, they are learned from experience.
Technology is always changing and most people don’t see the little things. I believe the next big thing could be the NPU (Neural Processing Unit) which almost all computer manufacturers are including in their computers now. This will enable computers to offload some AI math skills to a new unit and free up the CPU/GPU for other things.
Historically doubling of size has always been huge. Usually an exponent of 2. Think RAM and HDD/SDD space. Think even flash drives. You used to think a 8mb flash drive was awesome. My 120gb Maxtor external USB 2 HDD was $111 at the PX in Germany. That was my first hard drive. It was almost $1/gb! ($92.5/gb) Now I’m adding 4tb (4000gb) extra m.2 SSD to laptops for $225. That’s 5.6 CENTS/gb ($0.05625/gb). Also that first Maxtor drive was 40mb/s and the m.2 is 5000mb/s transfer rate.
That’s how technology has changed my job.
