Mentorship

Looking back on this past year, man has it been an interesting ride! The privately owned company I work for got purchased by a public company, the “vBrisket” community got started and continues to evolve, and I made a commitment to focus on making a change in my career path. Career goals were never much of a concern of mine before, I always just thought of myself as an IT guy working in the trenches. I continued to enhance my skills and keep relevant with the new emerging technologies, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. That is where my friends and peers in the industry came in to play, their ongoing and past experiences that they went through certainIy aided me for what I was about to embark upon. These experiences helped me define what I wanted to do and how to get there.

I often reference the Geek Whisperers Podcast and I will do so again :0)  Listening to Podcast featuring Keith Townsend, “The Geek Who Listened to Whisperers” talk about quitting his job without first having a replacement (my wife would have killed me), and the process of finding the right employer for his next job. Looking back to his struggles to find that right job, my first thought is that it wouldn’t take me that long. So as I am in the same process of looking for the next great opportunity, I can totally relate to Keith’s quote “When you go through 5 deep rounds of interviews and you don’t get an offer, that’s humbling.” I vividly remember interviewing for an SE position with a storage company and hear the bad news, “It was between you and one other person for the SE position, but we decided to go with him because he had some sales experience.  It was a very tough decision.” Right after I heard that phrase come out of his mouth, my heart just sank and disappointment set in.  I was very confident that I was “The Guy”, but I learned a great deal from this so called last place finish.  This just motivated me more.

I am fortunate enough to have some very good friends who serve as mentors to me, even if they don’t know it.  I am thankful for those individuals, I can glean on their experiences and guidance along my journey. I have an advantage of what they have already been through and possibly bypass a few mistakes along the way. I have never met nor spoke with Keith Townsend, but he too has been a mentor and I thank him for sharing his failures. Everyone wants to talk about their successes and no one wants to talk about failures, but talking about your failures can help others and I commend that.