Current Career

I barely talked about career progress and my various jobs at Flok Factory before, until now.

After finishing my IT management degree back in mid 2008, I had a side job at McDonalds before finding my first IT job as a field engineer in early 2009 for the next six months. After that, I took a detour into electronics and solar energy as a quality control worker.

After those 3 jobs, I struggled finding a new job as a starter, because all of the companies I approached were asking for too much conditions. Then in the 2nd quarter of 2011, for the next 3 years, I would be working at my final food & beverage related spot which hosts various events for various companies. I worked hard there as a catering crew member.

After mid 2014, I almost searched for 6 months, but in early 2015 I finally returned and got my second chance at the IT sector with Unisys. Doing work at a service desk, there was a period back in 2011 that I thought that this was not the kind of work for me, but after a few weeks of training, I got used to it.

Because of a re-organization happening, my next job in the 3rd quarter of 2015 was at another service desk in Utrecht, but it also had onsite support at it's mayor client. This time, management thought that I wasn't up for the job after 3 months, but I think that more time was needed.

In late 2015, I would be working for Capgemini and it's sister company Sogeti for the next 2 years as local support. There was plenty of stuff to fix and do at this job, but I liked the personal contact with customers, I had most of the time fun with my colleagues(which goes for all of my previous jobs too), and I felt for the first time that I was going somewhere with my career and my CV.

However, the IT company that sent me to Capgemini in the first place, gave me fake promises in the end on October 2017, including a permanent contract, workshops, a promotion and more. I felt devastated by this, but after searching like hell in just 2 weeks, I found my latest employer in December 2017 named NEH Group, or Network Expertise Holland.

It was once again a position at a service desk, but it happened to be the most expanded and involved one I have been with so far. Supporting over 50 different client at once, managing over hundreds of servers and working with partners for 500 different kinds of software applications, I had more responsibility than ever.

It also meant I had to deal with more agreements and exceptions and knowledge than with any of my previous jobs. Not only giving support for incidents and requests, but also doing training and meetings regularly, as well as research and knowledge management, this has been the best job to get involved with for IT for me so far.

Working with the latest of Microsoft's technologies and systems including Server 2016, Intune, Office 365 and Azure, alongside virtualization, ticket management, remote tooling, monitoring, administration and basically delving into the deep with various situations, this is a challenging and stimulating job for me.

I got a little promotion this year and now I was able to research more complex incidents. Considering that NEH's customers work with various shells of policies including Windows, Citrix and Ivanti, as well as getting sessions hosted and devices remotely managed, while having WLAN, LAN and VPN environments, you have a lot of factors to weigh and consider.

And when circumstances such as synchronization between various applications and cloud environments happen badly, or when performance issues are suddenly happening, or when network or power outages happen, it's sometimes difficult to find the root cause and satisfy the clients, but luckily, I have a good team I work with, and other departments are willing to help too.

So my current career, development and job are going in a good direction. Since 2016, I have obtained and achieved several certificates, including ITIL, Windows 7, PRINCE2, Windows 10 and Office 365.

I almost have a modal income too, which would make me quite proud too considering that I studied only on an average term, although that I tried my best, and I also achieved a diploma into Business Administration Management back in 2014 too.

I'm quite relevant for IT now, and I get opportunities at LinkedIn on a weekly basis, but I am also trying to get up the ladder and get even more responsibility, experience and knowledge. My current employer is content with me, and I have had a good run so far.

As for the future, I'm thinking about becoming a cloud engineer or manager who mainly works with cloud environments such as Microsoft Azure, or Amazon and Google's alternatives. Some of my colleagues and friends have also advised me to get into other IT fields such as Linux, virtual containers and security, but it's tough to specialize in all of that. Most recently, I took a course into PowerShell 5.0, a powerful language tool.

This IT industry is big, man. And most interestingly, it is a dynamically changing and highly competitive one too, accelerating at high amounts too. There was a time that I hated that my personal printer at home wasn't working, but now I have made it my living to analyze, fix and improve IT situations.