Category: Journey Log

It’s been five years since my last post. The last time I wrote here, I had just landed my first IT job as a help desk analyst at a managed service provider. I said I’d follow up with the details. I didn’t. I was busy doing the job.

So here’s the follow-up, five years late.

Where I started

In 2020 I was a repair engineer for a medical device manufacturer, leading a repair team. Before that came the Marine Corps, then years of electrical work and fabrication. I was working full time, going to school full time, and had a family at home. I started this site to keep myself accountable.

By mid-2021 I had an associate’s degree plus CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+, and Apple ACSP. That got me hired on an MSP help desk.

The route since then

• 2021: Level 1 help desk at an MSP
• 2022: Level 3, about nine months to a year after I started
• Next: Help desk manager
• Then: Central services administrator
• Now: Senior systems administrator at a different MSP

Along the way I added CySA+ and AZ-900, and I’m studying for AZ-104 now. Between the two MSPs I’ve supported more than 80 client organizations. I’m still finishing my BS in Cybersecurity.

What got me off the help desk fast

I took the hard tickets. On an MSP help desk, the tickets nobody wants are the ones that teach you the most: escalations, strange network problems, the client nobody else wants to call back. I grabbed those. You learn faster, and the senior techs notice who’s willing.

The certs kept coming. I didn’t stop after Security+. Studying while working meant the next cert was always tied to something I was seeing in tickets that week, and that made both stick.

My trade habits transferred. Electrical work teaches you to troubleshoot in order: verify power, isolate the circuit, test one thing at a time, don’t guess. That’s exactly how you work a network outage or a broken sync. Working the problem in order instead of guessing stood out.

What I’d do differently

Skip the coding detour. My second post on this site was about The Odin Project and Ruby on Rails. I put real time into it, and it didn’t lead anywhere for the work I ended up doing. If you’re aiming for infrastructure, spend that time on the cert path and a lab instead.

Apply sooner. I waited until I felt ready. Nobody feels ready. If you have A+ and you’re studying for Network+, start applying for help desk jobs now.

Build a lab earlier. Reading gets you through the exam. A lab gets you through the interview and the first month on the job.

Go Microsoft sooner. At an MSP, almost every client runs Microsoft 365, Entra ID, and Intune. I’d start the Microsoft admin certs right after Security+. That’s why they’re Phase 2 on the roadmap.

The parts that weren’t smooth

Full-time work, full-time school, and a family at home don’t leave much room. Some weeks studying didn’t happen at all. Progress was slower than I wanted, and it still added up.

Not long ago I had a job offer pulled after I negotiated. It stung. The lesson I took from it: keep your other options moving until you’ve signed.

What’s next

I’m working toward AZ-104 and finishing my degree. This site is coming back with the things I wish I’d had in 2020: career guides for people coming from the military and the trades, cert roadmaps, and home lab builds.

If you’re where I was back then, start with the free IT career roadmap. If you have a question, ask it here. The best ones become posts.

Update, 2026: Since this post I moved from Level 1 help desk to Level 3, then help desk manager, and I’m now a senior systems administrator. I also added CySA+ and AZ-900. The full story is in the 2026 update.

    It has been a long time since my last post, a little over a year ago, and a lot has happened. Since my last post, Covid-19 has happened and along with that many updates on my current Journey 2 Tech. I will update a little bit in this post and in follow on posts ,I’ll go into some details on my journey and what I did to get where I am today. I am still in school working towards my BS in Cybersecurity.

    Since my last post and creating this site, I have earned my Associates in Applied Science in Multidisciplinary Technology. This was fitting for me because I have a very wide base of knowledge and life experience in all things technology. I have also earned 4 separate professional certifications. It was quite a Journey for these and will cover this in my next post. I now hold an AAS in Technology, CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+, CompTIA Security+ and Apple ACSP 10.15. I am currently working towards a Microsoft Azure AZ-900 certification and CompTIA CySA+. The AZ-900 will be first, though I will be studying for both the CySA+ and AZ-900 simultaneously.

    The final and biggest update I have is I went from working in an IT adjacent position as a repair engineer for a large medical device manufacturer to a Help desk Analyst for an MSP. We have a wide base of clients and most of the work is done remotely, mind you from a home office, but the work is done remotely from my desk. As I said, I will update more in depth in following posts. I hope this update may help you to see it is possible to go from zero experience to breaking into the tech scene and getting your career started. Until next time, I hope you can find your Journey 2 Tech as fun and fulfilling as mine has been so far.

Update, 2026: I ended up on the infrastructure side of IT rather than development. The Git basics here still hold up. For the route I actually took, see the free IT career roadmap.

Journey to Coding

I said before, I am going to school full-time for a Cybersecurity, I am taking a couple of coding classes but have decided to take a more focused approach to it as well. I have been using freecodecamp and codeacademy for quite awhile now. they are awesome and have gotten me started and give me some focus when I feel like I don’t know what to do next. I recently found out about theodinproject. I know they say you should really focus on one language and framework, but I decided I wanted to check it out. I have just started the Ruby on Rails course. I am not very far into it so I can’t really comment on too much yet. However, I am about halfway through the introduction part, it goes a lot further into depth about Git and Github than I had expected. This is great for me, though. Around the same time I decided to start Journey2tech.com, I also started trying to use Github more. I have taken a few of the introduction courses offered by Github and that helped me a lot. Theodinproject has taught me about the history of Git and github, which is very interesting as well. I had no idea they were different, I thought they were the same thing using different names. I am glad I learned this because come to find out for me Github is just a website that uses Git. I did not know there were other programs that did what Github does. I just learned they are not the first, but, they approach the concept of version control very differently than any other version control programs.

Git

My understanding of Git is that it is a version control system. In that it saves your work and every time you change it, it essentially takes a snapshot of it and saves it for you. This way if you changed something and it isn’t playing nicely, you can then rollback to the previous version until it works again. To understand it better, I compared it to backups on a network. I recently finished a networking course, so it is fresh on my mind. Git is basically like taking a full backup which is the same as saving a document, everything is saved, even if nothing is changed it saves it all. Then there is an incremental backup, It only backs up data that has changed since the last backup. So Git is essentially like having incremental backups taken every time you save it. Every version of it is saved and kept safe. and you can easily rollback to each previous version if need be.

Github

So that clears up Git for me, but now I had to understand Github. After just learning there was a difference, I also learned that Github makes Git reachable from anywhere. It essentially takes your back up and makes it accessible anywhere. Instead of keeping it strictly local, it keeps it on many different servers and local client machines. So anytime you clone a repository, you are bringing the entire thing onto your local machine, if the main server goes down and somehow that original repository is lost, it can be built back up with the client clones. So it is no longer in one place but essentially everywhere. Anywhere with a network connection, you can access your repository to work on it. If you have been working on it already, you can continue working on it even if you lose network connection. Github and Git are not the same thing, however, they do go hand in hand. If you are new to coding, it is essential to learn Git and Github. Git revolutionized the version control industry, and Github made it even better and more accessible.

I am going to get back into my Ruby on Rails course and I will continue to update here and try to put it into easier terms to understand. As I continue on my journey to coding I will keep this page updated. This is only my second entry but every time I write about it, I feel more comfortable with the material. If anyone has any suggestions or questions, feel free to contact me, leave a comment or send a smoke signal. Happy coding.

Resources

• Theodinproject.com
• Github.com
• Git-scm.com
• Git and Github history
• Git tuorial
• Git tutorial 2
• Git cheatsheet
• Wiki about version control

Update, 2026: This is where it started. I was working a repair bench and going to school full time, with no IT experience on paper. A year later I was on an MSP help desk. Today I’m a senior systems administrator. If you’re where I was in this post, start here.

I keep asking myself, “Are you sure this is something you want to do?” I am not a super outgoing person. So when I decided to make a personal blog to document my journey into a new tech career, it was an odd feeling for me. I am not one to post a lot about myself on social media or anywhere for that matter. So bear with me while I get my bearings and figure out how to do this.

Since I am wondering what it is I’m doing here I’m sure whoever is reading this is thinking the same thing. I made this blog with the intention of keeping myself accountable to my plan. My plan is to make it into a career in tech, hence the name of the site. I am currently attending school full – time, working towards a Bachelors of Science in Cybersecurity. I am almost done with my Associates in Applied Science in multi-disciplinary technology. You’re probably wondering what that is, well, I have a wide variety of work experience in my past, I have taken many different classes in many different fields. This associates degree program allows me to develop my seemingly random work experience into a well rounded experience that pairs well with my AAS degree.

As I said I am in school full time, I work full time as a repair engineer for a major medical electronics supplier and am the team lead for another major manufacturers product repair. So, my idea was to create a site where I can offload everything I am learning, to help me better understand what I am learning and what I am going through. Almost liek a therapeutic journal about my learning and life experiences. I have recently started learning to code and I want this to be a place I can talk about projects I am working on and hopefully, maybe get some feedback from others on the same path. I figured maybe I can help others out that are thinking about taking this path as well. Aristotle said ” Teaching is the highest form of understanding.”

So here I am working my way through my journey to a new tech career, and decided this will be my personal project to work on, especially since I don’t already have enough going on! I will try to post regularly, my content will include random thoughts of mine, resources I have found to be very helpful, and maybe down the road some how-to articles. If you see something you like reach out and let me know, if you have any suggestions or ideas to cover reach out and let me know. I’m going to wrap up my first post here, however I will probably explain my backstory in a later post and what has driven me towards this career change and my plan to make it there. Thanks for reading this far!