If you asked me 5 years ago what my 5 Year plan was… I would never have guessed I would have gotten this far.
I moved to Quebec on January 1st, 2012, with the hope of starting anew. After 32+ years living in Ontario, I took the bold leap to leave my Province and start a new exciting chapter in my life. But it doesn’t start there. It all started in 1999 when my best friend Eric handed me my first copy of Linux… Corel Linux. It was at this point, just before I started College, that I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a Linux Admin, the guy who sits in the back room, making sure everything is working as it should.
I proceeded to go to College, first trying my luck at Comp-Sci which didn’t fare too well… I realized, even more, that I wanted to fix and maintain a server, rather than program how it functioned. I switched over to Computer Systems Technician. In our last semester, I would get an in-depth look at what Linux Server Administration was really like. The goal at the time was to leave college and work for Nortel, where my father worked. However, by this time, Nortel had crashed, which caused a bit of a shortage in Tech-related jobs in my hometown of Ottawa. When I finally graduated, ex-Nortel employees had taken up much of the jobs in my desired field, and aside from working as a server admins for my father, in the offseason, I had to take jobs at call centers to survive.
Fast forward to 2008, when my father passed away, I was then working full time for a call center, and doing even less Linux administration. By 2011, I had moved from Ottawa to Alexandria, and eventually to Cornwall. When the contract I was a part of at the call center in Cornwall dried up, I was desperately looking for an opportunity to get back into tech. With no jobs available in Ontario, I was offered a job at The UPS Store in Dorval QC, where a friend of mine from the call center industry had opened up his own franchise. Not quite the start in Tech I wanted, but it was a job and an opportunity at a new beginning. It was at this point, January 1st, 2012, that my new journey began, Part 2 of my book of life (Part one being anything and everything Ontario Related before this point)
Part 2, Chapter 1 – The UPS Store:
When I first arrived I worked as a store clerk for my buddy, then moved on to working on websites. But the part-time hours and minimum wage pay were just not cutting it for me. I longed for something in my field, and after 10 months, I decided I needed to look into a new job. I found one that would start me on my journey back into the work of Linux, a position as a Computer Centre Manager at a local anglophone library. Although the UPS Store job got me into Montreal, it was the next chapter that really got me back on track.
Part 2, Chapter 2 – The Atwater Library and Computer Centre
By November 2012, I found myself getting back into the groove with Linux, the Library I was now working for had an onsite hosting server, but due to electrical issues, their site was all too often offline. I suggested that we put the server off-site, like I had with my father’s company years before. And I managed all the staff email accounts and set up subdomain sites for the different departments. Although the job was quite fun, there was not much to learn as I was in a single server environment, technically 3 servers, by the end 2, but really my Linux administration was only for one server. After a year and a half at the Library, I decided to further my education, after all I wasn’t quite at my career goal, and there was no room for me to move up at the Library. I took a course at Dawson College to update my Windows Server knowledge, after all the last Windows server I was taught was Windows NT4 and Windows Server 2000, a little outdated if you ask me. This decision ended up starting a new chapter, as a job opportunity arose to further my career goals.
Part 2, Chapter 3 – Netelligent Hosting Services
At the end of my course at Dawson, the professor placed an email on the board along with a brief description of a job that was available at a Data Center downtown. It was for a Level 1 Technician position. As I was no longer learning anything new at the Library, and I know I wanted to reach further, I applied for the job and got in. After a year, I approached management with the idea of having Team Leaders, and this resulted in myself and a friend being the first team leaders in the company. This was a huge step in the right direct for me, but still wasn’t what I wanted. At some point in 2016, I felt uneasy with the way the direction the company was going and I decided to apply elsewhere. Again I found myself in a job where I could not advance in the direction I wanted to. A few months later I took another deep look at where the company was going and stopped looking for a job elsewhere. However, that didn’t stop those who I had applied to, looking for me later on. After about 6 months, I got a phone call from Ubisoft, for a position within their company, however, nothing panned out. A few months later I got another call, this one ended up with me being invited for a technical interview, then 2 more interviews for 2 different departments. This ended up with me getting a new job, which seems to be the job I have been waiting for all this time. And it starts next Monday…
Part 2, Chapter 4 – Ubisoft Montreal
A new chapter in life begins on March 27th, 2017…