Twitter Handle: @storageio
Blog URL: http://storageioblog.com
Current Employer: Founder and Sr. Advisory consultant StorageIO (www.storageio.com)
How did you get into IT in the first place, how did you get into working with VMware and becoming a 2011 vExpert?
I got into IT while going to college (or university) as I needed to find something that was fun and intuitive as opposed to difficult and boring. Turns out computer science was a natural fit that lead to different jobs while still going to school in addition to tutoring roommates and friends, what a great way to get free beer ;).
From college went on to work for an electric power generating and transmission company doing business applications development, moved on into systems management, systems programming, performance and capacity planning, backup/BC and DR strategy along with server, network and storage architects roles in various industries before going to work with some vendors. Became a vExpert in 2011 following on the momentum of being a 2010 vExpert leveraging an experience of having been a customer, vendor/var, analyst and consultant involved with servers, storage, networking, hardware, software and virtualization.
Learn more here: http://countdown2storageexpo.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/qa-with-greg-schulz-founder-of-storageio/
What would you tell someone who wanted to get a job like yours to do?
Broaden your horizons, learn about the technology as well as the business and applications to which are being supported. Look at the business and understand how technology can help it. Expand your cross technology domain skills across servers, storage, networks, hardware and software. Gain experience from having worked in different roles in IT organizations as well as check out the vendor or var side as well.
Don’t be scared, try new things out and take the risk of falling down, getting beat up while gaining experience. Learn how to keep on learning from others around you, look up, down, left and right, forward and back, there is knowledge to be gained in all directions however be sure to give back. Become both a student as well as teacher, find a mentor and become a mentor.
Be approachable and talk to people instead of at them, engage in conversations, learn what you don’t know, leverage that to become an expert and thus find new areas to expand your knowledge base. Set goals and objectives and the rewards and results will follow. Want to learn more, send me a note, be happy to chat.
