Patrick Brian

I come from a long line of IT professionals. The way some families are full of doctors, lawyers or cops mine is full of programmers, systems engineers and administrators. My Dad was a CICS Systems programmer, my Mom was an application programmer and system analyst. Some of my earliest memories are of drawing on the white board while my dad sat hunched over a terminal pouring through lines of text in the middle of the night, my sister curled up asleep in the corner of the room. Despite the greatness of the marker board these experiences didn’t exactly drive me to IT, I just sort of fell into it. From what I have seen this is the way it happens for a lot of us. You’re bright maybe a little more than average and you find technology interesting or challenging and the next think you know you’ve made it into a career. At least that is what happened to me.

I’ve been in IT for over 16 years now with the majority of that time spent as a consultant, solution architect and systems engineer. Throughout my career I’ve been fortunate enough to work with companies and organizations of all types and sizes. I’ve worked with people that are truly exceptional at what they do and watched them soar, achieving their goals and living the dream. I’ve also seen a lot of frustration, seen people struggle, never getting where they want to be.

With the hubpages I hope to share what I have seen and what I have learned. I’ll present the things that I have done, where I’ve had success and where I’ve failed.

I’m not going to tell you how I mastered all of these topics and all of the success it has brought me. No one but my mother has a picture of me gracing their halls and the technical pundits don’t hang on my every word. But I have had the good fortune to work with a number of exceptional people. By emulating them and learning what they had to teach me I have been able to carve out a little something of my own. I’m not rich but I’m comfortable, I have a job that I love and I get the opportunity to improve every day. If you’re not getting everything you want out of your career in Technology I hope that this information will help you. You’ll learn how the field of technology really works, what you might be most suited for and what it really takes to be successful in IT. As for me, I hope that by writing this I will learn some things as well, after all I don't have all the answers and you're never finished, always improving!