LIU004: From Fast Food to Leading Operations at an ISP

Kevin Nanns

Welcome to Life in Uptime, the podcast where we talk with the people behind the technology that keep our world connected. I'm Kevin, joined with my co-host Alexis. In every episode, we sit down with engineers, leaders, and builders in tech to uncover the stories behind their careers, how they started, what they've learned, and where they're headed next.

Our goal is simple, to help you see how far tech can take you no matter where you start from.

Alexis Bertholf

Today, guys, we have a very special guest. We're here with Matt Oborn, who started his career working fast food at Checkers before pivoting into IT. He doesn't have a degree, he doesn't have a ton of certifications, and he's mostly navigated his career by hard work and networking with the people around him.

He's navigated a couple of mergers, relocated across the country, and transitioned from video engineering into network engineering, and then moved into leadership as a director of IT. What we want you all to take away from this today is that it doesn't matter where you start as long as you have the drive to keep moving forward. Matt, welcome to the show.

How are you doing? Hi.

Matthew Oborne

Thank you. Good. How are you guys?

Alexis Bertholf

Great.

Kevin Nanns

Now, I have to be fully transparent on this episode. Matt is one of my oldest friends. We've been friends since middle school.

I think we actually became friends after he bullied me on a bus one day.

Matthew Oborne

Yes. Yes. I'll equate that that was fair.

It was a highlighter incident that happened, and yeah. I was a jerk when I was in middle school.

Alexis Bertholf

Weren't we all?

Kevin Nanns

Still is a little bit, but that's why we love you. Matt, you started out, your origin story is that you were flipping burgers at Checkers, working in high school, probably working too many hours that were illegal.

Matthew Oborne

Definitely underneath the table a little bit, yes. I enjoyed the job.

Kevin Nanns

You transitioned to tech. Can you explain to me how you got your first job in tech? What was that transition like, and why did you choose to go into tech?

Matthew Oborne

Yeah. At the time I was a first assistant manager, so that's equivalent to right below store manager, which really in fast food work, that means you do all the work and store manager takes credit. School, I actually didn't really mind it at all.

It was just a lot of hours, a lot on your feet. How I got the opportunity was honestly through networking. I had a really close friend who had gone through my military and stuff and then after he got out of the Marines, he went into an MSO company as a leadership within a NOC and a network operations center.

For those who aren't sure that term, that mainly means the center that monitors, creates the tickets and does some of the initial troubleshooting before sending to different groups. We were really close friends and he knew me as a hard worker, and so he gave me a couple opportunities to move into the NOC as an entry-level engineer one, which at the time in my life, I was also getting married, so I was looking at a little bit change of pace because those who work in hospitality food, it's a different beast of a schedule. You close one night, you wake up the next morning at 7 AM, and you work in godly hours and probably you might work 18 days in a row and not have a day off.

I was looking for more of a, not necessarily nine to five, but a nice one where I actually had two scheduled days off and not on my feet constantly. Plus, I'll be realistic, like fast food was never going to be the endgame. It was trying to get through college and stuff at the time.

I decided to pivot to the IT thing. Luckily, my friend tried to get me three times. First time he asked me overnights and I was like, no, I'm not going to work overnights.

People who love overnights, great, and sometimes we have to do it, but I couldn't do that life for that long.

Kevin Nanns

That's always the first shift they try to get rid of. Like, oh, do you want overnights? Here, we'll take this.

We're like, oh, no, I'll make you.

Matthew Oborne

Luckily, I got a swing shift, which was like a three to midnight position. I was able to at least get an interview. At the time, the MSO was just growing, so they were fairly new, so it wasn't like you needed a level of certification or anything.

It was more of how's your work ethic and how would you manage with the team and do you have some sort of technical knowledge? I'll be all open with anyone. I didn't even have cable at the time, literally.

I think I was still using AOL broadband, which ironically, I probably was still paying for it at the time before I realized you could give it free after they got rid of the dial-up service and stuff. But so that's how I got the job. Transition, again, part of it was a personal interest of just trying to change my work-life balance type situation.

Plus, I mean, I've never been one. I'm not like, I don't know. I'm not really a tech nerd.

Like, I don't build a lab at home and stuff. I do enjoy troubleshooting, I would say. I think I like working on cars.

I like sports. I like doing certain things like that. But I don't consider myself a tech nerd.

I think it was a good opportunity to change the work that I was doing and try a new avenue of life and see what kind of stuck. I mean, I did do some tech, like we were in web design together and nerdy fact, we were in computer game club together.

Kevin Nanns

Yeah, it's a little different than wanting to make that your career, though.

Matthew Oborne

Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Nanns

I feel like computer classes in school were always kind of an easy class. As long as you showed up and tried a little bit, they usually just gave you an A or a B. Especially if you copied off of me of everything you did, so.

Matthew Oborne

No, we were a team. We had the team of three. A team, quote unquote a team.

One of our third person didn't do anything. I did a middle amount of work. And you did, you made everything look pretty and professional.

Kevin Nanns

What I find interesting is that you did this transition not because you were interested in IT, not because you had a passion for IT or that you loved messing with technology. It was literally just because you wanted a better life, you wanted something different. And I think that's a cool or an important distinction to make because especially with kids these days coming into tech, you have, I always say kids these days, every episode I have to point out how old I am.

Kevin Nanns

Kids these days, no, I'm actually, a lot of people who are very public about being in tech to talk about tech, make videos about tech, we do so because we're passionate. And you get this perspective that you have to be passionate to be in technology. That if you're not absolutely in love with staying up 12 hours to figure out why your code's not working because you missed a semicolon, unless you have that passion, then you're not gonna make it.

But you are a testament to that not being true at all.

Matthew Oborne

Yeah, I mean, again, I think I'm kind of a weird build because I don't like to say I'm a mercenary because I haven't moved companies in 20 years. So like, I'm loyal to a felt sometimes, but also, yeah, I don't really like, I guess a long time, a long laid back in my life, I realized that you're not always gonna have your dream job, but you're gonna have to pay a mortgage. So, you know, at least enjoy what you do.

You don't have to necessarily be immersed in it, but as long as you enjoy what you do, who you work for, and the overall people you work with, usually the job really is a kind of second thing to me.

Alexis Bertholf

So, so Matt, I have a question. When you, was there any points where you got that job at the knock, and you were sitting there, and you were brand new, and you were learning all these things, and you thought, oh my God, what did I get myself into? Oh yeah, 100%.

Was this actually the right thing? Was there any points where maybe you started looking outside of IT? Because again, you weren't doing it because you loved it, you were doing it because you had to pay your bills.

You got options there.

Matthew Oborne

I did. I mean, so one, I don't, I'm not really a huge active looker for jobs. If I, I mean, again, I liked who I was working with.

I liked the people I was working with. But yeah, there was a complete time where I was like, maybe this is way above my head. Just because it's big difference.

Like when, I mean, of course, completely different fields, and you know, things were a little bit different, like in regards to just technology wise. Like again, I remember one day, like we would get phone calls from techs at the house, and we're expecting you to be like the guy who has all the answers. You're getting the guy who just started like four days ago.

And you know, like we would get questions like, and this was back in the early days. So it'd be like, how's HDMI work? Or I'm having a problem with this thing.

And I remember like looking over one of the guys who were there for a year, and I'm like, hey, can you give me like a 10 second rundown on how to troubleshoot HDMI? I mean, now looking back, it's silly, right? Because you unplug, you power up, plug one, you plug the other in, and sooner or later it will sync, went after trial and error a couple of times.

But completely, completely was, I think there's been a couple of times in my career where I've shifted to either a different organization or a different role, and I'm like, ooh, maybe I don't want to go back. Ironically, I did get counter-offered to checkers to go back, and I thought about it, but I didn't. Just really to your like, who gives you a counter-offer?

Like they're like, we'll pay you the same, we'll make you a store manager, and we'll give you health benefits. So I was like, it was, yeah, no, there was definitely a time I was scared, I would say.

Kevin Nanns

You weren't tempted at all to go back, because that's what you knew.

Matthew Oborne

Oh no, I was tempted to go back, 100%. Like it was, again, in checkers, I'll be fully transparent, is like one of my favorite timeframes was I was working for one of my really close, still long-term friends, seem to get a lot of jobs through friends, who was my store manager slash mentor, really. And so like, he was like, hey man, I got some, would you come back if I got this?

And I was like, in my mind, I'm like, there's no way they're gonna give me health benefits. Sure, if you get me this, this, and this, I'll come back. And like, he called at the end of the day, was like, he said, okay.

And I'm like, oh, now what do I do? Sorry, I didn't, sorry, you can add that part in.

Alexis Bertholf

No, you're fine, and I think when stuff like that, when stuff like that comes up, when you're in the middle of making a pivot, because I know there's multiple people who have been in that situation before, you're not happy at your current job, so you go looking, and then you find one, and then your current job's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, and now we'll give you everything you wanted. And then you really have to do a bit of internal reflection of like, is this new job? Is this something that's aligned with what I want, with the future?

Was I running towards something, or was I running away from something? And then also, at my old job, you know, I was asking for these things before, but I was asking for these things for probably months or even years before I started looking, and you refused to give them to me. So now that I'm on my way out the door, like, that's so disrespectful.

Is that something you still wanna tolerate, or just cut your losses and walk away and start something new?

Matthew Oborne

Yeah, I mean, again, I think everyone, I honestly think most of us have some sort of that feeling when we transition, just because there's a comfort level, and there's a change, and there's gonna be expectations that maybe you're not aware of or new to you. I guess maybe that's probably my greatest thing is that I don't really get, I get scared, but I don't really run away from it. Like, once I pot commit, it's what it is, and better or worse, you know, I always look at it as, the thing I always look at is, like, I don't necessarily work, and this is gonna sound bad, I don't work for a company, I work for myself, and at the end of the day, my whole thing has always been, no matter what job I'm doing, if I gave 110%, whether I succeed or fail, there's nothing more I could've done, so at least I know I left it all on the, quote, unquote, court, you know? And I think that's kinda where that takes over in me, and plus, I do like, I like growth to a certain extent, right? None of us like to be overwhelmed, but it is nice to have new things and challenges and things that you have to learn, because you should learn, like, I try and say I learn something every day, I don't necessarily do, but you know.

Alexis Bertholf

So, I'm curious, for someone who openly admits you don't go to sleep at night thinking about work because you love it so much, what are the aspects of your job that you do really enjoy? Have there been things that you have grown to love, or?

Matthew Oborne

So, like, I don't go to, I don't go to sleep necessarily thinking about tech, like, I don't, Cisco router, Juniper router, you know?

Alexis Bertholf

Oh my God, did you see that Cisco HyperShield just came out, and EBT has packaged over it.

Matthew Oborne

Like, I'm probably, like, the worst person to talk about, like, what type of devices are new, and of course, unless I deal with them on a daily basis, but, like, I do like the work aspect of life, like, I like the being, I'm probably overly involved in regards to, like, reading emails and stuff like that, and following up on stuff, so I do kinda have a workaholic aspect on that part, but in regards to, like, what makes me kinda tick is, one, I like the troubleshooting, right? There's a problem, if I figure out the problem statement, let's work our way towards it.

Now, I might not know all the jargon and stuff that's going on, but it's interesting to figure out how to get past that, how it kinda came about, things you can do in the future to look for improvements or ways to either catch it before it becomes visible to the customer or other people, also ways to automate it, or ways that, you know, to prevent it from getting designed or put in place in the future, so there's a lot of things that it's kind of, to me, it's like a board game, like a mystery game, I don't know.

Alexis Bertholf

Like the systems or the process side.

Matthew Oborne

Yeah. Yeah. So, like, because there's a lot of interesting things, like, we'll have issues, and I'll be like, I don't know how that was a network issue, and then I have talked to someone who's a lot smarter than me, and then, you know, they'll be like, hey, this is what happened, like, okay, cool, that makes sense to me, and then, one, it kind of clicks, like, there'll be, I guess I'm weird in the fact that there'll be issues where I'm lucky where I'll just have, like, oh, we experienced that, like, six months ago, I kind of remember what we did, and then, but, like, a lot of it is interesting on how certain integral parts either just can sometimes cause issues that you don't expect.

Kevin Nanns

And so you've admitted you're not the smartest man in the room, that you're not like this huge techie nerd who's studying and doing all these certifications and all that stuff, but you've found a way to go from the knock to engineering to a director level. What has been, would you say, is the biggest quality that you have that has allowed you to progress over the years to this level?

Matthew Oborne

Yeah, I mean, again, like, I will be the first to admit I'm not the smartest, the fastest, the strongest, any of that stuff. One thing I will say is I do have, I think a strong work ethic is very key because I don't want to compare it to future generations because I think everyone's kind of built their own ways, but certain people just don't have that extra gear.

Kevin Nanns

Were you about to call kids lazy?

Matthew Oborne

Yes, yes.

Kevin Nanns

I don't think they're all kids. Matt and I are the same age. We both do it.

Like, kids these days.

Alexis Bertholf

I think there's a generational. I feel old now, too, but it's fine.

Matthew Oborne

Well, I think there's a generational difference that occurs every so often, and I feel like, again, me and Kevin, we're a little bit weirder generation because we're kind of split between two generations where we're not full, like, get off my lawn. Yeah, exactly, but we still had like that. You go to work.

I mean, I will be fully open. I don't, I haven't called in sick in like five days, or five years, so there's no like, like, I literally, I mean, I know I'm pretty much wasting money that way, but I don't really call in sick. I will always be there, and that's not necessarily because, you know, I wanna prove anything.

I more feel bad when I'm out because I will feel like I'm on my team down, and that's just a feeling inside of myself, so that's an example. Like, it's a work ethic aspect. Like, not always do you have to know everything, and I think people get fixated on how many certs I have or how much my technical knowledge is.

Like, there's a lot of people who are very, very technically smart, but they don't have either troubleshooting skills where like, you know, if you have, I'm gonna just go to a car, right? Your car doesn't start. You're gonna look for gas, air, and spark, you know?

But like, some people don't know where to start with that, even though they have like, a complete knowledge of what the engine's built like.

Kevin Nanns

Right, they'll check the tires.

Matthew Oborne

Like, stuff that doesn't make any sense at all. Correct, like, I'm gonna try and turn the key three times, and that's gonna do anything.

Alexis Bertholf

Is there a reason you didn't end up going for any certifications throughout your career?

Matthew Oborne

So, I got a CCNA, but in all actuality, I'll be honest. It was just more of, for the most part, I didn't need them as I progressed. When I was in the NOC, we had certifications that were semi-required, but most of them were field-related.

So, it was a lot of like, RF stuff. And then, and again, I was pretty much part of the NOC. They're like, at the infant stage.

So, like, I joke, like, I'm Homer Simpson. Like, you're building the building. I just kind of showed up and was like, hey, I'm here, woo.

You know, I've been here forever, guys. No, and then, a lot of the stuff.

Alexis Bertholf

You came with the building.

Matthew Oborne

Yes. And then, like, video, they never really, honestly, pushed for a lot of Linux certification until much later on in life. So, like, even though I was doing a lot of Linux stuff, or working on a lot of servers or video equipment, I didn't have to have any certification.

And it was more like, as long as you had the practical knowledge, it was okay. And then, same thing with network, I have the CCNA. But the other thing I kind of stress with certs is certs are great, but certs are a perfect-wise network, right?

Or a perfect-wise system. Like, I hate to break it to everybody, but when you get into smaller systems where you have control over, it can be a little bit different. But when you get into some of the other bigger systems and stuff.

Speaker 5

They're all clusters. They're all the mess.

Matthew Oborne

Doesn't matter, you know, what the perfect scenario is. They're all built completely opposite, you know, completely different way and sometimes it's paper clips and bubble gum that puts it together. I don't know, you know, like.

Kevin Nanns

Most networks grow organically, where they start small, and then you kind of just paper clip things and bubble gum things together, until you have this 20-year-old network that has been piecemeal together by 30 different network engineers, and none of them were on the same page doing it. Exactly. So, it's kind of like.

Alexis Bertholf

I can see anxiety here.

Matthew Oborne

Well, like, especially when.

Alexis Bertholf

I know that's all of this in real life, but I like to pretend.

Matthew Oborne

Yeah, it's like when you get to an MSO level, between mergers and stuff, it's a simple idea of like, how do we make it work? Not really what the best design always is, you know? So, like, that's one thing is.

Okay, so like, if we go back to the question. I'm sorry, I went off topic there, but one, I think my dedication, hard work is one thing that I kind of outshine. Like I said, I'm not smarter, faster, stronger than anyone, but I will outwork most.

I don't mind late nights. I don't mind early mornings. You tell me what days or whatever, I gotta be there, I'll be there.

Two, I think part of it is understanding your shortcomings, but also learning your resources when you hit those shortcomings, right? So it's important to understand like, I'm not the smartest guy. Now, my counterpart is incredibly smart when it comes to network.

I like, I think he's probably the smartest guy I've known in a long time. There's other guys when I was in the server world that was incredibly smart when it came to Linux and servers or video on demand stuff and that type of stuff. You know, it's building that relationship with them where I don't wanna lean on you all the time.

Like, I'm not gonna come to you for every question, but I'm gonna come to you when I have a question, learn from that answer, retain that answer, and then also be able to kind of build upon that, right? And over time, I think with that, it creates an adaptability that you're able to learn on the fly, grow, and then also grow your knowledge so the next time you have that little bit extra. Like, you don't have to go from zero to 100, but little breadcrumbs as you go along will build your abilities 110% comparative to just trying to learn it all.

Kevin Nanns

So is that how you, going from a NOC where you're dealing with, you know, a monitoring board of different alarms going off, you create a ticket, and then you push it off to engineers, and then it's goodbye, you're moving on to the next thing. You were thrown into an engineering role. And by the way, I did the same thing.

Matt actually got me my job at the NOC, at the ISP, and I kind of fell at the same path where I went from there to engineering. And for me doing this, it was a whole new world. Like, at the NOC, you had basically read access to everything, so you can't really do anything, and you have a giant, what we called spectrum at the time, where it was just colored alarms.

You're like, red is really bad, orange is like, you know, check it out and see what it is, that kind of stuff. How do you go from that to, like you said, you're not technical, you didn't have any certifications. How do you go from that to fixing stuff, or being in charge of actually going in and configuring stuff right away, without training, without a degree, without any of this stuff?

Matthew Oborne

Again, one was, as for the alarm board example, when I created a ticket, even though I knew who I was assigning it to, and this helped with the relationship building too, later on, is I didn't just want to assign it. I wanted to know what I could do to do whatever initial troubleshooting I had the ability to, because like you said, at NOC we couldn't, I couldn't even shut down a port, right? But I could at least say, okay, this port goes to a video device, probably not a network ticket, it's really a video ticket, where like 70% of the time, other technicians would just be like, oh, network device on the alarm name, boop, who cares what the port goes to?

You know, and things like that, but even like, when I was in a NOC, I gravitated more honestly to video than I did network, because video in my mind, for some reason, made more sense to me, and not gonna lie, it's also a lot more GUI based, so it's a lot more, you know, pretty pictures, green, red, you know? Yeah, exactly, you know, no scrolling logs and stuff, but a lot of times- It's okay, Matt, I also prefer pictures. Yeah, exactly, like MRTG compared to like show monitor interface, you know, it's, oh, I have green traffic, great.

But I think there's the opportunity there, again, I use that example as like, maybe I didn't know everything, but I would ask small questions, try to learn from them, and then as I learned from that, one, it's building my relationship, because the engineer's like, oh, well, he's at least trying to get me all the information I need so I can pinpoint what's going on, and two, it allowed me to grow my knowledge as things came about, and like, also the important thing is, you know, is the work smarter, not harder, like, get to know your tools real well, like, that's why companies spend millions of dollars on tools, because guess what?

Sometimes they can help you find the problem when you don't know the command, you know? So there's a lot of that part, I think. With the video world, we did have some break-fix capability, but it could be a little bit of a thing, but since I was there from inception, like, restarting MQAMs and GQAMs back in the day and stuff wasn't really that big of a deal for me, because, again, it mainly came from the knowledge of, hey, what can I do when I get this ticket?

But we're just gonna go in here, click this, QS it, and then restart it. It's like, oh, well, can you show me those three steps, and I'll do it before I send the ticket over. Cool.

Alexis Bertholf

Well, and I think, Matt, I think what I'm hearing, a common thread is just taking pride in your work, making sure that you are doing things thoroughly, or you want a generally good result. You're not just trying to push this ticket off your desk so that you can get to the next thing or go back to checking fantasy football or whatever else you prefer to be doing. You actually care about the end result, and I think that says a lot about, like you said, your work ethic and drive, and also how people perceive you.

I know, Kevin, we've talked a little bit about personal branding on here and your reputation, but things like that really do go a long way in the workforce, and people remember you for it.

Matthew Oborne

Yeah, like I said, I think it's a big thing because resources are important. Again, I'll continue to stress that. It's important.

You're not gonna know everything. If you are expecting to know everything to get a promotion, it doesn't work. It's usually the people who develop that ability, one, to take pride in the work, like you were saying, or take it seriously, right, take ownership.

I consider any time I put my name in a ticket that that has a certain value to me. I don't honestly care what other people think, but I care that when you see you're going through a ticket, you're like, okay, maybe this wasn't done right, this wasn't done right. Oh, there's Matt's update.

Okay, it was right. He did this, he did this, he did this. Cool.

One, I don't get yelled at that way. Two, it's more of like, again, I work more for my thing, so that's my 110%, right? I'm giving you all my effort.

I'm just not going, click it, take it, send it, yay. But again, I don't like to say that. It's important for me to gain knowledge as I go along because I want to know what I can do for that one.

And I want to know what options I have. Is there something I can learn to do or something I can learn to check? Even if it's a log message, like, I don't know.

Working in a NOC was incredible because what I don't think people get or realize with the NOC is you get to experience every technology. Like, it's not just network, it's not just video, it's voice, it's, you know, whatever application services you have, it's caller ID on TV, it's caller ID on a phone, it's 911 calls, it's SIP traffic, you know? So like, coming from the NOC is very entertaining because then you can kind of say, okay, well, what do I like troubleshooting to an extent?

And then kind of move from there. And that led me to video.

Kevin Nanns

And I get asked a lot because I get a lot of followers that are entry-level and a lot of them start out at help desk or in the NOC position. They're like, I want to move up. No one goes to help desk or NOC and is like, I want to stay here forever.

There are a few. There are a few, there are a few.

Matthew Oborne

Yes, there are a few who are like 50 years old and they're still, I mean, again, they're comfort zone.

Kevin Nanns

Yeah, and that's completely valid. But there are a lot of people who go into those positions as entry-level positions that don't want to stay there forever. And they ask me, what's the easiest way or the best way to move up?

And I always say, whenever you're done with your ticket, you've escalated or whatever, follow the ticket. Don't just be done with it. Follow the ticket, see what the engineers actually did to fix it, what the problem was.

You can learn, number one, you can learn from it. So if you do want to apply for that job eventually, they're going to be asking you technical questions and you have some background of how they fix things and how their methodology is and troubleshooting and that kind of stuff. But also you can start doing some of the legwork for them, doing some of the show commands they would need, some of the output, some of the logs, that kind of stuff.

So when they do get your ticket, they start associating your name with doing the hard work that the, I don't want to call it, the grunt work of doing this stuff with them.

Matthew Oborne

It's the first, you're doing the first level troubleshooting that they would do. So it allows them to get past the first 20 minutes. Okay, let me first figure out where this device goes.

Okay, now let me see how long it's been down. Let me see what's in the logs. Like all of that stuff is honestly, it's not easy necessarily, but it's something that if you want to grow, those are things you want to do.

Because like you're saying, they're going to associate, your game is making that brand, that name of branding, right, association. Matt, I get Matt, he's on a bridge. He knows what's going on.

He's paying attention. He's following through. He's getting whatever I need.

Plus he's following along with the ticket and he'll help me get whatever additional logs I need while I'm doing, maybe sharing stream with Cisco or Juniper or whatever. He'll pull the logs or whatever, you know? So I think that's the twofold, right?

Like a lot of people think, okay, I have to, if I'm the smartest guy on the team, I should be the highest paid or highest promoted. One, I hate to break it to you in the real world. There's always going to be someone who's paid higher than you that necessarily doesn't know or is as good as you.

Two, it's just a matter of circumstance. And two, it's one of those things like, it's not, there's a lot of smart people who just don't take the extra effort to do the bare minimum, right? Like, or even the extra step, right?

Like I joke, like you have percentage of people I feel like, you'll have certain people who will go above and beyond. You have certain who are happy just doing, okay, I click it, I take it, I send it. And you have certain people who are like, I don't even look at the board, I don't know, you know?

So like different, yeah, just for me, just, okay, I'll click it, no problem. But you know, there's different levels. And if you want to progress, yes, search and knowledge is great, but you could have all the knowledge in the world.

And, but people just see you as not effective, then it won't suffice. Like I've been working, I've been growing a lot on my interpersonal skills because, hey, tech world, you know, we're not all the most personal people.

Kevin Nanns

What are you talking about? No idea what you're mentioning.

Matthew Oborne

But one thing I've always been throughout my career is no matter what you perceive me as personality wise, I will get the job done for you. So like, come to me, you know, I might not give you the exact personal response you want, but you'll know I'll get the job done and get to where it needs to go.

Kevin Nanns

So- You say that you're like, you're a problem solver? Is that like your brand is like, no matter what, your boss comes to you, your director comes to you, and they have a problem and you may not be able to fix it yourself, but I will find someone to fix it and the problem will get resolved.

Matthew Oborne

Yep, well, usually go through. And I mean, that's my goal is in the end that if you give me an issue, whatever it is, is I need this activity done by a certain date or I need to fix a certain problem that's been going on for months. Cool, even if it means we're sitting on a call with a vendor for like every day at 2 PM until we figure out the problem.

Cool, you know, it's fine.

Alexis Bertholf

Depending on those calls and they're not fun.

Matthew Oborne

They are not like, oh, what's different today? Well, we still don't know.

Alexis Bertholf

The first three days, it's like, yeah, let's get the team together. This is so exciting. We're gonna fix it.

And then by the fourth day, it's like, hey guys, no updates.

Matthew Oborne

We're still looking at the logs. Our development team is trying to lab it up. Yeah, I know.

Alexis Bertholf

It's not fun to be on either side of those calls.

Matthew Oborne

It isn't, but like Kevin said, I guess my nerdy tendency is not necessarily, I'm interested in certain issues. Like if I have an issue that was going on for a long time and or it was something completely strange that I, either one, my initial thought was like, hey, this isn't gonna be something that should be a network related issue or video related issue or whatever. And then it ends up being like, those are the ones that I still follow them a lot because I care about what the outcome of the impact was.

So that way I can equate, how do we get to the end result faster? Sometimes it's just having the knowledge that, hey, we had this ticket. Again, we had this ticket three months ago.

Same thing, same exact standard. Let me see if I can find it. Okay, we did this, this and this.

Can we try that? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Alexis Bertholf

I'm curious, Matt, because we've talked a lot about like going the extra mile, working hard, being there early, staying late, doing what it takes. Have you had a point in your career almost where you took a step back, right? And that's a personal question for me because I'm at a point, not a point in my life, but like the past six months just personally have been really, really rough.

And I'm really struggling with, I feel like I need to go zero to a hundred in my job with content. And also it's okay to take a step back and just let stuff ride and have a season of pause. Have you had one of those?

Matthew Oborne

Okay, so I have. What I'll honestly tell you is working for the same company for 20 years in different organizations, you get ebbs and flows. I think every person, any type of job will get ebbs and flows.

Like there may be a period where you're dedicated 300% and then there's a period where you're like, you know, and it's okay, right?

Alexis Bertholf

It's okay sometimes to be like- I just don't care that much. It's okay if there's some slides.

Matthew Oborne

Well, I don't think it's care. I think it's just that it's like anything. If you do anything for too much at such a high level, you're going to feel burnout, right?

If you're taking care of elderly people and they're your parents, you're going to have a burnout at some point where it just tires them. You know, if you're working a car for six months and you know, it just seems always giving you problems, you're going to have a burnout. I think everyone has that period of time where it's like, well, maybe I'm not giving my 110%, but I'm giving 80%.

But you know, again, I can joke and I feel sometimes like my 80% is still pretty good. Someone else's 100%.

Alexis Bertholf

You trained that, you trained that.

Matthew Oborne

I did. At first, like I've had a lot of good mentors in my life and I've had a leader who was literally like, look, Matt, because I would get so frustrated. I would come to him and be like, look, I'm beating my head against the wall and this is happening, this is happening, this is happening, but we're not going anywhere.

I don't know what else I could do. And I review tickets every day and blah, blah, blah. And he's like, look, Matt, it's okay.

Just take it to 80%. Take a break for a couple of weeks, couple of months, whatever. Your 80% is fine.

I'm happy with your 80%. When you do 110%, I'm even more happy. But you know what?

I'm not mad at you if you're just like, look. I can joke there's been times where I've certain quality checks that I do. And I just got honestly tired of emailing when I did them.

So I would date them on the last time I did them, stop for three months and then wait for someone to be like, did you stop doing the quality checks? Well, yes, I did.

Speaker 5

It took you three months to notice.

Matthew Oborne

What date do you think I stopped? Oh, around this week. I'm like, bingo.

So I don't think it's a bad thing. I think we all need to learn to adjust sometimes our energy levels based on what's going on in life, how we feel, that type of stuff. Like I don't take any days off, mental health days, anything like that.

But there are days that I go in there and I'm like, okay, not gonna work. Now I'm gonna do my meetings. I'm gonna get the tape if an outage comes in or anything, but I'm not gonna go too in depth on everything.

And I think there's also ways of doing that throughout your week. Like what I've learned, what I learned most from fast food world is it's gonna sound bad, but like you in fast food, you had to cut labor throughout the week. So you would hit a percentage of labor comparative to sales, right?

So you never wanted to have to cut labor on Friday and Saturday, cause those are your two busiest days. So you would work your butt off Sunday and Monday and Tuesday. And then that way you could kind of coast Friday and Saturday through the busy stuff and not have to have like only one guy doing fries or something.

You could have like literally the one guy just running back to get whatever product. So that's kind of how I do it as well is like I don't necessarily not give 100% all the time. I just think I stagger my week to where I know, okay, Sunday's my slow day when it comes to impacting events or ticket wise.

So I'm gonna try and push through everything I can paperwork wise or project wise. And even though most people book out at like one o'clock, okay, I'll stay till five, my normal shift, but I'm doing paperwork and stuff or numbers or quality checks or whatever. And that way when Monday and Tuesday come, which are like the days where everything's gonna break, you're like, okay, well.

I'm ready. I'm focused on mainly just this. This is what I got.

And I'm in this headspace and that's good. Like all I gotta do is worry about the influx. I don't gotta worry about all the side objects.

And then Wednesday is kind of my day to again, sink back into that. Cause I have a second, my counterpart's there. So it's like, well, you're here.

I'm gonna sink back a little bit. You do the main stuff and I'll do whatever work I need to do to make sure that when I leave you're set up for success the rest of the week.

Kevin Nanns

It reminds me of like the ant in the grasshopper story where like the ants working all the time and then when the emergency happens, he has all that surplus when the grasshopper has been slacking off, the emergency happens and he's got a pile of crap that he has to deal with. It's kind of the same thing where you kind of front load your shift week. So you get all their paperwork, all your stuff out of the way.

So by the end of the week, you can kind of take it easy a little bit, still do your meetings, still do what you have to do, put out fires, but you're not waiting until the last moment to finish all your stuff before your end of the week.

Matthew Oborne

Correct. And like, I don't, it's just not overloading you. So like there's also ways to do that.

And like, I consider that as taking a step back. Now, of course, the weird part was when I go into leadership, then it's, as you go up different levels of leadership, you have to kind of, it was really hard for me when I went from manager to director, because manager, I was very much kind of hands on like, okay, we're doing this. Okay, I see it's costed.

Okay, I see this, I see this, we're good. Where director, you kind of have to take that little bit of control factor away and be like, okay, I trust my manager's gonna check this. And in the beginning, that was a little hard for me.

Still, still work through that as days go by. But there are certain aspects that you'll take off your plate as you progress as well.

Kevin Nanns

That was gonna be number one, great segue. Thank you, that makes it easy for me. Because I was gonna ask you, now we've been talking about being a tech and being an engineer for a while.

And I wanted to transition to your leadership role and how you made that transition mentally of going from, you know, I gotta work 110%. I'm concentrating on my tickets and my outages and that kind of stuff. You're thinking more of a team level, more of a company level, which to me, like I couldn't even, that big a picture where I'm thinking company wide, I'm making decisions for not only me and my team, but for the benefit of everybody.

That's a lot of pressure and a lot of change in the way you think. So how was that transition like for you?

Matthew Oborne

So again, I think there was a lot of changes as I progressed through that, right? Like I think, I'll say there's been different stages in each one. So like I went from engineer to manager, not necessarily, again, I'm gonna be all honest, transparent, not necessarily because I chose that.

It was more of a, hey, we need this at this time and we feel you're the best guy to fill in at that position. But in all honesty, I was probably a better manager than I was a network engineer.

Speaker 5

Well, that makes sense.

Matthew Oborne

Again, I just think I wasn't, again, I had gone from video to network fairly quickly without very much training. So I could trace an M trace or I could trace a multicast route with nobody, like nobody's business, but could I necessarily do all the configurations you need me to do on stuff? Probably not.

But I think when I first, the first problem I experienced when I went into a manager from engineer was I was too focused on trying to be an engineer and a manager at the same time. And so, and I think in the tech world, it is great. I think it's very much, I don't necessarily hate it, but I do dislike the comment, like I don't need to be technical for a management role because yes, you don't need to do technical things, but you need to have the ability to, sometimes, again, it goes back to like the knock thing.

You need to be able to at least check like an interface description sometimes or a log message sometimes, or at least understand what this might mean. Do you need to know how to- Yeah, do you, like I can look at a device and tell you I have an Apex on it, which means that Apex is my video background is gonna feed channels. I don't know what channels, I don't know what type of channels, but it's gonna feed channels.

So likelihood is I can't reboot this device in the middle of the day because I'm gonna cause some sort of impact. So like, I think it is good to have a technical understanding, not necessarily, you don't have to be able to rebuild the network, fix the problem, but I digress. So I, when I first started, I was trying to be twofold engineer and manager, and that, my direct report at that time actually took away my config access to stop me from doing that.

Like one day my boss came up to me, he was like, hey, go to config T. I was like, oh, it says I'm not authorized. He's like, awesome, I'll try to be a manager.

Kevin Nanns

They're gonna force you to take a step back.

Matthew Oborne

Yeah, but like I needed, I honestly needed that because it was very important. Because again, like you said, the dynamic shift, like it's not just your ticket now, it's your overall team, right? So like, how is my team doing with their tickets?

Where is my team at with their tickets? Is my team doing the correct things with their tickets? Are they following processes?

Are there processes we need? Is there training we need? That kind of stuff.

And as I evolved, I think that helped a lot. Again, I think when you go into leadership, I'm a very big component of like, I have a certain structure I build and whatever, but like, it's always, I have certain generals who I rely on, who are my engineers, who you tell me in all honesty, I'm gonna take it almost as it's gospel. Now, I might check you a couple of times and then I joke with you and be like, ha, ha, ha, you lied to me.

But there's certain ones I put certain levels of responsibility based on, again, a lot of it is knowledge, work base, or work ethic, that type of stuff. Just because you're the smartest guy on my team doesn't mean you necessarily are the guy who I trust full-heartedly.

Alexis Bertholf

Is it hard, because you do have such big, or such a lot of like work ethic and drive, is it hard if someone on your team isn't responding to something the same way that you do? Or you would?

Matthew Oborne

No, again, as I've, again, this is a growing process, right? So when you first start, yes, it is. Cause you're like, everyone should work like Matt does.

But unfortunately, that's an unfair expectation, right? Cause I put myself, there are certain things, I'm probably my hardest critic always. So like, I always feel like there's something I could have done better.

And on top of that, I work at a certain work level effort. I look at it now as I've grown, as I think it's important, as you grow up, especially as in the management level, when you're managing a team, I think it's important to have some sort of, not personal relationship, but ability to be personal for a person, like what's going on, how's life, blah, blah, blah. But also understanding what their desires are.

Cause there are some people who, they're happy being an engineer three for the rest of their life, taking their 3% increase. They don't want the extra stress. They wanna do their thing, you know?

Like I always equate it to a basketball team. Like if you had three Michael Jordans or three LeBron James, you wouldn't win the championship because you don't win on pure talent, right? Like in a good basketball team, you have to have the Jordan and the Pippen and then the Rodman, right?

Jordan is the guy who can do everything and he's amazing. And you have Scottie Pippen, who's pretty good, but he defers to Jordan. So he knows, hey, Jordan's still my, if the end shot comes, I'm passing the ball to him and he's taking the shot.

I know that's happening every time. And then you kind of have the Dennis Rodman, who's the underappreciated guy who, you know, he gets the rebounds and does all the dirty work that necessarily Jordan and Pippen don't ever have time or want to do. And then you have other role players, right?

People who like, look, I just need you to come off the bench one time and make a shot. I just need you to take this one type of ticket and roll through it every time, you know, like, and I think the big part is understanding that part. This is your jam.

Yeah, you are great at this type of ticket, you know? I mean, there's been engineers where I'm like, look, man, I don't want you to take advantage. I just want you to do like the basic optical stuff because you're great at that.

When you set that next level, things go bad.

Kevin Nanns

But that plays a role. It's like it frees up the other engineer who is good at outages to take that on instead of trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.

Matthew Oborne

Right, it's just like understanding. There's certain engineers who love to do the little, I don't want to say the projects, right? Like they love to be like, hey, I need you to investigate this.

This has been happening and I don't know what it is, can we figure it out, work with the vendor, work with the SD, whatever we have to do to figure this part out. And they love that. And they'll give you an amazing email write-up on everything they've done.

And then there's other ones that are like, you want me to do what? That's so much work. And I'm like, all right, fair, get it, you know, so.

Fair, it's like, fair enough, all right. I mean, I don't want to push you to do, like if you put, there's a difference between trying to push you to take that next step, like, okay, hey, next time, let's look at the logs and check this part. This is what we were looking for.

Comparative to like, I want you to give me 110% when I know that's not your 110%. Cause then you're just, it's just, you're not gonna get the outcome you wanted and you're probably gonna get more stressed out and then you're just gonna stress them out. And then, you know, again, I think, and I didn't know this when I first became a manager, when I first became a manager, and I'm sure Kevin can attest to it.

I was sometimes very hard on my engineers where I was just like, I was very much like, I need you to do this, this, this. Why are we getting here? And, you know, and it didn't work out well sometimes.

Alexis Bertholf

I was gonna ask Matt, what was the push to go into leadership? Was it just the next logical step in your career or was there a burning desire to grow and develop young talent?

Matthew Oborne

Um, again, this is not probably the perfect answer. It's weird. Like throughout my whole life, I've never aspired to be like, I wanna be the manager or I wanna be the leader or I wanna be anything like that.

But it just seems like I naturally fall into that realm. So like when I worked at Checkers, I was a cashier and I was a line guy and whatever. I was a normal food person.

But then when they noticed my talent, they're like, hey, maybe you should try for a shift manager. And then from shift manager, it's like, oh, you're doing good as a shift manager. Let's go to, you know, second assistant.

And, oh, Matt, I want you as my first assistant. And it kind of worked that way in the knock too, I think, was it was a, go ahead.

Kevin Nanns

What is the talent you said? Like they saw your talent. Now your talent wasn't just like, because you could flip a burger really well, right?

It's all in the wrist and you were flipping it up. It was, it was not that kind of talent, right?

Matthew Oborne

No, no, no, no. A hundred percent not that kind of talent. Now I could run line in like 30 seconds during lunch.

So I was okay. But no, I think the talent was that there was an aspect of critical thinking, like, how can we do this quicker, better, easier, not because I'm lazy, just because it's silly to do inefficiency, right? Like in hospitality, it's like, how can you eliminate steps or mistakes?

And tech world, it's kind of the same thing, but it's just in a different world. But I guess it was the attention to that part. Plus the fact that, again, I'll put it, I'll stress the work ethic and availability.

Like I can always be count on, I'll always be there whatever time you needed. And then I think there was also just the aspect of, I don't feel like I have it. And I don't know if you do, cause you're my friend, but like, I, people were like, oh, you have this like somewhat sort of charisma around you.

It's not necessarily the most politically correct always.

Kevin Nanns

Matt's got the Riz, we heard it here.

Matthew Oborne

I don't think I do. Like, I don't, like, I've never been great at, you know, other ends of life. Yeah, I guess it's my aura, right?

Kevin Nanns

I can tell you, I have known Matt in multiple capacities. I've known Matt as a kid. I've known Matt as the drunk guy in Las Vegas.

I've known Matt as a manager. So I've had all spectrum of Matt. And I'd say that your ability to talk to people on their level, I think is what it is.

Like you can talk to your employee or whatever. And like, I wouldn't say you're trying to be your friend, but you talk to them in a way that is like comfort, like it's comfort, it's a comfort level. They're not scared of you as much, but then you can also elevate yourself and talk to directors and write emails that are like, you know, that go to the director's level.

And you can adapt to your audience and who you're around.

Matthew Oborne

Yes, yeah, I agree with that. So like, so like the manager thing, I've always just kind of gravitated that when I was at the NOC, I ended up going into lead, supervisor, and then I went to video. And I swore that was gonna be the last time I got in management just because I got tired of the politics within the NOC.

And then I went over to network and my manager at the time was like, hey, I need a manager. I'm like, I didn't want to be a manager. Remember, that's why I went to video.

And he's like, no, no, no, you're not understanding what I'm telling you.

Kevin Nanns

You're being volatile.

Matthew Oborne

All right, yeah. You're gonna be the manager because I can trust you and I know you'll make sure things get better. And I'm like, all right, cool.

And then again, like I also have never been one who stresses for titles. So like, for instance, I was a manager for seven years till I got senior manager. Not because necessarily I didn't deserve it because there was times where like for three or four months, like my director was on a health leave and that was me and no other managers.

And Matt ran the ship, we kept it afloat and people were happy. But at the time you'd have to be a senior manager before you get promoted to a director. So there was that HR limitation, which I didn't care at that point.

So, and then I got senior manager and then I went to director and director was kind of, again, I slid, like it was an admiration after I had gotten a management role. Cause of course you want to continue to progress. Like I don't want to just sit at a manager for the rest of my life.

But so when that avenue opened up again, same leader came to me. It was like, hey man, you're the best I got. You ready for this role?

Sure, I'll take a swing at it, let's go. Whatever you want.

Alexis Bertholf

Do you think that's a big part of the reason you never went looking outside the company? Because I think that, I mean, today, the general rule of advice that people give my generation is every three years, at least every three years you need to be looking if you're not getting what you want, if you're not getting promoted. Even if you are getting promoted, you'll get promoted faster if you continue hopping, whether that's roles internally to the company or externally to the company.

And there just seems to be a lot more movement.

Matthew Oborne

I'm sure that's probably part of it, just my loyalty to certain aspects. And again, on that topic, I probably am not the highest paid and I'm gonna go okay with that too. I feel like I'm making enough money to live comfortably and I'm not rich, I'm not poor, I'm not starving or anything.

But on the same note, I don't know, again, my outlook is if I enjoy the person I work for, and a person for the people I work with in general, I'm complacent on being whatever role I am as I move through it, right? Now, do I wanna sit and be the same role for 15 years? No, do I understand that there's a process and there's also a numbers game that you run into?

So maybe that three years turns into five years, cool. But a lot of times what I've realized out that aspect is one, name branding, right? If you're constantly moving, how do they know your name brand, right?

Now, I'm not saying 20 years of a company is what you should do always, because I will agree it probably doesn't get you paid as much as you would like to get paid in life and stuff, but there's a name branding. So like I have a certain brand that goes with my name and I don't wanna say I get some get out of jail free cards, but because of my loyalty and my name branding, when others might've gotten into more, got a little shorter of a leash, I probably got a little longer of a leash in regards to disciplinary action or even just expectation-wise.

Kevin Nanns

I also feel like the ISP world is a, so in tech in general, I feel like we're kind of a small niche of people, right? There's like seven degrees of Kevin Bacon, where I feel like I can pretty much run into anyone in tech and someone knows someone. And I think the ISP world is even smaller.

There's only a few ISPs out there. And it's harder, much harder to jump around at an ISP. Is that accurate?

Matthew Oborne

It is, it is, it is. It's a little easier depending on situations, but it is, what I always joke is like nine times out of 10, you end up coming back to the company at least one time, right? So it's like, you're not really leaving the company.

You're just leaving, like, I get it. There's pay increases and stuff, but sometimes there's also that, you get, again, I will go back to that name branding aspect, right? Like the name branding aspect is the company equates you to a loyal employee who does more than is expected.

And so sometimes when they're like, oh, well, Matt missed this, you're like, but he's been, you know, he's called this like 37 other times.

Kevin Nanns

So you have a pattern of success.

Matthew Oborne

Right, and it's hard to develop that when you're constantly changing jobs and students to further your financial situation.

Kevin Nanns

Yeah, that makes sense. So you talked about not, not leaving the company and staying where you are for your brand, but even though you haven't moved companies, you've had mergers and buyouts as all ISPs do every few years, it seems like have you, like I've never been through a merger. I left the ISP right before they got bought out and everyone moved to Colorado.

So I didn't have to experience that, but did you have to experience that? Like back to like, trust me, I've been doing this for a while when you have maybe a new leadership team or a new, like they're trying to find out who's the fat to cut.

Matthew Oborne

Yep. Yep. A hundred percent.

One, one reason why I went to network was because it was fairly the same leadership chain as previous, but even within that, when as manager role, like you deal with different organizations within your own organization and they were all different leadership who had no experience of who you were or what you did or your capabilities or anything like that. Same thing with engineers and stuff like that. And everyone being in different roles.

So, yeah, it is a rebuilding to a certain extent, but a lot of times what you're lucky in those regards is a lot of times there'll be someone who's on that team who has some knowledge of, you know, like, Hey, I'd probably go talk to Matt. Cause if you need something done, he'll get it done for you. And again, the work ethic is a big part, right?

So like, it's great to have knowledge, but when you have those mergers, they're going to look at who's dependable, who's the one who works, you know, goes a little bit the extra mile, who's the one we can count on. Again, for a corporation, you are a number. Don't ever get that through your head.

Like the corporation honestly cares that you're Matt Oborn or anything like that. Employee number 115.

Alexis Bertholf

We've been there for 20 years.

Matthew Oborne

Doesn't matter. My login is still a P and a number. So, you know, I'm literally the boring, like I'm P2175553 reporting for duty, but it's fine.

You don't have to get my password. Good luck. But that being said, like it is a, it is good because other people will be like, Hey, you'll get certain people who vouch for you, right?

Like, Oh, Hey, Matt's really good. You should go talk to him. Oh, Matt came off like a jerk.

Don't worry. He's not really that, you talk to a person. He's just a little short guy who's pretty much likes Christmas.

Kevin Nanns

And that's kind of weird, you know, that's how we should describe it in the podcast. Like our guest today is Matt. He's a little short guy who likes Christmas.

Matthew Oborne

So like, it's good. Cause you still carry the brand over. And then as you said, like, since ISPs are so smallly intermingled, that like a lot of times there's been times I get on Cisco calls or Juniper calls or someone and the engineer was literally someone who worked with me, for me, part of me, or I interacted with.

So like that branding can still go across, but it's a small industry. It is a, it's a very small pond. Like I'm waiting for the day.

I keep trying to call Kevin back when he says no.

Kevin Nanns

You can't pay me enough. At Colorado life's expensive, man.

Matthew Oborne

I got a basement, but I got a basement bedroom for you, buddy. It's free.

Kevin Nanns

Did you get to reapply for your job? I've heard that as a, as a thing.

Matthew Oborne

I, when the, when I was with the knock and we transitioned, I don't even know what we naturally transitioned to because the roles and everything were the same. We just transitioned name. I did have to reapply back then video.

I never had an adjustment. So it was just whatever you were in charter. Whenever you apply, whenever you go a position in management, you will have to technically reapply for that for like, if I want to become a director, I got to apply for the director role.

I can't just not go through that process. But from an engineer perspective, the only time you'll have to reapply is when you go from like an engineer for their principal engineer. And that's more just them verifying.

You're actually knowledgeable enough to be a principal engineer is that's a good technical interview. Cause it's a fairly large pay scale slash reward jump. And then on top of that, most of the time, whenever you get a normal promotion, you'll have to have some sort of new cert.

Nowadays in the MSO world, it doesn't have to necessarily be like CCMP, CCIE or anything like that. It just has to be like, oh, I got my optical certification, which like the Sienna optical is an open book test. So cool, took some time.

Or I did like basics of Linux or something like that. But so I've only officially had to interview for my job one time. And that was within the NOC when we transitioned from the original precursor NOC to the TSO NOC, which in all actuality, the responsibilities and everything wasn't different.

I think it was just their way of cutting the fat without having to call it a layoff or whatever.

Kevin Nanns

Yeah, that's what I was talking about.

Alexis Bertholf

Matt, I do have a question for you. And I know we're almost coming up on time here, but for someone who doesn't have a degree or certifications and they're listening to this story and they're wondering, where do I start? How do I actually do this?

What is one thing you want them to take away from your story?

Matthew Oborne

I would say, one, don't feel that you don't have abilities because of the degree. Yes, it gets a little harder to open some doors. But again, the more and more you network, the easier that becomes as well.

Like there was my, the person who hired me, even me to a certain extent, there's been people who I've hired who have no like technical background, but they are very hard worker, whether I see it. I mean, I remember the person who hired me, they hired someone out of a restaurant just because, well, I was out of a restaurant too, but just because they knew the work ethic of that person. So, even when you're trying to work to get into the tech field, whatever you're doing, just know that there might be someone out there who will see the effort you're putting forth and that can even get you an opening to the door.

So, it's not always what you have on paper. Like, I'm terrified to death if I ever go into the job world today because I don't have a cert, I don't have a degree, I don't, you know, I have a high school diploma, some college and a lot of experience. Now, of course, once you get your foot in the door, that's where your opportunity is, right?

So, focus on getting a foot in the door, not necessarily how skilled you look. And once you get in the door, then it's your opportunity to run with it, right? Like there's been plenty of people who I've given a position where I'm like, well, giving you an opportunity, what you do with it is your choice, right?

Like if you decide to just completely throw it away, then you'll end up getting terminated or laid off or whatever. And then, but if you take it, run with it, put forth effort, you can become successful, make a career. I find that's what I felt.

I mean, that's what I felt I did. I just got a foot in the door, luckily through a friend. My friend never guaranteed me anything.

And because of the effort I've put forth, I've made a career out of something that probably I honestly shouldn't have got a foot in the door nowadays.

Kevin Nanns

Yeah, like it's crazy that you and I both wouldn't get hired now at The Knock.

Matthew Oborne

Right, yeah, I'm like, okay, great. You like, look where I am now. And so I don't ever want, I don't think people, the biggest thing I can always tell people is don't doubt yourself just because of lack of education or certification.

If you can network successfully and you have a good personality and good work ethic, you can also be successful. You don't have to have a paper trail that shows it. You paid $9 million just to say that you're a Cisco engineer.

Kevin Nanns

You summed that up. That was the summary of the episode perfectly. Good job, Matt.

You did the hard work for us. See, 100% effort.

Alexis Bertholf

All right, guys, well, that is it for this episode of Life in Uptime. Huge thanks to our guest, Matt, for coming on and sharing his journey. And thank you for listening.

If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show so that you never miss an episode. And if today's story gave you something to think about, share it with a friend or colleague who may need it. And until next time, keep learning, keep building, and keep your uptime high.