My name is Carlos Trejo. My position right now in the company I work for is a junior systems engineer.
Tell us your title and your company.
I work for Skyline Technology Solutions.
Did you have any tech experience before coming to Yellow Tail Tech?
I did, but not to the point where I could get a job. More like, I did some training similar to this back in 2018. I learned on CentOS 6 at the time, I have some prior experience. When I came to this school to redo the training, it felt pretty refreshing, I felt a little easier than it was when I first started doing it.
You were working and a student. How did you manage your time?
I would say I’m actually very fortunate with the job I had previously. The job I had, I actually had a lot of free time during my working hours, I had the advantage of doing schoolwork while I was at work, only because the clientele wasn’t as busy.
I was working as a phone technician at an AT&T store in Alexandria, Virginia, performing phone repairs. All I had to do was acknowledge the customer and whatever appointments I had on the list; that’s all I was gonna do for the day.
That’s why I tell most people, like, how I did it. And mind you, I was working from 9 to 10. My hours were pretty crappy, but it was still free. If it were a busy store, it would probably have been even tougher. But I was fortunate. I consider myself lucky because when I hear most people talking about, “Oh, I have to do this or that,” I was lucky. Gratitude, that’s what it’s all about.
What was different this time? You said that you had some experience before, and you did some training and everything.
I was questioning the process of getting the job at the end. They were gonna give me something that made me uncomfortable doing, because I hate lying. They were giving me a resume that had like senior-level experience, but that was just for me to get in with no shirt and get a foot in the door. But I was uncomfortable about it, because then you’re gonna have that imposter syndrome, and then you’re gonna have to step in there and demonstrate that you have these skills.
If you ever ask the biggest difference, it’s that you guys provide an internship and certification prep for it. The whole program is very lenient. Everything that they provided for me to learn the concepts was right then and there. I didn’t have to go outside of my sources just to find information.
You could if you want to, but that would just be a waste of time.Yellow Tail Techtook the time to have all the content you need to learn Linux itself, it was very lenient, very straightforward. And you have these wonderful teachers who are very passionate about teaching, or maybe the one I had was just very passionate. I also liked the fact that every weekend there’s additional assistance, if you have any questions, you can show up on the weekend and ask as needed.
Other than that, the cert prep itself. I’m gonna be honest, that alone helped me the most with being very comfortable taking the exam. When I took the exam, it felt easy.
Tell me a little bit about the apprenticeship.
The apprenticeship itself gave me an idea of what the job is going to be. You’re gonna have tickets in the system, you’re gonna be joining in group chats and communicating with team members like, “Hey, what is this? What is that? How can we solve this problem or that one?”
Like, in the job I’m working at now, I’m on my, what, 8th or 9th day today?
Did you feel like, from day one, you were pretty prepared to hit the ground running?
I was confident. Maybe it was because of prior experience, but I was confident regardless. The foundation is there. I would say the only difference is that the stuff they’re working on now is very high-level. That’s gonna be a little tough on me, but the concept is the same.
The only difference is coordinating with them and their systems. Like, “OK, this is what we use, this is how we use Linux to make this work.”
It’s almost like just learning new syntax or a different set of verbs or something. I already know why it works the way it does.
It’s like, they seasoned it. You already have the main entrée; now you just have to deal with the seasoning they use for their environment. That’s like the best way for me to explain it.
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