Coli Career change success stories

[Duke Wy Lin]

In light of the recent threads about employment. Thought I would make a thread with some positive coli stories. Add your own or some other ones that you remember.

I'm going to try not to rant but "Passion" is a tirgger word for me. It sets me the fukk off and to be super real with you, is probably the single driving force behind me going so hard Initially.

When I was unemployed, feeling like the walls were closing in on me I attended this job fair at this IT boot camp school I was attending, I got a couple of vibes from a few of the vendors I slid my resume to which I was totally prepared for, But then I got to the table with this Asian guy.

When I handed him my struggle resume with all these manual labor jobs with just an A+ cert to my name, he had the face and instead of just saying "thank you for your time" or "we'll be in touch", He proceeds to go on this elitist fake -ass wanna be Ted Talk monologue about "passion", not even talking to me , but talking at me like a wall and was basically insinuating I was a bum who didnt belong and was just trying take any job I can get and that I I dont posses the passion and qualities to have a career in tech... Iike the only way I could have a career in tech is if I was some uncouth hobbyist incel who's been building Rasberry Pis and studying quantum computing since I was 5 yrs old or some shyt.

He kept going on and on about passion and the more he kept talking the more I felt the need to physically assail him and murder him right there on the spot. I'm not joking or being exaggerate. I felt so low that I seriously considered just duffing him out and stomping his face in. It was a split second decision that made me not act on my impulses.

I swallowed my pride, made peace with not only my rejection but my then current lot in life and I thought to myself "yeah I'm fukked up in the game, But this'll never happen again, Ima make these bytch ass nikkas a believer"

I learned to ignore the inner voice of my own self doubt and other people's opinions and just grind grind grind.

There were no preacher's, life coaches, mentors, confidants or self-help gurus; I had to spiritually and mentally reconstruct myself as a person and become my own man and make shyt happen.

I spent mad nights staying up to 3 am just asorbing as much knowledge as possible, building my own vison board and drawing up practical ways to execute my long-term goals. I had never studied this much ever...at any point in my life for any reason, but the more I researched, and labbed, shyt begin to snowball FAST.

Even my wife noticed the change, and while she loved my new found ambition, she also thought I was falling into unhealthy obscession territory in pursuit of some pipe dream. Understandably so as I was uncharted territory for the 1st time in a long time in life. But sure enough shyt started changing FAST.

Jan, 2019 - I was working my 1st job in IT following a shaky two years of unemployment making $15 hourly, PT imaging PCs in setting up workstation

Jan 21, 2019 - a few weeks later I landed my 1st real enterprise IT gig doing Desktop Support, asset management and mobile device management for this huge ass company making $18 dollars an hour. I got exposed to alot of shyt in a short amount of time, but muthafukka didint want me to spread my wings so I dipped immediately.

July, 2019 - I landed a job as system administrator making $28 dollars per hour, 7 months later I got an increase to $36 Hourly. Again a picked up on alot of shyt in a short amount of time, and I was thrusted into a leadership role while juggling my self study in home labs and stacking certs.

Aug, 2020 - Just accepted and started this Cloud / Infrastructure Engineer @ $85,000 annually with a few more companies after the fact all offering me $95K-$115K for similar roles. Hell, I just got off the phone with a talent aquisition manager talking about $90K-110K is a very doable range.

I'm not cac benefitting from nepotism or any other ism, I'm not well-connected in the industry(yet), I didnt benefit from some incentivized program t\o hire minorities and I sure as hell didnt have a mentor or people holding my hands every step of the way. All I had was an old Dell laptop, several accounts spread across Udemy/Oreilly/Linux Academy/ITPro, VMware workstation to spin up VMs, and my ambition. Through my nonstop grind I started achieving and leapfrogging to the next level and higher paygrades and it made my wife a believer, She saw the method to my madness and she cant stop smiling now, She held me down too.

Lemm just wrap this up by circling back to "Passion".

Throughout my entire journey in IT thus far, I have never encountered someone who exuded unwavering extreme levels of "passion" about the shyt they do on a daily basis. What I do see 30% of the time is people dedicated enough about their crafts to keep their lights on, a roof over their head and their car not getting reposessed. What I do see is people who take pride in their profession but still maintain a great work life balance and are not really pressed to be in the office any longer than they have to.

The the other 70% is a combination of people looking to get into IT and washed up career tech support bums looking to get out of IT due to career burnout because they never had the wherewithal or ability to succeed long-term in Tech industry.

In short you dont need 24/7 365 passion, not even close to resembling passion.
What you do need is an 'always be growing' mentality, self-sufficiency and hustler's spirit. get a few certs and some experience under your belt and you should be gaining decent traction in your career. But you still gotta know your shyt, but that goes without saying.

This is a career...treat it as such

If you're meandering around and doing the bare minumum like its some forklft driver gig through a rinky-dink temp service; especially with all the resources you can parlay into a six-figure lifestyle then as the OG coli brehs use to say....

You pouring jelly on your self.

Step your hustle up brehs

Exactly.

I ran into alot of fear mongering and discouraging attitudes and , people trying to play gate keeper when I started out, but I ignored all of that and carved my own path and stayed focused.

To all my niccas at a crossroads in life and pondering if they should get into tech, trust me my G's; You'll be alright. Dive in. Dont listent to these jaded ass bums tell you what's possible or what you cant do.

I had no mentors or any of that shyt starting out; Didnt even know what an A+ cert was. All I had was The IT Certifications and Careers thread and my boundless ambition.


I remember when I attended this bullshyt ass IT Bootcamp school tha helps with getiing certs for beginners,
Doing class introduction, I witness multiple cacs say they want a decent helpdesk job paying 30/hr and when I said the same, they looked at me like . Like I was tripping.

Now I'm making 40 dollars an hour 1year and 8 months into my career , getting basically waterboarded with knowledge of in-demand technologies while most of those same bum ass cacs are still bouncing between manual labor jobs and military leave struggling to pass the A+ with the closest thing they have to a job in tech is unboxing DELL laptops and imaging them before delivering them to some school or office building..


Nobody believes in you, GOOD...fukk'em

fukk what they think isnt possible or realistic

fukk their sob stories and bitterness, It dont mean shyt. 100% of these people feeding y'all negative demoralizing info are just flapping their muthafuccin gums aimlessly , hoping they can pursuade as many people as possible to not get into tech because of some fear of job scarcity or they're insecure about the idea of some black folks and women getting into tech and crushing it; running laps around their bum ass


The niccas who eating in tech aint hanging out on Reddit 16 hrs a day bytching about their career and the so called "pitfalls" of working tech.

However, what they ARE doing is effortlessly paying off their debt, increasing their credit score, investing, taking REAL vacations to places like the Maldives, and proudly flaunting their get-money gut (Not me lol) from all the bomb ass high-end restaurants they can afford all because they stay on the grind and know how to play the game.


Best advice. Find out what areas in tech you want to work in , the hottest markets, online learning resources and attack your goals relentlessly.

fukk external motivation...motivate yourself
fukk these hoe ass nikkas opinions....find out for yourself

Trust me my g's you'll be ok

 

[Duke Wy Lin]

I been meaning to make this thread for about a week now

It's a long one so

When I came to this board I was a shell of man brehs, Grew up anger, bitter, and resentful of everything and everyone. I was angry 24/7 and it was always focused on myself. I hated everything about me. Sometimes I wished I wouldn't wake up the next day.

I've resented the fact that I had to be the son,husband, and man of the house at the age of six. But it did me no good to hold that hate in my heart.
Bounced from job to job, never knew myself or what the hell I wanted to do with my life

Relationships came and went like I was on autopilot. No game, no sense of direction, I simply existed for 25 years.


When my grandfather passed away, it was the first time I had met someone on their deathbed. I only saw him on holidays, so I felt guilty that I didn't spend much time with him.

But it was his final words to me that shook me out of my personal void for a moment.

"I've seen you over the years son, and you've always looked in pain and downtrodden. You need to hold your head up high.You are a man of god, you deserve to exist like anyone else. I believe you will figure it out one day."

It hit me like a truck. I really didn't know the man, but here he is reading me like he has known me since I was a little one. It was hard to choke back the tears and even now I tear up a little when I think about it.

I didn't believe him. But I believe my soul did. His words consumed my thoughts. I wanted to know what the hell he saw in me. But my doubt was enough to keep it from uplifting me completely.

About a year later, I thought I was on the fast track. I was in an automotive school, straight As, respect, alright job.

Then mom had a seizure and retired from her job of 30+ years. Every time she has had a major seizure I was there. Like every single time. If not, she would be dead right now.
But this last one almost took her out even with me finding her at 6:00am.

Hospital was about to send her home while still having a seizure because she could answer yes or no But that's a separate story.


It made really think about my long term goals. I didn't want to end up like my parents working two jobs each, barely any retirement, barely any happiness.

At this point, I dropped out of school, my job transferred me to an under performing location with less hours, so I quit.

Fast forward a few months and I'm trying to learn web design by self teaching myself. I needed pictures of Africa and I wanted REAL pictures not the BS that they love to toss in your face.

Then I found The Coli

Essential - The Africa the Media doesn't tell you about

Coming from majority "white" sites, this place was like breathing fresh air for the first time.

I was reading everything like






Then I stumbled into Higher Learning

and read this thread

Essential - IT Certs and Careers...Let's Discuss It

I'm like holy shyt

"I could do this...nah I'm not smart enough, why bother."

*inner self*
"Fool,you've been messing with computers since you were eight."

"I've got nothing to lose Cept $300?!"

"Don't fail "

I studied up, took apart my computer, reassembled it, studied some more, and

Past the A+ cert in one try

But no jobs were available. You see majority of call center jobs down south and more on the west coast. Philly would have been an hour and a half drive with traffic and that would be for a temp job.

Had to take another automotive job and I was there for a month.

Dudes only paid me once

I got out of there quick, but not before folks stole over $500 worth of tools

I was back to square one with nothing but lint in my pockets and a beat up car.

So a few weeks ago some on made a thread about certs. Can't remember what was said, but someone asked if anyone had experience looking for work. Think it was @calixprynce . I said no, I looked for a solid month or two but everyone wanted 3-5 years experience. With a four year college degree and a few certs to boot.

Anyway it got me thinking, I haven't looked in a few months, why not take a peek?

Clock was ticking though. I had maxed out credit cards and was shuffling debt (paying bills with bills)

And I had to start paying off automotive school loans in a month. I'm like

I lead a meetup group and a white dude was like "I got connections"

I'm like hook me up!

"I'll email you when I get home. I may be able to get you a temp job."
(He never emailed me btw)

But when I got home, something awakened inside me like,

"Why the hell are you asking for help?!"

"Do you not realize how intelligent you are?! You know that dude isn't good for it."

"Make it happen on your own "

fukk.

I rewrote my resume from scratch and took it to the web. Again, same BS with the jobs.

Cept for one job. Sounded up my alley, entry level gig, full benefits, FULL TIME, not a call center, only 30min drive, willing to teach .

If yall don't know how Indeed works, they sometimes show you how many people apply for a job. By the time I had finished submitting my resume, the counter had hit 80+ people.

I almost didn't send it. My self doubt starting kicking my ass again,

" You know half of em have degrees! And with your spotty work history, who the hell is going to hire your dumbass. A+ cert?! That's a baby cert, you barely passed the test. You think you "did good enough" to compete on an equal level with grown people?! Who do you think you are "


"Nah fukk it, nothing to lose"

I applied to that and about ten other positions. Typeset game was on point I swear.

Got a phone call around 8:00pm a day later

*click*

"Hello?"

"Yes, this is Eric with *name redacted*. Calling to conduct a phone interview, you have time?"



*AHEM*

"Yes "

*talking and getting general information about me*

"I would like to offer you an interview, time and date work for you?"

"uh huh"

"See you then" *click*






I was shaking on the way there. If I didn't get this job, I would have no more money to pay the bills (I had one more month left until I would have been in serious trouble) so it was all hands on deck.

I stammered my way through the initial interview and the technical interview. I think I lost 15 pounds just sitting there. I performed what they asked me to do and I asked about my competition

"Did they get past this part "

"You did better than most "



I went home with a heavy weight in my chest. I thought I bombed out and I would have to go back changing oil and being treated like shyt.They would call if I did or did not I got the job. A day later, a phone call came through.

*click*

Hello

"Hey, this is Eric again"

Hi Eric

"I'm calling to say that you got the job."

Huh

"You got the job "




It's been three weeks now
No more lugging around truck tires for a truck with a Confederate flag all over it

I'll be able to actually save money

I make enough to be able to get a newer car sometime next year

I can pay my bills ahead of time

I can support my mom

I feel blessed as fukk .

Mom damn near cried her eyes out, dad is telling everyone who will listen how I beat out 70+ people for an IT job.



As I typed this up, I felt my grandfather looking down on me like

"I told you so "

So this is my thank you to yall, coming here has kept me sane (believe it or not) and help me achieve something significant in my personal life .

God bless The Coli.

Shoutouts: @PhonZhi for the Aloe Blacc thread (The Man played my first day of work, on shuffle)

#6certgang for putting in heavy ass work in that IT cert thread

Essential - IT Certs and Careers...Let's Discuss It

@tofuspeedstar
@bdizzle
@Data-Hawk
@gldnone913
@aixenv
@kevm3

Too many dudes to list just peep the thread. I read every.single.page. When it was over 150+ pages.

Now what do I study for next? My boss doesn't care about certs, company doesn't pay for em but fukk it, I want to hit at least 70k by the time I'm 30 .

tl;dr

I'm starting to learn how to win

 

[old pig]

that was a dope read…best revenge is living well and it seems like he succeeded…wonder if he ever ran into that “passion” faggit

 

[Duke Wy Lin]

that was a dope read…best revenge is living well and it seems like he succeeded…wonder if he ever ran into that “passion” faggit

I know exactly the type of dude he's talking about too

Can't stand those fakkits.

 

[skyrunner1]

In light of the recent threads about employment. Thought I would make a thread with some positive coli stories. Add your own or some other ones that you remember.

 

[Dave24]

Subbed

 

[Duke Wy Lin]

Just remembered I had made this thread.

Post in here if you transitioned into a new career, whatever it is, later in life. A lot of brehs here are defeatist and feel like they're too old even though they are in their 30s and sometimes even 20s.

 

[Da_Eggman]

I started out as a bitcoin entrepreneur than I went homeless

 

[Amerikan Melanin]

dope thread. I’ll reply with my story later.

 

[Duke Wy Lin]

dope thread. I’ll reply with my story later.

Please do breh

 

[Dave24]

Bump

 

[Duke Wy Lin]

Bumped for the new year. Add your own personal story if you managed to transform your life.