The first time I stepped into a data center, and breathed in the crisp air, tinged with an ozone smell, I was hooked. From that point on, in 1984, I knew what my career path had to be.
My early love of sci-fi comics, the original Star Trek series, and books by Isaac Asimov such as Foundation and all the ones that followed it, formed the basis of my desire to start a career I couldn’t have imagined when I was in college.
There were no PC’s then, no Internet, and a single computer was 6 feet tall, 7 feet long, made out of solid metal, and weighed 1,000lbs or more. My first real job with computers had nothing to do with the 4 programming languages I’d learned; my tasks were to do backups, and swap out 40lbs. boxes of perforated paper for the high-speed impact printers.
The IT and cybersecurity fields have been very good to me, and I can see that it’s going to be even better for those who follow.
I love a good story, and you’d think after a 35-year career I have a lot of amazing, humorous, heartbreaking, and inspirational stories to tell. I do.
As I look back, the most fun things I did involving technology were when I started my journey. I was blessed to have a wonderful mentor, and she was the first Network Director for the C-17 project at McDonnell Douglas. When she left for an exciting job overseas, I took over for her, and became the second Network Director of the program.
The initial C-17 contract was for $41.8 billion, and the last one of the 250 built made its maiden flight in 2015, 25 years after I left the program. You may have recently seen pictures from inside the C-17, it was used to evacuate people from Afghanistan.
Airplanes aren’t born in a vacuum; there’s lots of testing that needs to be done during the design phase, years before you see them in the air.
We used computer simulations, wind tunnels, etc. but my favorites were the flight simulators.
If there were no pilots were around, the programmers who did the testing would ask me to jump into one of the flight simulators, and pretend I knew how to fly. Some were pretty small, and the cabin was tight, but the biggest one was gigantic.
It had a full-sized cockpit replica that sat on 15-foot stilts; think of the Imperial Walkers from the Star Wars series, because that’s exactly what it looked like. The cabin would sway back and forth, and could achieve a wide range of motion. There were times I worried that I’d screw up, and tip it over, but I was pretty sure that wouldn’t happen. At least I hoped it wouldn’t.
The graphics were crude, but we thought they were awesome. I’d land 25 times in a row at JFK, or take off from Heathrow Airport in London, over and over again. It was the best toy a 27-year computer nerd could lay their hands on.
I had no idea what I was doing, but got better at it over the years. The testers would give me directions on what to do over the intercom. Trust me, there were a lot of crashes when I was on the stick!
Along the way I picked up the name “Johnny Upgrade”, because I had no social life. Before computer availability became a global enterprise, and 7×24 uptime was the standard, updates were done at night, or on the weekends. When my friends asked me to go somewhere, I usually had to turn them down. They’d wonder why, and I’d say I had to work, doing upgrades. The nickname stuck, and 35 years later some of my friends still introduce me to people as Johnny Upgrade.
Travel was one of the very best benefits I came to love during my early career. Frequently I found myself flying to different countries around the world as we expanded our network, all on the corporate dime.
The company put me up in nice hotels that were close to the office I was working on, and to me, they were luxurious. Once I was given a suite at a Dallas hotel complex that a casino in Vegas would be proud to have their high rollers stay in. It was so grand, I thought there had to be a mistake.
I was able to visit places across the world that I definitely wouldn’t have been able to afford. I’ll never forget the night I arrived late to my hotel in Tokyo, tired and hungry after a long flight. The dining room was closed, and I called down for Room Service. I ordered a simple burger and fries.
It was a great hotel, but my eyes bugged out when I saw the price; $45! And this was 20 years ago, when the cost of the exact same meal would’ve been $15-$20 at an American hotel. Talk about sticker shock! The company always had to raise our per diem when we went to Japan.
On road trips like these, I got very little sleep; working under fluorescent lights feels the same anywhere you go, and I wanted to make the most of my time there.
Wherever I went, I’d do a solo walkabout in the city I was visiting, just to get the flavor of it.
What caught my attention, and immediately impressed me as I walked around Tokyo, were the vending machines for hard alcohol. They dispensed big bottles of rum, vodka, and scotch. In America, the vending machines take a beating, and those are the ones with only stuff like pretzels and candy bars in them. I couldn’t imagine what a machine with hard alcohol in it would look like in comparison. No American company would put them on the street, knowing they’d be destroyed in days.
By contrast, the alcohol vending machines in Tokyo were pristine; they were painted white, with not a scratch on them, and no graffiti. Here a machine like that would need a 24-hour security guard, and it still might not make it.
One of the coolest trips ever was when I went to Sao Paolo, Brazil on January 2nd, 2000. It was the 2nd day after Y2K, and people were still partying.
I was there for two weeks, and got the worst ear infection of my life, but it was so worth it. I’d hang out with company employees from the local office after work, joyfully singing karaoke in the bars. This was a completely different world than the one I lived in, and I appreciated being there.
To say Brazilians loved their soccer is the understatement of the year. During the game the cafes were packed, and when it was over the crowds would pour out onto the streets, wearing their brightly colored, as in neon, jerseys. And again, more singing.
The hotel I was staying at also hosted a team from Spain, and army trucks were parked outside. Inside were posted dozens of Brazilian soldiers with automatic weapons. I wasn’t sure whether to feel safe because the army was protecting the hotel, or worried that some soccer nut would try to bomb the Spanish team. Since there was nothing I could do about it anyway, I decided not to worry. After a few days, I didn’t even notice they were there.
Interesting things could pop up on projects I did in America, too.
Once while between corporate jobs, I did some contract work for a major hospital chain on what became a design model for today’s modern call center. It was a very ambitious undertaking. I traveled to Los Angeles, and it being LA, had the unexpected pleasure of watching scenes from two movies that were filmed there: “The People vs Larry Flynt”, starring Woody Harrelson, and “Starship Troopers”. I didn’t get to be an extra or anything, and was just a fly on the wall, but it was very interesting to see how a major Hollywood movie was made.
A funny story, well, at least I thought it was funny, was the time I was working by myself late one night in a giant data center, racking up gear. There was no one else around, just me. With the air conditioning going full blast, and noise from the equipment, it was pretty loud in there.
From a distance, I could see the door open, and in walked a guy I’d worked with, but hadn’t seen in 10 years. I ducked behind the cabinets before he could see me. We’d pulled good natured practical jokes on each other in the years we’d worked together, and I decided to make this night a memorable one for him.
I waited for him to get settled in, then began saying his name in a weird, ghostly voice. Or what I thought was a ghostly voice, lol.
“Daaaaaavvvvee”.
He soon lifted up his head; the sound had drifted across the room to him as I’d slowly increased the volume. I stopped my otherworldly moans, and he went back to work.
Then, a couple of minutes later, “Daaaaaaaavvvvveeeeee”.
This went on for a while, and every time he’d look around, I’d keep quiet. Then, within a minute or two after he returned to his work, I’d start up again. The loud air conditioning was an effective muffler, because this data center was as big as a football field. There was no way to tell where the sound was coming from, and if it was room noise, or just the intermittent noise of squeaky equipment.
“Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaavvvvvvvvvvvvveeeee”.
Dave was looking nervous now; he got up and walked through the data center. There were so many cabinets in there, I was able to easily hide behind them. He did a thorough check, but he’d no clue where the source of the eerie ghost voice was coming from.
He even cupped his ear next to some of the cabinets, to see if he could locate where it was coming from, but to no avail.
Frustrated, Dave sat down and went back to work. This time I waited for a much longer interlude, and he became lost in thought.
Eventually, I felt Dave had been through enough. Besides, I wanted to say hi to him, and catch up with what he’d been doing.
“Daaaaaaaavvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeeee Jooooooooooooooohhhhnnnnssooooooooon!”
Dave leapt out of his chair, but because the sound was bouncing around, and lost among all the other noise in there, he was facing the wrong direction!
I put him out of his misery, and stepped out of the row of cabinets where I’d been hiding. Even though the place we’d worked together was thirty miles away, and we hadn’t spoken in ten years, he exclaimed “I should’ve known it was you!”
It was great to chat with him, and I found out he’d only just started at the company that week. In another twist, we wound up actually working together, as his project was soon merged with mine. Later that year I found a job closer to home, but this time we stayed in touch.
Funny how things work out sometimes; a few years later a friend of mine had just been given notice he had only thirty days left at his job, and was freaked out. He’d get a 3-month severance package, but he had three kids, and things would get tight, fast. My buddy had a lot of experience, but he could be out of work for an extended period, and unemployment wouldn’t cut it for the amount of money he needed coming in to provide for his family.
By then Dave had moved up and out in his career, and was now a junior VP at another very well-known company.
I gave Dave a call, and he said they were looking to fill the exact same position my buddy was leaving, but were having a hard time finding a qualified person. Well, since I knew my friend was most definitely qualified, I gave him a great recommendation.
He went in for a couple of interviews, got the job, and was able to bank the 3-month severance package his old company gave him on the way out. Double dipping is awesome, especially on those rare occasions when an employee can time it perfectly like that!
I’ve been very lucky; throughout my career I’ve met a lot of great people, and some of them have remained my friends for life. I guess the lesson here is don’t burn down the bridge behind you, and keep in touch with people. They may be able to extend a helping hand, especially when you need it most.
What gets me excited these days? It’s not what, it’s who. I’m ecstatic for the people already in the cybersecurity industry, and for those who want to get into our field. Cybersecurity is exploding, and the need for people will only become greater.
I have the same feeling about cybersecurity that I did when I first saw Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook emerge. They were corporations I thought couldn’t miss, whereas cybersecurity is an entire industry.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the first trillionaire comes from the cybersecurity industry. Sorry, Jeff Bezos.
There have been estimates that over 4,000,000 vacant cybersecurity jobs are out there, ones that corporations just can’t fill. If ever an industry had a desperate need for people to enter a field of any kind, cybersecurity is it.
To my mind, cybersecurity is recession proof. It’s not seasonal, the chance for advancement is tremendous, it’s highly paid, companies will have to pay market value for an employee, or more, because there are so many options out there.
When I hear those numbers, to me that’s not 4,000,000 jobs; I see 4,000,000 careers. To all those interested in joining our field, I’m very excited for you.
Welcome to your future, and the future is now.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JohnE Upgrade has enjoyed a long, and very enjoyable, career, spanning the early days of IT and into cybersecurity. He uses this pen name so that hackers will at least have to work a bit to doxx him.
In the 1990’s he was among the first to deploy automatic antivirus updates to corporate PCs from a centralized server. That was painful.
In 1996 he locked himself away for two days. When he came out, he brought with him an automated solution that would install, refresh, or repair the Windows 95 operating system for 41 company offices, with over 2,000 employees. It still brings a smile to his face when he remembers the Help Desk Manager announcing at a corporate meeting that his solution worked 100% of the time.
After 14 years he left IBM’s Cloud Division where he was a cybersecurity subject matter expert, with the desire to branch out on his own.
In October of 2021 he’s launching CyberD TV, the first streaming service dedicated to cybersecurity training for the general public. It’s like Netflix for Cybersecurity, but on a smaller scale.
His book on cybersecurity entitled “Don’t Hack” will be released in November of 2021. He lives with his antihacker team, which consists of Scarlett the Cyber Bird, and Elf the Wonder Dog.
