From Casino Cage to IT Professional with Manuel Martinez | Episode 008

Episode Information Show Notes Ever wondered how a casino cage cashier ends up as an IT professional? Join us for this special episode of Career Downloads where host Manuel Martinez takes the hot seat to share his own tech career journey. From accidentally discovering his passion for IT to navigating the world of certifications and management roles, Manuel’s story is a rollercoaster of determination, continuous learning, and seizing opportunities. Show Notes: Introduction to the episode and Manuel’s background The pivot from architecture to IT during college years First job hunt struggles and the reality check of needing real-world experience Breaking into tech: From casino cage to help desk The value of mentorship and developing a growth mindset Leveling up: Moving through various IT roles and responsibilities The certification game: How certs boosted Manuel’s career Building a home lab and the importance of hands-on learning Transitioning to management and the surprises of being on the other side of interviews Public vs. private sector: Pros, cons, and why Manuel made the switch The importance of documentation in IT roles Knowing when it’s time to move on and seek new challenges Lessons learned and advice for aspiring IT professionals Key Takeaways: Real-world experience often trumps academic knowledge in the tech industry Continuous learning and certifications can open doors to new opportunities Don’t be afraid to ask questions and seek mentorship Document your work – it’s beneficial for you and your team Recognize when you’ve outgrown a role and be open to new challenges Featured in this episode: Manuel Martinez – Host of Career Downloads and IT Professional: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelmartinez-it/ Resources mentioned: A+ Certification Windows 7 Certification VMware Certified Professional (VCP) MCSA Certification Get in touch: Website: https://careerdownloads.com YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@careerdownloads X/Twitter https://twitter.com/@careerdownloads TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@careerdownloads LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/career-downloads Instagram https://www.instagram.com/careerdownloads FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/people/Career-Downloads/61561144531249 Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review Career Downloads on your favorite podcast platform. Your support helps us bring more inspiring tech career stories to aspiring IT professionals! #CareerDownloads #TechCareers #ITJourney #CertificationTips #CareerProgression Transcription Hi I’m Manuel Martinez and welcome to Career Downloads. For each episode, I hit the refresh button and bring on a different guest to learn more about their background, their job history, and discover any techniques that they’ve used to be able to manage their career. This episode, unfortunately we were in the process of moving studios, so as you can see the background looks a little bit different for this one. So due to scheduling, we weren’t able to bring on a different guest. So you’re going to get to learn a little bit more about me and kind of the journey that I took along my career. So with that, I’ll go ahead and get started. So I was born and raised here in Las Vegas, Nevada. My family, my dad worked construction here for many years. So that’s kind of where I grew up and began a lot of my networking. I ended up going into UNLV with the intentions of being an architect. That was my goal. That was what I had always wanted to do since I was a kid. Once I started getting into it, I really started to learn and discover computers. Understood that it was a growing industry and pivoted from architecture over into management information systems. So in there, I took a bunch of college courses, met a good friend of mine, and we went through and finished and ended up finishing and graduating with a degree in management information systems. And like most naive college students, I thought that it would be just easy. Once I got a degree, I’d start putting in applications and everybody was just going to want to hire me because I have a degree who wouldn’t want to. I quickly discovered that while a degree is nice to have, I needed to have real-world experience. That’s what people were looking for. I didn’t, in the process of attending college, decided to, I didn’t even know that it was possible to try and get internships, again, to try and develop some of that experience. So I went through, graduated, and after not being able to land a job for probably about a good month, I ended up going and working for my dad in his masonry company. So I did that for quite a few months, still putting in applications, word of mouth, just trying to talk to different people to find out and see if there were any openings and see if I could find anybody that would want to hire me. That didn’t pan out. So at some point, the frequency of which I was putting in job applications started to slow down, started talking to my dad and trying to learn the business, thinking that maybe my career path was going to lead me towards going and really taking over the family business. Well, in some of those discussions, one of my best friends that I had known since junior high school, he was working at a, one of the local casinos here, and he reached out to me knowing that, you know, we talked all the time. He knew that I was struggling to get a job. So he actually put me in contact with someone that he had known for a couple of years in the casino that he was working for. And she talked to him, basically told me to come in for an interview as a casino cage cashier. So the person that, you know, when you get a bunch of chips or when you would get your, you know, your slot ticket out of the slot machines, you know, you’d come and cash it in. I was the person counting out the bills for you or if you needed to break a hundred, that was what I was doing. She hired me on and basically said that she would help me. She was pretty good friends with the person that was in charge of the help desk. And what she had said was, if I worked for her, saw that I had a good work ethic, did a good job. What she would do is we could put in for an internal transfer after six months and then be able to go in and move over to the help desk. So she would work to help me get that interview and be able to put in the internal transfer. So I thought, well, I’d be inside air conditioning. All I’d have to do is just stand around and cash out, you know, talk to people. So I figured it’s a lot better than being outside in the 110 degree heat carrying cinder blocks around all day. I had to go through and move forward with that. And I did the cage cashier for actually eight months. So after my six months, true to her words, she went in and put in the help me put in the internal transfer. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a position open, but it only took an additional two months for that opening to happen. I had done my interview, things went well, and eventually I transferred over and started at the help desk for one of the local casinos here in town. So at the help desk, they actually had a number of properties not only here locally, but they had a number outside of Las Vegas as well. So I did help desk. I was on I was doing training there during the day shift. So the actual opening that they had was for the graveyard shift. So I came in, did my training during the day, and then got shipped off to the night shift working midnight to 8am. So I did that. And most of the time what you’re doing is you’re answering phones, right? So help desk for me was just answering phones. People had problems. Hey, I don’t know my password, you’re doing password resets, helping them do basic PC troubleshooting. One of the other things that we had to do also is the office where we were at was actually not on property at a casino, but it was actually right behind it. One of the responsibilities was to do the nightly tape backups. So as part of that process, you’d have to walk over at a certain time, switch over tapes at what used to be the old Stardust casino before it got imploded, and change out the tape backups, and then head on back over to man the phones. So I did that for quite a while. And while it was good to learn and be able to troubleshoot, it’s one thing to troubleshoot when you’ve got something right in front of you and you can test things out, but be able to walk through, walk somebody through the process of fixing their computer without being able to actually see. So this is right around the time there was starting to be some remote management tools, but most of what we were doing, some of those might be like AS 400 terminals where there is no way to remote in. So you just kind of had to walk somebody through that. So that was pretty interesting. I was only there at the help desk for a few months, and then a position became open for what’s called a computer operator, still within kind of the help desk realm. And that was on the day shift. And I quickly jumped on it and said, I’ll take it. It was basically doing a lot of management for the AS 400 systems, really didn’t know anything about the A...