From Curiosity to Cloud Engineering Leadership with Jesse Taylor | Ep070

He broke the family computer in 8th grade trying to teach himself DOS. The repair shop he took it to hired him for the summer. That is how Jesse Taylor's career in technology began.Jesse Taylor is the Senior Manager of Cloud and Systems Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His path to that role spans Apple retail, college newspaper IT, media companies, a hotel property that declared bankruptcy, and a first month on the job that collided with Hurricane Sandy. None of it was planned. All of it was intentional.Jesse grew up in Napa, California, and moved to Las Vegas when his father, a Department of Defense employee, had to relocate to keep his retirement after the BRAC military base closures in the early 1990s. He worked at the Apple Fashion Show store during college, helped build Apple enterprise environments at the Art Institute of Las Vegas, and spent years supporting Mac-heavy newsrooms for Greenspun Media Group. He later served as virtual CTO for Niche Media's luxury magazine portfolio - a role that put him in a New York data center days after Hurricane Sandy flooded the floors below it.WHAT JESSE TAYLOR DOES NOW:Jesse leads the Cloud and Systems Engineering team at UNLV, overseeing server virtualization, storage, and enterprise infrastructure. He previously managed identity and access management for the university for over six years, including a campus-wide migration to Okta during the pandemic. He chairs SIM Nevada and advocates for broadband access policy across the state.KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS CONVERSATION:The art of listening is a technical skillApple retail trained Jesse to evaluate needs and find the right-sized solution - not the most expensive, not the cheapest. That skill carried across every role he held afterward.Work retail at least onceJesse believes retail teaches people skills that technical training cannot: reading emotions, tracking speech patterns, knowing when to keep talking and when to stop. He calls those skills essential for anyone working in IT.You have to leave where you love working to growEarly in his Apple career, a trainer told Jesse that sometimes the only way to develop is to leave a role you love and go get skills you cannot get where you are. He applied that lesson repeatedly, moving through organizations to build range.The smartest person still has to be a good team playerSkill gets you in the room. Attitude keeps you in the conversation. Jesse is direct: you can be the most talented person on the team and still be someone no one wants to work with.People are watching even when you don't think they areMultiple roles in Jesse's career came through former managers or colleagues who remembered how he worked. Not because he networked for it - because he did the job well and treated people well while he did it.TOPICS COVERED:Breaking his home PC in 8th grade and landing his first tech job because of itApple retail training and right-sizing solutions for customersWhy every IT professional should have a retail job in their backgroundMac enterprise skills built at the Art Institute and Greenspun Media GroupPrioritizing IT tickets and learning to work with executivesMoving Niche Media to Google Workspace in one day during Hurricane SandyReturning to UNLV and building the identity and access management functionPlanning and executing a campus-wide Okta migration during the pandemicBroadband access advocacy and his father's internet setup in rural NevadaEduroam and why UNLV students can open a laptop at Stanford and get online instantlySIM Nevada growing from under 15 members during the pandemic to over 100WHO THIS EPISODE IS FOR:Early-career IT professionals wondering if they need to stay in one place to growAnyone moving from technical roles toward engineering leadership or strategyTech professionals thinking about community involvement and professional organizationsIT managers working on large-scale migrations who want a real account of what planning actually looks likeAnyone who has stayed too long at a job they loved because they were comfortableCONNECT WITH JESSE TAYLOR:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessetaylorlv/ABOUT CAREER DOWNLOADS:Career Downloads explores technology careers through conversations with professionals who share their journeys, lessons learned, and practical advice. Hosted by Manuel Martinez, each episode exposes listeners to different technology roles and helps them manage their own careers more successfully. New episodes release every Tuesday.Connect with Career Downloads:Website: https://careerdownloads.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/career-downloadsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@careerdownloadsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@careerdownloadsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/careerdownloadsFaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Career-Downloads/61561144531249