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I manage and maintain the Information Technology Department for a bank holding company. I am responsible for supporting desktop computers, servers (a computer that contains data that the workstations request), and networks (computers that are inter-connected to share data and information) within the company. I'm also in charge of network design and new project implementation for 200-250 employees using 280 desktops, 30 printers, and 15 servers across six different banks in 23 different locations.

I have several responsibilities. The first of these is to minimize "down time." Down time refers to the time when, if ever, there are interruptions in service for employees. This is the opposite of "up time," which means having services up and available. I work to limit network or server outages. Any time the servers or networks are down, that means lost productivity and potentially lost revenue for the company.

My second role is to safeguard and protect the bank's confidential data -everything from account numbers to customer loan information, debit card numbers, and confidential emails. All of that information has to be protected. It's the customers' responsibility to protect themselves from identity theft, but it's the bank's responsibility to make sure that the information we have about the customers doesn't fall into the wrong hands.

In addition to these parts of my job, I also provide technical support to whoever is using the computer systems, from the tellers to the loan officers to the operations staff that do a lot of the accounting. I help with problems like inability to get on the Internet, printers jamming, emails that won't go through, or any other computer-related issue.

I interact a lot with the other person in my department. We work on projects cooperatively; we work well together and help each other out. The other person I interact with a lot is the CFO (Chief Financial Officer). I work with him a lot regarding strategic plans for long-term projects. When I'm going to change anything for all six banks, I work with the CFO to get his approval and assistance in presenting it to the people who will be affected by the change. We work together to "sell" changes to employees so that everything goes much smoother when we implement the change. In addition, I interact with the entire staff. Anyone can call me with technical problems that they need help fixing. The two of us in my department know most of the employees in all 23 locations.

When I started working at this job, I was hired to work at the lead bank, and I was only responsible for its four branches. I suggested the idea of connecting all of the holding company's banks. All of these banks were supposed to be working together, but each bank had different operating systems, programs, and servers. It was my idea to bring the banks together under one large system in order to make things easier for everyone. Essentially, I created my current position.

I told the company I could create a network for all of the banks, and that I could consolidate the IT (Information Technology) services and make life easier in the long run for all of the banks in the holding company. Each of the banks had its own unique identity, and there was a lot of trepidation and fear about losing those identities. There was a lot of fear that we were going to make all of the banks "cookie-cutter" and identical. The intent of the whole project was to make the "behind the scenes" things the same, but the customer side of things would still be unique to each bank. That was a challenging process.

IT is like plumbing. When it works and works correctly, people don't even think about it being there. You don't even notice it. But when you have a problem, it's a bad situation. When you have a problem with your plumbing, it can get really messy. When you have a problem with IT, it's the same way. It can be disruptive to daily operations and possibly the entire bank or the entire holding company. So we work to make sure that doesn't happen.

After high school, I went to college. I ended up going to three different colleges in three different years, because I wasn't satisfied with the material I was learning. At that time, only computer science classes were available, and they dealt almost entirely with computer programming, which really wasn't what I wanted to do after school. During college, I had a job working with people living in the dorms who were having trouble getting their personal computers properly connected the school's systems. That was when I started to realize that I wanted to work with people and computers.

Against everyone's advice, I quit school and took a job working at the help desk in a nunnery. It sounds strange, but it was a good job because I learned a lot, although I wasn't there for a long time. Afterwards, I began working for a computer consulting company. When I first started work there, we got a lot of business because everyone wanted advice for how to prepare for Y2K. After Y2K passed with few problems, the business really slowed down, and eventually the company closed. Next, I went to work for another consulting company, where I was responsible for helping people who worked for an energy corporation with some of their computer problems. That was a great job, but once my contract was up, there wasn't enough funding to keep me, so I was again out of work.

At that time, my wife and I had just had our first baby, so I was definitely looking for work again. I'd actually already accepted a job somewhere else when my current company called for an interview. By the end of the day, they'd hired me and I'd told the other employer that I had changed my mind. When I started working for here, I was a Network Administrator. After several promotions, I ended up in my current position.

In the future, the changes I foresee involve being in charge of more networks for larger companies with more staff. I'll have the same duties and responsibilities, but for more people. I could go from managing one person to five people to 10. Those are really the biggest changes as I go forward. And as the departments get bigger, my duties will become less technical and more managerial. I would not be upset at all to stay here for the rest of my career. I want to be here as the company grows. My goals really are to see this job all the way through. I enjoy where I work and the atmosphere. They gave me the opportunity to do so much more with my job, as I described earlier.

The most valuable thing that I have taken into this job is the importance of establishing a relationship with a supervisor or manager. In the two consulting companies I used to work for, the relationship was awkward, so it was difficult to figure out how I was doing or what was going on. At my first consulting company, we went out of business and I hardly knew we were having problems. That was something that I tried to do differently when I came here. I wanted to stay in better contact with my boss. I wanted to see the whole picture, not just what I thought I was doing right or wrong.

The first hour of the day, I can count on receiving more support phone calls than the rest of the day combined. So, the first hour is all about answering the phone when it rings. Usually it's something simple like someone forgetting their password, for example, and I can deal with it while they're still on the phone. The rest of day is spent dealing with long-term support issues or other projects. I also send emails to people and talk with them on the phone. I work with the CFO to stay on task with future projects. I'm always multi-tasking; there are 10 things going on at once and I'm trying to make progress with all of them.

Just recently, we've committed to visiting each of the 23 locations for our banks once a month. Either the other employee in my department or I will be on site to answer any questions or fix any problems once a month. We generally go separately unless there is a large amount of work to be done at a single location.

Unique to the banking industry are regulatory examinations. The government comes and examines every bank on a schedule that varies—it's usually every 12 to 18 months. Each of the banks get examined separately. We're an FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) bank, so the FDIC comes to examine the bank, and they review compliance issues to make sure the bank is being honest with the customers. As part of a Safety and Soundness exam, they come in and look at the Information Technology structure. They check to make sure our security is appropriate, among other things. There's always preparation for the next exam. We're pretty much in a constant state of examination. Internal audit also checks about once a year to make sure our department is following the policies and procedures we've set up for ourselves. Someone has to check and make sure my department is doing what we said we would do.

I never know what the problem is going to be when the phone rings. It could be user error, where there really is no problem, but that the user just didn't know how to do something. It could be a small problem on an individual workstation, or it could be a problem with the server. The most repeated problem I encounter is passwords. People forget their passwords often, and so I have to give them a new one. We also have a new security setting that locks people out of the system if they type in the wrong password more than three times. I get a lot of calls asking me to unlock the system for them. I get at least 2 or 3 of those a week, minimum.

I had a user who complained somewhat irregularly about having problems with her monitor. She told me that every so often her screen would just look funny. One day I was just walking through and I saw it happen. She was sitting at her desk—she wasn't even looking at her computer—and all of sudden the image became shaky. The person on the opposite side of the cubical from her was using an electric stapler, which uses really big magnets. Every time this person would use this electric stapler, it would give her problems with her monitor. When I happened to see it, I heard the noise of the stapler. I went around to the other side of the cubical wall to investigate and I saw the stapler. I started using it and every time I stapled, you could see the monitor change. All we did was put the stapler farther away and everything was fine!

It has both positive and negative effects. The positive side is that I get a large sense of accomplishment, maybe not on a daily basis, but in regard to the long-term. Three years ago, this network did not exist and this bank did not operate as well as it does now. The well-oiled machine did not really exist in terms of the network and the support and things like that. The downside is time. If I wanted to, I could spend every second of the day working. It's very difficult for me to resist the urge to answer my cell phone when it rings. Somebody's got a problem and I feel like I need to fix it. The fact that I can work from home also makes it hard to stop. However, my job does allow me to pay the bills and let my wife stay home and take care of our three children. That's a plus.

I travel a lot, probably too much. They're usually day trips, and I'm usually not staying anywhere overnight. Most of our locations are within two hours of my home, so the trips aren't usually too long. I could be gone all day, however. I typically travel two to three days a week. It's gotten better since we hired someone else to work in my department, because he can do some of that traveling now.

My field is very stable. There will always be computers and there will always be problems with computers. So, there will always be people to fix those problems.

I don't know when I will retire, but I will get benefits. The bank has a very good retirement plan. It's called an ESOP, or Employee Stock Option Plan. At the end of the year, the bank looks at how much I was paid, and puts an additional 20% of that salary into my ESOP account. There are two parts to the ESOP: the money purchase plan and the ESOP itself. In the latter, the bank buys shares of the bank for me. That makes me a partial owner of the bank and when the bank does well, that will benefit me. The higher the value of my shares, the more I earn on that investment. The money purchase plan involves making a zero risk investment, which will earn a small amount on an investment the bank will make on my behalf.

Entry-level employees who may or may not have a college degree and no experience probably earn about $27,000-$30,000 a year. A college degree in the beginning doesn't get you a whole lot more. It's more valuable to have a year or two of experience, in my experience. The more responsibility you have, the more you get paid. If you're working at the help desk, you're not responsible for the servers. If you're a Network Administrator, then you're responsible for the servers, but then you have to keep in mind how many servers for which you are responsible. The more servers, the more work stations, the bigger the network, the more you will earn. I would say Network Administrators earn $35,000-$45,000 a year. Information Technology Officers probably earn $45,000-$85,000 a year. In the really big companies with the really big networks, people can earn between $100,000 and $150,000 a year. However, there are very, very few of those jobs in the Midwest because there aren't many companies that large here.

There's always a problem and I enjoy that I can fix those problems, in theory. All I have to do is fix someone's problem and I'm a hero. Some people don't see it that way. Some people think that I made the problem, and so I better fix it, and that's discouraging. The least appealing part of my job is that sometimes I have to deal with cranky users. Some people literally think that it's my fault that something's broken, and therefore I need to fix it now. They can really be disgruntled about something that's really not my fault.

The easiest thing is fixing the simple problems. A lot of the issues people report are simple things, and it's easy to fix those problems in less than five minutes. The most difficult part of my job is when someone calls me to complain about something being "slow." Slow means nothing to me. What is slow? It's the most ambiguous term to use when describing a computer problem. I could tell you a thousand reasons why something runs "slow," if I can even define the term. It's impossible to pin down what "slow" means in a lot of cases But it's also the easiest thing for a user to complain about. If it's broken, I can fix that. "Slow" is my worst enemy.

Technology has changed the way other people see my job, less than my job has actually changed. My job is the same, but some of the technology that has come out has increased the value of IT departments in the eyes of others. The technology can enable everyone else to do more things, and that makes the IT department more valuable.

The economy has very little affect on my job. The IT department doesn't sell anything, and we don't make anything. We don't generate any revenue. My experience is that the economy doesn't matter. It could be one area where the bank could try to cut costs by cutting the budget allowed for the IT department. But if the bank is open, there has to be someone in IT there, as well.

The biggest trend is that now some schools are starting to offer classes that will be appropriate for Network Engineers or Help Desk Personnel. That's already started to happen. Computers aren't just about programming, and college classes are starting to reflect that now. There are a lot of people out there that like computers, but don't want to program. Previously, schools didn't really offer anything to advance that side of computers, but they're getting better now.

Remember that IT runs the business, but IT does not make the business. IT does not make money; it costs money. Often, young people come into IT thinking that they control everything, but you can't do that. You can't say that IT is the most important thing. It's very easy to say that, but you have to fight that urge. You have to remember that IT is here to support the business. IT is the plumbing of the business, not the pretty exterior. It's very challenging. If you can think about it that way, you can put yourself in a better position. Once you embrace that philosophy, you can find allies within the company in other departments. You can make other people your friend and not your enemy. They can help you, and you can help them and everybody wins. Knowing that IT isn't the business puts you in the right frame of mind to give better service.

The best comment I've heard is that the best network administrators are the ones sitting in the break room drinking coffee. Because they know what is and isn't working and they're not running around worrying about everything. They know that they've got everything under control, and even if something does happen, they know how they're going to figure it out and fix it. So, they can hang out in the break room drinking coffee and reading a newspaper.

Regardless of your job, the most important thing is to never stop learning. Whether you learn by earning certifications, by taking classes, or just while you're on the job, you should keep learning. As long as you're learning something new, the job is beneficial to you, and the job is worthwhile from a career standpoint. Even if you hate it, if you're learning something, it will benefit you down the road at some point. When you've stopped learning something new, those are the dangerous jobs because those are the "dead-end" jobs. After you leave those jobs, or they leave you, you realize that all you were doing was killing time. You didn't truly better yourself.

Being detail-oriented and being able to remember very specific things is important. If you can remember those things, you spend less time looking up information. Everything is documented and written down, but if you remember it you can fix the problems more quickly. Being personable is also really important. You can teach anyone how to operate a computer and train on the technical aspects of my job. But it's much, much harder to teach someone good customer skills. I can teach a personable person how to be technical; I can rarely teach a technical person how to be personable. Being able to laugh and joke with a user is very valuable.

I think the key to advancing is networking. It's beneficial to know the other people that do what you do, so that when you're looking for another job, you have people to contact. IT crosses so many industries - banking, manufacturing, education, and many others - so you can meet a lot of people who do what you do, but in a totally different area. An IT person from a bank can absolutely walk into a school and pick it up very quickly. So much of the mission is going to be the same - to provide good customer service, to minimize down times, and protect the assets of the business. You can apply those to any industry, although the applications may be a little different.