Job Shadow Reflection

Jack Roberts Period 1 March 13, 2019 Job Shadow Reflection I decided to job shadow my neighbor, Brett Erickson, who works at a company called Ivanti where he works in the IT department. It was a very good experience. When I got there he gave me a tour of the building and showed me what he was responsible for. He was dressed very casual in a t-shirt and jeans. Some of the other employs dressed in polos or button up shirts. After the tour he told me about how in one of their buildings in London they had a power supply that stopped working, but they have a lot of backups here so he had to send one but he sent them another one just in case the backup fails. He told me about packaging it up and shipping it to London. Another thing he did while I was there was to install some firewalls in another building where we had to have a government ID badge to get into the building. Other companies also rent out space in this building. After we got into the building he had to unpackage the firewalls in a different room because there can’t be anything flammable in the room where they had to install the firewalls. There were a lot of fans to keep the equipment cool. It wasn’t very hard to install the firewalls. The reason he installed two firewalls is because if one fails then there is a backup. After that we went back to his office where he used his computer to program the firewalls and instruct the firewalls what to do. There is one other person that he shares his duties with, but I didn’t get to meet him because he was at home sick. Brett said that they are under staffed in the IT department because the IT doesn't bring in money to the company. I was surprised to find out that Brett was mostly self taught about what he was doing in IT. Brett said that he started in the low five-figure range as far as salary, but after he had shown that he was capable, he started earning in the six-figure range. Brett said he felt pretty lucky to have the position he has now. He also said that once he developed his skills that many other companies were interested in hiring him. Brett said that being able to troubleshoot various problems and being self driven and motivated. He has to keep up on new technology and does a lot of research online as part of his job. Brett usually works Monday through Friday from 9:00 to 5:00, but the company is flexible about the hours. He doesn’t have a set routine, but instead helps solve problems wherever he is needed. Brett also has to travel to help out other branches of the company, but he said it’s not so much travel that it affects his home life. I felt that Brett was very nice and good at explaining everything he did. I feel that this might be a field that I would be interested in pursuing.