Transitioning Veteran needs advice and some help

[Dusty Britches]

I don't know if state government employment is for you, but with your credentials, I would think the Texas A&M Department of Emergency Management or Texas A&M Forest Service Task Force I might have something for you. With your skills and abilities, I would think you would fit in like coffee in a cup. Go to their web sites and search Employment.

[Ætheling]

ain't that the truth

you get that look like "oohhhhh...interesting..."

Then awkward because they have nothing to add to that conversation.
They're left with "so, shooting a cannon." Not knowing how much is really involved in Field Artillery, and no real way for you to convey it.

Interviewer: Can you do Excel?

Me: Never heard of her but I can destroy, suppress, and neutralize the enemy.

Interviewer: Dont call us we’ll call you.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[BigL]

Check out https://veterans4quality.org/ if you want to join the tech field. Great group of people. I sometimes teach for them.

[Mavrick_ET]

You need to talk with Rob on TBH.
Someone else may know his user name but I think it's "At The Wall."
Not sure how to link this thread to his attention. He's a ex Coast Guard guy.

That's him. He and I have talked a few times. Got some good sea stories!

[Mavrick_ET]

I don't know if state government employment is for you, but with your credentials, I would think the Texas A&M Department of Emergency Management or Texas A&M Forest Service Task Force I might have something for you. With your skills and abilities, I would think you would fit in like coffee in a cup. Go to their web sites and search Employment.

Thanks Dusty I'll check it out!

[dropTopTx]

First off, thank you for your service!

Not sure why but I cant send you a connection request on LinkedIn.

I am part of a mid-sized (~200 people), Houston based consulting firm, MRE Consulting, that is actively looking for resources to fill consulting and project management roles. We solve business problems for clients across all types of industries, with a heavy focus on energy related organizations. My division focuses primarily on strategy, M&A support, and system implementations for energy trading/marketing/retail organizations. The systems we deal with manage the full life cycle of physical and financial energy trading. Your background and education seem like they could be a good fit. If that sounds at all interesting PM me and we can talk more.

Best of luck in your search and thanks again for your service!

[Mavrick_ET]

First off, thank you for your service!

Not sure why but I cant send you a connection request on LinkedIn.

I am part of a mid-sized (~200 people), Houston based consulting firm, MRE Consulting, that is actively looking for resources to fill consulting and project management roles. We solve business problems for clients across all types of industries, with a heavy focus on energy related organizations. My division focuses primarily on strategy, M&A support, and system implementations for energy trading/marketing/retail organizations. The systems we deal with manage the full life cycle of physical and financial energy trading. Your background and education seem like they could be a good fit. If that sounds at all interesting PM me and we can talk more.

Best of luck in your search and thanks again for your service!

PM inbound

[Mavrick_ET]

Bump for visibility

[AtTheWall]

I retired in 2000 as a COMMS2 - selected in 1990 to fill a new Regional System Manager Program (I was the first selected as the new then USCG RSM and Electronic Support Unit/Detachments) leading up to 9/11 and today's speciality disciplines supporting IT. Some of my closest IT friends - were previous ETs and Avionics rates who filled in for Local System Administrator duties on the then old CTOS/BTOS Unix Standard Workstation 1 thru Workstation 3 generations (Unix to Microsoft and Active Directory).

Finished up my 20 at ESU Seattle - Pier 36 and held the 13th Coast Guard District's Information System Security Officer (ISS0 for the 13th District) as well as managing all of the GSA 11's - Enlisted Coast Guard ET & the new TC rates working with TTs) throughout 13th during my twilight tour there.

I farmed a two page resume on MONSTER & DICE (the early generation job post boards) before ******* and Facebook et al.

A dot com startup www.cybercorp.com found me online - called me as I planned to job hunt my last 2 months of saved vacation time. They asked me if I could do a job interview - 2 weeks after my retirement ceremony - drove to Austin leaving wife and kids in Seattle (they completed that year of school there) as I hired with them - right in the middle of the Y2K era.

Joined them - 40 or so developers - 35 servers - connected to NASDAQ and feeding market data to day traders, using our products developed and supported in house here in Austin Texas.

Schwab acquired us for 600 million - I was hired as the IT Manager and promoted to IT Director and grew that data center - pre ESx virtualization VM server days to 1500 servers (All Dell current gear of that era) with 8,000 clients who traded stock online at 15 bucks per trade - trade volumes hit 60,000 trades per day - we covered costs in 2 weeks and the last 2 weeks each month, lined the bank at Schwab.

Got laid off - refused to move out of Texas to Phoenix and Schwab's data center - started consulting for Dell Small to Medium business - Toshiba Medical (VPN tunnels to XRay systems) - the new beginning of todays Cloud and interconnected INET ECommerce community.

Right now - Cybersecurity is big and any info related to INTEL and CYBER- SECURITY systems - firewalls - routers/switches and INTERNETWORK Engineering with today's gear as well as Virtualization.

Today's civilian based IT infrastructures - are all under the gun with hackers from known bad nations - and experience with handling firewalls and security - email and smtp routing (premise hybrid cloud infrastructures) - this is the new trend in the industry.

Folks who manage the network edge equipment on the Internet backbone - with the layers of cloud connections using port 443 handshakes - to trusted end systems (the other end of the Internet connection - from your place of business - encrypted and tunneled) Business 2 Business (B2B) portals with network traffic routes through THE CLOUD - any experiences on the INET BACKBONE and or Security of defenses inside these firewalls - is key knowledge needed today.

Let's stay in touch - I have been here and you have the experiences of today - worked thru from yesterday with our previous USCG members - and I haven't left any of it behind - I manage a 28 mil private business - that is all inside Texas - Houston to Brownsville to Austin and Dallas.

We have 3 on staff - I put it all together when I got here in 2010 - as the industry transformed into CLOUD - PREMISE and or HYBRID CLOUD (the three flavors of today's Corporate Data Center - hardware) options.

The industry is transforming.

Cloud was designed for quick startup businesses - low investment in IT CAPITAL up front - to get started....the easy part.

Once the business launches - and data starts to climb into the terabyte storage level with regulatory requirements of privacy info related to Federal and State laws - coupled with the lawlessness on the Internet now. Cyber Security and forecasting security coupled with controls (classified info system like - proprietary info of the company and funds) is now in a cloud data center - that may reside in a foreign country because the cloud ISP may be owned by a foreign investment group etc etc etc?

The knowledge of where that data resides and who has access then becomes questionable......

Cost associated with cloud - you don't control the hardware or storage - they do and if you do not want to continue a contract with them, holding your data hostage, businesses are forced to move their data to another ISP Cloud vendor and moving terabytes over the Internet - with the data center holding your data as you terminate contract with them = pain to move this data.

Examples of today's challenges

We rent high end Cisco servers and SSD SAN storage - replace the servers every 5-7 years and we hold our data. Which is replicated to other locations - inside our network. All locations are private fiber optic connections - not routed over the Internet - and I can move data after hours between locations - for data continuity in case of a local disaster - smoking hole at the primary data center. Insurance can replace the building and hardware - we can't recover lost data our business needs to operate with.


And costs when you lease is known (CAPEX) - when you cloud - they control the costs (OPEX)

Owner of my Company has a friend with a multi-national business - he put his stuff all in the cloud. He as many of us were forced to do, upgrade to the latest Microsoft Datacenter 2019 server operating systems - his quote was 3.5 million to upgrade.........the upgrade has hit 12 million and is not completed yet.

A prime example of the challenges - today's Corporate IT world must deal with.

Lotta technical stuff shared here but - you have the training and background - I was there before.

You had to earn and pass a lot of intense exams to get to your level and all of it pay dividends - when you can break out - and find a shop to join and learn more.

I work from home - all of my systems I can manage anywhere I have an internet connection.

Any questions - please send them to me and I can dig into my systems for examples and or details - if you get opportunities offered to you - with today's gear.

We own a CISCO VoIP telco shop with virtual servers and digital pri's for voice and call routing

We own our data and the bulk of our network gear and lease a million dollar server that is virtualized with Windows 2019 Datacenter server.

Database operations

Web operations

Firewalls and multiple fiber circuits (some burstable and others fixed rate)

75 vans that roll Texas - all connecting to email - database - dispatch operators who dispatch them to service calls - all of on 4g/5g mobile networks to the vans with laptops and or ipads. Paperless to them and paperless to the customers for service calls.

3 people supporting 160 employees and over 7,000 Texas businesses - as we service their needs with this mobile workforce

USCG 1980 - 2000

I had a TS 14 years - I let it go. Had some opportunities at the Austin VA Data Center - they asked me to hire on as a GS12 and I refused (when I left Schwab). Two Cisco guys that worked for me went there - both are GS14s and are making good money but - extremely unhappy.

They joined a group that they though would let them stay active with technology - they found they got specialized inside and any desire to move into a different technical challenge/discipline and or change to grow - not part of their department so they get stuck doing one or two technical disciplines that pay well but - zero challenge. And being at the VA Data center - they are firewalled behind the backbone of the Internet.

Find a shop that has an active presence on the INET backbone. My ISP is AT&T Enterprise - my choice of them - Internet - Fiber and they own AT&T Mobility (4G & 5G). I mention this because outside - you are forced to play vendor relationships with these providers - and the big players like at&t and spectrum/charter will work up dark fiber deals - where you lock in growth and they will build the fiber network to these locations - which allows you to do the same as the Government shops - one route in and out in a controlled firewall to the rest of the organization - CONTROLS
And then route ethernet TCP/IP traffic inside the PRIVATE NETWORK, like the old WASH DC Firewall for the USCG back when the INET launched and all of the Coast Guard districts were fed PRIVATE ACCESS inside with routes to WASH DC for access out into the www.

Same formula then - I applied it at my location today and now we are waiting to watch - what the cloud will bring to those - who now have their credit card held hostage with their data in a cloud data center.

It's a good time to find work - with your skills.

Rob

[AtTheWall]

PM sent

[Graysonhogs]

Bump


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Mavrick_ET]

PM sent

Hi Rob. Sent you a PM as well. While I understand the lingo and most of the stuff you talked about, I am by no means an IT. If I knew then what I know now I would have gone IT (used to be TT) and I should have pursued a degree in cyber security vice management.
However, I'm excited to see what the civilian side has to offer me. I know I can be an asset somewhere with my leadership, training, and drive to achieve

[Hooverfb]

Sent you a PM and linkedin request. Good luck in your endeavors.

[Mavrick_ET]

Sunday Bump! Thank you to everyone that has reached out to me on here and on LinkedIn. Please keep it coming, TBH never ceases to amaze me!!

[Mavrick_ET]

Hey does anyone on here have connections at Jacobs, KBR, or Lockheed? Applied for some positions at those places but feel like if I have an inside point of contact it might help. I also applied for a position at Halliburton. Thanks guys!