[zx10guy]

Graduated during the 92 recession. Couldn't find a job without having to look into relocating. Due to family reasons that was out. I took on temp jobs to make ends meet. Was offered a perm position at this firm I had temp'd for. Decided to decline even though it was tempting to have set steady income. Decided to take the risk and apply for a summer intern position not paying much doing technical/research work. The project leads questioned why I would want such a position with a 4 year degree. I said I just needed to do something technical to keep my sanity. They hired me and I impressed them enough where they lobbied upper management to hire me on permanently and accepted the job.

I took a gamble and obligated myself to $6k in tuition for MCSE training during the NT 4.0 period. This was a major gamble on my part as I was still on the hook for $25k in student loans and had a car payment. I was still living with my parents but didn't need to get further into debt as I've made some foolish financial decisions as someone young. This move spring boarded my IT career as I met someone in the class that worked for a defense contractor. A few of us provided resumes to him but I don't know if any of them got interviews. I got an interview and a job offer. They also sponsored my security clearance (I already had some at the time) which was highly sought after where it commanded salary premiums as not many people had one. This set me up for the rest of my IT career due to the experience I got. I had left them after a year. But now I'm able to work in a space where I had lots of access to new technology. My last project in that space I gained a ton of experience as I was the head guy that did the needed upgrades to networking, storage, and servers along with building out a new data center and migrating two physical locations.

From the above, I made the decision to leave decades of Federal contracting work to gamble at working in IT sales. To me this was a huge gamble as I've never had any sales experience. It has paid off in spades where I've been working from home ever since the change. My income has sky rocketed. And the exposure to various technologies has increased.