I'm going to try not to rant but "Passion" is a tirgger word for me. It sets me the fukk off and to be super real with you, is probably the single driving force behind me going so hard Initially.
When I was unemployed, feeling like the walls were closing in on me I attended this job fair at this IT boot camp school I was attending, I got a couple of
vibes from a few of the vendors I slid my resume to which I was totally prepared for, But then I got to the table with this Asian guy.
When I handed him my struggle resume with all these manual labor jobs with just an A+ cert to my name, he had the
face and instead of just saying "thank you for your time" or "we'll be in touch", He proceeds to go on this elitist fake -ass wanna be Ted Talk monologue about "passion", not even talking to me , but talking at me like a wall and was basically insinuating I was a bum who didnt belong and was just trying take any job I can get and that I I dont posses the passion and qualities to have a career in tech... Iike the only way I could have a career in tech is if I was some uncouth hobbyist incel who's been building Rasberry Pis and studying quantum computing since I was 5 yrs old or some shyt.
He kept going on and on about passion and the more he kept talking the more I felt the need to physically assail him and murder him right there on the spot. I'm not joking or being exaggerate. I felt so low that I seriously considered just duffing him out and stomping his face in. It was a split second decision that made me not act on my impulses.
I swallowed my pride, made peace with not only my rejection but my then current lot in life and I thought to myself "yeah I'm fukked up in the game, But this'll never happen again, Ima make these bytch ass nikkas a believer"
I learned to ignore the inner voice of my own self doubt and other people's opinions and just grind grind grind.
There were no preacher's, life coaches, mentors, confidants or self-help gurus; I had to spiritually and mentally reconstruct myself as a person and become my own man and make shyt happen.
I spent mad nights staying up to 3 am just asorbing as much knowledge as possible, building my own vison board and drawing up practical ways to execute my long-term goals. I had never studied this much ever...at any point in my life for any reason, but the more I researched, and labbed, shyt begin to snowball FAST.
Even my wife noticed the change, and while she loved my new found ambition, she also thought I was falling into unhealthy obscession territory in pursuit of some pipe dream. Understandably so as I was uncharted territory for the 1st time in a long time in life. But sure enough shyt started changing FAST.
Jan, 2019 - I was working my 1st job in IT following a shaky two years of unemployment making $15 hourly, PT imaging PCs in setting up workstation
Jan 21, 2019 - a few weeks later I landed my 1st real enterprise IT gig doing Desktop Support, asset management and mobile device management for this huge ass company making $18 dollars an hour. I got exposed to alot of shyt in a short amount of time, but muthafukka didint want me to spread my wings so I dipped immediately.
July, 2019 - I landed a job as system administrator making $28 dollars per hour, 7 months later I got an increase to $36 Hourly. Again a picked up on alot of shyt in a short amount of time, and I was thrusted into a leadership role while juggling my self study in home labs and stacking certs.
Aug, 2020 - Just accepted and started this Cloud / Infrastructure Engineer @ $85,000 annually with a few more companies after the fact all offering me $95K-$115K for similar roles. Hell, I just got off the phone with a talent aquisition manager talking about $90K-110K is a very doable range.
I'm not cac benefitting from nepotism or any other ism, I'm not well-connected in the industry(yet), I didnt benefit from some incentivized program t\o hire minorities and I sure as hell didnt have a mentor or people holding my hands every step of the way. All I had was an old Dell laptop, several accounts spread across Udemy/Oreilly/Linux Academy/ITPro, VMware workstation to spin up VMs, and my ambition. Through my nonstop grind I started achieving and leapfrogging to the next level and higher paygrades and it made my wife a believer, She saw the method to my madness and she cant stop smiling now, She held me down too.
Lemm just wrap this up by circling back to "Passion".
Throughout my entire journey in IT thus far, I have never encountered someone who exuded unwavering extreme levels of "passion" about the shyt they do on a daily basis. What I do see 30% of the time is people dedicated enough about their crafts to keep their lights on, a roof over their head and their car not getting reposessed. What I do see is people who take pride in their profession but still maintain a great work life balance and are not really pressed to be in the office any longer than they have to.
The the other 70% is a combination of people looking to get into IT and washed up career tech support bums looking to get out of IT due to career burnout because they never had the wherewithal or ability to succeed long-term in Tech industry.
In short you dont need 24/7 365 passion, not even close to resembling passion.
What you do need is an 'always be growing' mentality, self-sufficiency and hustler's spirit. get a few certs and some experience under your belt and you should be gaining decent traction in your career. But you still gotta know your shyt, but that goes without saying.
This is a career...treat it as such
If you're meandering around and doing the bare minumum like its some forklft driver gig through a rinky-dink temp service; especially with all the resources you can parlay into a six-figure lifestyle then as the OG coli brehs use to say....
You pouring jelly on your self.
Step your hustle up brehs
. Like I was tripping.
