A senior systems engineer with nearly three decades of experience reflects on the gap between professional aptitude and personal temperament, tracing how an accidental entry into IT became a career…

After nearly 17 years in enterprise IT, the technology has never been the hard part. The hard part is the stuff that doesn’t show up in any ticket queue.

Some machines earn their place on the network. Others just refuse to leave. Knowing the difference has cost me more than I’d like to admit.

Most IT careers are a highlight reel of jobs hopped and titles climbed. Mine is a long, unbroken view from one window, and that turns out to be worth something nobody talks about.

Job-hoppers talk about momentum like it’s the only currency that matters. What nobody tells you is what you actually gain when you stop moving long enough to become readable to the people around you.

People hear “rural Georgia” and picture a guy fixing printers. The reality is a lot more complicated, and the gap between assumption and truth says more about the tech industry than it does about small towns.

Exchange Hybrid isn’t a migration strategy — it’s an architecture you move into and sometimes never leave. After 16 years managing it for a major health system, here’s what it actually looks like from the inside.

Systems engineers and developers aren’t just using different tools, they’re running different operating systems in their heads. The sooner both sides admit that, the better the work gets.

The skills that kept you employed in 2005 aren’t the ones keeping people employed in 2025. Some of that shift is obvious. The part nobody talks about is more uncomfortable.