This month we've welcomed Simon to Transcendit, who is joining us as an IT support engineer. We caught up with Simon to find out more about him, and how he got into IT.
'Initially, I worked as a graphic designer,' says Simon. 'I've lived and worked all over; Durham, London and Leeds to name a few. When I was working in Slough, it was for a newspaper creating big promotional adverts. I was also doing the IT as a back up, because I 'showed aptitude' for it - I didn't really want to do it to be honest, but I got lumbered with it!'
Simon says that IT always felt like an option, particularly when he was moving away from graphic design, 'There's good bits and bad bits with graphic design. My sister was a programmer, so I was familiar with IT. And because I was doing a lot of IT anyway through graphic design, it just kind of stuck. Once, I took an Ethernet cable and plugged it in, literally just put it in the right port. Everyone was blown away, saying 'Simon's fixed it!'. From that day on I was the IT support.'
Simon went back to Gateshead college and trained to be a Cisco engineer, 'I actually almost joined the Met, but a job in Dartford came up so I went into IT. I've worked in IT ever since, and eventually found my way back up to Durham and the North East. I considered moving away to Canada after a time, I was even going through the emigration process, but then I met my wife. She was in the printing trade so we had a stimulating conversation about 4 colour press. I ended up staying in the UK after that.'
Simon and his wife now live in Houghton Le Spring with their daughter. They spend a lot of time together at swimming, gymnastics and Aikido, 'I used to do Aikido, Judo, Karate, a bit of kung fu. My daughter does Aikido now, she's going for her yellow belt before Christmas.'
In his spare time, Simon enjoys woodwork, 'I recently got myself a CNC machine. You can carve names into wood with a piece of software, you can do line art. I like messing around with that. I build things for the house aswell; shelves, drawers, decking, that sort of thing. I do little carvings aswell, you just need a carving knife and a bit of wood.'
Simon is a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator, Microsoft Certified IT Professional, a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist and a Microsoft Certified Product Specialist. He is also a certified Fibre cabler, and will shortly be a certified Copper cable installer. We wish Simon the best in his new role!
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