Hey, friends. Welcome to the Panda Awards Show. I'm Ben.
Abhi Saini:And I'm Abhi. And the two of us are your hosts for this podcast.
Ben Climer:How you been?
Abhi Saini:Oh, I've been pretty good. Can't complain. You know, the world's moving along. What about yourself?
Ben Climer:Man, it's been good. Get recording on Juneteenth. So got a little day off and some time to get this one out.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Yeah. I have a lot of people that have been like, I didn't know the bank was closed today. I was like, yeah. Federal holiday.
Abhi Saini:So, Ben, we're we're new to this. This is our first episode that we're recording. Why? Why did we start this? What is the point of this podcast?
Ben Climer:Gosh. Yeah. I kinda had this idea in the back of my head for a while that I listened to a lot of podcasts. Like, there are a lot of podcasts that I love out there. I used to travel for work, so I'd listen to, like, hours of content.
Abhi Saini:Nothing better than six hours of podcast on the plane. Right?
Ben Climer:Yeah. I mean, you know, we'd be going New York, California, and you got three hour flight, and there's nothing to do, but sit there, listen to a podcast. So one of the gaps that I saw was kinda in the career aspect. Right? Because I had my really technical podcast, like the PowerShell podcast and things like that.
Ben Climer:And then I I really love, like I'll I'll shut them out. The the Humanize IT podcast, really like.
Abhi Saini:Oh, yeah? Good one. I really
Ben Climer:like their stuff. And yeah. And there's a lot of stuff for MSP owners, but there's not much for the techs in MSPs or in internal IT to really talk about their career and kind of figuring out, you know, where they wanna go. And the other thing that I've always really enjoyed is talking to people and diving into their stories. It's been something that even if I wasn't recording it or doing it for a podcast, how did you get here exactly?
Ben Climer:And most of the time when I ask somebody, they say, well, it's a weird story.
Abhi Saini:Every single time, it's weird. And I feel like we should we should readjust what weird means. It seems like weird's the new normal.
Ben Climer:I think weird's the normal. I mean, I've seen art degrees, engineering guys, like all walks of lives.
Abhi Saini:Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I I love I love what you said about there being some really great podcasts out there. It's it's you know, I think both of us come from pretty technical backgrounds, and there's so many podcasts, and there's so much content out there that lets us learn more about whatever task or job we need. You know, Packet Pushers has always been a favorite of mine, figuring out the latest and greatest new thing about networking technologies.
Abhi Saini:Like, I don't have the time to read all of the articles. It's good to have someone summarize some of that. But there was never anything to teach me just what should I do? What's my next step in my career? How do I go from where I am today to, you know, making more money, having more responsibility, doing cooler things.
Abhi Saini:You know? What was what did it take to get there? And that was always been the hardest part. And I think that's one of the reasons we wanna start this. It's to get the actual the next generation to to learn more.
Abhi Saini:Right? It's to increase their career, have a better to understand what the IT career path is. You mentioned MSPs. And for a lot of people, I think, out there, they don't even know what that means. You know?
Abhi Saini:It's a and even I think even MSPs don't know what it means all the time. But, you know, for those that don't know, an MSP is a managed service provider. That also is not self explanatory, but they're your outsourced IT firm.
Ben Climer:Yeah. The the way that I kinda explain it, you know, a lot of companies aren't big enough to have, like, an in like, a full time person doing IT. So you might have, like, your savvy office manager or something like that, but she may not understand how to manage a three sixty five environment or networking gear. And so those smaller firms are gonna partner with a managed service provider or a company like that to kind of round out their IT. And then the other piece of it is, you know, you see larger enterprise companies that, you know, maybe they have some really sharp level three guys, but those level three guys are kind of focused in on this one area, and they need some assistance over here.
Ben Climer:It wasn't uncommon for us to be brought in on three sixty five or Azure products because the guys they had were great with on prem infrastructure and didn't have the cloud knowledge.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. And it's those it's in the same vein as, like, you know, when you are a small company, you might outsource your accounting department or your bookkeeping or your legal team or, you know, there's you're not gonna be able to bring in every aspect of running a business in house. And so it's just part of the puzzle of making businesses function better. And, you know, I now I am personally happy to be part of it, and, you know, I think you were there too.
Ben Climer:Yeah. And then I guess one other thing to touch on, like, when you say new generation, I kinda I connect with that. And one thing I wanna add is new generation doesn't necessarily mean age. You know, there's people that are thirty thirty, 40, 50 that are switching up careers, and, you know, they wanna look at IT because they wanna switch up. You know, for some, that's money.
Ben Climer:For some, that's they just wanna scratch a different part of their brain or, you know, it it looks different from different walks of life. And thinking IT and cybersecurity, we need people from different walks of life.
Abhi Saini:Absolutely. Absolutely agree with that. And I think that that touches on a lot of the reasons, like, that I'm in my position now. You and I kind of, around the same time, kind of flipped our careers upside down.
Ben Climer:Yeah. Right? We Yeah. So, I mean, I guess, to touch on a a little bit of background. So I know Avi from IT DRC.
Ben Climer:It's a nonprofit at a super high level. Disasters happen at an unfortunately more common rate than it used to be, and we basically come in afterwards and help the community recover with technology and communications. I met him volunteering there, and we kinda kept touch. And I don't know if I've mentioned this you this before, but in my volunteering there, I'm usually either behind the camera or kinda some of the first ones on scene before there's anybody there. So I think you might have taken the only photo of me, like, actually doing something at IT DRC.
Ben Climer:Well, I think I think everybody else just thinks I'm like a figment that, like, pops into the chat or something because
Abhi Saini:I love it. And I think that, you know, we man, I think, you know, we've known each other for a while now, but we kinda hit it off immediately. We became instant friends. Yeah. It helped that we were in the same region.
Abhi Saini:We kinda had the same mindset. I think at the time too, you were the Tennessee state coordinator, and I had just started. And a few months later, I would become the Florida state coordinator. So, you know, we we were kinda on the same track. We're around the same age.
Abhi Saini:We kinda did the same thing.
Ben Climer:Just to step away for a second if I'm educating people. A state coordinator works at the local level when things happen to help coordinate our recovery efforts. So, you know, we're usually on the ground and, you know, we we're already connected with the local governments and the volunteer organizations so that we can provide the quickest and most helpful impact.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. One of the one of the biggest things we do as state coordinators is kinda be the liaison between the state government and our organization. So that way when things do come up, there's we know who to contact. We know what to get in touch who to get in touch with to make sure that the like, in our case, the Florida Department of Emergency Management, we know exactly who to call, who's in charge, that when they need help, we can be there to support them with Wi Fi, satellite Internet, radio communications, whatever it might be.
Ben Climer:I feel like when you see news coverage, it's all the bad, and we get to interact with the people that are doing good in the face of bad. Yeah. I think it was Joe or someone put it as, you know, when you're seeing people that are affected, you're seeing them on the worst day of their life. And how can you make that better?
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Absolutely. And and Joe is one of our fearless leaders at IT DRC. He always knows how to say things so pointly. Yeah.
Abhi Saini:So the name of my company is Barium Networks, and I'm the owner of MSP there. But it has nothing to do with the panda bear that is on our logo here at Panda award show. That's true. So why? Why bears for you?
Ben Climer:He looked kinda cute and cuddly, so we just brought him on board.
Abhi Saini:No. I I Why look like friend if not friend?
Ben Climer:So am I from a first MSP, one of the traditions that they had is you have, like, a weekly tech meeting where you would kinda discuss your wins and things were struggling with, and we would pass a stuffed panda bear. And they would do it based on who kind of showed company values, and you would hold it for a week. So you would get the stuffed panda bear, and you would have it for that week. And the next week, you pick you picked someone who showed the company values. And actually, towards the end of them doing it, so we actually had an Iron Man suit for the panda too, which was kinda cool.
Abhi Saini:Awesome. I love it. So the the panda embodied doing the right thing and making sure that whatever had to be done to service your clients was getting done. I love it. Absolutely love it.
Abhi Saini:I think that that embodies so much about what what we do in our jobs. I think the reasons that you and I have excelled in our careers is that we we always go above and beyond to make sure that our task isn't just our task. It's seeing the big picture and doing more than doing more than just the needful.
Ben Climer:And we'll touch on this another episode, but at a at a really high I kinda picked up the things that people weren't doing. Yeah. They had an RMN called Labtech, and nobody was doing anything with with it. They were just using it for VNC, which was a really slow remote control tool. And then You don't want
Abhi Saini:it remote control too? Free freeze not always good? Is that what you're saying?
Ben Climer:But nobody was, like, scripting or anything. So, like, I created a simple script, and they're like, this guy's a genius, And I had just copied it from Google.
Abhi Saini:That's that's something I've always been really good at. My you know, I have I have a little bit of programming background or education, but I was never a programmer. But what I was good at was understanding code. So I can take script and know what it's about to do and understand what the language is, but don't ask me to write it because that's what you're I'm gonna get you involved.
Ben Climer:I started as a web developer, and I I had a a gig, like an internship. And I was in this cubicle that had these really tall cubicle walls. They were probably 10 feet and they seemed more like 15 feet. And I was like in a quiet cubicle, like writing code. I was like, I don't think I want to do this for the rest of my life.
Ben Climer:And so, you know, eventually I think that kind of swayed me more towards IT work and things like that.
Abhi Saini:Gotcha. Okay. I like that. I like that.
Ben Climer:And so, yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, we've touched on this a little bit, but, kinda who are we? So who are you? I've seen you a couple times before.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. I'm I'm your neighborhood friendly brown bear. I am the owner of an MSP in Orlando, Florida called Barium Networks. We do a little bit of everything. We're a pretty new green MSP, but we focus in on your general managed IT services, cybersecurity coming from my background and degree in cybersecurity, and then just all the technology you need to run your business.
Abhi Saini:So I've said earlier that, you know, I I came from an internal background, but I wanted to be able to impact more companies, more small businesses that needed help. And so started this MSP pretty recently, actually.
Ben Climer:Yeah. And I may I may be putting you a little bit on the spot here, but I know you mentioned wanting to impact business. Did you have any personal reasons for wanting to switch over to a business owner? I mean, it's not an easy an easy job, but you looked at
Abhi Saini:Yeah.
Ben Climer:Like, I wanna do this.
Abhi Saini:To put it bluntly, I don't wanna do tech anymore.
Ben Climer:So you you picked that tech a tech company to not do tech anymore.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. It sounds weird. Right? But, no, I love I love technology. I'm good at technology.
Abhi Saini:I understand technology, but, it's not what I wanna do every day all the time. And I've always been a little bit of a leader. I've never actually led a business or led a large team, but I was always the one that when we had a group project at school, I'd just be the leader because I'm the one that was seeing the bigger picture and see how to put things together. I took leadership classes when I was 16. And all those things, still have the book somewhere.
Abhi Saini:I'll have to pull it out for another episode or something. But when I look at training today, I'm like, how to be a better this or how to do project management, whatever it might be. So many of the lessons are the exact same lessons I learned when I was, you know, a kid. Yeah. And I realized that I have a skill set, and I have a passion for leading teams.
Abhi Saini:And so why why stick myself only to do technology when it's not something I want to do all the time? I can instead have a company, try to lead that company, try to grow that business to have a team, have a group of people, nurture them to train them their skills, give them better skills, upskill them, kinda what we're doing with this podcast. And then, hopefully, it also sets me up to to have a lasting business that, you know, my my family doesn't have to worry and that I can set up a legacy for my kids that don't have kids yet. But give me three weeks, and, I'll have one.
Ben Climer:Man, we're excited for that too. I bet you guys are really happy to start. Weeks.
Abhi Saini:I forgot. We're we're recording this a little bit early. Two weeks from the time this podcast airs, I will be a father. So I'm really excited for that. And I just I want I want more for my daughter than what we have available today.
Abhi Saini:So just trying to work towards that.
Ben Climer:And I forget. Have you announced the name yet or anything, or is that gonna be
Abhi Saini:We have not mainly because we also have not picked the name. We have it listed. I have a piece of paper here on my desk that has a few names on it, but we haven't picked it up yet.
Ben Climer:Are you thinking, like, day of? You're like, you know, that looks like a Sally or something like that. Are you gonna pick who
Abhi Saini:would look like that? Yeah. I think we it's gonna be like from the the three that we have now, slowly we'll dwindle it down to two or one.
Ben Climer:This is kind of a I don't know if this is a dark joke, but probably a bad joke. But is it kinda like naming a dog where you, like, see what they respond to or something?
Abhi Saini:You know, I've been looking into it. There's no legal requirement to give your kid a name. Right? Like, you don't have to. Now they won't be a part of society, but technically, you don't have to.
Ben Climer:You'd be probably have to if you want the tax credits and things.
Abhi Saini:Right? But that that's just being part of society. If you don't you don't have to. You can homeschool them technically. Right?
Abhi Saini:Or it's like, what about Social Security? They don't have to work. Right? It's not part of the requirements to be human, but it is a requirement to be part of society.
Ben Climer:I think we've bled into the hot take section unintentionally.
Abhi Saini:Let's go this let's go back a little bit. Ben, I wanted to to follow-up with your question to me. What what do you do? What's your job?
Ben Climer:The super high level today, I work at Roost as a a lead automation specialist, and I support, like, the automations they're working on in the platform and help kinda lead and mentor a team of people, some of which are honestly smarter than me in some ways.
Abhi Saini:But So you you you saw a gap at your previous company. You filled that gap, and now you're filling the gap for so many other companies out there.
Ben Climer:You know, kinda when I was I was switching over, I I mean, I had probably one of the better MSP scenarios out there. Overall, they treated me well compared to some of the horror stories that I hear. Or, you know, whenever you go to RMSP, there's always some story about everybody being underpaid and not getting any PTO.
Abhi Saini:Litmus test for reality.
Ben Climer:Yep. But I was looking for a change up, and there's a guy in at Black Hills InfoSec. And he does these live streams on getting like, job hunting for hackers is what it's called. I think it's Jason Blanchard. I'm probably gonna mess that up.
Ben Climer:But, in a super high level, one of the things when I had watched his streams, like, during COVID and stuff, he said, make a list of the top five companies that you'd like to work for and start figuring out how to work there. You know, if the company that you're at today is not at the top of the list, what do you need to start doing to be at the one that's at the top of the list? And Rooster was at the top of that list. And so I don't know that I did anything that intentional other than I probably picked up more automation projects than I would the normal, and I started looking for the job openings.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. What came first? Roost being at the top of that list or you starting to enjoy automation?
Ben Climer:So I I think that's been one of my career power factors has been automation along the way. So I've dabbled in PowerShell pretty early on, and I think the industry of automation has kinda evolved with time. Right? So, you know, ten years ago, like, PowerShell was a huge thing. It still is, but there's other ways, you know, to be impactful to the organization at a higher scale.
Abhi Saini:Right. Now, you're not your options aren't just Python and PowerShell. There's so many more things that you can do out there. Yeah. Well, that's one area I've struggled with, understanding APIs.
Abhi Saini:I think I I literally learned what an API was in the last three or four years. I didn't understand what it was for the long
Ben Climer:If if you're out there, don't understand application programming interface, I believe is the acronym for it. I might be wrong with that, but I'm pretty sure it's the acronym. And and super high level, when you click things on sites that change things on the back end, it's probably using an API. And so there are tools out there that you can sort of orchestrate and tie together those APIs to do bigger things at a better scale than you clicking things all the time.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. I think when I tried learning about it, it was essentially the it's the bridge between two applications. So like you're you want your you want QuickBooks to talk to Excel? Well, they don't just talk to each other. They both have to speak a language that they both can understand.
Abhi Saini:So you use an API to tell the other one what to do that tells the other one what something like that. Right? Yeah. I mean, this you know, I think I think you and I both have We've worked in tech for a while. How many years have you worked in tech?
Ben Climer:Okay.
Abhi Saini:I always have to do some math.
Ben Climer:Yeah. So it it depends. If we so if you just wanna count like full time employment working for someone No.
Abhi Saini:No. I wanna know when was the first time you did something that wasn't just being the neighborhood tech kid?
Ben Climer:So something you did for money.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Or something that's what was the first time you did something that a sys admin would do?
Ben Climer:I mean, a really weird one. When I was 14, my uncle was working at a lawn care company, and they had this really expensive software that was on a failed hard drive. And they didn't have the software key, and if they had, like, reinstalled it, they'd have to pay another $2 or something. And so this was A lot money
Abhi Saini:for a small company.
Ben Climer:Yeah. And I mean, it was kind of cool. Use a three d modeling software. So you could like recreate the client's yard, and they would like put in bushes and stuff and show you what it would look And this was back in like, I don't know, 2009 or something they were doing this.
Abhi Saini:The good old days.
Ben Climer:Yeah. It's somewhere around there. And kind of the fur so, like, I helped them out with that, and I got a it was Windows XP days, and I figured out every registry key, every folder, and, like, all the things that were needed for it to work. And I got it copied over to a new install with a good drive, and it actually worked. And they Wow.
Ben Climer:You know, paid me $50 or whatever. What about yourself?
Abhi Saini:I know this, like, as a top of mind always. It was it had there's a lot of stuff beforehand, but it was seventh grade, 12 years old. I learned how to image computers so that way the actual IT guy didn't have to do it. He was teaching us. I think, technically, it'd be like free labor, but we won't go there.
Abhi Saini:We were having fun. I enjoyed it. I have no qualms against who's now a friend, the person that was a tech person there. And she's doing awesome things now. So, you know, really cool to see how their career progressed.
Abhi Saini:But, yeah, I I learned how to use Alteris, you know, to to image a computer remotely, do it I was I was putting new RAM in computers, configuring network printers, teaching teachers and students how to do things. I went to a really cool element, a middle school that had a lot of technology. So we were piloting at the time, this was 02/1945 or so. So we were piloting SMART boards, and now SMART is a huge company. Right?
Ben Climer:Yeah.
Abhi Saini:We were piloting microphones for classroom audio systems, which now is, like, just the default. People just see that so often.
Ben Climer:Yeah. Gone are the days of the transparent sheet projectors and things like that.
Abhi Saini:Overheads. Yep. Yep. We had we had a one to one laptop ratio for each classroom. So we had laptop cards.
Abhi Saini:Now a lot of large school districts have one to one student ones, but I was I was part of the I ended up being part of the team actually when I was an intern at that school or in that school district Yeah. That brought us to one to one.
Ben Climer:I don't know if if you guys called them this, but they would call them cows at our high school. Computers on wheels.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Oh, no. Cows for me were always cell sites on wheels. When you have a when AT and T or Verizon come out and set up a lark cell tower, set up a cow.
Ben Climer:You know, you you didn't get to keep the laptops like they do today and stuff. You, like, maybe got them for a class. And Yeah. If if it was a core class, like, maybe the last student didn't plug it in, and it just dies on you when you're writing your paper.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Those batteries did not last. I think putting putting late two thousands batteries in the hands of a child is a terrible idea because they have no long company. Okay. So the the reason I asked you that question, you know, I wanted to just I wanted to set the stage here for, like you've had years of experience.
Abhi Saini:Even though we're pretty young, you know, we've still had ten, twenty years worth each of IT experience or seeing things in the industry. So, you know, if we wanna if we wanna move into our hot takes, what what are some of those crazy things you've seen that kind of set the stage for this podcast? You know? What have you seen out there that we're trying to
Ben Climer:I mean, I won't get into politics too much, but I think we're seeing a little bit of a, you know, a hirer's job market right now. And just a year or two ago, it was, you know, kinda on the the techs had the upper hand on everything. And, you know, right now, we kinda you know, I know if it's economic concerns, but we're just not seeing as many new jobs as we work. And Right. That kinda that kinda means things are more competitive, and it's a little harder to get a job starting out.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, we went from especially during the pandemic, everyone needs a remote worker now. Everyone needs a job. And it's like, well, now there's now we've finally figured out how to we went through those struggles, and we're we're equalizing the market and things are saying, but it's getting harder and harder to get a job.
Abhi Saini:But not it's not getting harder to get a job because there's fewer jobs necessarily out there in a way. There there are, but there's also more workers with those skill sets. So the ratio is off, and the employers are they want, like, stronger candidates. Or they're looking for
Ben Climer:I think the people that are looking for a job would strongly prefer to have a remote job, and we're definitely seeing less of those by quite a bit. And so the jobs that are out there in IT might be a hybrid role where you're in a couple times a week.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Yeah. Actually, a guest that I hope we will have on the podcast at some point. I saw him in an interview. He said he would not hire for a particular part of his company for, you know, a segment of his job.
Abhi Saini:He would not hire remote workers because that team needs to collaborate and work together so much that being in person is vital to their function. It takes a really intelligent person to understand that so that way they don't just blanket say all remote or all in person. Right? It's there's nuance to it. We'll have to ask him.
Abhi Saini:I'm I mean, I'll keep his identity hidden for now. If we have him on, we'll have to ask him what his his nuanced thoughts on that.
Ben Climer:Even if you take a little bit less pay sometimes, it's a different quality of life being able to work remotely like that. And, you know, there there are people that that it's gonna be too distracting at home. You know, I won't say that everybody should go all remote, but I think, I I know with minds mindset, I can be I've been diagnosed with ADHD for a lot of years now. And
Abhi Saini:I gotta go do that. I think mine's just still undiagnosed. Yeah.
Ben Climer:I think working at home sometime I tell you what I really liked when I didn't have the option to work from home is sometimes doing the on-site work when I had the opportunity to work on one thing at a time and just knock them out. I loved that too. Yeah.
Abhi Saini:That's really good for that ADHD brain, being able to focus on something.
Ben Climer:Towards the end of my MSP life, I was doing sort of the I mentioned a little bit earlier in the episode, but kind of the longer travel stuff. And so, know, I fly into California, New York, and I'd go in and swap your entire network. And, you know, if you look at my LinkedIn, you'll see Yeah.
Abhi Saini:I've seen a couple of those.
Ben Climer:See some of those racks. And those are ones where, yeah, I traveled to another state and took out all the old junk that was cable spaghetti and left them with something that we could manage remotely and, you know, just left them in a better place.
Abhi Saini:Nice. Nice. It's always I had a I was raised as a a boy scout, and one of the things that still is a real big part of my life is leave no trace and leave it better than you found it.
Ben Climer:Yeah. Right? I was gonna say, I think I left a little bit of a trace, but I I do think I left it better than I found it at least.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. I mean, there's a well, you know yeah. Okay. Fair. I like the latter part of what I said.
Abhi Saini:Leave it better than you found.
Ben Climer:Yeah. So I'm curious. One, did you have any certifications that really, you know, brought you a lot of value in your career? And do you think do you think having certs will get you a job today? Sure.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. So I I got my a plus, CompTIA a plus certification in 02/2009. So I was I was in eleventh grade. Got it. I was in an IT academy at the school.
Abhi Saini:It was like a magnet program. I was doing all the fun stuff because I I I like tech. I was like, I was the guy that just wanted to do all the stuff. We were using test out for training, for learning. I was getting, like, 97 percents on the time of tray the what's it called?
Abhi Saini:The the practice exam. So I was like, okay. You know, maybe I should go actually sit for the exam. And I did. I got my a plus as a 16 year old kid.
Ben Climer:That's awesome.
Abhi Saini:I it didn't do anything for me until like, three, four, five years later.
Ben Climer:I This is kinda I may throw you off track here, but was that when you took it, did they still have the lifetime exam for A plus?
Abhi Saini:I I not only took my A plus, it is still my only current certificate. And I got my first IT job out of it. It was Geek Squad. I interviewed for a Geek Squad job, and they saw that I had a plus, and the rest of the interview was all about personal, not technical. And I had that job for five months, maybe six months.
Abhi Saini:No one has asked him out since No one. But
Ben Climer:So so you were was that about 20 when you got your Geek Squad job? Or
Abhi Saini:Yeah. I wanna say it was, like, 2012 or '13, so I would have been around '20, '21. No, I was not 21. I was I was 19 or 20. It was before it was before I had a diff.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Yeah. So I remember the job that I was at when I turned 21. This was before that.
Ben Climer:Where did you find the job? Did you seek out Geek Squad or did you see a listing somewhere?
Abhi Saini:Back then, it was it was the only thing I knew about IT jobs. Like, if I wanted to fix a computer, where do I go get a job? That was the only thing I knew. It helped that Best Buy was really close to my house, so it was an easy
Ben Climer:That makes it nice.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. But I I was I was definitely more of a hardware guy than I was networking or software, and that kinda set the stage for me. But the you know, ever since then, like, if you just take the name of my company, Barium Networks, I don't own I don't hold a networking certificate. I should probably sit for an exam just to do it, but it wasn't the certificate that got me to where I am today. It was just continuously proving worth and having more and more worth on my resume beyond the certificate.
Ben Climer:Yeah. I think, you know, kinda like your Best Buy situation, I think the certs can get you the interview. Your knowledge gained from the certs actually gets you hired.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. I will
Ben Climer:people that out there doing the brain dumps and stuff like that, you're cheating yourself. You might get the interview, and then you're in a world of hurt at a lot of places.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. It's not just unethical. It's just useless. If you the one thing that I value in a a plus certification and if you talk to a lot of IT guys or a lot of people in like, anything if you talk to a lot of our friends and colleagues, they'll be like, a plus? Useless.
Abhi Saini:Doesn't do anything. Doesn't teach you anything else. But it does. It does a lot. It teaches you how to troubleshoot.
Abhi Saini:It teaches you what to think and how to think about technology. And I think that was the most valuable thing I got from a plus. It wasn't knowing that VGA cable has nine pins or 15 pins and a serial cable has nine. Right? Like, that doesn't matter.
Abhi Saini:No one cares in the long run. The big thing
Ben Climer:Don't plug a serial cable into VGA port.
Abhi Saini:If you can make that happen, I'll give
Ben Climer:you a I've had a user turn in a computer that that was the issue as they tried using a serial cable as a VGA.
Abhi Saini:Hey. In end user is the person that taught me that a USB a cable, the male end is the same width as RJ 45 jack. Oh, well, it You're like, it does fit. I'll give you that.
Ben Climer:Yeah. I've seen phone cables plugged into the RJ 40 earlier in my career too.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, why is it party? So, yeah, I, you know, I and we'll go into this more.
Abhi Saini:I wanna you know, we can dive into it, but I don't think a certification necessarily gets you the job to get the actual technical side of the job. I think it does do a decent job at checking a box and gets past HR, but it doesn't actually teach you how to do the job you're going for.
Ben Climer:Yeah. And and and maybe it depends. It could depend on the certs. Like, we're starting to see more I think people are hearing this feedback, and we start seeing more certifications, like, especially on the cyber security side where, you know, you have to do something to get the cert. Like, it's not just question and answer type of situation.
Abhi Saini:You have to prove that you've had industry experience. Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Climer:Tying into this a little bit, I think your, answers will be similar, but what about a degree? Do you think you need a degree to get a job in IT?
Abhi Saini:Well, this is a this is a fun we'll talk about later as well. I I got my degree my bachelor's degree, two years ago? Last year? I forget. I don't know.
Abhi Saini:It's it was that useless to me. I got it just to get it, to finish a task, to prove to myself that I can do it, but it was never what got me my job. And I was able to reach a 6 figure salary without a degree. There's more to technology than just education. It's important.
Abhi Saini:I will I am a lifelong learner, proud supporter of education, but it is not the only thing.
Ben Climer:Yeah. I I think there's so I still don't have a degree today. I've thought about it more in the recent years because I think as you get mid career, if you wanna and I don't know that I want to, but there's certain, like, really large enterprises and government jobs that Mhmm. Still have some degree requirements there. But, man, it's
Abhi Saini:But even even your IPMs, your intels, they got rid of the requirement. It used to be big there.
Ben Climer:Yeah. I was gonna say, it's more and more often that I see, you know, bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience. And I think and to be honest, like, I I've been on the hiring side of the MSP, and I think people have an expectation that once they finish their IT degree, they're ready to rule the world. But, you know, education at a college level is tricky because there's approved coursework. So it's not uncommon for you to take a networking course at a college, and some of the material might be, you know, three to four years old.
Ben Climer:Now, you know, a lot of the concepts are still gonna apply. It's not changing that often. But I think a lot of your value in a college degree from talking with people that have had them and went the traditional route is, frankly, you know, some of the connections you make, like, you know, I mean and I found some mentors and connections without college, but, you know, I I've known a lot of people that had their college professor help them get their first job. Yep. And I think it it does have opportunity to make you a more rounded person, you know, well rounded person depending on, you know, what you do with that time.
Abhi Saini:Right. And I think that's that, that's actually a big huge reason why a lot of Ivy League schools will give away some of their education for free because it's not it's not necessarily the education that you're paying for at those big schools. It's it's the people. It's the networking. All this secondary and tertiary aspects of an education.
Ben Climer:Yeah. And I and I will say this. Like, man, when I was just first starting out, I think or at least early on, Coursera started being a thing, and Harvard was putting out, like, their IT courses and stuff for free even back then. Yep. And I I did class.
Abhi Saini:It's the, it's CS 300?
Ben Climer:Yeah. Something right along those line. They like their computer science classes.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. That is a amazing class. Have you ever if anyone listening to this podcast wants to learn more about computer science, the intro to computer science class that Harvard puts out on Coursera and I think their own thing. Super amazing.
Ben Climer:And, you know, that was it was I think it was Mark Zuckerberg that he would just, like, audit classes, basically. Like, he would just show up to the physical conference and attend classes, but you you don't get credit for it, but he would just, like, take the knowledge from it. And, you know, if finances
Abhi Saini:I guess worked out for him.
Ben Climer:It it might have worked out. You know, there there's this little lesser known guy, but, you know, I think I think, know, if this meta AI thing takes off, he might be a little bit more successful. But, yeah, I mean, I you know, I don't if you wanna go to college, I think that's great and admirable. If you don't have the financial means, I don't think you need to go into a ton of debt if it's not the right thing for you.
Abhi Saini:Yes. Absolutely. There's some really, really good content out there for next to nothing or less than $50 a month that, you know, you can if you put the time, I think that's the most valuable thing that you have as a as a as a young adult, the most valuable thing you have is time. And if you can if you can dedicate an hour a day to education, you will be miles ahead of so many others out there. And that's just an hour.
Ben Climer:Yeah. I'll be honest. Earlier in my career, one thing that I would be told by management is in IT spaces, I was a little bit weaker on my social skills. And I probably, you know, in some situations, still am. But what I would do is I would stay late every night because I had crap Internet at home.
Ben Climer:And I would watch TEDxs and, like, everything that I could on, like, human interaction and, like, you know, ways to, like, conversate better. To be honest, I probably retained, like, 5% of it. I couldn't tell you most of it now, but, you know, I think there's
Abhi Saini:Every single episode of this whole house, I cannot build a
Ben Climer:Yeah. But, you know, I think I think there's something to be said about, like, using those resources, and it it doesn't have to be technical upskill either kinda, you know, in another point here. When I mentor people that are earlier in their career, I kinda tell them there's different ways to upscale. Everybody focuses on the technical side. The other side that will increase your impact and value to a company is actually that social component in a lot of roles.
Ben Climer:You know, if, like, if you're the level three network guy, you know, sure, you can be a jerk, but a company might pay you 20 or 30,000 more if you're not a jerk and still know your stuff. Because I mean, I think everybody's met the stereotypical, like, CCIE jerk who's, like, blaming you for the problem that's on the network and stuff.
Abhi Saini:It's always the network. Every time.
Ben Climer:It's not the network, guys.
Abhi Saini:But then I think that's that's a a big thing too is because you have to remember we're people. We're humans. We your day to day job might be technical in nature, but it's affecting people. And you have to be able to communicate with people in order to
Ben Climer:And it's okay to not be social or extroverted. I'm not an extrovert. This is me masking. I mean, I still enjoy it. But, you know, after this, I might go, like, zone out and not talk to anybody for a few hours or something like that.
Abhi Saini:Yeah.
Ben Climer:But, you know, like, it really depend like, it's okay to not be an extrovert. There are opportunities if you're willing to wear that mask or be that person.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. And I you know, I'm I'm kind of the opposite. I'm definitely more extroverted, but I am I will gladly say I am not the expert on so many things, and I am not the number one person on a technical subject. I'm good at it. Right?
Abhi Saini:I'm I will stand by my rates and what I charge for my services because I know it's worth that, but there's a lot of people that are way smarter than me. But I do like to talk to people. I like to communicate, and I like to I like to make friends. I think that's been a really big proponent of my career. It's it's just being communicative, being there at the right time, knowing the right people.
Ben Climer:A 100. You know, I I think and you kinda touched on an aspect on there. Like, sometimes it's knowing the right people at the right time. Like, nepotism is not a great thing, but I think there are, like, just befriending someone on LinkedIn that, like, I mean, like, to be on it, like, the the Roost job offering. If I hadn't added Roost people on LinkedIn, I never would have saw the job posting.
Ben Climer:It just was never on my radar before.
Abhi Saini:Oh, yeah. Yeah. For social media, you have to you have to be in the circle in order to see the circle. Right? So it's not don't there's a reason that on LinkedIn or even Facebook that I have thousand plus connections.
Abhi Saini:It's not because I talk to a thousand plus people. It's because that's the only way for you to to be visible. You have to have that network.
Ben Climer:Yeah. And, I mean, I think, you know, along the way, I've made some really deep connection and, like, friendships with some people just because, you know, they'll post something and, like, oh, you know, I kinda know something about that. I do wanna go back for a second because you kinda touched on something there about, you know, not knowing everything. Something that I don't know. This probably sounds a little goofy, but something that I had to learn to be okay with in my impostor syndrome is being okay with not knowing everything, if that makes sense.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Climer:I I think it's and I don't think I think this is a typical problem, but, you know, you're in IT and maybe most of your job at MSP is dealing with a network. And then you go to a conference and there's a CCIE there and they know the world and you're like, well, I'm an idiot who's a fraud and I've tricked this MSP into hiring men doing their networking work. But I I think there's
Abhi Saini:It sounds like you're talking from firsthand experience because I know I've been there.
Ben Climer:I know this guy, and, he worked at MSP and defrauded them by tricking them into but, you know, if you're out there and you have that impostor syndrome, I think there's a seat at the table for people that aren't the experts. That's the reality of it. Yeah.
Abhi Saini:Absolutely. I think that's the, there's if you look at any, and, know, the date we're recording this podcast, I think it's kind of perfect to what I'm about to say. It's it's you have to have a really broad and diverse set of skills in order to make anything happen. You know, when you if you're thinking about any business, the the person in the top, the CEO, they have to have really good business acumen. Right?
Abhi Saini:They have to know everything there is to know about running a business and how different aspects of the business can affect other aspects. But then, you know, they rely on a really smart group of people. They rely on the CFO, the chief financial officer that only is really good at finance, but they suck at legal and tech. That's fine. Right?
Abhi Saini:That's why you have a chief technology officer, someone who's really good at technology, but may not know everything else. And you have the chief legal officer or head counsel. You might have a chief operating officer, just someone that's running the business and can understand other things but doesn't know the details. And when you realize when you extrapolate from that and you go further and further down a large enterprise chart or an organizational chart, right, really down the ladder there, even your your bottom of the wrong teams, they have to have people that can do so many different tasks. And that team works with other teams that works with other teams that works with other teams, and they all do their own thing.
Abhi Saini:But, I mean, that that's that's that's a lot of you have to recognize that and know that you're not gonna know everything because that's why we're a team.
Ben Climer:Yeah. And I I think that's something that I another aspect that I kinda figured out along the way. MSP works a little bit polarizing. A lot of people either love it or hate it. And I think one of the reasons is you have to be more of a generalist.
Ben Climer:Like, there can be areas of focus, but there's really more of, you know, a mile wide, you know, couple inches deep knowledge Yeah. That it can have a greater value than being the expert in one particular thing, especially on smaller teams.
Abhi Saini:And, I mean, you know, I I said earlier, I I just shouted out that. I've seen every episode of this old house, but I don't know how to build a house. But I own a house, and I have had to paint the walls, and I've had to fix the walls. I've had to fix the plumbing. I've had to fix the landscaping.
Abhi Saini:I've had to do electrical work. I've had to do structural work. Right? And so it was like, I I'm that person where I am not I am not an electrician, but I know how to replace a light switch. Right?
Abhi Saini:I have that surface level knowledge, which I think helps me in my
Ben Climer:What it is is know what you know. And that applies to the house too. Right? Like, I'll replace a faucet. I'll clean my gutters.
Ben Climer:But, like, when it talks about, like, replacing the gutters or something like that and, like, you're on the ladder all day and stuff, like, somebody else is gonna do a much more bet you know, a much better job than I am. Or, you know, like, I'll like you said, I'll replace an outlet. I probably won't replace the circuit, the breaker panel by myself. I'd probably involve somebody on that.
Abhi Saini:Right. Yeah. And it's it's understanding that there's so much depth and nuance to so many different industries that you know, if working in tech, I think this is something that I've always thought back to. It's like, if you're in tech and MSPs, you said, you have to specialize or you have to kinda go into a vertical or a niche. But at the end of the day, like, tech is tech.
Abhi Saini:If, you know, the computer that you use at Google is the same computer that you use at Deloitte, which is the same computer that you use at Walmart. They're all computers. So you have to there's a foundational base understanding and knowledge to how technology works. And then I think what elevates you to have those more specialized careers or higher value careers is understanding the business part or the the tiny little details that separate Walmart from, you know, Google. Right?
Abhi Saini:They're so similar yet so different.
Ben Climer:Yeah. I think to kinda expound on that a little bit, you're touching a few of your things there. So I think, you know, when you're thinking about how technology works, there's a piece to that called critical thinking of, like, really breaking down a problem and understanding where the issue is. I'll loop back to my a plus certification. They teach that.
Ben Climer:I if if you don't have the a plus or if you don't you know, you're not interested in Mindy Greens did a really good talk on it a few years back about critical thinking. There's also a book by Don Jones who wrote the books on PowerShell in a month of lunches. And I think his book is a lone wolf in Siberia, and it's a book about troubleshooting. It's about 50 pages. It's a little short read, but it's it's really good too.
Ben Climer:But yet when you see, you have the critical thinking piece and then you touched on another thing that I like that when I was in my internal IT role and when I was in sort of the sales a little, yeah, there you go. Third edition, baby. Now, have you actually went through it or is it just on your shelf and
Abhi Saini:Both. There's there's 350 pages. I've probably only read up.
Ben Climer:Yeah. Anybody listening on audio, he's brought out his PowerShell in a month of lunches book.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Learn Windows PowerShell in a month of lunches. Third edition by Don Jones and Jeffrey D. Hicks.
Ben Climer:Yeah. I have a couple sign I went to one of his he did an in person class. He's a super nice guy.
Abhi Saini:If you want an insane class on PowerShell, Jeffrey Snover.
Ben Climer:Yes.
Abhi Saini:I mean, the father of PowerShell there, that guy.
Ben Climer:Yeah. As you get a little bit deeper, the PowerShell conference puts out a lot of their, like, their sessions, and they do some really technical deep dives. If you're someone who knows PowerShell and wants to get a little deeper. The other thing I wanted to tie back to is you were talking about understanding the business value, and I think that's some like, how a business works. And I think that's something that I had to understand when I went through internal IT and then some in the MSP world as well.
Ben Climer:But, like, you can really connect the need to the business. Like, that if you're in MSP's sales, that's frankly how you should be selling. Everybody comes out with kind of the commodity MSPs package. Everybody has AV and RMM. Can you sit down, talk with a customer, understand how their business works, and then save them time or money?
Abhi Saini:Right. Right. It's it's how do you translate tech to business needs. And that goes for any industry really. Right?
Abhi Saini:Like, finance is finance, but how do you how do you link the very particulars of finance to how to run this business? And that's something that I've I just I'm learning more about. I just had to redo my entire chart of accounts. And I was I'm working with a a bookkeeping company, and they're like, okay. Here's the 5,000,000 options you have.
Abhi Saini:Do you need this, this, this, or this? I'm like, I don't think so. It's like, okay. Let's go to something else. Like, there it's there's amazing how many options there are, but that's part of that's part of understanding the business and how it relates to
Ben Climer:Even at even at the core, if you don't understand the business terms, it's shocking and disappointing to me sometimes how few MSP owners don't understand how their clients actually make money. Yes. Well, you're like, oh, they're they're they're a printing company or whatever. Well, then you dig in, and this specifically is 80% of our revenue. And when it goes down, we lose $20,000 an hour.
Ben Climer:We should probably add some redundancies there.
Abhi Saini:Right. And it's not it is not the job of the owner of that printing company to to know that's what it takes to get to the fix. Right? That redundancy, they might not know. They know that they need that to work, but they don't know what's gonna what it's gonna take to make it work properly.
Abhi Saini:And that's where that's where we come in at, like, IT professionals.
Ben Climer:And they're expecting you to be the experts. So there's some clients that if you don't identify those needs, they're gonna when it goes down, they're gonna be asking, why didn't you tell me about this?
Abhi Saini:Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. And it's I think that happens so often in not just in MSPs, but internal IT and all kinds of IT worlds. It's like you it shouldn't be news to you that this is a current event.
Abhi Saini:It shouldn't be news to you that Windows 10 is about to stop being supported. Right? End of life comes three months from now. Right? But we've known that for a while.
Abhi Saini:So you should have planned for this, and you should have known that this is gonna happen. And this is a big thing that's, like, talked about in IT spaces or in in the MSP side at least. It is it's like planning for equipment replacements. So, like, you just bought a laptop. It shouldn't be a surprise to you that five years later, you need a new laptop because they only have a five year lifespan or whatever it might be.
Abhi Saini:Right? You might be able to get more fewer more years out of it, but that's the that's a big part of, like, the executive side of IT. It's understanding the lifesand life cycles of devices and services and planning for the future today.
Ben Climer:Yeah. Yeah. Like you said, if I if I have never had a conversation with my client before about Windows 10 And I come to them in, you know, it's I believe it's October when it goes into life. I come to them in September and say, well, hey, guys. We gotta replace a 100 laptops next month.
Ben Climer:They're gonna go, what the heck, dude? Why didn't you tell us about this earlier? Right. If I can tell them, you know, a year in advance where they can start, like, planning their money out, where it's not this surprise huge bill, like, nobody's happy about that.
Abhi Saini:Oh, yeah. And I think I think companies are doing the companies that, like, set these, like the Microsoft, Apple, Google, right, they're doing a really good job at setting expectations for how long they are going to support the product. You know, like like, I have a I have a Pixel phone, and I think it gets seven years of updates. Right? So I know that after this I get this $1,500 phone, bloody expensive.
Abhi Saini:But in seven years, I can't expect that it is gonna be a good phone to have. For other reasons. Right? Seven years is quite a long time for a compact device. But, you know, you have to understand those and acknowledge those details.
Abhi Saini:And if you do, you will you can have those conversations about the future expectations of your technology department.
Ben Climer:Well, Abby, I've really enjoyed our time on this call and everything, and I'm looking forward to the future episodes. I think this is gonna be a lot of fun. Do you have anything else to tell the friends of the Internet?
Abhi Saini:Please come back.
Ben Climer:Please listen to our podcast.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. I am I'm really excited not just to to, like, for you and I to chat. This is great. I think it's great as episode zero, just chatting. But I'm really excited for the conversations we're gonna have with people that you know, what we can say is they've they've made it.
Abhi Saini:Right? They've they're at they're in their career. They're doing the thing. They're succeeding. How did they get there?
Abhi Saini:Why did they get there? I'm gonna I'm gonna be just enamored in learning these people's stories.
Ben Climer:I I I've looked looked at that list of people that have expressed interest. And, I mean, I'm excited. I'd love to talk to any one of these people about anything, frankly.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these are of
Ben Climer:them, I could listen to them talk about a broomstick, and they'd make it entertaining somehow.
Abhi Saini:Yeah. And that I mean, that list that we've and this isn't just a list of people that we want to talk to. Right? This is literally a list of people that we have asked and said, hey. Would you want to be on our podcast?
Abhi Saini:And they have said yes. And there's people on there that, like, I've looked up to. There's people there that I idolize, and I'm like, you, you're the person that teaches me how to do my job. And you wanna be on my podcast? Talk about, like, fandom.
Abhi Saini:Right? It's that's crazy. I think that's that is that's the best thing about technology and IT. It's like we're all a bunch of nerds. We just wanna help each other.
Abhi Saini:We just wanna learn more. Right? And I love that. I absolutely love it. Awesome.
Ben Climer:Well, we'll see you all next week and, back here on the Panda award show. Thanks all.
Abhi Saini:Take care, everybody. See you next time.