Pratica di Shadowing: How I Escaped Help Desk Fast (Step-by-Step) - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

Ladies and gentlemen, in this video,

I'm going to discuss how I escaped help desk fast.

Now, first, I need to start with the fact that help desk is not a career.

I know that some people are going to get angry about that.

Not that it can't be a career,

but in my opinion, it's meant to be like an entryway.

It's meant to be a launch pad.

And if you treat it like anything else,

which I've seen a lot of people do, you will get stuck.

I was in help desk for a small four months before I escaped and became a system administrator.

In this video, I'm going to explain to you how I did it exactly step by step

so that you can do the same thing.

Okay, so first, before I was in IT,

I was a teacher in Texas.

I taught Spanish and I was also a coach and I was making about $70,000,

which in teacher standards is pretty good.

But I just kind of got fed up.

I had huge classes.

I had like a lack of purpose.

I didn't really have a real growth trajectory.

I loved tech.

I loved computers.

And I looked at IT and I thought this is where the future is.

And this is where I want to be so I can find purpose,

grow my career, make more money,

make more responsibility, or rather have more responsibility.

And just this is where I need to be.

And so my last year as a teacher,

I spent eight months, took all of my like 20 days off that I had and I studied for three certs,

the A+, the Network+, and the Security+, all by CompTIA.

And by the time my teaching contract was up,

I had already lined up an IT job,

an entry-level job at an MSP.

And I applied for jobs for a total of about two months.

I think I had 32 tailored applications

and that's relatively low in the space in terms of what I've seen other people have to do.

Now, again, my first role was at an MSP,

which is a managed service provider.

So we gave IT services to other companies,

specifically banks and credit unions.

And it was a tier one position.

It was technically called tier one special services engineer,

which sounds cool, but I wasn't really engineering anything.

I was like pinging down devices.

I was doing a lot of phishing email analysis,

which was actually pretty fun.

VPN, end user DNS stuff, troubleshooting hardware, software.

It was normal tier one stuff.

I was fortunate that I got to work remote basically from day one.

But to be honest, I really hated being in the call queue.

I was taking back-to-back calls and I just hated it.

I wanted to get out of the call queue as quickly as I possibly could.

And please note, I made a ton of mistakes at tier one as well.

Like early on, I thought that I had to be this person

that knew everything and I would almost act like I knew everything,

but I really didn't.

And I was making tons of mistakes.

I wasn't asking the right questions because I didn't know what to ask,

but I picked up quickly that it's best to just accept that you don't know information,

ask as many questions as you can about it,

be honest about that to the end user and then go do your research and come back to them.

This is one of my first big lessons.

Now, why I think most people get stuck,

and this is what I saw in a lot of my coworkers,

is that a lot of them just stopped they just got the position

and they stopped learning they stopped studying they stopped trying really hard they stopped getting certs

and honestly i think a lot of it was fear they

were scared of moving up they were scared of failing they were scared of not being ready

and people just have this tendency to just kind of sit back

and like take their foot off the gas and just get comfortable

and comfortable just turns into getting stuck

and to be honest with you i went into tier one with a a completely different mentality.

I knew that I wanted to get out as soon as humanly possible.

I was making like $48,000.

I had bills to pay.

I had goals that I had to reach.

Again, my plan was just to move up as quickly as possible.

I wanted to at least match my teacher's salary of $70,000.

And here's exactly what I did.

First, I outworked everyone.

I took more tickets than anyone else on tier one.

I closed more tickets than anyone else on tier one.

I also billed more hours than anyone else on tier one.

This is not me bragging.

This is just me telling you what it takes to make your move out of tier one to be inevitable.

When you're new and you don't have like years of experience that you can bank on,

the only thing that you can actually control is your effort.

And so you have to max this out.

I wanted my name to be at the top of every single report,

leaderboard, metric, anything that my bosses or my boss's bosses were seeing.

And to be honest with you,

it worked and people noticed.

Like people called it out in meetings.

And I remember the tier three manager calling it out to me and I felt all giddy and good inside.

Next, I got my CCNA in four months.

While I was grinding tickets during the day,

I was studying at night.

It was like an hour a day.

Sometimes it was two hours.

100

Sometimes it was three if you would count flashcards.

101

My wife and I would go shopping.

102

I recall one time being in HomeGoods and just studying Anki cards the entire time.

103

I already had a small home lab set up and I also had Cisco Packet Tracer.

104

So I was doing a lot of practicing with labs.

105

Nobody else on tier one that I knew of even had their CCNA.

106

Now this made me stand out above everyone else.

107

And if there's one cert that moves the needle at that early stage,

108

I really think that it's CCNA.

109

This was a big separator.

110

Next, I helped everyone that I possibly could.

111

I offered to mentor the new incoming tier ones.

112

This was when I had like one or two months of experience.

113

I offered to help the tier twos.

114

I begged to help the tier three system engineers.

115

Now, over time, I became known as the guy that helps everyone.

116

And I think that that reputation is powerful.

117

When a promotion comes up and leadership is kind of deciding between like five people,

118

I feel like they're going to choose the guy who helps everyone.

119

That's the person that's going to get the shot.

120

Now on top of this,

121

and this is huge, I also volunteered for the hard stuff.

122

When there was a problem that nobody touched,

123

I always raised my hand.

124

Was I qualified?

125

Absolutely not.

126

Was I scared?

127

Usually, but I always just dove in and did it.

128

And to be honest, I think that mindset really helped me a lot as well.

129

Like you're never going to be ready.

130

You're never going to feel like you're ready.

131

And this goes for anything in life.

132

Like if you wait until you feel ready for that next thing,

133

you're never actually going to feel ready and you're never actually going to move forward.

134

The key is to just expand your domain as much as humanly possible

135

and then catch up and then keep that process going,

136

expand and catch up.

137

So you take the hard ticket,

138

you learn it on the fly and you figure it out and you become better on the other side.

139

Now, four months in a system administrator,

140

a tier two system administrator position opened up internally.

141

And I applied and I walked into that interview extremely confident,

142

even though I knew at the time I was not ready for the job.

143

Again, technically I was not even close to ready,

144

but to be honest, again, you never are.

145

I was confident I had put in the work.

146

I took the CCNA.

147

I could learn anything.

148

I had the reputation that I help anyone and I was ready to just walk into the fire.

149

I got the promotion and in week one of being a tier two,

150

they threw me into a priority one ticket that had been ongoing for like two months.

151

A customer had been frustrated over a networking issue that had never been resolved.

152

I took it, I was terrified.

153

Like I legitimately didn't sleep good for like the couple of weeks that I was suffering on that ticket.

154

But again, I just attacked it head on.

155

I went into these meetings.

156

I'm talking with multiple CCNP network engineers and CEO of bank and I was completely in over my head,

157

but I just took everything on head on and I was as confident as I could possibly be.

158

And I never looked back.

159

Now my system administrator position had a base salary of I think it was $55,000

160

and then it had some variable stuff on top of it.

161

So you'd get paid more if you billed more

162

and you could bill more by doing things like taking priority one tickets or like working after hour tickets.

163

And there was a rounding system in there too.

164

So if you did like five minutes of work,

165

it would round up to a quarter of an hour.

166

So you could kind of cheese the system a little bit.

167

Realistically, if you worked super hard and took a bunch of P1s,

168

you could probably make up to like $100,000.

169

I think in my only actual year as a system administrator, I made $87,000.

170

So I went from 48K in year one to like just about 90K in year two.

171

So I was pretty happy.

172

And this is like what's possible when you refuse to just be comfortable.

173

Now, was I comfortable with that salary?

174

I mean, when I got to that salary and I worked one year,

175

honestly, I was ready to make more.

176

I was ready to make 100K.

177

I was ready to move on to the next position.

178

And I always feel that.

179

Like I always want more money, more responsibility, more purpose.

180

And I want to make a big difference and build cool things.

181

Now, if I had to boil it all down into three things,

182

it would be the following.

183

One, I just worked harder than everyone else.

184

I just outworked everyone else.

185

I took more tickets.

186

I did build more hours.

187

I just worked harder.

188

That's the foundation.

189

Secondly, I was fearless in the job and in the interview.

190

I said yes to everything.

191

Even when I was scared,

192

I said yes to things.

193

Even when I was uncomfortable, I said yes.

194

And I put myself into some positions that really sucked,

195

to be honest, that were, you know, really scary.

196

But I just think that's how you learn and that's how you become better on the other side.

197

And that mentality really helped me a lot to grow.

198

And fear is that thing that keeps people stuck in help desk for like two,

199

three years until they feel ready.

200

But again, you never feel ready.

201

Just don't let that happen to you.

202

And then three, I got my certs.

203

I had A+, network plus, security plus.

204

I got CCNA when I went up to,

205

you know, system administrator, I still continued getting certs.

206

I started getting cloud certs like AZ-104 and SC-300,

207

and I just never stopped the grind of studying either.

208

So if you're stuck in help desk and you're wondering why you can't move up and you're not getting new certs,

209

like at least three per year,

210

then you need to take a look at that area of your life as well and just continue getting certs.

211

Now, I know a lot of people don't like to hear this,

212

but you don't need to stay in help desk for years before you can move up.

213

I'm living proof that that is the case.

214

Was it easy? no. Did it take lots of time and effort?

215

Absolutely.

216

Was it worth it?

217

Yes, absolutely.

218

Being a system administrator is legitimately a better job.

219

Like, of course you get paid more money,

220

but it's way more enjoyable as well.

221

The help desk is an amazing learning opportunity,

222

and we shouldn't forget that either.

223

Like four to six months at help desk can teach you

224

so much about tech if you grind and you work really hard.

225

But there's also diminishing marginal returns,

226

and you get to a point where you're like,

227

man, I'm ready for something more.

228

Now I was a system administrator for almost a year and a half.

229

And as I said, a teacher in the past,

230

I made a YouTube channel about tech videos,

231

and I ended up getting a job out in San Francisco with a startup called InPhysical,

232

where I do developer relations.

233

I work with AI a lot.

234

I work with some of the most cracked engineers in the industry doing secrets management,

235

certificate management, privileged access management,

236

and I genuinely love what I do.

237

I can tell you when I got this job,

238

I went into the interviews confident,

239

and it was the same story.

240

I was super in over my head.

241

I was nowhere near where I needed to be technically.

242

I'm still not.

243

And I'm always trying to learn and trying to grow and trying to get better.

244

I think that that's one of the reasons why I got this new job as well.

245

And I think that if you take these patterns and you just apply them to legitimately every area of your life,

246

you will be successful in whatever you wanna do.

247

None of this happens if I get comfortable in tier one.

248

So this is what I want for you guys.

249

I want you to go out and apply these lessons and I guess these patterns and see what happens for your life.

250

If you do it for one year,

251

I promise you will see a marked increase in your ability to do things,

252

in your confidence, and you're probably going to get a better job.

253

I appreciate you guys for all the support.

254

Be safe, be smart, make some good decisions,

255

and good luck leveling up in your life,

256

grinding through the fire, and getting out of help desk.

257

Bye.

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

Pratica di Shadowing: How I Escaped Help Desk Fast (Step-by-Step) - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

Informazioni su questa lezione

Vocabolario e frasi chiave

Consigli per la pratica

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?