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Wat voor opleiding heeft u gehad?
Secondary school and college.

Wat voor soort college?
I did computer science there.

Bent u naar de universiteit gegaan?
No, I went to the Royal Navy instead.

Wat deed u bij de marine?
Aircraft engineering, specialized in radar systems and radios.

Hoe lang werkte u bij de marine?
I was in the navy for six years.

Hoe kwam u vanuit de marine terecht in de IT?
I managed to get an IT job without having any professional experience. They sent me on various IT courses.

Had u de meeste kennis vergaard door zelfstudie?
Yes, mostly from selfstudy.

Er is constant verandering in de IT, volgt u regelmatig cursussen om bij te blijven in de technologie?
Yes. My job sends me on courses that benefit the company. I also still do a lot of self-study to keep myself up to date in other areas I find personally interesting and what I think makes me more valued to future employers.

En vindt u dat vervelend dat u steeds dingen moet blijven leren of vindt u dat juist leuk?
I really enjoy IT and I don't mind learning new technologies. I think that's what sets me apart from some other people working in IT who just do it for a means to make a living. IT is also a hobby to me.

Voor welk bedrijf werkt u?
Romad.

Wat doet het bedrijf?
Design and manufacture a personal GPS safety tracking device.

Wat voor apparaat is dat precies?
You use the device when you are in danger. We can track down where you are and that way we can quickly warn the police for instance.

Kunt u beschrijven wat exact uw functie in Romad is?
I'm the senior infrastructure and systems administrator. I have a team of people working for me who maintain the companies IT infrastructure. We have about 50 servers performing various roles for example: database servers, load balancers, web servers and in-house developed applications (we have a software development team as well).
I make sure all the systems work 24/7 and manage the installation of new or upgraded infrastructure to meet increased load on our systems. These upgrades need to also meet the strict service levels agreements (SLA) we have with our customers. Our systems need to be available 99.99% of the time.

Dus u heeft een hele hoge functie?
I report to the CEO (de baas)

Dus je u bent eigenlijk de op één na hoogste man van het bedrijf?
There are other people at the same level as me who do different things like software development or hardware development. When it comes to IT I'm the top ranked. The CEO doesn't know anything about IT. I advise him on IT. He makes the overall decision if required. Usually he takes my advice.

Waarom heeft u gekozen voor een baan in de IT?
Because I really enjoy IT and I want to do something I enjoy. I'm also pretty good at it as well.

Dus u heeft er nog nooit spijt van gehad dat u dit pad heeft gekozen?
Not at all. I could have gone to university and studied IT but I think joining the forces first has made me a better employee.

Merken de mensen die werken in de IT veel van de financiële crisis?
In some areas yes. I'm finding it hard to get the budget for some projects. We are needing to squeeze more out of less hardware. As a result our less critical servers are now virtualized. We've also had to scale back in our hosting costs. As a result we are consolidating our servers more and reducing the number of server racks we need in the datacenters. Apart from things like this I haven't seen much difference. When it comes to IT that is absolutely required to run the business you can only cut back so much. We have managed to get some great new employee's on board though. As companies are making people redundant there are a lot of very good people out there looking for jobs. I haven’t had to make anyone redundant though, we've been lucky in that respect.

Maar mensen die in de IT werken, hebben die zich zorgen hoeven maken over het behouden voor hun baan?
Maybe in some very big companies yes. Not in my company though. Big companies tend to use recession as an excuse to clean out any dead wood in their ranks. We don't have anybody we could afford to lose and still be able to operate effectively.

Aangezien u een goede functie heeft, heeft u een goed salaris?
It could be better. It's enough so I can live comfortably and still have some savings.
We are quite a young company though so hopefully bigger salaries will come with time.

Wilt u dit beroep blijven doen tot uw persioen?
Yes. I could imagine that it might eventually become more management based and less hands on IT. I do prefer the hands on stuff though.

Is er nog een specifiek doel dat u wilt behalen voor u met pensioen gaat?
I get great satisfaction when I see people using the systems I designed and put in place. If I could do that on a much larger scale I would be very happy. With millions of customers using the systems every day and them being world renowned for their reliability (like google, facebook, etc) with me being key member of the team - maybe even with me heading up the team. It would of course bring a lot of work and challenges but I would find it very enjoyable.

Tot slot, is er nog iets wat u graag zou willen delen met mij of aan de lezers?
Just that I would recommend IT for anyone who wants to be challenged on a daily basis. It can be a very rewarding career but can also be very stressful. These things only add to the challenge though.