Introduction

Thanks for your interest in reading my blog, this is something is have wanted to do for a while and keep going too but never actually follow it through as well as I should have. This blog is designed to explain what technical/lifestyle challenges I come across throughout my day to day working career. To do a real introduction it is probably necessary for you to know a bit about the author.

My name is Aaron Hatton, at the time of writing this (03/05/2015) I am 19 and currently work full time as an Internet Services Manager for an IT Support company in London, UK. I started my working career at the age of just 13 with my own website design and hosting company, it wasn’t anything spectacular but was definitely a massive kick start into my working career. After leaving high school I went on to do an Apprenticeship as a website developer for an IT Support company in London, while working there I was interested in their helpdesk department and asked to be transferred.

After over a year of working there I wanted something new, something much more challenging and went in search of a new role which is when I found another IT Support company in London looking for a helpdesk tech. (I’m going to try keeping company names out of this but if you are really interested you can view them on my LinkedIn Profile) I joined the team as an experienced helpdesk tech for their Tier 1 support team but was quickly recognised as being far more experienced than anticipated and was quickly moved onto Tier 2 (by this point I was 17). As the company grew I was being positioned for a role in their engineering team, looking after customers of my own and installing server infrastructure and being given my own projects.

After a year and a bit, I was approached by a friend of mine who I used to play games with online where he explained that he had a job for this exciting tech start-up company in London and wanted to chat to me about it, after a three hour interview (much more of an informal chat and dinner) I was sold, I moved to the company and was working there for just under a year, doing everything from mobile app pre-production testing, running their IT Support in the UK and installing/supporting our solution for our customers. This was great, I had a notable salary increase to work for one of my friends who had also promised to mentor me to shape me into the businessman I wanted to be.

I had a break up with a long term girlfriend of mine at the start of 2015 and had a serious think about my long term life plan (as most do after a long term relationship ends) and had noticed that I had no real career progression in my current role, with the departure of my friend/mentor from the company as well, what was a great opportunity didn’t seem so great any more so I began to look on and off in my own time for a new role elsewhere.

 

While looking I came across an advert for my previous employer, this time as an Internet Services Manager, I knew whose job it was and the lady I would be replacing, knowing the responsibility she has and with a rough idea on what she did on a day to day basis it was exactly what I was interested in tech wise while making a move onto management which was a great career progression so I applied.

I went in to have a chat about the role with the directors and the role was a lot bigger then I could have imagined, they wanted someone to come in and overhaul and review everything which the lady did. She had been working or the company for 12 years and because it has been such a constant work flow no one had, had time to review the company’s service offering and make the changes where necessary. This task would be up to me.

So this is where this blog starts, I have currently been working as an Internet Services Manager for a little over two months now, I enjoy it, I have lots booked in my calendar in the upcoming months and get to go to lots of shows, expo’s, conferences and supplier corporate entertainment events as I am essentially the one with the responsibility for proposing new products to the board as well as implementing them into the companies service offering.

I have been lucky in my career, very lucky in fact, and now I am 19, I work full time in a management role, I own a brand new Mercedes A180 as a car and am learning to play golf.

Throughout the life of this blog I aim to provide updates as to just how things are going, what great things I come across and what bad. Most importantly I will be posting blog posts about the projects I have, what I have learnt from them in a hope to aid someone else doing the exact same thing. As the image provided with the post states “if you’re lucky enough to do well, it’s your responsibility to send the elevator back down.” and this is something I am a firm believer in, so lessons learned, good things and things which have gone well or will go well all will be included within this blog as my way of sending the elevator back down.

Please keep following and I hope to see you soon.