Jason’s Journey - From IT Support Technician to Software Engineer

The IT Support Technician Years – Getting Started

I had just left school when I got an unexpected phone call from my A-level IT teacher, who told me she’d seen Micronclean we’re looking for an IT Support Technician.

I had taught myself computer programming that summer and had developed a passion for it, so I contacted Micronclean, setup an interview, and joined the company a few weeks later.

I also enrolled on a degree in computing and mathematical sciences with The Open University, and Micronclean offered to pay for my degree and give me every Monday off to study! I was incredibly grateful for this.

As an IT Support Technician, I was responsible for supporting the hardware and software infrastructure at our innovative garment processing plant at Louth, and working directly with end users to solve problems. This quickly gave me diverse experience.

I was actively mentored and allowed to make controlled changes to software, and even write new software. This fed my growing passion for software development.

After a couple of years, I was promoted to the software developer role, and I relocated to our head office in Skegness. This was incredibly exciting!

The Software Developer Years – A Developing Professional

I have a passion for solving problems and an unrelenting determination to succeed. I take great pride in producing ‘right first time’ solutions that stand the test of time, leave no stone unturned, and add real value for people.

I developed numerous significant pieces of software during this period, including;

• A new suite of RFID and barcode garment scanning and tracking applications used throughout our three UK garment processing plants
• A manufacturing and batch processing system used in our brand new, state of the art medical device manufacturing facility
• A sophisticated suite of garment tracking and batch processing applications used in our ground-breaking new garment processing plant in India.

I travelled to India to install and train out this new software. This was a great experience and I really enjoyed the opportunity to work with the team over there and present the software I’d been working on. It was very exciting to see the previous two years of hard work materializing into something tangible.

I made another notable contribution back in 2015 when disaster struck for the business. One of our key servers was physically damaged and we were in danger of losing years’ worth of critical garment data stored in Protrack; our in-house garment management and tracking system. This would have been catastrophic for the business.

I put in many hours of painstaking work over multiple days, piecing together disparate pieces of data spread across multiple replicas, in order to rebuild the database. The final step of the recovery process involved a numerous hours of work and an overnight syncing process that had to be complete before production at our three processing plants started work the next day. This was a high pressure scenario and it felt like the fate of the business was resting in my hands.

I remember the syncing process finished successfully with minutes to spare. I still remember the feeling of relief, and the glow of satisfaction that comes with knowing you’ve made a real difference.

I also completed my degree with First Class Honours in 2015. Micronclean’s incredible support undoubtedly played a crucial role in this success.

Personal Darkness

On a personal note, the years after leaving school, through much of my first two roles at Micronclean, were extremely dark and anxiety-ridden, as I struggled to build a sense of identity beyond school. This was undoubtedly the most horrendously difficult, lonely and sad period in my life, and my career at Micronclean was the one ray of light, and was crucial in giving me the purpose needed to get me through.

I believe this period of my life is partly responsible for the passion I now have for self-improvement and helping others. It’s given me a level of self-awareness and empathy that I may not otherwise have developed, so it’s a period I can now look back on with a feeling of gratitude.

Furthermore, I recently joined the Mental Health First Aiders team at Micronclean, and I’m currently undergoing my first aider training. This team aims to support people in the business going through mental health struggles and I’m very excited to be part of it. I just know how good life can be if you get your mind in a healthy place, and I’m very passionate about helping others find their own ‘healthy place’. Once we find that place, the world starts to feel limitless! Everyone should get to experience that feeling.

The Leadership Years? Maturing as a Person; an Evolution of Passions, Through to the Present Day

Around 2018, I began to fully emerge from the personal darkness and noticed my passions evolving to where they are today. I have a burning passion for leadership and self-improvement, and I am hungry to reach my full potential in life, and help others do the same. Unfulfilled potential truly saddens me, as I know we’re all capable of so much!

Whereas I used to find enjoyment being locked away writing software for weeks on end, I now find it incredibly isolating and stifling when done too much. I still absolutely love solving problems, but I equally absolutely hate being in my comfort zone. If I’m not pushing myself and regularly engaging with other people, I get restless, angry, lonely, and then sad, in that order. In contrast, I get a palpable thrill when I’m outside my comfort zone and addressing my weaknesses.

One of my favourite things in the world is waking up in the morning feeling like the day is full of possibilities and opportunities to improve. In fact, I need that to be happy in life. My mission is to make every single day one of those days, and I’m finally, after years of struggle, soul-searching and self-discovery, starting to do this, and be who I was always meant to be. That feels amazing!

I’m loving getting out there into the business and engaging with people, and supporting, representing and promoting the growing software team and our work. The software team is developing a ground-breaking new web platform that could revolutionise many of the business’s processes and its IT offering, and I’m just loving developing the vision for the platform, and presenting and selling that vision to the rest of the business, and collaborating with everyone to make the vision a reality. It’s such a buzz for me, and I just know I can make a significant positive impact far beyond writing software. I can’t sleep some nights because I’m so excited for the next day!

Micronclean, as always, are actively supporting me as I take my career and life in this new direction. It’s quite special to me that as my passions and purpose in life have continued to drastically evolve, Micronclean have always been there to support my aspirations, and align my professional role with my purpose and needs at the time. What more could one ask from an employer?

Author

 

  Jason Humberstone

  Software Engineer