I started to think the other day about my career in IT. Well, I've not known anything else, I started my career at 18 years old at a company (Now Datto partner) called Tiedata in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. It was the 4th of July 1988 and they took a chance on me as a Junior Programmer initially. I started off programming in DIBOL (Later DBL) on Digital PDP-11 mini-computers running RSTS/E. Over time we started to transition from RSTS/E to Xenix, then UNIX and my programming career probably ended around the time of Novell Netware. At this point Tiedata became more of a services company with less of an emphasis on programming and wound up as a very early MSP.
I left Tiedata around 2006 I think and joined Orchid IT in Derby as Services Manager and later became Services Director. Orchid went through the time old break-fix to MSP model and during my time there we implemented Autotask PSA and initially HoundDog PSA before moving to N-able. We were also very early into the BCDR world partnering with Zenith Infotech before finding a far better product in the form of Datto. (We started using the Aurora product, which was the predecessor to Siris). Orchid were sold to GCI and to this day they continue to use Datto products.
After leaving GCI and prior to joining Datto, I worked as a MSP Consultant. This gave time to look inside lots of MSP businesses all over the UK and understand what makes them tick.
Finally in 2016, I got the call I had been waiting for from my great friend Andrew Stuart.
He asked me if I wanted to come and work at Datto and of course I said yes. Very sadly Andrew passed away last year, but I will always be grateful for the opportunity he gave me.
There is a quote, probably from Mark Twain, they usually are, that if you do the job you love you will never work a day in your life. This is certainly true in my case. (and that's coming from me, the Hardest Working Man in the Channel :-))
I've made some great friends along the way, some work for MSPs, some for other vendors and quite a few that are now colleagues.
There aren't many people I speak to that even remember PDP/11 so i'd be fascinated to hear your story and how you got into this great industry...