The Geek Who Listened to Whisperers – Keith Townsend – Episode 74

In this powerful episode of The Geek Whisperers, your Whisperers welcome Keith Townsend, better known as VirtualizedGeek, to discuss how he was crazy enough to listen to us. Keith announced leaving his job quite publicly and went on a wild ride of self-discovery. His reflections make for a great conversation for us all as we consider our career path forward.

We discuss:

• An Engineer getting into Management Consultation
• Job hunting while unemployed
• The changing value of IT skills
• The value of an MBA
• DevOps roles
• Traditional management tracks
• How a career path of stability requires management skills
• Keith’s prolific presence online
• Staying positive during the hunt
• The therapeutic value of blogging
• cutting through the “getting to know you” part of job interviews

“I like to let people know who I am before they even meet me” ~ Keith

• Why no one asked Keith technical questions in interviews anymore
• The power of PowerPoint to make something easier to understand
• Why arguing storage protocol is not taken seriously
• The question of whether we fire everyone and outsource
• How skills are no longer manageable
• The difficulty in hiring the higher up you get
• Expertise is no guarantee of a butt in the seat

We also bring up our podcast with Stu Miniman. We recommend reading Keith’s follow up blog post called “The Job Search is Over” to fill in some further details. Thanks for listening!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS