Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The jobs we had before LTT”.
How many jobs did the two of you have before starting LTT? Do you have any advice before breaking into the job market? I had a ton um. I had a lot. I started working really early um. My parents are freaking awesome, but we weren’t like wealthy growing up so um having a job was like a good idea. I don’t know, I also didn’t mind working so yeah.
I had a ton of jobs breaking into the job market depends on your age and it depends on your experience entirely for me. When I first broke into the job market, it didn’t matter, walk to whatever store or walk to, whoever person’s house like some of the things everyone was hiring. At that point, I remember noting I remember like noticing the quality of like Subway sandwiches going down dramatically in that like several year period, because it was like they would hire literally anyone off the street. There was nobody stated at a job for very long like once.
They were trained they’re, just like out of there like nobody was trained. I’M talking potentially like before that, like I started working before, I could legally have a job, I’m talking about like 2 000, like man when, when okay, when was it it was, it was when I was getting my scuba certification, so it would have been around 2010.. Oh I’m talking like 2001., oh okay, well, carry on yeah! So how I first started doing things is like I would walk around my neighborhood and see like oh someone’s, doing a landscaping project and I offered a help for relatively, like not okay, amounts of money because they’ll probably say yes, but I could. I could get some work, I could get some money and I didn’t really mind it. I’M like shoveling, whatever it’s a type of physical activity, I didn’t really care um or I’d mow, Lawns or or one of the like main first things that I got was just delivering newspapers which sucks it’s a terrible job, yeah um and then yeah a bunch of Other stuff, so it really, it really depends on like when you’re hitting into the market um it’s something that I always say for developers is try to build a portfolio, build something do something um make it kind of cool and that’ll get a lot of traction for You like genuinely do stuff on GitHub make it so your code can be seen one of the most frustrating, but understandable things is when someone applies and they have nothing to show at all, because they’re, like I’ve, been working professionally in the industry, 10 15 years and And just like your developers, a lot of my stuff, not maybe all of it but the stuff that is, there, is open source contribution and I don’t want to share that encounters whatever like. I there’s nothing for me to see. So it’s like okay! Well now, I’m gon na have to get you to do some stuff um.
So if you, if you don’t have experience to throw at people, you have your three things right, you can throw portfolio as in like things, you’ve made some examples of your work. You can throw experience, you can throw education um each one of those are entirely viable and I know myself definitely but a lot of other recruiters. These days are looking quite heavily into experience and portfolio and less into education.
Education is really expensive. Not everyone can afford it, but some of those people that can’t afford it might be really really good and it’s worth looking into them. Uh my entire employment history can be found on LinkedIn. I my first job was as a day camp counselor. During my exchange to Rebecca, I was like a an assistant camp counselor. I didn’t speak French very well, but boy did I ever try hard learned some of the songs and everything wow AJ rip them apart.
Yeah go away, Jay go whatever um, then I was a lifeguard and swimming lessons instructor from 2004 to 2005 at the Maple Ridge parks and Leisure Leisure Center. That sort of faded away, because I went to school in 2005 and it was not realistic to be working while also attending UBC full-time and commuting a total of about three and a half hours a day. Yeah from Eastern Maple Ridge to UBC um at the like West End of Vancouver, then I was recruited during my first year of school as a student Works, painting franchisee.
So technically I was self-employed during this period, even though I didn’t fully understand that at the time I thought that I kind of had the backing of a larger organization behind me in practice, though, if someone doesn’t pay you, they do absolutely nothing to sort it out. You are you’re, essentially an independent owner operator, so thanks for that student works um then I quit student works, definitely abandoned my contractual obligation out of both well. This was a period of um.
I guess it’s probably fair to call it depression, even if it wasn’t diagnosed. It’S pretty much textbook case uh. This was this was not working for me um, so between how I was feeling already about the the job and the feeling of Abandonment. When we had that payment issue and them just kind of been like see you later, I I walked away and I went to work at NCIX because I loved just like talking about computers and helping people configure computers. And I only lasted six months because I went back to student work, see how these overlap a little bit so I started at NCIX. Then I knew I had to go back to student works in the summer um.
So I was only there till May and then, when I came back, they actually didn’t send me back to the store. So you can see here, here’s how it went uh December to may. I worked at NCIX part-time, then from May to June. I was at student works, then I walked away and in July I was back at NCIX. So as the PC systems business unit manager, I configured the PCS, I ended up actually building a lot of the PCS uh, including a junior employee. This is Ivan um.
I think oh man, what else I filled this out like really well, because I was updating this at a time when it wasn’t uh certain that this whole Linus Media Group thing was going to work out and I was trying to get a job uh. The there’s. An OMG clip of the I think of the time that I tried to apply for Amazon that took place during this time. Then, can you imagine what a different life I’d have if they had hired me as their like? It was like social media, video coordinator or something like that, like I was an absolute dream fit for the job and I never even got a con like contacted back. I was like yeah like I, these there’s these channels with like, like over a million Subs. I think I already had a gold play button at NCIX for NCIX Tech tips and like can you imagine not hiring that person for your like social video role, and I think it was because the job requirements were that you had to have a bachelor’s degree, and I didn’t yeah, so I probably never even made it to her real human being.
I think I would have been a catch. I think y’all missed out so anyway. I think I probably could have done some social media video stuff for you, that’s a that’s! A Luke Tech tips, dark timeline, um, yeah yeah for sure uh.
So then I was promoted to product manager lasted in that role for six years. I was also like a category manager as part of this man I was like. I was actually like pretty good at this hold on sorry about that uh cut daily POS managed a personal product portfolio from zero dollars to two million dollars of monthly Revenue. I i i rejuvenated a lot of troubled lines.
Uh NCIX was selling like I kid you not like 20 MSI motherboards a month when I took over that line, and we were like over, like hundreds a week by the time I was done with it. Uh ocz was selling basically nothing when I took over that line and they were our biggest SSD and dram Vendor by the time I was done with it. They didn’t go under until I was. I was out so that wasn’t my problem, because why um? But no, no! No! I had nothing to do with that. It’S your fault, no, no um! Then I have some like other roles.
I had multiple jobs at NCIX as YouTube video social media project coordinator. So I did some stuff total of 85 million video views and 325 000 subscribers. Okay, apparently I did not have a million uh subscribers at that point. Oh no! That’S right! That happened way later.
We were at the Langley house, never mind, never mind with less than ten thousand dollars invested. Let me tell you, let me tell you I buffered the crap out of that. There was far less than ten thousand dollars invested. I was trying to account for every possible equipment expenditure that we could have had.
We spent nothing on NCIX Tech tips, um and then category manager for a couple of years, so that’s basically overseeing product managers, um so yeah. I worked with ocz Intel, Nvidia AMD and Tech, courser Asus, MSI EVGA, and many many more that was pretty cool by the time I left. I was one of the most senior people in the company, even though I was only what does this workout to 20 26 years old? Did you get him more? Why did you get me yeah, so people someone’s telling me to dig at you the only okay, so one piece of feedback that chat gave you is that you’re not supposed to have stuff that far back on your LinkedIn, but he’s also not actively looking for a Job yeah and like so who cares and like honestly, I well, what am I supposed to just have this job? I’Ve been here for almost 10 years yeah. So at this point I think basically yeah well, what do you mean you’re not supposed to like, like you shouldn’t, have your like painter stuff on there? Oh yeah, that’s stupid, yeah! I just I was memeing yeah.
I was just like you know what okay so part of it was that I was wanting to get a job. The other part of it was that I, like I, used to keep a diary when I was in high school and it’s like it’s pretty cool, to go back and look at that stuff. So my my my concept here when I was creating this was that it would be as complete as possible more as much for my own entertainment as anything else.
So I put as much information into like the NCIX stuff, which I obviously remembered a lot better, because it was current. I put as much information as I thought I could put in there without um. You know disclose it without breaking my NDA with NCIX like disclosing business secrets, so I have sales growth in units while remaining excellent customer satisfaction and achieving GP margin targets from 2006 to 2012, a 440 percent. That’S my that’s the sales growth of my lines, um and I’m not gon na lie. I spent actual work time digging into our reports in our internal system to compile this for my LinkedIn wow. While I was seeking employment elsewhere fired bad bad Linus. Well, they didn’t fire me. They asked me for six months. Notice actually is what they actually did when I tried to quit something like that.
That’S a lot! That’S a lot of notice! Yeah! Well, I was trying to negotiate for buying this channel that you’re watching this video on for a dollar right, so yeah. That was the whole thing. Yeah .