Show Notes

Paving the Path in IT: From Family Business to Industry Leader with Sirinda “Sindy” Glasgow

Host: Manuel Martinez

Guest: Sirinda “Sindy” Glasgow

Episode Summary:

In this inaugural episode of Career Downloads, host Manuel Martinez sits down with Sirinda “Sindy” Glasgow, a seasoned IT professional with deep roots in Las Vegas. Sindy shares her remarkable journey from helping her father’s technology company to becoming a leading figure in the IT infrastructure scene in Las Vegas. Her story is one of perseverance, adaptability, and lifelong learning.

Key Topics Covered:

– Introduction to Career Downloads and Sirinda Glasgow

– Early Life and Education

– Entry into IT

– Working in the Family Business

– Skills and Training

– Challenges and Gender Dynamics in IT

– Transition to Mirage Resorts

– Career Growth and Mentorship

– Career Decision to Stay or Leave

Actionable Advice:

– Stay curious and never stop learning.

– Embrace challenges as opportunities for growth.

– Build a network of mentors and peers who support your career development.

Connect with Us:

– Follow Career Downloads at https://www.careerdownloads.com

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– Subscribe to our newsletter for updates and exclusive content.

Next Episode:

Join us next week as we continue our conversation with Sindy and the decisions she made that led to to her current role.

Transcription

Manuel: Hi. I’m Manny Martinez. Are you looking to level up your career? Then welcome to Career Downloads. Each episode I’m going to hit the refresh button with different guests and dive deep into the journeys of these inspiring professionals. I’ll unpack their educational paths, explore their job histories, and discover the strategies they use to navigate the ever-evolving job landscape. So whether you’re just starting your journey or you’re really looking to make a more strategic move, you’ll be able to gain valuable insights and actionable advice from the diverse minds in the industry. So plug in, download the knowledge, and join me on Career Downloads.

All right. So on today’s episode, I have Sirinda known as Sindy Glasgow. And I’m going to be getting additional info about her and her career. So let me give you a quick introduction about Sindy. So I’ve known her for quite a few years now. And I’m pretty sure that if there’s any type of infrastructure, IT software that has been deployed in Las Vegas, there’s a good chance that Sindy has had her hand in either setting it up or getting in touch with the people that have deployed it. So with that, I’d like to introduce Sindy. So welcome.

Sirinda: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Manuel: And of course, so I’m really excited to really get to know more about you. So I know we’ve talked before in the past about your career, you know, kind of things that you’ve moved up. We have similar paths. I know if this is the second time that we’ve crossed career paths.

Sirinda: Yeah.

Manuel: So I just really, I want to start and kind of go back a little bit and understand. I know that you’re born and raised here in Vegas.

Sirinda: Not born.

Manuel: Oh, not born.

Sirinda: We moved here when I was five.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: So almost.

Manuel: Almost so pretty close.

Sirinda: Yeah.

Manuel: And what made you stay in Vegas all that time?

Sirinda: Well, interesting story. My grandparents retired here and bought a little motel. And we would come visit. And when my grandfather passed away, my mom and dad decided to move down here. So it was the two of them and my brother and myself. And we’ve been here ever since the motel. I did live in the motel for a little bit. So that was kind of interesting, you know, childhood playing in the alley and swimming in the hotel or motel swimming pool. And a lot of the lounge performers in Las Vegas, so old school, stayed at my grandma’s motel because it was a weekly rental. And I guess that was kind of a one off. There weren’t as many weekly rentals at the time.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: Yeah. So kind of interesting. I used to watch them all leave for their shows when I was a little kid.

Manuel: Nice. That’s interesting. Yeah. So obviously, you continued on, you went to school here, graduated from UNLV, correct?

Sirinda: I did not graduate. So that’s interesting. And there are other people in technology that you’re running to that didn’t graduate. It was really hard to find classes for what I was doing at work while I was going to UNLV. So I actually started in IT while I was at UNLV. And I was challenged for finding classes that were relevant to the work I was doing. And little by little, I got busier at work, challenge finding classes. I literally left because I didn’t know what to major in and they weren’t going to let me register until I declared. And I’m like, you don’t have the classes I need for what I want to do. So I didn’t finish.

Manuel: Okay. So interesting. So that when I kind of looked, I must have missed up my timeline. So then you actually started working in IT prior to going to college?

Sirinda: Just around college. So before that, I worked kind of retail jobs. So I didn’t really work in IT until I started college, but right away. And interesting enough, it was very similar. My dad worked for a technology company and then started his own business. So my first 13 years were working for him. Company was called Computer Business Solutions. They called on some of the hotel casinos here in town, lots of small businesses. In fact, really close to where we’re meeting right now, a couple of his customers, I would deliver terminals, cables. And I did that for, like I said, about 13 years. And I started as a runner, like delivering things.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: One day I came back from my college classes and my desk had a big toolbox on it. And it had all the equipment to do cabling. So RS232 cabling, pin crimper, soldering iron, if I needed it, like cable stripper, like everything to do the cable connections. Because back then, for those mid-range systems that were proprietary, you’d order these really long cable lengths, you’d hire someone to run them and you’d end up with like a spool of cable at the end. And then they’d turn it over to the tech team to do the ends. And they would come preconfigured. That’s how they would ship to us. But the customer doesn’t want like 50 extra feet under their desk. [Laughter] This is that big, thick coax type cable.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: So they bought me the toolbox to go clean up cabling everywhere I went. And next thing you know, I’m actually doing the installs in the data center. I’m doing the installs of, you know, customer would convert from one system to the next and I’d show up and I’d do all the cabling.

Manuel: So is that something your dad obviously at the toolbox had shown up? So do they kind of go through and show you, hey, this is how this works?

Sirinda: He showed me quickly how to do that. His company, so he started, when they moved here, he was just delivering Coke for Coca-Cola. And he delivered to a company called NCR, National Cash Register. And they gave him a test. They really liked him. He had delivered for quite a while. And they were looking for people and think about trying to find tech talent when it was so new. So they gave him a test and they hired him as a Programmer. Next thing you know, they made him a Salesman. He’s like million dollar salesman, quite a few years. His manager went to work for a company called MAI Basic Four. My dad followed him. And again, continued to sell very well, not just for NCR, but for Basic Four. And he ended up buying his business from them. They said, how can we promote you? You’re going to need to move to California. He said, let me buy the office, which he did. And around the time I went to work for him, he was selling Basic Four, which was proprietary, like disk platters. I’m really dating myself. [Laughter] So yeah. Well, they started to go out of business. And he had sent me to IBM for RS6000 training. So Basic Four at the end had an AT&T 386 Unix box, not to get super technical, but yeah, it’s what I do. And then IBM’s RS6000, AIX is a Unix-based operating system. I was trained at IBM in Southern California. So then I was installing RS6000s all over the valley. And typically, we’d have point of sale or accounting systems. We had a lot of the title companies here in town, a big company called Las Vegas Auto Parts that was here. That’s their warehouses or their old warehouses close by here.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: Yeah. All types of businesses, some of the nurseries, Star Nursery, which is a local Las Vegas staple. I installed point of sale equipment and it all connected back to an RS6000. So that’s kind of what I did for several years.

Manuel: So then, again, not trying to date it, right, but starting back then, there wasn’t, I can’t imagine that there were many females in that industry. So I mean, you were probably like the one. So what was that experience like as you were coming in and you’re like, Hey, I’m here to kind of, you know, clean up your cables. What were some of the reactions or what was that experience like for you going through that?

Sirinda: Do you know that the customers were all very nice. They were just happy that someone was there to fix their computer. Just the smile on their face. Oh, thank goodness, the computer girls here are going to be back up and running. The ones that I had, the biggest challenge was the Telco guys. So think about it, you have all these remote stores like a Star Nursery, for example, RS6000 at the main office. So then we would have multiplexers, DSU/CSU like digital, you know, telco equipment to connect all these offices back to the main, the main headquarters. And I was, so one of the things I learned early on, starting with the cabling was I would double test my stuff because I would go put together a cable and the Techs that, you know, we outsourced that did the break fix for all the equipment back then, they would try to blame my cable. [Chuckling] And I was like, I did my cable, I would get so, I did a good job. I did my cable right. So I had testing equipment. I would always validate it. And then I would have them show me why you think it’s the cable. So they’d show me, and little by little, I learned how to do what they did. And that evolved into the Sys Admin saying, oh, it’s on your side. And I’m like, show me how you think it’s on my side. And because back then you had to drive everywhere. We didn’t have, I mean, there were modems, but a lot of this, you’d have to be on site to do the work. They would take advantage of the fact that I was already out there and say, Sindy, we need you to log in and do XYZ. And so I’d go configure. Next, you know, I’m teaching users how to use Word Perfect back in the day. I actually taught some classes at one point in time, but I just started picking up more and more. Well, with the Telco guys, same thing. Like I had all my testing gear. I would make sure that it worked. And they would try to say, you know, and they would see me show up too. And they had big doubts that I was the girl or the person that should be working on fixing the connection between the stores. So they were the ones I had the hardest time with. Just, you know, they hadn’t seen anybody. Plus I’m super short. [Laughter] Who is this short little girl telling us how to do our job or yeah.

Manuel: And coming in probably younger than them as well, right? So they’re like, oh, who is this person? So then part of your knowledge came from not just being curious, right? But it’s also, hey, having to prove it and understand kind of what their job is.

Sirinda: Yeah.

Manuel: Right. Okay. Awesome.

Sirinda: I love like puzzles, right? I love figuring out how things work. So that’s part of it too, right? Showing that, no, I put that together the right way. And yeah. And still being nice about it, but making sure.

Manuel: Sure that you’re going through.

Sirinda: Yeah.

Manuel: So then you started off there with your dad. And as you’ve kind of gained this additional knowledge, did you continue to move up within his organization or his company? Sirinda: I did. I did. Like I said, I started out just as a runner, then I’m doing installation work. While I was in college, just one more college story. I was determined that I was going to quit that awful computer job [Laughter] because I was working so many nights and weekends because back then the typical business is open eight to five. When do they want the computers down? Not like the casinos. It’s totally different in that industry. But in the normal business is the evenings or weekends.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: And I’m like, what am I going to study? I’m trying to squeeze in classes in the evenings. I’m studying for tests on the weekends. Now, the sudden I have to do installation work. And it was not always easy to schedule customer in any sales company, customer decides they’re going to buy a big system. Everybody drops what they’re doing. [Laughter] We’re going to install it. Right. So I was a waitress one summer. And at the end of the summer, I was going to tell my dad I was quitting.

Manuel: And so you got to take the summer off. [Laughter]

Sirinda: You obviously see what I do today. I did not keep the waitress job. And so here I am.

Manuel: With that waitress job, did you take it as your kind of way to get out of IT or was it just to try to?

Sirinda: Yeah, I just wanted to be a student. I just wanted that I needed to support myself. And so I was, you know, I thought waitressing. Someone told me at one point in time when I was in school, that if you have, you know, a lot of studying that you’re doing, it’s good to have a more physical job, right? Because if you’re studying and then you have a job where you’re studying, you get a little burnout. And so at the time, the opinion was, hey, you’re working on these computers and technology and you’re having to learn all that. How are you going to be able to finish school? And when I was in high school, I wanted to go to law school. I wanted to be a lawyer. Part of what derailed that is I lost my mom when I was 19. So my dad and I, my parents were divorced when I was a young girl. So we, our relationship got stronger while I was working for him. So he was always my little league coach. And I’d see him on the weekends, but then he remarried. He had his kids and, you know, we just weren’t around each other as much. But when I went to work for him, you know, you’re in the office together all the time. And yeah, that was kind of a good experience. But not to derail it. Yeah. At the end of the day, I didn’t have the nerve to tell my dad. He couldn’t hire anybody to do what he had. By that time, I had learned so much. I had learned how to do what the techs were doing, like configure the equipment, configure the mainframe or midrange system at the back end, right? So I’d have to configure all the terminals and printers that I was installing. One point in time, I became Okidata authorized. So there’s little dot matrix printers. I could repair them. Just, you know, things start adding up, like with any job, you gain experience and it’s hard to replace that person. So.

Manuel: That makes sense.

Sirinda: Yeah.

Manuel: So then how did you transition into that next job? So I know you said, Hey, you’re going to school, you decided you were going to try and do waitressing and focus to become a student. And at some point there, you grabbed your next job, right? Your next career.

Sirinda: So I also, towards the end of working for my father, I got married and I started having kids. So I had my son while I was still working for my dad. And then he sold his business. And he sold it in kind of pieces. And my brother actually took a piece of it, like the PC network kind of smaller businesses. And he to this day has had his own business from that. I went to work and followed his software partner, bought like the RS6000 AIX customers. Okay. And I followed him for about a year. And he was way out at the end of Henderson, almost railroad pass, like heading to Boulder City. It was a big drive and I had new baby. [Laughter] Struggle for me a little bit. And to be honest, like health insurance there was super expensive. And somebody told me about MGM, or I was Mirage resorts at the time, had great health insurance that they were building out their IT team. And I just walked in an HR office. Nobody does that anymore today. It’s all online. But I just walked in and in the HR office, they had a number of jobs posted on a board behind this front desk. And I did a little bit of a lot of what was on the board. So I wasn’t sure exactly which position to apply for.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: So I ended up applying for more of like a application support type of a job. I got the interview. And during the interview, we’re talking. And the person that interviewed me, she said, let me just stop you a minute. You’re way over qualified for what I’m looking for. [Laughter] She said, but I have somebody that needs you. Stay right here. And she went and pulled in the manager who I then ended up working for. His name was Ron Pavan at Mirage Resorts. And he hired me for a project they had that was all on AIX. They were totally a Microsoft Window shop. But they had RS6000s that they had bought to centralize their operations.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: So back in the day, every hotel had a computer room and operators that worked in the computer room got dispatched from the computer room out to see the customers. They had all of their alerts coming to like a dot matrix printer. So they’d go check the readout and they’d see that there were errors from the food and beverage system or the casino system. They had tandems back in the day and AS400s. And that’s how they would get their alerts. And so they had bought some software to centralize that at their main corporate office and then create like a operations, a network operation center, a NOC.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: And so they hired me because they needed somebody with AIX experience. And here I was sitting in that interview [Laughter] and they were having a hard time finding somebody that had that knowledge. So I got hired for that specific project. It was called Project Eclipse to go dark in all the computer rooms, no operators and bring them all into a central.

Manuel: And that role is it something that you had seen on that job board or is it?

Sirinda: No, I had no idea.

Manuel: It wasn’t even posted then.

Sirinda: No. And it was like the most exciting job because I got to learn a little bit about everything. And it’s so funny, they say they were a Microsoft shop.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: They had a number of UNIX applications. So I’m just sitting there working on my project and people would come by my cube and say, Hey, I hear you know UNIX. We have HPUX over in the architect and design side of the building. So our building was not in one of the casinos. It was remote behind the fashion show.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: The architects and design folks were in that same building. And so they would have me come across the way and just basic things like their logs had filled up. They were running out of disk space. Just they knew their CAD software, but they didn’t know the operating system.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: And every operating system still needs care and feeding like just basic administration.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: So I picked up HPUX helping them out. Plus our Network E ngineers use that same operating system for their network node manager. So HP OpenView So I helped them as well. They had a few issues and they were not UNIX folks at the time. Then our food and beverage system ran on SCO UNIX. Our retail system ran on DGUX. The big tape silo that did all the backups ran on Solaris and then what controlled the robotic arm ran on AIX.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: So little by little, there’s all kinds of UNIX all over that place. So I started becoming not just on the project, but kind of the UNIX Admin eventually moved in as a UNIX System Engineer. So I moved my way up.

Manuel: And were you kind of doing that as the project’s winding down? So like, hey, this project is coming to a close and they’re just like, hey. Sirinda: Yeah. It became kind of cookie cutter after a while. We went dark first at the Golden Nugget. Then we went dark at Treasure Island. Then we went dark at Mirage. So no operators in the computer rooms brought them all into this one facility. And it was very cool. We had all these big monitors and we’re watching all the alerts and we’re automating as much as possible. So that was my big thing was to make sure that we’re taking away as much of the manual tasks. There were some interesting systems that couldn’t be on the corporate network. So we would use like a terminal server to take that printer output into the terminal server, give it an IP address and get it routed back over to that NOC so we could get those alerts as well. So little by little, we did more and more. And one of the managers for the Network Engineers, I remember going to him and saying, hey, where I used to work, I had a little breakout box where I could map out the cable connection to figure out, you know, transmit, receive, request to send, clear to send, like all the signals to make sure that I would get the right pin out. Do you have one that I could use because I need to connect to my terminal server? He kind of chuckled and he was like, yeah, here’s the box, right? Like he thought I wouldn’t know how to use it. I came back in like a really short time. I want to say, you know, within 30 minutes to give him his box back. He’s like, would you like one of my guys to come help you? And I’m like, oh, no, no, I’m done. My cable’s all pinned out. I’m good. He goes, show me. [Laughter] And he’s like, would you like a position on my team? And I was like, well, thank you. That’s very flattering. But I love the job that I have right now.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: You know, and I have this big project. So I’d like to see where I’m at. But it was kind of funny that he just doubted that I was going to know.

Manuel: I mean, and I’m sure by that point you’re used to it, right? So you’re like, oh, okay. They see this appearance and they’re like, okay, look, can she really do it?

Sirinda: Yeah. Anyhow, that was, that was kind of fun. And so we were successful. And so then when we opened Beau Rivage and Bellagio, no operators in those computer rooms. So I was part of the opening team. But I was very proud that as much as possible, most of the opening that I was involved in was remote. Like anything that we could automate, anything that we could do without having to physically be on site, we did. And so they ended up opening those properties. And this is an interesting story. They opened those properties without having to have a whole room of operators. We had by then centralized the help desk. We actually won some awards with that software company. They were originally Boole & Babbage. They were bought by BMC Software. We won their, like back in the day, a lot of that kind of software was shelfware. People would buy it with the best intent, tension to do all this remote monitoring automation and they wouldn’t get there. So we, I actually spoke at their big users group in front of a huge audience that I hadn’t done that before. But in any case, so we opened those two properties and I think opened on a lower IT budget because even though if we had to add operators, we weren’t having to buy a whole room and all the head end equipment to be able to run software that handled that. We just added agents for what we were adding with this new property. When Wynn opened, I left MGM Resorts and I went over to Wynn. And they opened without the luxury of all of that. And so that was going to be like a phase two type of a thing. So it was interesting because I went from, and by the way, I was at MGM for a little bit longer. So I did some System Engineering. I did some other projects. I was Exchange System Engineer. So I picked up Windows along the way, by the way.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: Yeah. So I started doing more because I was there almost 10 years.

Manuel: And as you’re doing this, or as you’re kind of picking up these other skills, is it just like helping out on the side? Is it something you took an interest in? Like what made you kind of branch out and learn more about these different systems?

Sirinda: That project that I had, because I needed to monitor all of those different disparate systems, I picked up a little bit of AS400. I picked up a little bit of tandem because I had to figure out how am I going to connect to it? How am I going to get the alerts? How are we going to get our team to be able to respond to those alerts? And by the way, are there manual tasks we can automate as long as we’re doing this? So kind of curiosity is a big piece.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: And so just kept learning as much as I could so that we could do our job. And then once I picked that up, just kept learning more. And I remember going to one of the Windows Engineers that was a couple cubes down from me and telling them, hey, we’re getting these alerts all the time that say that these particular servers are running at 100% CPU or 99% CPU utilization. That’s a problem. He’s like, no, that just means we’re getting our money’s worth. I’m like, yeah. [Laughter]

Manuel: That’s not how it works.

Sirinda: So what should the threshold be? I need to eliminate noise or people will ignore the alerts. So you become very good at figuring out how to filter out some of that noise, make sure that we’re catching what’s important and valuable to the business so that we’re aware. And one of those things, there were agents we installed on the Unix / Windows systems. They weren’t capturing the event logs.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: Yet our Application folks were writing errors to the event logs. So how am I going to get that log up to my board? And there was a users group for BMC Software and for those agents that we had.

Manuel: Sure.

Sirinda: And actually, before BMC, so with Boole & Babbage, we were able to start funneling those alerts up to the board and actioning on them. And then when they got bought and they decided they were going to move from that, it was an agent called Ensign and they moved to one called Patrol.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: The second one didn’t do the event log monitoring. And we’re like, you can’t, we can’t upgrade then. Now we’ve become reliant upon getting those event log messages that are key to the particular apps. There’s like about, give or take, some of these casinos have about 200 different applications. And some of them, when something breaks, it’s communication from one system to the other. If you get a comp, that comp has to go from the casino system to the food and beverage system or vice versa. All that information needs to flow. And so we would get alerts that would capture if any of that broke and make sure we make sure you set that back up.

Manuel: So with that user group, is that user group, was that like a local thing? Is that a regional?

Sirinda: It was, that was more like working with the salespeople for the software company for BMC. They kind of connected all those folks. And I’m going to lose track of the timeline here, but at that time, I mean, we were already getting on the internet and they were creating user groups and stuff. So yeah.

Manuel: So that’s how you’re able to communicate and kind of share information.

Sirinda: Yeah.

Manuel: Okay. Nice.

Sirinda: You could join those users groups back then. But yeah.

Manuel: And then, so then kind of going back a little bit, you mentioned that you had to speak in front of, so you were speaking in front of their conference, was in front of the user group. So how did that kind of, how did they come about that they asked you to speak?

Sirinda: It was, it was like a sales conference where they had customers. So that customer facing.

Manuel: Got it.

Sirinda: I don’t know if you call the sales conference because those companies have them internally too.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: But this was a number of their users and we had won an award from them. Our CIO was recognized. They actually did a video of our command center, what we had accomplished. We all got interviewed. The Engineer that brought me in. Well, he was like the lead on the project. And then there was another Sys Admin. She had managed a lot of the remote computer rooms. They were there before I got hired. So they were in the interview as well. So we all got interviewed in like what were our original processes, how helpful this was to our business. Our CIO and then our CTO at the time. And she’s been here in Vegas for a long time too. Went to high school here and was CTO at MGM Resorts, then was over at Clark County. So a lot of folks know her name is Laura Fucci. But she’s been here a long time. And so they were all interviewed and then I got interviewed as well because I did a lot of the work part. [Laughter] I think they were the visionaries. I was more the execution person.

Manuel: So then when you spoke in front of this group, what was your preparation for that talk? Was it just to talk about like, hey, this is what I’ve done? Because you mentioned like, hey, this is a big group and this is the first time you’ve done that. So what was that?

Sirinda: We put together like a PowerPoint, right? And to show kind of to give them a view of everything we had accomplished. And then numbers wise, we talked about all the efficiency that brought to the business. So really at the end of the day, wherever you work in IT, you’re always working with the customer’s goals, what they’re trying to achieve in mind. And so even though I worked in IT, we were in the casino hospitality business. And which is funny, just just short segue that my mom was a hotel manager and my dad was a computer person. So I always felt like when I worked as an IT person in hospitality, I was kind of a hybrid of both of them. [Chuckling] So I understood a little bit about both about guest service and, you know, how important it is for us to give the best guest experience and how IT plays a role in that. And the whole 24 by seven and being on call. Yeah, that goes with it.

Manuel: Now, and it makes sense, right? I mean, just kind of understanding that as you’re going through, because a lot of times not all positions are customer facing, but a lot of them do end up being in that hospitality is your, or your, you know, your customer is the other internal folks that you’re supporting, right? So going through and, and that’s one of the things that when I started, I found that you really need to have people skills, right? Especially if you’re in that type of role is being able to go through and talk to somebody, not talk down to them, not, you know, like belittling them like, Hey, you’re I’m here to help. How can I help and really give them that experience? So it does sound like that technique you do. I’ve known you for a little while, right? But you do have that technical experience and knowledge and also have that, I mean, you’re very personalable, right? Like, Hey, you’re easy to talk to, you get along with just about everybody. And you’ve, I’ve been with you, you know, we’ve got out to lunch, we’ve got in different places. I was born and raised here. And I thought I knew a lot of people, but you know, even more, right? Especially in the casino industry, like, Oh, hey,

Sirinda: I’m a few years on you. That’s part of it.

Manuel: It might be part of it.

Sirinda: But that’s part of the journey, right? We’re all here, like, get to know as many people while you’re here and make the most of it and have great experiences. That’s part of life. I know there are people that are more comfortable being a little more introverted. I want to say all of us have a little bit of that, right? But but there’s a fit in IT. If that’s kind of more your thing, you want maybe want to go more into being a programmer, but even then for them to do a really good job, they need to understand what the customer, what the what you’re trying to achieve. So somebody has to do that translation or be that intermediary to make sure that that’s happening. But yeah, I want to say COVID and kind of the whole remote work thing has been a little bit of a challenge because you don’t get to see people in person as much. We’re all on video camera.

Manuel: Yeah. So I could see that.

Sirinda: Yeah.

Manuel: All right. So now you’ve gone through and you said you went over to the Wynn at that point. So you’re kind of transitioning into that role and.

Sirinda: I kind of pivoted to doing property openings for a while. So I did the Bellagio Beau Rivage remotely.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: We had been through a couple mergers. So Mirage was merged with MGM resorts.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: And then Mandalay Group. And that’s around the time that Wynn was opening. And there were a few people from that I had worked with before that had gone over there. And there was a position and I went over right before opening with the intent that maybe within a few months or at least within the first year, they would need to build out help desk, SOC, do a similar type of a project. It just, they never got there. We were fighting a lot of fires. Manuel: Okay. Sirinda: So it was the first time I did more of a project manager, less technical role.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: So I would meet with the various business units to try to understand what was keeping them from being successful. We called it kind of the critical items list. And we would try to manage those top five to 10 critical items that were keeping the business from being successful across casino, hotel, sales and catering, point of sale for retail, food and beverage. So going and meeting with the executives, working with the vendors, because a lot of times it could have been just software related. We did do like trials of some new software when the property opened and just continuing to make sure we were knocking out all the blockers and getting those resolved. And I did that for about a year. And then the project that I really got hired for wasn’t coming to fruition. And so I was, I wasn’t unhappy, right? I was just torn. Well, this isn’t really what I had signed up for.

Manuel: And this was that Wynn, correct?

Sirinda: Yeah. And I have to say everywhere I’ve worked, I have loved working there. So there was no, like I wasn’t disgruntled and looking for something. But a friend of mine that I had worked with as a System Engineer at MGM resorts got hired at Qualcomm and he told me they had a need for a Qualcomm person here in Las Vegas. They had a remote data center and they were going to open a huge data center out by the North Las Vegas airport. And UNLV was going to put a super computing center in there. It sounded like such an exciting project. I was like, oh, I would love to do that. So I had done a couple property openings. I’d not done a data center opening, right? So I was super excited to go, learn, be part of that. And they needed a UNIX person. So that’s why he reached out to me. They had a lot of their DR stuff here in Las Vegas back in the day. And they owned a division of their business that’s no more called Global Tracks. Tracks all the trucks and freight shipping freight. That’s what you call them. Shipping containers. Yeah. They track all that to make sure that it can be located and tracked for timing and stuff. That was what they did. And they would fail over every six months. There aren’t a lot of IT companies that are successful at making sure that they do their failover all the time. They did. And I got to be part of that, helped automate some of it. And then they were going to open this big data center. And then the Nokia lawsuits happened. And that all kind of got put on hold. So all of a sudden, I was kind of like a Maytag repairman. Like I had to reach out to the San Diego Engineers and say, hey, are there any projects I can be part of? I can do it remotely. Any work that I can do. [Laughter] Look, I needed more work. And I remember my boss always saying, Sindy, they’re not going to get rid of you. You’re part of corporate IT. Like, yeah, I just don’t feel like I have enough work here. And the data center’s on hold. Our office had shrunk a little bit in terms of number of people. So I was a little worried. And somebody had worked with at MGM Resorts. Got hired as a CIO at Cosmo. So he brought me over to Cosmo. So another property opening. Manuel: Another property opening.

Sirinda: I went through a lot really fast.

Manuel: I’m going to back you up a little bit. So as you’re going through, so Wynn and then you kind of mentioned all these other ones, again, you weren’t unhappy. But what really, what made you kind of go into that next opportunity? Was it really just people were reaching out and it sounded interesting or kind of what made you go through? Because I know sometimes it might just be like, hey, I don’t dislike where I’m at. But maybe you just are like, I’ve done everything I can. But I’ve learned and it sounded like you got very proficient at consolidating, automating. So at some point, was it boredom?

Sirinda: It kind of felt like my project was done. I delivered on this project. And at a certain point, either I’m going to have to try to find some other project that’s going to keep me as challenged as the project I just got off of. So do I do that by staying? Or maybe I need to move somewhere to find something that’s going to challenge me as much as what I’ve just worked on.

Manuel: Got it.

Sirinda: Right? Kind of like back to the puzzle analogy. If you keep doing 100 piece puzzles after a while, you’re like, I can do those. [Laughter] It’s time to move on to 1000 pieces, right? Like I’m ready for the next challenge.

Manuel: The next challenge.

Sirinda: Yeah.

Manuel: And then those challenges, they came primarily from people that came to you. Or at some point, did you kind of start looking? Just kind of what was your thought process? Or kind of what was the, what did you do to kind of move on to that next role?

Sirinda: I would say a lot of times they came to me. So there were people that I had worked with that knew about me or had, or had, we had worked side by side and they had moved somewhere else. And they’re like, you would be a great fit here. We would love for you to come over. So that’s how I ended up at Wynn. Some folks that had, so I didn’t go over as early as some of the other IT people at Wynn. I came over very close to opening because remember they opened without that same kind of formal structure, that operation center that we had. And so I think I went over a little bit later, but with the intent that that was coming, which didn’t happen. [Chuckle] But so I was more on a firefighting mode there than a building. And I like to say, usually I’m in more of a building kind of a role. And then Qualcomm, it was one of my peers from MGM, someone who sat in the cube across from me for a long time.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: And then.

Manuel: So then, and then though, so obviously they’re coming to you and let you know that the job is there. Did you still go through the regular hiring process? Like did you have to put in an application, go through an interview and things like that?

Sirinda: That Qualcomm interview is scary. I had to go down to San Diego and be in a room full of IT people asking me all kinds of questions.

Manuel: So like in a panel type interview?

Sirinda: Yeah, yeah. That one was a little nerve wracking. I’d never done that before. But yeah, each time I had to interview.

Manuel: And did you, were you able to get from the people that kind of brought you in? Did they help you out as far as kind of help prepare for the interview? Just kind of just curious to understand how you interview, right? Because everybody’s experiences are different and just trying to understand, you know, what that was like for you. And maybe there’s something in there like, hey, this is how I prepare. Do you just prepare on your own?

Sirinda: That’s interesting. I did reach out and ask a few questions, especially like the Qualcomm one. I was nervous and I asked Derek a few questions. Just his personality is like, oh, you got this. [Laughter] I mean, he just, he told me a little bit what the process was going to be like. But yeah, I did prepare. I always research whatever I’m doing. So I go look and see, has anybody else posted this experience? Is there any tips I can find anywhere? So I just naturally do that.

Manuel: Got it. So you normally do your research and say, okay, hey, this is what the company is. This is what the position is doing and making sure that you’re aware.

Sirinda: Yeah. I think that’s one advice I’d give anybody, any job you’re applying for. I mean, they want to know that you’re interested in being there. So you should do your research about their company and what it’s like, what the culture’s like. First of all, just for yourself to make sure it sounds like it’s a good fit. But then also they want to know you’re interested in being there. So make sure you’re able to answer that.

Manuel: Okay. Yeah. That’s good. I definitely, I agree with you there, right? It’s just understanding. And one of the things I tell people is making sure that when you’re interviewing, it’s a two-way interview, right? Like, and you mentioned that, right? Hey, yeah, they want to make sure you’re a good fit, but I want to make sure you’re a good fit for me as well. Like trying to find out, hey, ask questions about culture. You know, what’s the role? What do you see this as? So it’s very interesting.

Sirinda: It’s a big step to take too. If it ends up not being the right fit, that, you know, you don’t want that to happen because then you’ve given up maybe a solid position you were at to make a leap to go somewhere, you better make sure you want to be there. [Laughter]

Manuel: Yeah. All right. So now, hopefully, I get the timelines, right? So now you’re at Qualcomm. And then from Qualcomm, is that that’s the position you were talking about where you were kind of actually looking for work, right? Because the projects on hold, did that ever come to fruition or?

Sirinda: That didn’t. So that was put on hold. And like I said, my boss kept saying, they’re not going to get rid of you. You’re part of corporate IT. I’m an extension of San Diego though.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: Because that’s where they have most of their data centers and where they’re headquartered. And sure enough, when I left, they did replace me with somebody in San Diego, not somebody in Las Vegas.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: And at the time by now, I had three kids. So I had my second daughter when Bellagio opened.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: And so at a busy time, and then I had my third one while I was at MGM as well. And so by the time I met Qualcomm, I have three kids and how am I going to pick up and move to San Diego? In fact, I had training in San Diego. And a couple of times it fell just luck of the draw. It fell during school spring break. And I brought the kids to San Diego, put them in a daycare close to the Qualcomm office. We’d go to the work while they were at daycare during the day. And then in the evening, we would go to the beach. We went to Legoland. We went to SeaWorld, [Laughter] the zoo. So I squeezed all that in while I was working there. But yeah, after Qualcomm, I ended up, what happened is the CIO at the Cosmopolitan, he had been a Unix System Engineer at MGM Resorts. And we had worked very closely together. And when he got hired, he said he was very flattering. He said I was one of the first people he thought of. And so he reached out to me and asked if I would come over and help open the Cosmopolitan.

Manuel: Nice.

Sirinda: And I was there about three years. Yeah.

Manuel: So I’m glad you mentioned that you had your kids, right? So what was that? Obviously, it worked out for the trainings, right? To be able to go travel out to a site. But what was that like, especially with the younger kids, managing your career, right? You’re trying to advance. You’re trying to do your day job. But then you’ve still got to do your number one job, which is be a mom. So what was that like? Obviously, it probably got a little easier once they start school. But while they’re smaller, what was that like for you?

Sirinda: So remember, I said, I worked for that. When I left my dad’s company, I had to go all the way out to Henderson and back. My son was little. And I was working for my dad. And then I got the job at that Henderson office. My sister-in-law was helping me for daycare for a while. And they live kind of Green Valley. So I would leave my house, which is up in the Southwest. And I would drive all the way to Green Valley to drop off my son, then all the way out to Henderson, then come back and pick him up and come back. Then I went to work for Mirage because the health care and having a family and kids, now I have to go all the way to Green Valley, come back to the Mirage, go back to Green Valley to pick him up, back to my house. And I was on call. So it became a little stressful. Like, I felt very bad about my sister-in-law when I couldn’t get there on time because you can’t leave if a system’s down and that’s customer facing and that’s just kind of part of the job. So I was really worried about it because I love my family and I just didn’t want to create any strife there. And I had come home one night, a little bit teary-eyed by the mailbox, like, what am I going to do? This is very stressful. My neighbor, she’s like, oh, what’s wrong? Starts talking to me. She’s an elderly couple, live right across the street and they have an adopted daughter. So it’s just the three of them and she’s a teenager. So I talked to her for a few minutes. I go back in the house next thing you know, about an hour goes by and there’s a knock on my door and she’s there, her daughter’s with her. And she said, if you don’t mind if I ask, she said, would you be interested in me being your baby sitter? And I’m like, really?

Manuel: I know we just met, but yes.

Sirinda: No, I mean, we had met a little bit. You know how a lot of neighborhoods don’t have a front porch? They had a front porch with a rocking chair. They were always there when I came home. We’d always wave. So we knew each other a little bit.

Manuel: In passing.

Sirinda: Now I visit her four times a year in Nebraska. She’s like the grandma to my kid because my grandmother passed while my kids were little and my mom was gone. So her and her husband have become like family. They watched my kids. It didn’t matter when I was on call for MGM. If I got called at 10 o’clock at night, they would tell me to bring the kids over with their sleeping bags. And I would push a double wide stroller across the street. So I was very fortunate that I found them and I paid. That was the one thing. She said, do you mind if I ask, do you pay your sister in law? And I said, yeah. And she said, because I would need to quit my part-time job. And I said, oh, no, no, that’s not all. [Laughter] I’ll pay for you to watch them. And kind of funny, over time too, I’d pack their little lunches and stuff. After a while, she’s like, you don’t need to pack lunch. They’ll eat what they can eat with me. [Laughter] No, really, I’ll bring lunch. So I did that for a while and then there have been some tough times. But I always say some of the benefits, like being on call like that, we’re all, a lot of folks in IT have to take weird shifts and work on call or maybe work swing shift. It allowed me to go to the Mother’s Day event at school, the Christmas pageant, all the things that normally if you’re in an eight to five, it’s like you get a little stressed about I have to leave work. I want to go to my, I just want to do lunch duty at the school. And because I worked those extra hours, it was always a give and take, right? Sometimes you hear people refer to it as comp time or.

Manuel: Flex time.

Sirinda: Yeah, there was never any question that I ended up owing the company. It was usually worked the other way around. But yeah, it made it very easy for me to be able to take care of my kids. Now, I will tell you when it comes to kids, there were a couple of times, like one time I was at Costco and something happened and I had to hurry back because I was on call. I literally had to leave my cart and go apologize since I can’t check out. I got to go and me and the three kids had to go to the corporate center. So my kids have spent time drawing on whiteboards while mom worked or one time there’s a small like lab computer room that we had at MGM resorts. My son came so close to hitting the halon button. I mean, I keep them pretty under control if they’re with me. But he was like, oh, mommy, what’s this? And he almost deployed the halon, which would have destroyed all the equipment. That would have been horrible. So I did kind of slow down bringing them like only when desperate. But then my brother started and his wife started pitching into. When Bellagio lost power, it was a Easter Sunday and I had to drop all three kids off at my brother’s house and they were there for the duration. That was about three days that Bellagio, I don’t, if you were here long enough, about three days that we were down and I was on call.

Manuel: Wow. So how long were you doing a lot of that that traveling? Right? So for those that may not be familiar with the area, that’s probably commute wise between you dropping off kids and picking them up. At that time, maybe traffic’s not as bad, but it’s probably a good 45 minute extra each way. So that’s about an hour and a half each way. And then now you find this willing and great neighbor. [Laughter] So that had to have helped. So how about how many years, and I guess I would just, with the oldest, so how old was the oldest by the time that they made that transition to being babysat by your neighbor?

Sirinda: Oh, they were still really little. So my son and my first daughter, and then I had my third while she was watching the other two. Eventually, because she’s a little older too, my son ended up going to a different daycare after a while because kids get rambunctious and stuff and so she could only really handle the girls at that time. But he would spend, like in a pinch or whatever, he would still go over there for some things. Then they moved back home where they were from, which was a little farm town in Nebraska, when my kids were in about middle school. So then I kind of had to transition, and so they were in school. So after school care, but then summers became a challenge. So we did try a couple summer camps. One time they kind of make fun of me. I grew up here, and the Tarkinian family, the boys played basketball. My dad coached Little League and he did basketball a couple years. So I took him to the Tarkinian Basketball Academy. They had like a little daycare upstairs, and so they met a lot of the basketball players during that summer camp. Yeah, but they liked it. But just tried to find the best that I could every summer and then after school care.

Manuel: So having a support system sounds like it was kind of the biggest contributing factor, right? So whether it’s family, neighbors, friends, that really helped you a lot because to kind of get to the point where it sounded like you were starting to break down from the stress.

Sirinda: Well, and that leads to the next after Cosmo. Manuel: Sure. Sirinda: I went to work for… Manuel: So remind me again, so you helped open Cosmo. You were there for about three years. Sirinda: Oh, I left. So this is a good story to tell for people that are in their careers, especially in this industry where so many people know each other.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: So I had done some property openings, and really you need to be prepared about a year out. You need to be testing the systems, the integration, making sure everything works.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: And so here I’d been helping Cosmo towards build. The person that hired me, they went into… They had some challenges financially, bankruptcy. I stayed through that. So I remember one of the things when he hired me, he said, what do you need to be successful? And I said, I’m a System Engineer. You need to hire a good Network Engineer because I don’t know how to do networking for a whole casino property. I’ve always had a strong peer on the networking side. Sure. He wanted certain people that he ended up not getting because they were opening City Center. There was a challenge finding Network Engineers at the time. They went into bankruptcy and couldn’t hire anybody. And here I’m a System Engineer with no Network Engineer. So I did do some networking with the partner. So we contracted it out, but they weren’t always here. So they would either walk me through stuff. But some of it, I didn’t know how to do enough.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: Just not enough to do a project that size, right? And they had an IT Director that came over. He had done some property openings in Canada, and he coordinated the Networking Partner that they brought in. I did a lot of cabling, which brought me back to my old experience.

Manuel: Cables are a little smaller now, right?

Sirinda: Yeah. And punched down blocks and cross connects and stuff. And there’s a Desktop Guy who reminded me to come back to this part of the story.

Manuel: I will.

Sirinda: Because today, that guy is my daughter’s boss.

Manuel: Okay.

Sirinda: So just to bring things full circle.

Manuel: I will.

Sirinda: But yeah, we were a small group at Cosmo, and as they got close to opening, coming out of bankruptcy, the folks that came in, we’re going to make a lot of changes. And it’s about a year out from opening.

Manuel: Right.

Sirinda: Either I make a decision and they had me on a contract and the contract came up. So I needed to make the decision whether I was going to stay and be part of this opening, where a lot of things are changing. It makes me a little nervous, right? And whole new team. Or is this the time that I make my exit? Because everything’s changing, they don’t necessarily need me at this point, right? Like I’ve delivered all this way. And now, if you’re not going to kind of implement what we’ve already done.

Manuel: If you’re not going to utilize me the way that I was, kinda brought on to.

Sirinda: Yeah. Do I need to stay? And