Colorado-born Katie Zellner originally studied communications in college — however, a tech internship at a construction company made her realize that she wanted to move into IT. She’s now the manager of IT operations at Alterra Mountain Company. There she manages a team of IT technicians and administrators and has worked as a system administrator, or sysadmin, for nearly four years. Here are her experiences, and what it’s been like working in a male-dominated field.

How did you get your start in IT? What about it appealed to you?

I've liked computers forever. I learned a lot from my dad growing up, and I was doing minor HTML coding and stuff like that when I was a teenager. I was the go-to person for all my friends to help them fix stuff, so I enjoyed things like desktop support and understanding how a computer actually works, which I learned while working at Best Buy. When a tech internship opened while I was in college, I thought it was just another job for me to have — I never would have imagined that I would be here six years later, which is kind of crazy to think about.

What was the roadmap like from then until now?

When I graduated, the construction company I interned at brought me on full time as an IT generalist. While I was there, I was learning about all the different fields in IT — networking systems, security, desktop support, management, pretty much anything.

I just was trying to figure out for myself if tech was something that I wanted to do and if so, which field I would want to be in, because there's so many different things you can focus on with an IT career. Eventually I realized that I really enjoyed working on the server and system side.

When I moved from Fort Collins to Denver, I quit and worked at a school district, and that was my first system administrative job. Then the construction company that I was with asked if I could come back and be the system administrator.

At that point, I was really enjoying what I was doing. I was learning a lot. It was my first system administrator job, and it was at a smaller company, so I had an opportunity to implement a lot of things for the first time and learn a lot about Windows server administration and all sorts of different systems, all that jazz. Now I’m at Alterra and have been since November 2019.

What are your job duties at Alterra?

Right now I'm in charge of all desktop support systems and infrastructure for the Denver office, and making sure that the 300 employees there have everything that they need to do their jobs. That includes deploying hardware and software, which I’m in charge of all the budgeting for. I also serve as the liaison between the technical teams and the rest of the users and employees. 

Alterra is a different company — they're much bigger, which I like, because I'm learning a lot more. There's a whole network team and a whole system team, we well as our team and a cloud team. I get to work with all of those teams, and figure out what we need to do to get everything up and running for the rest of the users. 

What aspects of being a sysadmin really appeal to you?

I like seeing everything come together, and being the one that puts everything together on the back end that allows all of the users to do their jobs and use the system on the front end. I enjoyed learning how all that stuff operates, rather than being a person that just uses a piece of software or a system and it just works. I like fully understanding what on the back end was making that stuff happen. 

As well, since I did major in communications, I've really enjoyed that piece of it. Every job that I've been in, I've been the person who is great at communicating and speaking about technical topics in plain English. That has come in handy in all of my positions — that communication piece is huge.

What skills have you relied on most as a sysadmin?

Besides communication, figuring out how to create some sort of business plan, or explaining what you need and why you need it to an executive team or VPs that have no idea what tech support needs. 

Being able to speak to the decision-makers in the language that they understand is super important, and I learned most of that in my business classes. When I got my master’s in technology management, a lot of the classes that I took were about proving what the tech team needs is important, and proving that to executives. If you're looking for higher education beyond a bachelor's degree, focus on that management piece and how tech can fit in with management.

What's a typical day like for you?

I am a working manager, if you will, so I'm out there knocking out help desk tickets as much as anybody else on my team might be. I am also in charge of all procurement for hardware, and getting licensing up to date for anybody that needs software licensing. As well, I help as we're working on deployment projects, or any widespread software that we're trying to deploy or get everyone enrolled in. So I pretty much touch on every single part of it at this point in my current position, as well as system administration. 

What experiences and skills have been most helpful to you in becoming a sysadmin?

Communication would be number one. Being able to communicate, and being able to recognize what somebody needs, even though they don't know that they need it. It's been a huge factor. The most important part of my job is customer service, whether it's employees or customers — my number one priority is that they are satisfied with the IT service that my team is providing them. 

Listening is a big factor as well as communication, and then being able to interpret customer needs into technical terms. All of my customer service experience has helped me learn something new every single day, so if I see something in our queue that I haven't seen before, I can say, okay, time to learn how to fix this. Being adaptable and willing to learn comes into play in my job every day, more than anything else.

How has the field changed over the past six years?

It has changed a ton. I mean, if you're a system administrator, you always have to be on the lookout for what's new, because as soon as something's a year old, it can get out of date. 

I found, at a previous company that I was at, they were very hesitant to implement new technology, and they are suffering for it — just because it is more expensive now to make such a large leap rather than doing incremental updates every so often to their technology. It has changed a lot, and it's going to continue to change regularly as new technologies come towards us.

It's changed so much even in the past three months — I’ve been so much busier since work from home started, just because we had to implement new systems and additional resources to get all these people remotely set up on our network. It's a whole new ballgame now, which is interesting.

What's it been like navigating a very male-dominated landscape?

It's been tough at times, definitely. It's uncomfortable a lot of the time to be the only woman in a room everywhere you go. But I think I've really been true to myself, and I've made it a point to not change how I act or who I am when I'm around on an all-male team. 

Luckily for me, I’ve had few negative experiences with somebody being rude to me or talking down to me or treating me differently just because I'm a woman. 

Even so, it's obvious and I notice it everywhere I go, and every team that I'm on, even in college, in my computer science classes, I was the only woman in the room. So it's hard.

Now I'm excited because the further I get into my career, the more women I see, and I think that they bring a different element into it, with their compassion, communication and customer service skills that a lot of men haven't had to think about. I think women are bringing a different element into computer science because of their more nurturing side, if you will. 

What steps do you think institutions and workplaces can do to encourage more diversity and more female representation in their tech departments? 

For classes, it's definitely hard, because you need to get girls to be interested in those majors. I think showing them that there are females out there that are just like them would definitely help with that.

I think we really need to encourage women to get the training and apply for the jobs that they are interested in, and not be discouraged. The more that women get together, the better it'll be for all of us. I'm in a few meetup groups in Denver that are for women in tech, and getting together with like-minded women that are experiencing similar things as me in the workplace has been great. So creating alliances there is super important as well, so that you don't feel so alone.

What kind of challenges have you encountered?

A lot of it has to do with my age in addition to being female. I am on the younger side for being in a management role, and that, combined with being a woman, I get comments. People call me sweetheart. They don't focus on my skill —- their mindset will be, oh, thank god we have Katie, she can be the token girl on our team. 

I’ve had a manager in the past that definitely talked down to me, and just like downplayed my role because I was leading the IT department at the time for the whole company, and he just did not take me seriously at all compared to how he took the man that was in my position beforehand.

Sometimes guys will tell me, you're just like my daughter, and I think they can't get past that — “You're like my daughter, how am I supposed to treat you like an equal?”

And it kind of sucks, but I’ve gotten used to it. And honestly I don't take it personally — I am confident in my skills and I have a great job, and the people that I work with now are phenomenal.

I would definitely say if you’re a woman in a position where you're being treated unfairly, or you aren’t valued because of your gender, move on and find somewhere that isn't gonna treat you like that, because places like that do exist. And as soon as you find a new job like that, you're gonna say, wow, I can't believe I stayed in a place where they treated me like that.

What advice would you have for someone starting out as a sysadmin?

For students, I’d say branch out a little bit with your elective classes that you have an opportunity to take and try to fit in some business classes or communication classes. If I’m hiring, and there's two candidates that have the same tech experience, but one has better communication skills, I'm going to pick them, because I want a more well-rounded person that is going to be able to stick out for our team in other ways that are not just technical. 

So don't solely rely on your technical skills, because that can be taught on the job — whereas things like communication skills you're going to need from the get go. 

For women: Try not to let them give you that “sweetheart, you're just like my daughter” kind of attitude from the beginning. Make it clear from the start that you know what your skills are, and you know your value. Don't let anybody make you feel otherwise and don't settle because there are opportunities and places that will hire you and treat you equally.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.