Computer Technologies Program The Bridge to a Career
Union City native Diondre Jordan, 22, came to the Computer Technologies Program after finding himself unsure of what he wanted to major in.
“I knew I wanted to do something tech related,” he said. “I didn’t want to sit with ‘undecided’ on my shoulders.” Department of Rehabilitation counselor Himani Tiwari introduced Diondre to CTP, and the rest was history.
Diondre had been working in retail and attending community college, but knew he wanted something different. “I knew I wanted to work in tech and I didn’t know where to start,” he said. “My counselor told me that CTP was a good opportunity, and in reach.” After a stint working on production at Tesla, Diondre now works for Facebook, providing remote support.
“This is something I enjoy doing, helping people with their technology,” Diondre said. “It’s not a drag to go to work.”
At Facebook, he uses skills honed at CTP: hardware support through ticketing, troubleshooting computer problems, using Microsoft mailing lists, and accessing computers remotely to fix issues.
Diondre enrolled in Computer Skills Bootcamp in January 2017, before going on to Computer Technician Training (CTT). He graduated from the CTT course in June of that year. “At CTP, I could take BART to get to it. I could take a pause from school and get set in my career. This is the route I wanted to take instead of the traditional route.”
His CTT experience culminated in an externship at the Port of Oakland.
“The Port was great, because I got to do a lot of hands-on things. I didn’t really know what the Port did, actually, so I got to learn about what their business was about, and do a lot of hands-on things with computers, repairs, phones, IT help desk. It was kind of putting my toe in the water, with doing hands-on support. I’d always done IT support at home, with friends and family, but this was more of a business role. Also I got the work experience of showing up at 9 a.m.”
Diondre says CTP taught him practical skills, as well as confirming what he wanted to do professionally. “The CTT instructor helped a lot with me with learning to troubleshoot Macs and whatnot. Before then, I’d never really touched a Mac. Since then I’ve just kept on growing. I feel like it more ingrained what I wanted. After CTP, I knew I didn’t want to go back to some other kind of job.”
“It’s never too late to learn something new,” Diondre said. “When I first came to CTP, I didn’t think I could do a lot. I wasn’t confident in my skills at the time. But when I came to my externship it was familiar, because we had gone over these things.”
What does the future hold for Diondre? “My end goal is to secure a full-time position at Facebook and see how my growth goes, see how much I enjoy it. Ten years down the road, I might start up my own tech support company.”
