My IT career unofficially began shortly after I was born, having been raised in a home with an Apple IIc and a Nintendo Entertainment System. In the elementary school summer months, I attended the computer camp run by our gifted education program and encountered the first Macintosh computers and Maniac Mansion. I received my first PC in 1999, a 400mHz Celeron with a 6GB HDD and 256MB of SDRAM, running Windows 98SE from Fingerhut. I was excited to play Final Fantasy VII with it, and my first experiences with 56K dial-up internet were formed on IRC servers, MUDs, and forums. In 2005, I dropped out of community college; Instead of finishing my general studies for an Associates Degree, I picked up a CompTIA A+ certification so that I could get to work.
My IT career officially began in 2009, doing bench repair, phone/remote support, and on-site support for a small IT provider and computer repair shop serving Greater Philadelphia. I had just recently discovered the early versions of Ubuntu Linux and began working open source technology into all my methodologies. I specialized in forensic data recovery and Windows operating system repair, at a time when all my contemporaries were doing assembly line "nuke and pave" system wipes. I was frequently accused of "overserving" customers, and I took more time and effort to do so; Despite my comprehensive standards, I was retained because I was still a profitable employee. I moved to New Mexico in 2015 and continued working in small brick-and-mortar IT consultancies until I moved to Indiana in 2017 and landed my first official corporate Systems and Network Administration role, managing three offices in an ITAR division of Lionbridge. I wasn't being paid competitively, but I was finally working with the systems, authority, and autonomy that were suited to my skill and experience.
My IT career officially peaked in 2020, when I joined the tens if not hundreds of thousands of other IT employees in transitioning the entirety of corporate America to a work from home configuration. My division was closing due to market factors outside of our control, so I finally had the freedom to move to Colorado. I was able to find work here and there doing low paying and low qualified work in end user support contracts, and I was able to work in the MSP (Managed Service Provider) space as a full-fledged consultant with sole responsibility for a handful of clients, but it seemed that the market had changed. More and more, I was joining teams that were predominantly remote, hiring me only to satisfy the requirements to have sensitive systems handled by an American citizen. The pay was below industry standard and the pace was grueling. 2024 brought no suitable IT work at all, and I leaned on the gig economy to stem the tide of financial loss, only to find an expense-heavy business model with unsustainable profit margins, along with a growing sense of class consciousness for the average low-income American.
In 2025, it seems clear that IT is moving in a direction that is going to leave behind countless IT workers. After cutting my teeth on the front lines for 15 years, after a lifetime of focus, I cannot fathom retraining and attempting to compete in another field with no professional experience. Even if you are in the top 10% of IT workers, if there is only 1 opening for every 10 workers, you are still fighting tooth and nail just to find employment. MSPs know this, and they've been reducing hiring salaries to take advantage of the market competition. Meanwhile, they charge you higher and higher rates as they pay fewer and fewer technicians less and less. I reject this race-to-the-bottom culture in the IT industry, as it undercuts both business clients and tech workers equally, merely for the sake of private equity extracting more wealth at everyone else's expense.
Nothing bends forever without reaching a breaking point, and if all of us are being left behind and replaced by AI tools in the hands of a skeleton crew of global workers, the only solution is to refocus locally. MSPs only wanted to hire me because I was local and American: Would you be inclined to purchase my services for the same reasons?
This year I am taking steps to forge B2B relationships in the Denver area with anyone who is looking for assistance with maintaining a web-driven presence. My passion is in Linux systems and network administration, and you can use the site you're viewing now as a representation of my skills with Linux, cloud, nginx, VPN and firewall technology, domain name management, SSL, email platforms, and SPF/DKIM. I can host your web presence for as low as $5/mo, and I will include domain name management and Office 365/Google Workplace integration for free as an added bonus. (A traditional full service IT contract with service level agreements can be negotiated at an hourly rate with prepaid "use or lose" hours per month.) I intend to be a loss leader for the sake of competing with private equity enterprises, and even if I have to strip my personal expenses down to the barest essentials, I will compete and succeed.
We can succeed together.
The long term goal is to disrupt the MSP industry with cheaper and more ethical technician cooperatives: Thus the "Group" in Foxlight Technology Group.
-Erik Pope, 2/1/25 foxlight.info "The Earth Is My Witness"
(FTG is owned by and inclusive of the neurodivergent and LGBTQIA+ 🏳️🌈 and stands in opposition to the encroachment of fascism and regressive ideologies fueled by politically expedient tribalism and intergenerational trauma.)