Abbey Lowdermilk
IS Development Operations Associate EngineerReskilling from the food services industry to a mainframe career
Reskilling from the food services industry to a mainframe career
“There are so many facets to the mainframe that you don’t know where to start, but that’s the beauty of it: you can start anywhere. Wherever you start, because it’s so interconnected, you’re going to forge your own path and find success.”
Not all software engineers start their technical training at universities. Just ask Abbey Lowdermilk. Abbey is currently an IS Development Operations Associate Engineer who works on the mainframe platform at a leading member association and service organization. The door to her career in mainframes opened for her only after the COVID pandemic shut down the restaurant where she was a food services worker.
During the height of the COVID pandemic, Abbey found herself out of a job and in an industry with few opportunities during this challenging period of time. With most restaurants closed and millions of food service workers sent home, she needed to quickly reinvent herself and her career. Fortunately, she didn’t have to look far for inspiration. Her mom had recently reinvented her own career through an apprenticeship program and suggested that Abbey do the same. While looking for apprenticeships on an internet job site, an opportunity for IT apprenticeships quickly popped up on her screen. A few clicks later, Abbey was on her way to a new tech career she never could have imagined.
Read moreAbbey still remembers those first steps on her new career path. “When I signed up for the IBM - Franklin Apprenticeship, it actually just said ‘IT apprenticeship,’” she recalls. “I thought, ‘Okay, I’m tech savvy, this could be interesting.’ So, I signed up. It wasn’t until later that I found out I would be working on a mainframe.”
Although this new career journey was a radical departure from her past, she wasn’t alone. “When I joined as an apprentice, I was lucky enough to be hired alongside three other apprentices, so it felt like we were embarking on this new journey together,” she says. “We were able to bounce ideas off each other, ask questions, learn together, and support each other. Not only did we have each other, but we also had great mentors on our team who were ready and willing to pass on their knowledge.”
Abbey’s apprenticeship journey began by taking the online challenges available on the IBM Z Xplore learning platform. “IBM Z Xplore really sets you up with learning the fundamentals of IBM Z®,” she says, and adds that the self-paced online experience “was completely unique and different, but it was fascinating and fun to learn.”
A day in the lifeAbbey shares a typical day in the life of her engineering role and why it’s meaningful to her. “My day typically starts running performance reports to see how our systems performed on the previous day,” she says. “Then, I’ll run a storage pool report to make sure we’re not approaching any storage pool thresholds. Right now, my team is currently working on the z/OS 3.1 upgrade, so that’s pretty expansive. And we’ll have work orders or incidents we receive from end users that we need to take care of. Any other free time I may have, I spend doing training or one-on-one knowledge transfers with some of the mentors on my team.”
If that sounds like a busy schedule, Abbey wouldn’t have it any other way. “The excitement I get coming to work every morning is definitely the diverseness of the job. You never know what you’re going to get in the day of a mainframer. That keeps it fresh, fun, and interesting. It’s also a very important job because of how much the world really depends on mainframes. Flights, hotels, banking, insurance . . . you name it, there’s probably a mainframe behind it. It just feels like I’m doing something important, something that matters, something that contributes to the world.”
Jumping in, feet firstAbbey recognizes her pathway to a mainframe career began through serendipity, opportunity, initiative and hard work. As a reskiller, she was able to gain key technical skills through her apprenticeship that enabled her to enter and succeed in an exciting new mainframe career. Abbey hopes to inspire others to explore a career in mainframe computing, reflecting that “maybe my story can open up the mind of someone else who thought they couldn’t start a new career or change careers.”
Her advice to mainframe newcomers is to “just jump in, feet first. There are so many facets to the mainframe that you don’t know where to start, but that’s the beauty of it: you can start anywhere,” she says. “Wherever you start, because it’s so interconnected, you’re going to forge your own path and find success.”
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