Kevin: Advice for the world of IT

We have a lot of people that have nontraditional backgrounds that have made it here at Google. I've worked with people who have history degrees. I work with people who have economic degrees, and they're writing scripts, automating us on how we can process these credits for this client. I think people have a misconception that you have to have a traditional path in order to succeed in IT. A lot of people do follow the traditional path. A lot of people do succeed following that traditional path. But I think the benefit of IT is that in the end, people just want to know whether or not you can fix the problem. Make sure you have strong fundamentals. They do end up coming back. A lot of times people think that like, I'm not going to need to worry about how to do. Like, I don't need to know, understand the TCP IP model or the OSI model. That's like low-level stuff. I can focus specifically on this one particular application or program that I'm going to be dealing with. There are instances where you will run into problems were in having that foundational knowledge will be like very integral to solving the problem. As long as you're able to get to a point where you feel comfortable working with users, fixing their problems and supporting them in the best way for you and them, you're going to always be viable in the world of IT.