From NT4 to 2022: Windows Server, and the journey from flight attendant to IT Pro

I never wanted a career in IT – I was going to be a flight attendant, and my plan was to work for a year before enrolling in a travel and tourism course. But during that first year of work, my employer recognised a spark of natural talent, as I become the “go to” person to deal with the Helpdesk. This led to an offer from IT to join them for a project rollout, and I walked into a tech department as their second female employee when I was just about to turn 19 years old.

My 15-year-old daughter is the only girl in her coding-heavy technology class in school, but she’s seen me follow a career that doesn’t involve software development at all. While she’s writing Python for an assignment, my job training included a session around the whiteboard on how TCP/IP addressing worked. I often wonder if we need an alternative to Girls Who Code, to celebrate the amazing variety and challenges of IT Pro roles and attract an audience that doesn’t want to bug bash.

That project I mentioned earlier was to roll out Windows NT4 Server. As I look at the announcements for Windows Server 2022, now in preview, I must smile that Server Administration is still a valid career path, whether it’s on-premises or in the Cloud (or both)! To celebrate this foundational piece of technology, we’ve recently published over 26 hours of free learning content on Microsoft Learn relevant to Windows Server 2019. It covers deployment, Hyper-V and virtualisation, high availability, files servers and storage, networking, and Active Directory.

Here’s to inspiring the next generation of IT Pros and long live Windows Server!

Sonia Cuff

Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft

See more articles from this author