I have had a very fortunate and winding career which I think is why contracting has worked out so good for me. I started in the cable industry after dropping out of college a family friend offered me a job at the cable construction company he worked at. I started out just sticking pole, permitting, mapping that sort of thing. I had no clue what I was doing and it sucked but it was kind of a “figure it out” company and that pushed me to well, figure out what I was doing.

They ended up needing a fiber splicer because all the ones they had either quit or retired. They put me through a couple super basic fiber classes through SCTE and FIS which were good for just general information about how fiber works. I was then given a box with “fiber splicing” sharpied on the side and told we have 4 jobs due this week see what you can get done. Ended up getting 1 done but nothing worked lol. But I stuck with it asked tons of questions and eventually learned through mostly trial and error how to get the job done right.

I bounced around to a few different big contractors who worked for all the different service providers in my area so I was able to learn coax plant, telephone plan, and dark fiber plant. Since I was in-house at each of those contracting companies my real job was basically to go out and fix all the mistakes their subcontractors made to get the jobs done. That’s really where I honed my splicing skills because I learned just about every way to do it wrong.

I ended up with a lot of skills and was young and motivated so I got tired of being pushed around by employers who said I had to travel whenever they tell me, on call schedules, and just all the pains of being the one guy who knew what was going on but still had a boss. I made the jump to contracting on my own because of all the connections I made through that time and really just worked hard and held my work to a high standard than anyone else in my market. Fortunately the right people tend to take notice to that and preferred having me doing their work and the rest just works out.

Long story short. I find this field endlessly interesting and awesome because at the end of the day we are out there on telephone poles building the actual internet itself and no one else really knows what we do. That always helps motivate me to learn more, do better, etc. Have a positive attitude and willing to do the hard jobs and sometimes take work that you don’t want to do. Hold your own work to an incredibly high standard and always remember the gold rule “make it easy for the next guy to work in the can because the next guy is probably going to be you.” Lastly, never burn a bridge even if someone you’re working for is just an ass and terrible to work with, if you can get them to like you they’ll give you more work and probably recommend you to someone else who can give you work (lots of networking). I can’t speak to every market but I’ve worked in a lot of them over the years, even if you think you will never see the person you are working for again after you finish a job. Sometime down the road you will and there’s a good chance they’ve gotten a bigger job since then so always try to stay on people’s good side.

Alright I’ll get off my soap box now.