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Chicomm Blog

Technology Support: What Would We Do Without It?

Posted by Jill McNamara on Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Employee Spotlight: Joe Sopron

IT technology guy Every office has at least one. They're a source of guidance—a relief to your frustration. Surely there's been more than one occasion you've been in dire need of this person. I'm of course referring to the IT person. At Chicago Comm that "guy" is Joe. Whether its building a computer from scratch, loading it with the necessary programs or recovering those lost files from a 'crash', Joe is the one we rely on. For all of us not quite so inclined to all the rapid changes in software or "how to fix that thing", Joe is our means of support. "When someone has a problem or can't do something, I help them figure it out." Sounds so simple, right? It surely seems to be for him. Regardless if it's yelling at the computer or the endless headaches we would get from trying to figure it out ourselves, we are thankful for the rescue. So it's fitting that when I asked Joe what he likes most about his job, he replied, "I get to do a lot of different things, but the biggest thing is I like helping people, both in my personal life and in my career."

   Joe got his start in this field many years ago. He's been around long enough to work on O85 punch card machines ("I'm probably the only one that remembers that kind of stuff," he says) and see the transition from punch cards to floppy discs to hard discs to, well, you know the rest. He grew up in a Canaryville neighborhood of Chicago and attended school at the Chicago City Colleges. Joe then started working at a credit firm in the mail room and caught a break shortly after. The Vietnam War had started and when the rest of the people working in the computer room got drafted to the army, Joe was thrown in to pick up the slack. He started taking related classes in school, continued excelling, and the rest was "learning by doing". Next he worked for a towel & linen supplier as a programmer where eventually he went on to run the whole computer department. His role there was to create the programs for accounting, billing, and inventory functions by writing and managing the software consistently. He worked here for ten years only leaving briefly when the army drafted him to work as a computer programmer in West Point, NY.

     Another stint worth mentioning was Joe's 4 years of teaching at South Suburban College. He taught several basic and advanced courses in computer programming on nights and weekends. After this he took an offer at a shoe retail company doing similar work as before, but with different means, as technology began to shift towards personal computers in the 1980's. The methods of data entry went from writing out sales tickets to using electronic transfers. What originally took about five days of work could now be done overnight. The first personal computer he purchased for his employer cost $3,000 in 1985, 1980s computer even though this PC was extremely less sophisticated from computers today. Unfortunately this company went bankrupt and he was forced to look elsewhere for work, landing on Chicago Communications in 1993.

    When he started ChiComm didn't have its own network yet but he helped put it together. That's when things really began evolving, and Joe was there every step of the way. “It's amazing how things changed in the PC era, and how it changed businesses. Back when it came out the internet was really new to all of us; people mostly just dabbled into it. It's been interesting watching it get to where it is today, where almost everything relies on it. And also seeing cellular go from big car phones to ones the size of bricks to flip phones to handhelds that are next to nothing in size…and now they’re getting bigger again. Smaller used to be the most convenient when people used the phones for calls, but as functionality grows, the phone has to get bigger to hold the functionality."

   There are numerous reasons Joe has stuck at ChiComm for almost 20 years now and he sums it up nicely when he says, "The people here are great, the management and owners make themselves available to the employees and it’s a forward moving company. They’re not just satisfied with standing still; they’re always looking for new avenues & opportunities to improve. I like coming here, I like my job and if I ever had to do something else it’d have to be something I enjoy just as much.”

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Jill MThis article was written by Jill McNamara, Internet Marketing Coordinator at Chicago Communications. Jill has written all of the Meet Our Techs & Employee Spotlight articles for ChiComm's blog and continues to seek opportunities for similar blog articles from current employees & customers. If you'd like to submit a suggestion for Jill, Contact Us!