Getting to know datacenter employees: Isa Hernandez
Microsoft’s success depends on our people. We are proud to introduce some of the talented folks in your community who work in our global datacenters. Discover what inspired them to seek a career in the tech industry, the different pathways they pursued, and what a day in the life of a datacenter employee looks like.
Introducing Isa Hernandez
Datacenter Technician
Goodyear, Arizona
Employee since 2022
Early days
Isa grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and later moved to Avondale, Arizona. She spent a lot of her childhood outdoors with her younger sister. Her mom did arts and crafts projects with them, and she remembers playing with LEGO bricks. Her family had a computer at the time which she played on a little bit. Her dad was always fixing things around the house, and she always wanted to be right there with him doing what he was doing or learning what he was doing. She would hold the flashlight for him or hand him tools. He would teach her what the tools were and why they were fixing something. When she got older, Isa spent a lot more time on computers. She worked in Microsoft Word, played computer games like The Sims and Nancy Drew, and enjoyed customizing her social media and her Microsoft user account. “I would get curious about how things would work, or if I needed to learn shortcuts. I was always Googling to figure out how to do things or fix things.”
The path to technology
Isa worked for four years as a dental assistant for a private practice where a lot of the technical difficulties were passed off to her for fixing because she was the youngest person in the office. “Some things in dental are becoming digital; your X-rays are becoming digital, your charting is becoming digital.” The practice had computers in each room which were older and had some issues. Isa often had to troubleshoot software with the X-ray machine or figure out user error problems. Sometimes the charting system would disconnect from the server and Isa would figure out how to reconnect all the computers. She would also work on the hard disk upgrades for the older computers. “I had to figure out how to explain to my office manager what that meant, and what that was going to cost.”
After doing all the technical jobs around the office, a coworker mentioned to Isa that she would be good at a technical career. “I thought, you know, that’s not a bad idea.” She looked into the Glendale Community College (GCC) technical courses and found an Associates degree path that she was interested in. At GCC, Isa’s Linux teacher encouraged her to apply for the Microsoft Datacenter Academy scholarship. When she got the scholarship, a lot of her classes at GCC counted for the scholarship requests. She got to learn hands-on skills and was trained in cyber security, which included security protocols and forensic skills.
Superpowers
Isa’s superpower trait is learning. “I always want to learn, and I always want to invest in learning.” When certain devices stump the technicians in their day-to-day work, Isa likes to research previous tickets for that device, read manuals, and talk to other technicians who have had similar issues. “I don’t want to be complacent; I want to keep learning things and keep applying what I am learning.”
A day in the life
Isa gets to the office 10 to 15 minutes early so that she can have a verbal hand-off with the previous shift about what needs to get done. She then sits down to look at her queue and get a sense of what the day is going to look like and what tasks are urgent. Isa then prepares for her team’s daily meeting. After the meeting, she goes through all of the tickets in her workspace and begins to gather information on what she needs to do for each ticket. She starts with completing the easier tickets and then continues to the tickets where she might need extra parts or might need help from a senior technician. By the end of the shift, she takes an hour to clean up her area and return things back to where she found them. She finishes by closing out any remaining tickets and prepares for the next day.
Favorite childhood food
Isa’s comfort food is sopa. Sopa is a Latin American soup with noodles, beef broth, tomato, and cheese.
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